Remembering Jesus on Easter Sunday
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.—Gandhi
I am not a Marxist—Marx
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets—Matthew 7:12
On this Easter Sunday, if you believe in Jesus, I tell you this. Don’t ask yourself what you think Jesus would do, because it’s clear most Christians don’t have the faintest idea, instead, ask yourself these questions.
- What have I done to Jesus?
- What have those I support done to Jesus?
35 For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat: I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink: I was a stranger, and you took me in: 36 Naked, and you covered me: sick, and you visited me: I was in prison, and you came to me. 37 Then shall the just answer him, saying: Lord, when did we see you hungry and fed you: thirsty and gave you drink? 38 Or when did we see you a stranger and took you in? Or naked and covered you? 39 Or when did we see you sick or in prison and came to you? 40 And the king answering shall say to them: Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me. 41 Then he shall say to them also that shall be on his left hand: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me not to eat: I was thirsty and you gave me not to drink. 43 I was a stranger and you took me not in: naked and you covered me not: sick and in prison and you did not visit me. 44 Then they also shall answer him, saying: Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not minister to you? 45 Then he shall answer them, saying: Amen: I say to you, as long as you did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to me. 46 And these shall go into everlasting punishment: but the just, into life everlasting.
Have you tortured Jesus? Have you bombed Jesus? Have you laughed when someone raped Jesus? Have you killed Jesus? Have you said “those animals in jail deserve to be raped and beaten?”
What have you done to Jesus?
What have you done to Jesus!
Jesus didn’t say to kill you enemies, to annihilate them. He didn’t say to beat them. He didn’t say your life was worth more than another person’s life.
What Jesus said is “what you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.”
“But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.”
I am not Christian. I do not believe that Jesus was the son of God, except perhaps in the heretical sense that we are all God’s children.
But I do love Jesus. I do respect Jesus. I do think he was a good man, and a good guide.
And it saddens me when those who claim to act in his name do exactly the opposite of what Jesus would want them to do.
If you do evil, if you rape, if you murder, if you bomb, if you kill, so be it.
But do not cloak yourself in the shadow of Jesus’s crucifixion, do not claim that you are his apostles. You, my friends, are the devils who quote scripture, the foulness that uses the words of a good man to cover your evil, that you may continue to rape, murder and torture.
The true church is the heart of any person who actually follows Jesus.
And if Jesus were to return today, he would say “I am not a Christian”.
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Jesus of the Four Gospels was either a frighteningly dichotomous messiah, or a confusing character mashup of different traditions. Yes he said those things, but he also said “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” And as Mark Twain said, for all his gentleness Jesus is crueler than Jehovah, because he invented or at least massively popularized the endless-torment version of Hell. And he goes around doing stuff like cursing fig trees for not having fruit, even though they’re not in season (wtf?), and also saying that whoever doesn’t believe his improbable story, when they hear it third-hand, will be damned.
So yeah … my feelings about Jesus vary a lot with my mood. I guess I can like a more Gnostic-y version.
Amen to that, Ian!
My and my family’s religion is “I will treat others the same way I want to be treated”…and that is with love and kindness and compassion and fairness and justice and equality – and, you get the idea.
I worship by looking out my window at my wonderful natural world. And I “pray” that we don’t destroy ourselves – in the name of religion.
That said, I like this post. And it is evident that the movers and shakers, though for the most part nominally Christian, also for the most part have never given a single shit about the Sermon on the Mount in their lives. And it is sad.
Yes, I’d be a gnostic, for sure.
I suspect that the prophetic second coming of Christ is going to surprise all, somehow the idea that a “take two” is in the offing probably isn’t in the cards, not if the simple message presented the first time is beyond the ability to learn. A new lesson is likely in store, more likely one that cannot be ignored (or spun). May you live in interesting times.
Cloud,
It’s best to take everything we “know” about Jesus with a huge grain of salt and consider that the establishment of Christianity is only tangentially related to Jesus or the Christ. Not to mention that so much of the tradition was purged in order for Christianity to be accepted by Rome.
What evidence we do have (find and read Funk and/or Crossan, especially the latter for serious consideration of what he likely actually said and the milieu in which he lived) portrays him in two ways: the gnostic-y manner of inner enlightenment as an answer to a difficult and cruel world, and as very much a social revolutionary acting in a time of serious upheaval.
