The acronym “WWJD” was the popular christian t-shirt of the nineties. Sooo … how can one know what Jesus would do? It depends heavily on which part of the New Testament you read.
The nice guy Jesus:
Matthew 5:43-45
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.”
Matthew 7:12
“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”
The violent vandal Jesus:
John 2:13-16
“When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here!“
The angry, name calling Jesus:
Matthew 23:33
“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?”
Matthew 23:15
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.”
Matthew 23:16-17
“Woe to you, blind guides! … You blind fools!”
Matthew 23:24
“You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.”
The cruel and threatening Jesus:
Luke 14:26
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.”
Matthew 8:21-22
Another disciple said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”
Matthew 5:30
“And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.”
Matthew 18:9
“And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.”
Mark 11:13-14, 20-21
Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again … In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. Peter remembered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!”
Matthew 10:34
“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.“
The fear mongering fire and brimstone Jesus:
Luke 12:46-47
“The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers. That servant who knows his master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows.”
Matthew 10:28
“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
Matthew 5:22
But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
Mark 10:25
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
The next time a person disagrees with your religion: call them a blind snake, tell them to gouge out their own eye and explain how they will one day be destroyed by the fires of hell. All while chasing them around with a whip. After all, that’s what Jesus did.
Tags: Bible, Cruel, Curse, Evil, Fear, Fire, Fools, Good News, Hate, Hell, Jesus, Love, Testament, WWJD
December 2, 2009 at 1:29 am |
I am going to have to highlight all of these. Although I suspect that some may be from parables taken out of context. Personally, I don’t think many people realize just what it is they are signing up for with Christianity. Jesus was a bit of a bastard… both literally and figuratively since God and Mary were never married. Keep up the good work.
December 2, 2009 at 8:50 am |
The one I thought might be a parable was, Luke 12:46-47. That one is basically saying that those who do wrong without knowing it will be punished less than those who knowingly do wrong. Still, he’s clearly talking about mankind as his slaves. Not to mention the fact that these “wrongs” are based off of some of the silliest laws we’re likely to ever hear.
December 2, 2009 at 9:34 am |
Yes, Luke 12:46 is from a parable. But as you noted, it is a parable describing what will happen to people who don’t follow God’s demands. The demand for all people to be God’s obedient bond servants.
Wrathful threats are the same even when they are packaged in a parable … about slavery. By the way, nice choice of parable Jesus. “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you,” unless they are one of your slaves.
December 2, 2009 at 4:12 am |
These verses do better explain why so many fail to meet the so called christian standards. How can someone meet all the standard when by doing one of them they break another one.
December 2, 2009 at 11:42 am |
What would Jesus do?
Just what you want him to.
December 3, 2009 at 8:41 pm |
“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”
Susan B. Anthony was a pretty smart chick.
December 4, 2009 at 10:00 am |
Nice. I’m going to borrow that one for my next post.
December 2, 2009 at 8:43 pm |
Matthew 5:30 and 18:9 show that whoever wrote this apparently believed in the Egyptian concept of having the body you died with in the afterlife. (Therefore, a wise Christian will have plastic surgery.) I know, “let the dead bury their own” seems to contradict this.
People actually do believe this – during the Falkland Islands war, some Argentinians had heard that the Gurkhas serving with the Brits were cannibals, and were afraid that they would not be able to be resurrected if they were eaten.
December 3, 2009 at 12:26 am |
THE MONEY CHANGER INCIDENT: He ran the money-changers out of the temple because the animal sacrifice system was keeping people poor because they had to spend so much of their lively-hood offering worthless sacrifices (expensive ones too) to a god that did nothing for them, the Kosmokrator. And in halting this robbery for a day, he was doing for his neighbors what he would want them to do for him: saving them from robbery and from having their money stolen by an illegitimate theocratic tax.
CALLING THE PHARISEES NAMES: They were the robbers stealing people’s money with the worthless animal sacrifice system. In calling them names in public he was alerting people to their fraud, hence doing for his neighbors what he would want them to do for him.
THE THREATENING AND THE FIRE AND BRIMSTONE: When he threatened he did so to pray men away from the Kosmokrator and his works so that they might be saved by the Heavenly Father, the Alien God, who sent him into this world to save us from the god of this world.
December 3, 2009 at 12:44 am |
Yet I admit your point is correct that the Bible shows Jesus acting in contradictory ways (due to Catholic corruption) just not these examples. By ‘Catholic’ corruption I mean 2nd century Catholic, those who taught Jesus was the Old Testament god and OT Messiah as opposed to the 2nd century non-Catholics who taught he was not the Old Testament god nor OT Messiah. The most obvious example is where the 2nd century Catholics have added their corrupt verse in which they make him call Gentiles “dogs” which no non-Catholic of the 2nd century would have believed he did.
