James, I am not in any way disputing with you personally about the Lord being "poor". But would like to bring up the idea of the Lord as in a pathetic street bum without income of any kind.
Perhaps this is because I so agree with Alan that you "CHristians have turned the Jewish Messiah into a freak." Yes, I'm afriad sometimes I feel the same way. And John, the Beloved, was a ego-maniac trying to get the Lord to make him a big shot in heaven right before He got killed, and of course we all know "Peter was a braggart and a big mouth." I went through all of this on ASkgod and the lengthy rambling posts are probably ignored.
But I don't see that. I see that he didn't spend his time making money to keep a house and collect the possessions that in every time has meant as much to them, and impressed everyone else, as much as we do today. For instance, do you realize that all of the gawdy, ugly, tacky, and basically embarrassing 50's stuff now collected by fools was at that time as good as it gets? They paid big bucks for that trash? It was as there as you get? That stuff was in mansions in Beverly Hills? Get the point, I hope. I don't like the 50's.
ANyway, as a protector of our Lord's image as much as is humanly possible, I believe it is rather unfair to Him, the most beautiful human probably anyone ever saw regardless of one sentence from an old prophet which could be interpreted many ways, and regardless of those who walked and talked with Him, we now assume that Jesus was "the ugliest man that ever lived." To that we add destitute street bum.
Our license with creating unfavorable conditions for humans recounted and spoken of in Holy Scripture seems that the worse we can make them, the better. I am not always sure that was the Lord God's intent. After all, Jesus was His son. Made in His Image, the one who sits on the throne. Were Jesus that horrible, do you think He really meant to tell us in code that since we have seen Jesus, we have also seen the Father, and both of them are rather repulsive compared to other pleasant looking, clean humans? He was not a product of a Hinduism, and we sometimes make him out to be a filthy vagabond where that is held in high esteem in that foul pagan country.
I just don't feel comfortable with it, and always like to make some small statement that the Lord was not repulsive after all. I mean,
call me crazy.....I guess I just love Him too much, or something.
Just a note of balance there. I do it all the time, not just with you.
I have heard these ideas of man for so many years I have sometimes reacted in a little less than quiet understanding of misunderstanding, and that's the truth.
Isn't it quite possible that he just traveled a lot, but the Lord took care of Him very well, as He did the men and women who gave up everything to walk around with Him? I mean, between them all they must have had enough money to eat, and probably didn't sleep in filthy alleys. ANd is there a word in scripture of the life of Jesus to back up the claims that he was destitute and so ugly no one could hardly look at him? With these same scriptures we produce Bob Tilton, and the reason there are so many Bob Tiltons, is that they can run to the writings of Paul and find a million sentences convincing everyone that Bob is great and to judge him will put the tithers who support his wretched kingly empire in hell. Although every word of the gospel condemns every aspect of their "ministry".
I guess I am just the worse person you have ever met for the scripture, the whole scripture, and nothing but the scripture as intended, and nothing else, and that after it has been run through the Strong's to see what the actual Greek meant. I believe the scriptures about Jesus being poor have been misinterpreted to drirty and homeless as in our concept of same--a life style primaryily and exclusively inhabited by drug addicts and alcholics.
Do not take this personally, please. |
