Conservations with a grouchy skeptic about Jesus in the Gospels, who mostly seems forgotten (or ignored) by Christendom

The other day, I paid Facebook to boost this below in the United States for 5 days to people aged 13-65+. With 3 days of the boost left to run, there are 1,000 likes, 12 shares, and a number of comments, including a grouchy skeptic named David, whom I engaged in what turned out to be a lengthy discussion:

A Fool's Work Never Ends

Most unusual thing happened this past weekend. Didn't realize it was Easter until around noon yesterday. How could that be? Had seen nothing about Good Friday or Easter Sunday on Facebook and TV news. How could that be? More to the point, how could I space out Good Friday and Easter Sunday?

Can't imagine why they named it Good Friday. Doubt Jesus felt good about that day. Being nailed to a cross. For speaking his mind. Making a few miracles. Attracting a large following, who mostly went into hiding and left him stranded mostly alone on the cross.

Is that what I did this past weekend? Left Jesus stranded mostly alone? Have no clue, for cannot recall an Easter weekend when I didn't have something to say about Jesus on my blog. But not this past weekend. I was in another world.

And I swan, that world seemed so truly disturbed at Facebook and TV news, in emails from people, in my dreams, that I wondered how it could ever be fixed? Not by Easter egg hunts. Not by attending church services. Not by posting on Facebook. Not by watching CNN or FOX. Don't use Twitter or other social media, can't imagine it's any different there.

So much disturbance, finger-pointing, handwringing and spinning facts to suit this and that agenda. What happened to Jesus in the Gospels? Mostly, he seems to have been forgotten and replaced by something else.

David

It is. Pagan celebration hijacked by the church in the early middle ages.

An honest prayer should begin with "Let us pretend!"

All of this is according to a book that contains talking serpents and mules.

If prayer works, explain how it is that science based addiction recovery programs are five times more effective than faith based programs?

If prayer works explain why there are no faith healers working in hospitals?

Try praying for someone who has lost a limb to regrow it.

Finally, if your child or spouse is injured and bleeding, do you rush them to the church or the hospital?

Religion is an outdated coping mechanism that stifles logical thinking. Religion causes more harm than good today.

A Fools Work Never Ends 

Agreed, much of the essence of Jesus in the Gospels is diluted, even smothered, under the pomp. And, under the focus on miracles, instead of living as he lived and taught other people to live. I have wonder if Jesus had it to do over, would he use miracles? I can't speak for him. Others in his wake also apparently were able to effect healing by extraordinary means. Yet, this world today, America is a good place to start, I think, would be very different if Jesus's way of living were the norm, rather than how things are.

David

IF he actually existed, he was another of many prophets like Mohammed.

You are using an outdated coping mechanism that stifles logical thinking. Religion causes more harm than good today

A Fool's Work Never Ends

For sure, religion does a great deal of harm today, and in the past. In that regard, see last two paragraphs of this post. If you lived in my skin, or in the skin of a few other conscripted people I have known well, you would spend a lot of time trying to cope with tasks and tests provided by beings described in the Bible, revered by church people, but how would they feel about having those beings on their case day and night, for the rest of their lives? Meanwhile, it’s a lot easier to attend church services, than to live as Jesus in the Gospels lived and taught.

David

You are part of the problem.

Millions murdered during the Holocaust. Jim Jones victims and don't forget Catholic pedifiles.

BUT HE SAVED YOU! Aren't you special. Give me a break

A Fool's Work Never Ends

Are you reading what I write to you? Let me try another approach. I am not a Christian. I once was. I am someone who was literally captured by Jesus, Archangel Michael and, later, Melchizedek, who turned me every which a way but loose, inside out, upside down, and changed my perspective of everything. I have no cult following. I have had few friends having similar experiences, one of them is in my life now. We have the same view of Nazi Germany and Jim Jones as you have. We view today's religions as cults. We view today's political parties as cults. 

Read the last two paragraphs of what I posted here. As I and captured friends see it, Christians, for example, are saved by Jesus in the Gospels to the extent they live as he lived and taught in the Gospels. There is no magic salvation formula. That was invented by the organized church, to gain adherents and get donations. The Devil, which is very real, loves the magic salvation formula. I makes it so very easy to be saved by Jesus in the Gospels, who never preached easy salvation. Au contraire, he was very plain it was not easy.

David

Have someone outside of your cult with at least a GED read this thread back to you and explain it.

You are obviously incapable.

It is easy to prove that the bible is BS.

I however cannot fix stupid.

A Fool's Work Never Ends

David Graham Heh, for the most part, Jesus was not able to fix stupid in his day, either. Nor, for that matter, have I been able to do that, nor my few friends who shared my predicament. I dunno, you seem so sure of your position, I can't help but wonder if you have tempted God to provide you with other perspectives? If that happens, I suggest you be cautious about seeking help with it in churches and the mental health profession. I suggest you be cautious about telling your friends and family about it. But then, such a cosmic sense of humor God has, that might be just that you are told to do, as in, an offer you cannot refuse 

.

