Why Jesus?

This is an edited version of a tract produced by the Freedom from Religion Foundation, whose original can be found at "Freedom From Religion Foundation".

"As for Jesus' divinity...I have doubts." -- Benjamin Franklin, near the end of his life.

WAS JESUS PEACEABLE AND COMPASSIONATE?
"Think not that I am come to send peace; I came not to send peace but a sword."

"He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one."

"But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me." (The last was spoken in a parable in Lk.)

"If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth...and men gather them into the fire, and they are burned." (a verse cited by the Inquisition)

Jesus looked at the Pharisees "with anger" Mk. 3:5, called them blind fools and sons of vipers and sons of the devil, and called his generation an evil and adulterous one [just as today's doomsaying Christian televangelists rave on about the evils of OUR generation] and said that certain towns of his day deserved and would receive greater judgment than Sodom. And in one spectacular curse, Jesus says, "Depart from me ye accursed into the hellfire prepared for the devil and his angels."

Jesus attacked merchants by turning over their tables and brandishing a whip.

He showed his respect for life by drowning innocent animals.

He refused to heal a sick child until he was pressured by the mother.

WAS JESUS TOLERANT?
The Gospel of John, unlike the three other Gospels, concentrates on the necessity of "believing in Jesus." The other three Gospels do not have Jesus harping on the necessity of believing in Jesus but instead explain "the kingdom of God" in parables, and even downplay belief in Jesus and play up ethical actions instead. John's Gospel also differs from the rest in NOT HAVING JESUS UTTER A SINGLE PARABLE, but only portrays Jesus teaching about himself: "I am the way, the truth and the light," "I am the light of the world," "I am the good shepherd," "I am that I am," "I am the resurrection and the life," etc. Jesus' emphasis according to "John" was totally on himself, and the only way to inherit eternal life was by believing in Jesus (as supposedly revealed to Nicodemus secretly one night, an event that the other evangelists left out). Hence, statements appear in John's Gospel like, "If you do not eat the body of the son of man and drink his blood, you shall not have life within you," and, "He who does not believe is condemned already" [the latter verse is found in John, chapter 3]

The Gospel of John is also the most anti-Semitic in tone, since it blames "The Jews" as a whole, not just "the Pharisees."

Neither is the author of the Gospel of John mentioned in the book itself. It is the "beloved disciple." And if the apostle John was that disciple then it is curious that his Gospel omits any account of Jesus transfiguration, a spectacular even that the disciple John was supposed to have witnessed along with only two other disciples, according to the other Gospel writers. Furthermore, a later chapter in John states that "we" are the ones who have "witnessed" and written the Gospel of John, implying a group effort. The Gospel also has two ending verses, one in the next to the last chapter, the other in the last chapter. The last chapter is therefore believed to have been added later, to enforce later church opinion, making it seem like the "beloved disciple" was "John" rather than someone else.

DID JESUS PROMOTE "FAMILY VALUES?"
"I am come to set a man against his father, and the daughter against her mother, etc., And a man's foes shall be they of his own household."

"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."

When one of Jesus' disciples asked for time off to go to his father's funeral, Jesus rebuked him, "Let the dead bury the dead."

Jesus never used the word "family." He never married or fathered children.

He spoke approvingly of those who would "become eunichs for the kingdom of heaven.

To his own mother he said, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?"

WHAT WHERE HIS VIEWS ON EQUALITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE?
Jesus encouraged the beating of slaves. (Luke 12:47) He never denounced slavery and incorporated the master-slave relationship into many of his parables.

He did nothing to alleviate poverty. "Ye have the poor with you always."

No women were chosen as disciples or invited to the Last Supper.

WHAT MORAL ADVICE DID JESUS GIVE?
"There be eunichs which have made themselves eunichs for the kingdom of heaven."

"If you do something wrong with your eye or hand cut/pluck it off." (This perfectionist ideal, of being able to divorce yourself completely from even looking at a woman with a sexual longing, has lead to a lot of cognitive dissonance and neuroses, not to mention a few cases of actually severed hands!)

