Kent, may I address just one point in your message.
Let me preface this point by saying that the "Jesus Seminar" scholars are what Jesus refers to as "wolves in sheep's clothing". I find it curious that, with your healthy measure of skepticism, you have absolutely no skepticism for their work, but accept it at face value.
The one point I want to address is where you said that Jesus said "you have to hate your parents and siblings to be one of his disciples". Did you really take the time to examine that closely? It doesn't take a very close examination. But I'd recommend you get a "plain" New Testament, without all the cross references and propaganda from hostile "scholars." Buy the least expensive one you can find... why invest more in it until and unless you have good reason.
The verse you refer to, in its entirety, is:
"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." That is Luke 14:26 Read the whole context, while you are at it. You are every bit as intelligent and capable as those "scholars" who are misusing their credentials in another effort to smear Jesus.
In that particular verse, focus, for one thing, on something you didn't mention in your message: Jesus said, regarding whom to hate in order to be qualified to be his disciple, that he must hate "yea, and HIS OWN LIFE ALSO..." (emphasis mine). If you take that as literally as you took the rest of it, it means a person has to hate his mother, father, siblings and commit suicide in order to be a disciple of Jesus. Right? Of course not. If you really don't understand what he is saying, read the context. He is talking about counting the cost before beginning.
He is talking about devotion to him (because he is God) that is total to the point that all other love pales in comparison, even one's love of self. If someone contradicts himself, one of the two things he said was not true. That verse, at face value, contradicts both Old and New Testament and Jesus's words which say to "Honour thy father and mother". So on the assumption (a correct one) that God never contradicts himself, because he is truth and always true, it tells you that you are misunderstanding one of them, if they seem to contradict. And all Jesus' teachings about love contradicts what you said about him being a "war monger." So you figure out which one means something other than face value.
From some of the other things you said about what you read, it sounds more like what I would expect from the "Satanic Bible". I've read the New Testament through at least a dozen times and I don't recognize some of the things you said about what you say you read.
The Jehovah's witnesses, by the way, are not Christians. How could they be, since they deny that Jesus is God?
John |