December 3, 2009 at 6:46 am |
Citation needed. Actually, many citations needed. I think everyone should defer to the expertise of Jewish scholars and Israeli archaeologists as to what was actually going on in and around the Temple in the 1st century.
I’ll say it again- you need to find other terms to identify your boogeymen. The vast majority of readers will take “Catholic” to mean a member of the organized church AFTER the Council of Nicea.
And please, get you own site- when you talk about and “Alien God,” you are just teasing us with glimpses of what I suspect to be a ripe and florid lunacy.
December 3, 2009 at 1:11 pm |
Citations: OK.
A better name for the corrupters of the Bible: Good idea if it reduces confusion and avoids animosity toward living persons.
But how is the Interloper God crazier than the general level of lunacy that is religion? Or do you just mean that you suspect Rey of making all this up on his own, without any historical antecedents, as a result of mental malfunction?
The outlines of Rey’s recent remarks here are consistent with Marcionism as described by Wikipedia (with citations). And, in regards to the term “Alien God”, the Wikipedia article says, “Marcion called God, the Stranger God, or the Alien God, in some translations, as this deity had not had any previous interactions with the world, and was wholly unknown.”
December 4, 2009 at 11:07 am
Corruptors of the Bible?? I think that every single book in the Bible has been the subject of ongoing revision, almost from the instant of first oral transmission or writing, and I don’t think “corruption” is quite the word for this process, since it implies that there was something pure or original about the first Judeo-Christian traditions, which were so heavily influenced by earlier religions. Check out Bart Ehrmann’s books.
Reducing animosity- yes. Just as I didn’t bother to look up “alien God,” most people aren’t going to bother to find out what Rey has defined as “Catholic.” Just because I have no use for religion doesn’t mean I enjoy seeing its followers abuse each other.
I do in fact suspect that Rey has gone past the bounds of merely selecting scriptures to suit his fancy, and is creating his own theology. I conclude this from remarks like : “He was a God from outside our universe who came and did good to make the god of this world jealous and crucify him.” If that’s not a new concept, it’s new to me. Speculation about multiple universes has only been around for a few decades, but of course religion will charge in to claim new turf, just as New Agers claim that positive thinking changes our destinies through the mechanism of quantum physics.
Think about how Rapture theology was cobbled up from various vague scriptures in the 1830s. Maybe we are the unwilling witnesses to the birth of a new sect.
December 4, 2009 at 3:38 pm
“He was a God from outside our universe who came and did good to make the god of this world jealous and crucify him.” If that’s not a new concept, it’s new to me. (nazani14)
It’s Marcionism which is as old as the early 2nd century. See Yeznik (or Eznik) of Kolb (or Golb)’s summary of the Marcionite view of how the cross saves men. Eznik of Kolb on the Mystery of Marcionite ‘Redemption’
December 4, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Eznik of Kolb, by the way, was a 5th century writer wikipedia article on Eznik of Kolb.
I might as well post the most relevant paragraph of his summary of Marcionite doctrine. Speaking of the Good God, he says:
“He sent his Son to redeem them and ‘to take on the likeness of a slave and to come into being in the form of man’ [Phil 2:7] in the midst of the sons of the God of the Law. ‘Heal’ he said ‘their lepers and give life to their dead and open [the eyes of] their blind and make very great healings as a gift to them, so that the Lord of creatures might see you and be jealous and raise you on a cross.’”
December 4, 2009 at 3:46 pm
As to ‘Catholic’ being too confusing, it is customary for modern scholars to refer to the 2nd century Catholics as Proto-Orthodox. I suppose I can either use that term or Proto-Catholic from now on.
December 5, 2009 at 1:17 pm |
Well, at least the man isn’t as irresponsible as his dad was. I mean, we’re talking about someone who made a bet with the devil to kick Job in the balls repeatedly, and when Job called him on it he not only had Job rebuked, he *sent someone else to do the rebuking for him*. >_>
December 7, 2009 at 8:45 am |
The first time I heard of “WWJD” it was in Harper’s Magazine: http://www.harpers.org/archive/1999/03/0060427
December 14, 2009 at 9:59 am |
What I *do* like about this post is that it helps to *not* paint Jesus as a blond-haired, blue-eyed Savior who likes to carry lambs around.
I think the scriptures you’ve chosen show a very diverse and *real* Jesus Christ.
God was “off the chain” at times in the Old Testament as well, so this behavior by JC shouldn’t be quite such a surprise. I like it!