Jesus also taught people not to plan for the future in any realistic fashion, don't save money on earth, give to all who ask and ask nothing in return, give your cloak and coat to anyone who asks (leaving you naked).

If someone hits you, invite them to do it again.

If you lose a lawsuit, give more than the judgment.

IS this WISE? Is this what you would teach your children?

WAS JESUS RELIABLE?
Jesus is depicted as mistakenly predicting that "some [of his disciples] standing there would not die" until they "saw the coming of the Son of Man" [with his angels, to reward the good and punish and evil, i.e., the final judgment] Mat 16:28

This false prophecy was echoed by Jesus' disciples throughout the N.T., here are some of those echoes:

The book of Revelation begins with this prophecy, "The revelation... which God gave to show...the things which must shortly take place." (1:1) The author, having addressed his letter to several churches in Asia Minor, circa 65-95 A.D., continued, "He is coming with the clouds, and every eye shall see him, even those who pierced him...Repent therefore; or else I am coming to you (the church at Pergamum) quickly, and I will make war against them with the sword of my mouth...(To the church at Thyatira) hold fast until I come...Because you (the church at Philadelphia) have kept the word of my perseverance, I will keep you from the hour of testing which is about to come upon the whole world...I am coming quickly...hold fast what you (Philadelphia) have."
Rev. 1:7; 2:16; 2:25; 3:10-11

In the final chapter of Revelation the author repeats his first chapter prediction of Jesus' soon coming, "...God...sent His angel to show...the things which must shortly take place...I am coming quickly...do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near...I am coming quickly, and my reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done...Yes, I am coming quickly...Come Lord Jesus."
Rev. 22:6,7,10,12,20

The idea of being either "sealed up" or "not sealed up" is something that the books of Revelation and Daniel both share. According to the author of the book of Daniel, he was commanded to "seal up" his book "until the end of time": "Conceal these words and seal up the book until the end of time...these words are concealed and sealed up until the end of time." (Daniel 12:4,9) The book of Daniel was composed from the alleged point of view of a Jew living in ancient Persia who had visions of "the end of time," or, "the end of the age," when all men would "rise again" and be judged. (12:2,13) "Seal up the book," he was commanded, or so the story goes.

But the author of Revelation was told, "Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book," adding that what is revealed in it "must shortly take place." The intent of the author of Revelation in alluding to the "non-sealing" of his book is obvious, the author believed and predicted that Jesus was about to "come" and judge the world "quickly." So, the author of Revelation was a false prophet. And, by the same token, so was the author of Daniel, since his book was "unsealed" long before "the end of time."

"The darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining...The world is passing away [This world, as it is now, will not last much longer - Today's English Version]...Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that Antichrist is coming, even now many Antichrists have arisen; from this we know that it is the last hour."
1 John 2:17,18

"The rulers of this age...are passing away [will not last much longer -Today's English Versin]...Do not go on passing judgment before the time ["before the time" of final judgment], but wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men's hearts...The time has been shortened so that from now on those who have wives should be as though they had none...and those who use the world, as though they did not make use of it [i.e., there was no time for marriage or buying or selling - only in a state of holy celibacy could the Elect remain pure while awaiting the soon return of Christ]; for the form of this world is passing away [This world, as it is now, will not last much longer - Today's English Version]...These things were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come."
1 Corinthians. 2:6; 4:5; 7:29-31; 10:11

"Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries which are coming upon you...It is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure [which is to say in James' own day]...Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord...for the coming of the Lord is at hand...behold, the Judge is standing right at the door."
James 5:1,3,7-9

The author of the letter to the Hebrews began his letter, "...in these last days," and argued on such a basis that, "He (Jesus) would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." With equal fervor he employed the phrase, "as you see the day drawing near...," and made the prediction, "...for yet a very little while, He who is coming will come, and will not delay."
Heb. 1:2; 9:26; 10:25,37

This ridiculous idea survived century after century. If the world did not end under the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, it had to end under Theodosius; if the end had not come under Theodosius, it had to occur under Attila the Hun. And up to the twelfth century this idea enriched the monasteries. A great many of the charters and donations to the monasteries began thus: "Christ reigning, the end of the world approaching, I, for the remedy of my soul, etc."
Voltaire, "An Important Study by Lord Bolingbroke, or, the Fall of Fanaticism"

Now back to the reliability of Jesus' claims...