Robert

There is a very good chance that the Jesus of the gospels were based on at least 3 to 4 different Jesuses....none of whom would recognize themselves.

A Fool's Work Never Ends

You got that information from a New Age guru? ETs? A grocery store tabloid? Some cult? Are you willing to bet your life and your soul that Jesus didn't exist in Palestine, as reported in the Gospels?

David

His source is a lot more accurate than a book compiled almost 400 years after the fact by a group of misogynist men with an agenda.

The King James version has 14,800 differences between it and the Sinai bible. And those are just two of thousands of versions.

It is easy to prove that the bible is BS.

So blow all the smoke that you want. Bottom line is that you have nothing but your delusion.

A Fool's Work Never Ends

David, you are right about how the Bible came into existence, and it was produced by men, and they decided what to include, and what to leave out, and they didn't seem to have much use for women. The writings they included were around for a while. Back in those days, there was a written and an oral tradition of passing down history. There were people trained early in life to memorize and preserve history. There were writings found much later, which also referenced Jesus, which the church tried to suppress or collected and stored in secret vaults. That rabbit hole will not likely ever be resolved. Yet, read what Jesus himself is quoted in the Gospels as saying about how to live and walk with God. It was a radical departure from what had come before in the Abrahamic lineage. My point in posting what I did and paying FB to boost it is seen in the last two paragraphs.  This would be a very different world, if what Jesus in the Gospels modeled and taught about living were how people live today. All the going to church and praising God and Jesus and his mother and the apostles, yet how do people behave when they are not in church? 

As for me and a few people I have known well, we got treated to being captured, adjusted, tutored, called on the carpet, terrorized, uplifted by something we flat knew was a lot bigger and smarter than us. We knew we could not prove any of it. We knew no one could disprove it. It fell on us to live it and tell other people about it. We caught a great deal of flack. We learned that goes with the terrain, and if we did not catch a great deal of flack, we were not doing it right. You can stay with trying to convince yourself we are like church people, if that makes you feel better or justified or righteous. That's your business and your walk with God, which you will see eventually, in this life or afterward, and then you will wonder what had gotten into you? Meanwhile, if you have not, try living as Jesus in the Gospels said to live. If you already live that way, good for you.

A Fool's Work Never Ends

Some examples, of how Jesus in the Gospels said to live. Do unto others as you would have done unto you; it is more blessed to give than to receive; you cannot worship God and mammon; first take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly enough to help your brother remove the speck from his eye; take no thought for tomorrow, because each day has enough trouble of its own; turn the other cheek; if a man takes your goods, ask not for them back; if a man asks for your shirt, offer him also your coat; if a man asks you to walk a mile with him, walk more miles with him; if a man takes you to court, settle with him along the way, less the judge puts you in jail; resist not one who does evil; pray for and do good to your enemies; repent your own sins and make amends. 

David

Why not quote Yoda?

It would be less harmful to believe that as fact than backing a work of fiction that supports women as second class citizens, gays as abominations and supports slavery.

Grow up

A Fool's Work Never Ends

I happen to like Yoda and Obi Wan Kenobe, but it seemed to me the rest of the Jedi ensemble got a bit tangled up in their thinking. I wonder if you had a bad experience with Christians? You carry on as if you did. The Jesus in the Gospels embodies nothing you decry. He treated women well, except he had some issues with his mother. He and Mary Magdalene seemed pretty tight. She washed his feet before the male disciples with her hair and tears, and anointed his feet with sacred ointment she scarce could afford. What do you figure she washed and anointed him with when they were in private? 

Once I convinced a group of young gay men, who were very reactive against Christianity, and rightly so, that St. Paul's undisclosed thorn in the flesh was he was gay and that didn't matter to God, but it sure mattered to Paul, since he did not come clean with it. How else I convinced them Paul was gay, was he was a Jewish Pharisee, but in his writings he never spoke of having married or produced children, which was his sacred duty to God. He put women below men in relation to Christ. He spoke against men and women having sex. Every woman near him knew he was gay. And today Christians quote Paul a great deal more than they quote Jesus, whose teachings were a bit steeper than Paul's. Paul was into adding numbers to his flock, Jesus was into recruiting a few good men and women. 

Toward the end of his life reported in the Gospels, Jesus sent Magdalene to tell the brave men disciples in hiding that she had seen him and he would be with them soon, and they were disturbed he had sent a woman with that news. Jesus never did anything by happenstance. He sent Magdalene to make the point that she was closer to him than they were. In fact, she was his wife and he was her husband, and, yep, they did have a child, a girl, in fact, but you will never get the Vatican or the mainstream church to admit it. Or, that Jesus did not leave this world, but went elsewhere from Palestine. 

You can continue trying to fit me into something you think you know, if you wish. Or, you could consider that I have punched a lot of your hot buttons and it is you who are a fictional character living in a self-created reality about as solid as Christians who claim Jesus saved them, but they trample much of what he taught in the Gospels.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com