To be sure, the Church wanting acceptance in Rome and the power that comes with it would have had zero use for either of these aspects.
Lex
Formerly T-Bear,
We wouldn’t even notice. I think that Dostoevsky nailed the second coming scenario in “The Grand Inquisitor”.
@ Lex
There goes obtaining another book to read. JOY!!!
I’ve traveled quite a ways with this over several decades. I was an agnostic in my youth, became a born again Christian in the 80s, eventually walking away from it, and becoming much more ecumenical. I came to see, that under their skin, nearly all religions are about the same core realizations and experiences, and more importantly the direction of human and personal evolution. But you have to get past the packaging (the exoteric church).
1) There is the religion that Jesus practiced, and then there is the religion about Jesus. Many cannot see the difference.
2) It’s useful to separate the wrapper, the packaging, from the man. The packaging (the church and its scriptures) have evolved over 2000 years, and are largely a man-made cultural and historical creation of many layers (it’s sort of like the party game “Telephone” – tell me how the message could not possibly get garbled over two millenia?). There are many Christians who cannot make this distinction, for them it’s all of one piece, they cannot question the packaging.
The bible, or any sufficiently complex scripture is like a rorshact test – people see in it what they want to see. Lefties like myself are fond of the scripture Ian quoted (Matthew 35). Others will focus on verses about judgment, or sex, or money. The dominant form of Christianity in America has shifted over time in its focus on Matthew 35 and our obligation to others, and more toward judgment, as the political and cultural winds in this country have shifted.
And don’t get me started on how people project their own biases into the Koran – people either see an Islam that is extremely tolerant, or one that is extremely militant, depending on their own biases.
Many people stay stuck (or revolted by) the packaging around Jesus their entire lives, and don’t penetrate to the core of what he and all spiritual figures were about.
“I do not believe that Jesus was the son of God – But I do love Jesus. I do respect Jesus. I do think he was a good man, and a good guide.”
That always cracks me up when I read something like this. If Jesus wasn’t exactly who He said He is then He most certainly wasn’t a good man nor a moral teacher. If Jesus wasn’t exactly who He said He is He was a liar, a fraud, a con artist.
Jesus told people to worship Him.
He told people to be ready to die for Him. I
f Jesus wasn’t exactly who He said He is, He was scum.
Yet you love Him! What a joke!
Well of course he would say he wasn’t a Christian-he was Jewish after all.
I am rather partial to liberation theology. Of course, Ratzinger (aka: Benedict, aka: child rapist abetter) and John Paul II destroyed liberation theology as a movement in the Church.
Another reason why, if there is a hell, both of them can expect to burn in it.
Ratzinger aka: Emperor Palpatine -lookin’ guy
But there isn’t a hell, and there isn’t a heaven either. That’s the whole point. It’s all here and it’s all now and there is no point in fairy tale games about the great hereafter. People don’t always get what’s coming to them. You have to deal with that and get on with it. If we are going to make a better world and a more just environment and social contracts to live by, we have to do it our selves.
Thanks Ian and John B.
@ Formerly T-Bear
You don’t have to read the whole of The Brothers Karamazov (though it’s worth it) to get “The Grand Inquisitor”
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pol116/grand.htm
Jesus is LOVE, the people you see in government and on teevee calling themselves christians wouldn’t know about christianity if they were knocked across the head with it by a brick wall. It is sad that a bunch of racist, mean, greedy, bigoted, people have hijacked the religion in the name of Christianity but their actions are NOT those of a Christian. They are NOT what Jesus would do or would have us do. HE expects us to love, and turn the other cheek, and forgive. I wish the media would quit aiding these haters by calling them Christians.
I can rarely unequivocally agree with anything as much as I unequivocally agree with what you have said here, Ian. My Catholic mother (who is seriously investigating Deism at this point, in her 73rd year) and I had this same conversation over Easter, and I’ll be goddamned if your post doesn’t sound the same as my side of the convo!
@ Lex
Found my copy Fyodor Dostoyevsky “The Brothers Karamazov” unabridged, edition © 1957 by Manuel Komroff and yellowed at the edges (as am I). Thanks for the direction.