Jesus claimed the "stars would fall."

The author of the Gospel of Matthew (in the scene in which Jesus is taken to a very high mountain by Satan and there shown all the kingdoms of the world), claimed that you could "see _all_ the kingdoms of the world" from a "_very_ high mountain" (implying a "flat" shape for the earth).

Jesus also mistakenly claimed that the mustard seed was the "smalled seed on the face of the ground" (Matt. 13:32), and that salt could "lost its savour."

WAS JESUS A GOOD EXAMPLE?
Jesus said that whoever calls somebody a fool shall be in danger of hell fire, then he called the Pharisees much worse names, like sons of vipers, sons of the devil, etc.

Jesus irrationaly cursed a fig tree for being fruitless OUT OF SEASON.

He broke the law by stealing corn on the Sabbath, and he encouraged his disciples to take a horse without asking permission. (Matthew says it was not just one horse that Jesus said to take, but two, and adds that Jesus "rode THEM" into Jerusalem.)

The "humble" Jesus said that he was "greater than the temple" "greater than Jonah" and "greater than Solomon" (see Matt.). He appeared to suffer from a dictator's "paranoia" when he said, "He that is not with me is against me." Mat. 12:30 (Though in another place Jesus reversed that and said, "He who is not against me is with me.")

WHY JESUS?
Although other verses can be cited to portray Jesus in a different light, they do not erase the disturbing, judgmental, unruly side of his character. And if the church "added" this side, then there is certainly no way to credibly determine exactly what might not ALSO be merely an addition or gloss upon the Jesus legend. Maybe many of the beautiful, less disturbing passages are also additions, such as the "woman taken in adultery" section of John's Gospel, which we now know was a later addition, and not in the earliest Johnnine texts. (In fact, the earliest appearance of the parable of the "woman taken in adultery" is in a Lukan text dated after 1000 A.D., and the text became so popular it soon got copied again by some scribes who felt it belonged more properly in the fourth Gospel rather than the third.)

On the whole, Jesus said little that was worthwhile. He introduced nothing new to ethics, not even the notion of "eternal punishment" which several intertestamental works had introduced right before Jesus appeared on the scene, works like the Book of Daniel and the Books of Enoch. He instituted no social programs, no useful science or medicine, but appeared ignorant, a child of his times. Many scholars doubt that any clear picture of the "historical Jesus" will ever emerge. [See for instance the two excellent works by Dr. Robert M. Price, BEYOND BORN AGAIN (an introduction to "Jesus questions"), and, DECONSTRUCTING JESUS (his new scholarly thesis that sums up the many strands of work on the historical Jesus today).]

WHY IS JESUS SO "SPECIAL?"
It would be more reasonable and productive to emulate real, flesh-and-blood human beings who have contributed to humanity -- mothers who have given birth, scientists who have alleviated suffering, social reformers who have fought injustice -- than to worship a character of such dubious qualities as Jesus.

In fact, if it wasn't for a host of scientists who happened to be either lapsed churchgoers, heretics, apostates, infidels, agnostics, or atheists, and their successes in the fields of agricultural and medical science, hundreds of millions would have starved to death or suffered innumerable diseases this past century. Those agricultural and medical scientists "multiplied more loaves of bread" and "prevented/healed more diseases" in the past fifty years than Christianity has in the past two thousand.

Also, Florence Nightengale, the woman who made nursing a legitimate profession, was a lesbian who disdained institutionalized religion. The founder of the International Red Cross, Andre Dunant, was gay. The founder of the American Red Cross, Clara Barton, was a freethinker. And Helen Keller, the blind and deaf woman who proved an inspiration to sufferers of severe disabilities, was a humanist.

