by snowbird 23 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Even if you don't think much of Jesus of Nazareth, LionCask, I think you'll have to agree that His teachings are nonpareil.
In fact, His words recorded in Matthew chapter 23 are a direct condemnation of religious leaders who overburden their flock with endless rules and regulations.
LOL at Outlaw!
Syl
I think you'll have to agree that His teachings are nonpareil.
Not unqualified. While I agree that Jesus' moral values were a great improvement over the moral bankruptsy of the OT, I still disagree with some of what he taught and represented. His forgiveness of the adulteress in John 8:3-11 was questionable, since he usurped without permission the role of the agrieved spouse. But he did this on a regular basis - what do you make of a man who announces forgiveness for wrongs not done against him? Jesus was also a rather rigid Jewish sectarian which we see in Matthew 15:21-28 where he expresses contempt for a Canaanite woman who begged him for help but was comtemptuously told that he would not waste his energy on a gentile, although he was subsequently persuaded by his disciples to lighten up and intercede. One does not detect a great deal of generosity from Jesus of Nazareth toward non-Jews in general. It was Paul who thought of bringing the Jewish God to the gentiles, for example, not Jesus of Nazareth. More in particular, I have no admiration for the family values of Jesus of Nazareth. He was more than once rude with his own mother (John 2:3-4, Luke 2:48-49) and he made it a non-negotiable requirement of his disciples to abandon their families to follow him. '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.' Luke 14:26. I find this to be a bit ironic when the WTS is justfiably criticized on this board for driving wedges between family members. Isn't that what cults do? That is, get you to reject your family in order to inculcate you?
He's quite a piece of work, isn't He?
Syl
He is grounded in his time. Today a woman would not anoint him with oil, do his hair and feet. I believe he acquired a reputation as a teacher whether or not He was recognized as a messianic figure. He was a man. It is interesting b/c my women's Bible study analyzed the passage where he refuses, at first, to heal a nonJew. I said he was acting in a very nonJesus manner and condemned it while acknowledging that Jews thought that way. The women were well-educated but were very uncomfortable with my statements. The leader went on and on about how wonderful He is in this passage. I made my point so I said well, He changed his mind. Otherwise, His actions are contemptuous and don't follow his other teachings. My Name, can we move on now?
She had a platform for ten minutes. I tend to be terse in oral presentations. I had all of one minute.
Jesus is puzzling, coy, and radical. His actions are inconsistent. Scholars noted this from the beginning but I sat in my time out box.He doesn't fit in neat tacky boxes all in a row. He is not groovy. The social gospel is only one aspect of His ministry. Everyone is not sitting around and singing Pete Seeger folk songs. He was not a Royal Shakesperean Company actor, tall and pale with blue eyes filled with Hollywood sparkle drops.
I studied Jesus in a seminar taught by Elaine Pagels at Columbia before she went to Princeton. Everyone in the class had to take the New Testament and read the primary sources. She said Jung wrote that we project ourselves onto Jesus. We were to write three adjectives to describe Jesus in very short order. I wrote down Witness stuff altho I did not believe it. Every Christian in the room failed. We wrote what our churches taught us. The only students who were factually correct were three Jewish Orthodox males, taking the course b/c it looks good on medical school apps.
Do people truly want to worship a God so easily defined? God is supposed to have a trascedent quality. For all the agony of being a Witness, sheer determination should count for something.
