What's the term for someone that likes Jesus of Nazareth, but doesn't identify with church, religious dogma, or whatever?
What's the term for someone that likes Jesus of Nazareth, but doesn't identify with church, religious dogma, or whatever?
They think, "Jesus was cool. I like him, and I'm gonna try to be like him." Kind of like their guiding light is what would Jesus do? But there isn't a focus on identification, recruiting others, judging others based on their religion, fear of God, fear of punishment for sinning, respect for clergy as an authority, rituals, worship, etc. Basically, just the example of Jesus' life.
inb4: Christian lol!! got em!
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Like uh... normal? Jesus, as described, seems like a pretty chill dude. It's christianity that gets into the crazy shit.
I take it you haven't read the book of John?
Yeah. There's some good stuff there, like 8:32*, but it's full of so much crap** that... urgh.
*"And you'll know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
**Give the whole chapter 5 a check, specially 5:14; crippling people is apparently their god's punishment for sinning. Or 3:36, someone gets really pissy if you don't believe him!
I was thinking John 6 is pretty nuts tbh. There are a lot of problems with Christ, like how quiet and accepting he seemed about slavery, or how fragile he is about his ego and being respected as God, the central message of Christ is about his divinity, not about moral teachings. He threatened anyone who disagreed with his divinity with eternal damnation and so on. Just not the kind of person you would think of as a "chill dude", rather the description "crazy" comes to mind when I read the book of John especially.
His moral teachings are irrelevant. It's like how when cops volunteer to do a charity car wash. Moral behaviour doesn't get you everlasting life.
yeah, at least not according to him; but his moral teachings got a lot of people in the door and interested in following him, and the whole "faith without works is dead" thing (book of James is pretty lit tbh)
People who model their lives after the teachings of Jesus are pretty rare. I think it is more psychologically valuable because Christians are able to psychologically transfer the moral qualities of Jesus to themselves. Jesus is "good" in ways that most Christians today don't even give a shit about, but it gives him moral character, and so it allows Christians to feel like they have moral character as well.
In fact, I was going to link to the article about "moral licensing" as though I actually knew what I was talking about (I don't) and I see there is a section about exactly this idea, where people see themselves as having the moral qualities of others in their in-group:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-licensing#Group_membership
So in a way, the stories about Jesus allow Christianity to fill an important spiritual role in people's lives: assuring them that they are good people. But it's tricking them, and Jesus has to be a model of good morality for this trick to work.
John is way sus.
not sure what you mean
The Gospel of John is the last one written, much later than the others and is full of things that are suspicious. Almost as if it was specifically written to direct a nascent cult into the direction it wanted them to go and not particularly inspired by any actual events.
oh interesting, TIL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_John#Historical_reliability
Thanks! I'll have to read the book of Mark and see how it compares (esp. I wonder if the events depicted in John 6 occur in the book of Mark).
Nah, I was brought to church as a kid but I haven't really read the Bible closely. Honestly, I'm just going off a general read of "dude who helps people in need and isn't an ass".
I recommend you read the book of John!
I wrote a longer response to Kolanaki if you want to read that as well, sorta summarizes what I think are some of the relevant bits as to why Christ isn't such a great role model.
Not since catechism. What weird shit happens? Cuz I don't remember. I mean, besides the supernatural BS during the crucifixion and resurrection.
The book of John shows the problems with Christ's mental health much more plainly, it portrays him as a megalomaniac with paranoid and psychotic tendencies. If you just sit down and read the book of John you will get what I mean.
Personally I was particularly struck by John 6. Christ has amassed a following, and seems to have trouble feeding and appeasing the crowd that follows him around. It seems like the subtext is that he wants to lose the crowd, so he runs away to the mountains (6:15) where they can't follow to lose the crowd temporarily, and when he comes back, he makes a speech to his followers in which he claims to be God and demands belief in his divinity as the only way to be resurrected after they die.
The crowd is a bit miffed about Christ's suddenly weird behavior, since they knew him growing up it was hard to take him seriously as a supposed god now:
They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”
Christ re-iterates he's the only way to God, and then things get even more weird:
I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.
The people are stumped (6:52):
"How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"
Christ doubles down on this alienating cannibalism talk:
“Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”
People didn't love the boasting and claims that he was God, but they especially didn't appreciate this cannibalism angle, so his followers abandoned him:
From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
And there were only twelve people left who supported the clearly unwell guy who claims to be God and who requires you eat his flesh to allow him to resurrect you after you die.