Don't feel like you quite belong?

Don't feel like you belong?
by Edward T. Babinski

Have you heard of a classic sci-fi novel called Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein? It's about a boy raised by Martians who then travels to earth, and truly feels like a stranger in a strange land, like he doesn't belong. It's a great story, and also involves man's search for religious truth as a major theme. It was very popular during the 60's along with Tolkein's Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Also, Woody Allan's comedic prose works are also classics, in the humor section of any major bookstore, GETTING EVEN, WITHOUT FEATHERS, and, SIDE EFFECTS. They are all written I suppose from the point of view of someone who doesn't belong, which is to say from the viewpoint of a Jew in modern day society, in this case a neurotic obsessive one, obsessed with such basic matters as religion, sex, and death. The stories he invents in "Hassidic Tales" as told by "famous rabbis" of the past are fall-off-your-chair funny.

Also, there was a letter sent to the website www.billhicks.com years ago. I can't find it at the moment. But it was the tale of a kid who felt he didn't fit in. He wanted to do something dreadful to himself, because he felt like nobody truly understood him. Then he discovered the comedy of Bill Hicks, and felt for the first time like somebody else really understood him. It was a great letter. Moments like those are great.

I thought I was going to pieces when I was a fundamentalist and when I began to realize how much other people believed in their religions. They were sure as I was, and just as compassionate and kind.

Which reminds me of an e-mail I rec'd just the other day which said, "I think the Chr. Reconstuctionists make a good case that other religions, such as Hinduism produce terrible consequences for humanity."

And I replied:
I have no particular love for any particular religion. But certainly Christians of all people, have no right to criticize the consequences and history of another religion. For all of Hinduism's faults, it never produced slavery. The caste system, yes, but slavery, no. Heck, even Medieval Christianity had a _caste_ system of _inherited_ nobility, kings, lords, all the way down to peasants. And during the Medieval ages when king Asoka ruled India he made it a rule that all religions should be respected. There was peace during his reign and freedom of religion, while in Europe and the Middle East there was the Thirty Years' War. Asoka even entertained Jesuits in his court, and allowed them to speak their views..

I also have read about the marvelous attempts by some Hindus to spread the news about birth control, which the Catholics in their country are attempting to thwart. One female who works with poor Indians and who teaches them birth control says that the families that have only a few children are much better off, since they can concentrate on those few children and they grow up well and whole, while the old way of having as many children as possible, and wearing down the health of the wife and stretching the budget for the children until some inevitably die, is a much worse way to go. She has proven this is true via the lives of the women she has worked with. Yet Mother Teresa tells India and the world they must go the other way.

Interesting is the fact that the 1996 winner of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion was Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ (which also subsidizes Josh McDowell Ministries!). But the very next year the winner was a Hindu, Shastri Athavale, whose spiritual and social activism was inspired by the The Bhagavad Gita. Athavale has inspired hundreds of thousands of people to spend two weeks or more visiting India's poorest villages where they seek to advance the self-respect and economic condition of those they visit. For more than four decades Athavale has taught that service to God is incomplete without service to humanity.

Perhaps you've heard of Sundar Singh, the Sikh convert to Christianity? He was quite famous in his day. But he made plain his view that, "There are many more people among us in India who lead a spiritual life than in the West, although they do not know or confess Christ...It is of course true that people who live in India worship idols; but here in England people worship themselves, and that is still worse. Idol-worshippers seek the truth, but people over here, so far as I can see, seek pleasure and comfort...The people of the West understand how to use electricity and how to fly in the air. The men of the East have sought the truth. Of the three Wise Men who went to Palestine to see Jesus not one was from the West.'". Heiler, p. 217.

Neither was Sundar afraid to raise his voice in favor of "universalism." He could never deny to all non-Christians the possibility of entering heaven (as fundamentalist and hard-line evangelicals, like McDowell, do). In 1925 Sundar wrote, "If the Divine spark in the soul cannot be destroyed, then we need despair of no sinner... Since God created men to have fellowship with Himself, they cannot for ever be separated from Him...After long wandering, and by devious paths, sinful man will at last return to Him in whose Image he was created; for this is his final destiny.". Sundar Singh, Meditations on Various Aspects of the Spiritual Life (London, Macmillan, 1925).

