talk about potentially incendiary discussions…but i can’t help it.
if you’re a reader of the new testament, you’ll find plenty of seeming contradictions. personally, i think it’s because jesus was a paradigm shifter & the people who were his contemporaries weren’t quite as progressive as he was. these days, i’m none too sure about the whole son of god thing, although i do believe in allegory, simile, metaphor & parable, which jesus is said to have taught. perhaps jesus, whoever & whatever else he was, came to teach us a new way of thinking: a shift from the literal to the figurative; a place to jump off into the heretofore undescribed. my favorite thing about new testament jesus is his figurative & literal laying down of his own life for the end of blood sacrifice. it’s said that at his death, the curtain in the temple of the israelites tore itself from the top down, symbolizing the end of the sacrifice of animals and humans for the appeasement of an angry god; heaven’s thirst for blood was finally satisfied in the offering of its own son on our behalves.
jesus was known to hang out with undesirables: the debt keepers, the prostitutes, the diseased, the outcast. he said that whoever is perfect should be the one to kill another for the sake of justice. he walked through the halls of the temple in jerusalem and made quite a ruckus, throwing over tables and stalls & kicking out folks whom he felt were misrepresenting his father in his own house.
he said, ‘whosoever will, may come.’
he turned the other cheek, to the point of laying down his own life, which he said was a sign of great love, the greatest love , even.
he warned churchgoers of the time to not be like the political factions that had evolved in the church and were not accurately preaching what the message of the church was about: the sadducees & the pharisees, who cared more about appearances than truth.
he fed the masses, healed the sick, & even went away to be alone, to keep possession of his vision & to keep going against the current tide.
until he decided it was enough, finished; his choice, verified & upheld by his father.
so why is it that most of his present day followers appear more like everything he fought against, or could i say: the antichrist?
it’s hard to find a more judgmental, discriminating (in the negative sense) group of folks than the present day church.
how bad must it suck to die for a cause that gets skewed so sharply?
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