The ones remaining re-affirm their loyalty, and in response Christ says:
"Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!"
This comes across to me as incredibly paranoid, and in conjunction with the cannibalism and claims about being divine, they paint a picture of Christ as unhinged and mentally unwell. Of course Christians these days take communion and have normalized the cannibalism angle so it doesn't seem so crazy, but I read the book of John without the context of communion or transubstantiation, and furthermore the followers of Christ who heard his speech about eating his flesh and drinking his blood likewise didn't have that context, otherwise they would not have found it so alienating and disturbing, such that he would have lost all his followers. (I guess the twelve that remained and were on-board with the whole cannibalism and necromancy thing).
I'm apparently not the only one who thought Christ seemed mad, there are observations of this made in other parts of the gospels as well, like Mark 3:21–22:
And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for people were saying, "He is beside himself". And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, "He is possessed by Be-el′zebul, and by the prince of demons he casts out the demons".
or John 10:19–21:
There was again a division among the Jews because of these words. Many of them said, "He has a demon, and he is mad; why listen to him?" Others said, "These are not the sayings of one who has a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?"
So yeah, while there are some interesting things Christ has said (Sermon on the Mount comes to mind as saying a few good things), there are plenty of reasons to be wary of choosing Christ as a role model. You essentially have to ignore all the problems and just take the good parts to protect Christ's image, but then I would ask why you would do this if you weren't some kind of Christian. It seems unmotivated, there are other people who lived lives of more virtue and with less baggage, there is no reason to choose Christ in particular, unless you have some kind of loyalty to Christ as a figure in particular.
Knowing the context of communion and transubstantiation, I feel like Jesus was talking in metaphors but some people took it literally. Maybe it's because my Christian teachings were from a Lutheran church where nearly everything is just taken as a metaphor. I also suspect that's why I am an atheist, to begin with; none of it was ever claimed to be real. 🤷🏻♂️
Eh, ironically it's the Lutherans who still believe in transubstantiation, which means communion is not a metaphor and the essence of the bread turns to Christ's flesh and the essence of the wine turns to Christ's blood, the cannibalism is more literal for Lutherans than some denominations.
Either way, Christ could have qualified his statements if he was speaking in metaphors, as he does in other passages, but he was strangely literal about eating his flesh and blood, and again that whole chapter reads like Christ was wanting to alienate his followers because he had amassed a crowd that he didn't want to deal with.
And yes, lots of scripture is interpreted as not having a literal interpretation, that everything has hidden and layered meanings. This was used a lot by Christians to re-interpret the Hebrew bible as foretelling Christ as the Messiah, and before Christ the priests and interpreters wished to breathe life and meaning into scripture by finding meanings in there that weren't supported by a more literal or direct reading. Still, this seems like addled religious thinking to me, strangely disrespectful of the scripture and motivated by a need to resolve cognitive dissonance when passages don't make sense or contradict something the church wishes to change their minds on (such as the way the Roman Catholic Church re-interpreted Christ's messages on poverty and wealth).
paranoid and psychotic tendencies
If he was simply insane, then how would he have performed any of his miracles? Or are you going to throw out the parts of the Bible you don't like and keep the ones that support your position?
Also, I've dealt with, and am friends with, plenty of people with what you would call "paranoid and psychotic tendencies." That you would accuse someone who walked this earth more than 1,900 years ago of having them suggests you either have supreme medical and historical knowledge. Perhaps you've spoken with him so you can make an accurate diagnosis?
in which he claims to be God
If he is, then that explains everything he said and did in the Bible. It's pretty obvious that if he's God that he would want people to follow him.
This comes off to me as incredibly paranoid
He was talking about Judas, who was stealing money from the ministry and later sold Jesus out for a handful of silver. Calling that out isn't paranoia.
I'm apparently not the only one who thought Christ seemed mad
If he was just a madman and the people he was "curing" of "demons" were also madmen, those "cures" wouldn't have happened. No person with schizophrenia has ever been cured of this disorder simply because another person with schizophrenia touched them. I've had the disorder for about seven years at this point; I wish it were that simple.
I agree with you that following Jesus doesn't make a lot of sense unless you're worshipping him. His entire message is based on his own divinity. If he was just a prophet, then if he was a good one, he wouldn't be saying things like "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30).
Pretty easy, he didn't do that bullshit.
So what did he do, then? How can you substantiate it?
He built a cult based on a monotheist version of the Canaanite religion.
Well, he explicitly condoned slavery, so...