In February, 1929, the year Sundar disappeared on his final missionary trip to Tibet, he was interviewed by several theology students in Calcutta, India, where he answered their questions: "(Question #1) What did the Sadhu think should be our attitude towards non-Christian religions? - The old habit of calling them 'heathen' should go. The worst 'heathen' were among us [Christians].

By the way, C.S. Lewis' close lifelong friend, Bede Griffiths, became a Catholic monk and ran a Chrisitan-Hindu ashram in India for decades, devoting his life to inter-religious dialogue, and grew to love Hindus and Hinduism so much he wrote books praising Hindusim's most sublime aspects, even defending it against papal ignorance and misunderstandings. Griffiths also got Lewis to admit in a letter that when Christianity does not make a man very much better, it may make him very much worse, a "devil," as Lewis himself admitted to Griffiths in one of the last letters Lewis penned.

HINDUISM AND EASTERN RELIGIONS
In the little self-contained Christian "world" view of evangelists there is no room for Hinduism. Yet for millions of devout Hindus there remains room for Christianity and Christ's divinity. Hinduism in that sense encompasses a wider range of faith than Christianity.

There are even what one might call "fundamentalist" Hindus, like the one who asked Joseph Campbell, "What do scholars think of the Vedas [the most ancient Hindu holy books]?" Campbell answered, "The dating of the Vedas has been reduced to 1500 to 1000 B.C., and there have been found in India itself the remains of an earlier civilization than the Vedic." "Yes," said the Indian gentleman, "I know; but as an orthodox Hindu I cannot believe that there is anything in the universe earlier than the Vedas.". Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By (New York: Bantam Books, 1973), p. 54.

It's obvious that the study of the world's holy books by historical, archeological and literary scholars continues to provoke tension and discomfort in "Vedic believing" Hindus, "Koran believing" Moslems, and "Bible believing" Christians (like McDowell).. Philip H. Ashby's The Conflict of Religions (published around 1960), describes the conflict in the major world religions between modern scientific knowledge and old religious traditions. Christianity is not the only religion being "attacked" by "devilish liberals." Traditionalists in all the world's religions feel threatened by the insights that scholars bring to light whenever such scholars are free from having to parrot inherited dogma. So there is nothing "unique" about "Bible believing" Christians in that respect.

Furthermore, there are millions of devout Hindus more moved by the story of Krishna in the Hindu holy book, The Bhagavad Gita, than by the story of Jesus. As one Indian Catholic priest candidly told a British journalist, "Although my family had been Christians for generations and I had been through the full rigors of a Jesuit training, I still, in my heart of hearts, feel closer to the God Krishna than to Jesus.". Mark Tully, "Lives of Jesus" in The Illustrated London News, Christmas Issue, 1996, p. 33. (In Indian courts of law, people swear with their hand on The Bhagavad Gita not the Bible, and there are even popular Indian books with titles like, The Bhagavada Gita for Executives by V. Ramanathan.)

There are also millions of devout Buddhists more moved by stories of the Buddha and his disciples. See Nyanaponika Thera and Hellmuth Hecker, The Great Disciples of the Buddha: Their Lives, Their Works, Their Legacy (1997). than by stories of Jesus and his. Anagarika Dharmapala, a nineteenth century Buddhist, commented, "The Nazarene carpenter had no sublime teachings to offer, and understandably so, because his parables not only reveal a limited mind, but they also impart immoral lessons and impractical ethics...The few illiterate fishermen of Galilee followed him as he promised to make them judges to rule over Israel [appealing to relatively 'base' desires according to Buddhist teachings - ED.]." To such Buddhists, "Jesus is a spiritual dwarf before Buddha, the spiritual giant." A J. Mattill, Jr., The Seven Mighty Blows to Traditional Beliefs, 2nd Ed., Revised and Enlarged (The Flatwood Free Press: Alabama, 1995), p. 237.

Oddly enough, one version of the Buddha's life that reached Europe from India underwent subtle changes along the way, until the Buddha became a Christian saint! According to that version the "prince" who "lived in India" was named "Josaphat," and he was a "Great Renouncer." Research into the origins of "Saint Josaphat," revealed that the Latin name, "Josaphat," was based on an earlier version of the story in which the Greek name "Ioasaph" was used, which came from the Arabic "Yudasaf," which came from the Manichee "Bodisaf," which came from "Bodhisattva" in the original story of the Buddha. (A "Bodhisattva" is a person who achieves great spiritual enlightenment yet remains on earth to help others.) Thus the Buddha came to be included in Butler's Lives of the Saints.. See Leonard Swidler, "The Buddha Revered As A Christian Saint," The Catholic World, May/June 1989, p. 121; and Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Towards a World Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988), pp. 7-11.

Also, some of the earliest Jesuit missionaries to China, who read the Far Eastern book of wisdom, the Tao Te Ching, returned to Rome and requested that that book be added to the Bible, because it contained teachings on non-violence, love and humility that paralleled and preceded Jesus' teachings by hundreds of years. (Many of those parallels are commented on in The Tao of Jesus: An Exercise in Inter-Traditional Understanding by Joseph A. Loya, O.S.A, Wan-Li Ho, and Chang-Shin Jih.)

Eastern religions also feature stories of miracles and visions, along with stories of saintly Hindus and Buddhists who died beautifully and serenely. In some cases a sweet flowery odor is said to have come from their corpses. In another case a corpse allegedly turned into flowers at death. All in all, the stories rival those of Catholic saints and their miracles. In fact, "sainthood" is a phenomenon common to all the world's religions.. Richard Kieckhefer and George D. Bond, eds., Sainthood: Its Manifestations in World Religions (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988). Needless to say, reading about Hinduism and Buddhism in books written by Josh McDowell is no substitute for reading books written by Hindus and Buddhists. A tour of any large bookstore can provide plenty of interesting titles by both Hindu and Buddhist authors.. Here is a list of books on Hinduism (none of which were written by hard-line Christian apologists): The Hindu Phenomenon by Girilal Jain; Hindus and Others by Gyanendra Pandey; Hinduism for the Next Generation by V. Krishnamurthy; Recovery of Faith by Radhakrishnan; An Autobiography by M. K. Gandhi; Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda; The Mind of Swami Vivekananda by Gautam Sen; The Mind of Adi Shankaracharya by Y. Keshava Menon; Ramakrishna and His Disciples by Christopher Isherwood; Living Biographies of Great Religious Leaders by H. Thomas & Dana Lee Thomas; Truth is Two-Eyed by John A. T. Robinson (Christianity as seen through Eastern eyes and Hinduism as seen through Western eyes). Not to forget the magazine, Hinduism Today.

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Right now secular and governmental charities feed more people worldwide than religious ones do. One thanksgiving there was an aritcle in USA Today that listed the three major organizations in America that feed the hungry and not one of them was related to any particular Christian denomination or even to Christianity as a whole. Check out the United Way sometime and the listing of all the charities in your area. See how many of them are "church-related." Church-related charities do a good job of parading around their righteousness in the public square like the Pharisees.

If it wasn't for a host of scientists who happened to be either lapsed churchgoers, heretics, apostates, infidels, agnostics, or atheists, and their successes in the fields of agricultural and medical science, hundreds of millions would have starved to death or suffered innumerable diseases this past century. Those agricultural and medical scientists "multiplied more loaves of bread" and "prevented/healed more diseases" in the past fifty years than Christianity has in the past two thousand.

Also, Florence Nightengale, the woman who made nursing a legitimate profession, was a lesbian who disdained institutionalized religion. The founder of the International Red Cross, Andre Dunant, was gay. The founder of the American Red Cross, Clara Barton, was a freethinker. And Helen Keller, the blind and deaf woman who proved an inspiration to sufferers of severe disabilities, was a humanist.