What did Jesus ever do for us?

[Harbal]

There is a trick in your question: "actual good" does not exist. Good and bad are subjective values, so, asking what actual good Jesus did doesn’t make sense. Whatever is good for somebody can be valued completely differently by somebody else.

I meant good from the subjective point of view of other human beings of his time. What did he do that made life better for the people he lived among?

[Immanuel Can]

Lived.

Died.

Rose again.

Lives.

Will make this place right.

Has eternal good plans for you.

Any further questions?

[Harbal]

Any further questions?

Yes, and it's just dawned on me that I've made quite a simple question very long winded.

I know you won't play along with this, even before I suggest it, but somebody might. The reason you won't go along with it is because it involves allowing (hypothetically in your case) that Jesus was just a man, and not the son of God. What I want to know is, as a man, what did Jesus do in his lifetime that was of extraordinary significance?

Does Jesus's importance rest solely on his being (supposedly) the son of God?

[Immanuel Can]

What I want to know is, as a man, what did Jesus do in his lifetime that was of extraordinary significance?

Well, that depends on what you are prepared to accept, of course.

If you don't think He was God, do you think He came from God? Do you think He actually did miracles? Do you think He spoke the truth? Do you think his moral teaching was good? Do you think He died and rose again? Do you think his followers have done any good? And do you believe He restored men to God, and opened up hope of eternity once again?

Do you even think, as many say, that He was "a great ethical teacher," if nothing else?

Or does your question boil down more to this:

"If Jesus was just a man, and all his teaching was not true, and never healed the sick and walked on water and raised the dead and taught moral truth; and he never did any miracles, and never gave himself up for us, and did not satisfy the righteousness of God on our behalf (since God doesn't exist anyway), and he died and is buried and that was the end; and if his followers were all deceived, then, and the church he established is nothing more than an odd human institution, and all the people who have followed him are no more than well-meaning fools, and he's not coming back to rule the Earth in righteousness, so that he left us with no hope, then what did he do?"

Then I think you'll find nothing you can remark on.

But it's because you've ruled out everything He actually did before you even began the question. And there's no cure for that.

[Harbal]

What I want to know is, as a man, what did Jesus do in his lifetime that was of extraordinary significance?

Well, that depends on what you are prepared to accept, of course.

If you don't think He was God, do you think He came from God? Do you think He actually did miracles? Do you think He spoke the truth? Do you think his moral teaching was good? Do you think He died and rose again? Do you think his followers have done any good? And do you believe He restored men to God, and opened up hope of eternity once again?

Do you even think, as many say, that He was "a great ethical teacher," if nothing else?

Or does your question boil down more to this:

"If Jesus was just a man, and all his teaching was not true, and never healed the sick and walked on water and raised the dead and taught moral truth; and he never did any miracles, and never gave himself up for us, and did not satisfy the righteousness of God on our behalf (since God doesn't exist anyway), and he died and is buried and that was the end; and if his followers were all deceived, then, and the church he established is nothing more than an odd human institution, and all the people who have followed him are no more than well-meaning fools, and he's not coming back to rule the Earth in righteousness, so that he left us with no hope, then what did he do?"

Then I think you'll find nothing you can remark on.

But it's because you've ruled out everything He actually did before you even began the question. And there's no cure for that.

Well you have to understand that while he does have great significance as the son of God, I don't actually fully appreciate what that significance is, so I hope you will forgive me if removing that devine significance from him reduces my question to absurdity. It wouldn't be the first time I've asked an absurd question. And I don't intend it to be the last.

So can we put this to bed? Were it not for what God was doing behind the scenes, Jesus would have been just another bloke going round preaching. He didn't actually do anything particularly useful, and it was only his status as the son of God that is celebrated.

[Sculptor]

jesus was a central character in a very marketable story that medieval venture capitalists would take advantage of producing once enough material was complied for a book. first with feathered pen then with printing press.

the simple life of a jewish hippie carpenter who always had a big enough clique around him to stir some shit up with the POleece. in a sense he wuz one of the first manson type sociopaths, tho his was a nonviolent and passive narcissistic messianic complex of the b4.c subtype.

And yet the gun wielding, pro-lifer, flag waving, ma cuntry rate ur wrang, rednecks is dem wuns hoo is his greatest supporters. spit - ding

[Immanuel Can]

...so I hope you will forgive me if removing that devine significance from him reduces my question to absurdity. It wouldn't be the first time I've asked an absurd question. And I don't intend it to be the last.

No offense taken.

But when you think about it, it is a bit odd, isn't it? I mean, if all the claims for His greatness require some belief in His identity as Son of God, then removing that element (not surprisingly) also seems to vacate His life of significance...not surprisingly.

So can we put this to bed? Were it not for what God was doing behind the scenes, Jesus would have been just another bloke going round preaching. He didn't actually do anything particularly useful, and it was only his status as the son of God that is celebrated.

Ah. "Useful" to whom?

I suppose I could try to make a case for you that Christianity has undergirded the entire history of Western civilization -- it's art and literature, its law and policies, its ethics and science and music...and so on. But do you want to hear that case...again? So many others have made it.

And it think that, as a case, it has a fatal weakness I have to admit to you: that if all of this stuff was good, but was only brought about by a lie about a historical figure who was really nothing special, then I'm not sure I'd want to make that kind of case. I think I'd be rather ashamed to think that all that good was done merely by fooling gullible people into believing things that just weren't true, and investing their lives in a delusion...even if that had proved to be historically "useful."

So I think we are stuck with something related to Lewis's trilemma: namely, the realization that if Jesus Christ was not who He said He was, then I don't know there's much to be said at all.

[Harbal]

I suppose I could try to make a case for you that Christianity has undergirded the entire history of Western civilization -- it's art and literature, its law and policies, its ethics and science and music...and so on. But do you want to hear that case...again? So many others have made it.

You don't need to make the case, I totally accept it. For hundreds of years the church was the kingpin of Western European society. The stunning art that was inspired by Christianity is impressive enough, but when you look at an ancient cathedral, that is when you get a true sense of the scale of that inspiration. I absolutely love all the old village churches dotted about the countryside where I live, and I can't imagine them not being there. Of course, Christianity does not have the monopily on the power to inspire. The pyramids, both in Egypt and South America, all that greek sculpture and literature glorifying their gods, and in India too. There is no doubt about it; religion is the daddy when it comes to inspiring.

Of course, there is no knowing what we would be left with now had some other religion dominated our history, but I feel sure it would have been equally inspired, and beautiful, only not exactly the same as what we did end up with.

I suppose I'm lucky in being able to stand in York Cathedral and be completely awestruck without having to believe the nonsense that goes with it.

[Dontaskme]

What does goodness do for us….short answer is….it alleviates all that is bad and not good for us.

But the bad and the not so good will always return as long as there are conscious beings to feel and know these experiences of good and bad…as long as we are a sentient feeling living conscious person who understands the concepts of both feelings of pain, not so good, and the feelings of good in the temporal absence of pain.


Jesus is the archetypal depiction of what it means to know yourself through the direct experience of being consciously aware.

We prefer good over bad, but ultimately we have no control over whether a good or bad feeling arises. There’s just what’s happening in any given conscious moment.


The bible story is a collection of allegories depicting the human condition..nothing more than a self help book…written by humans who had nothing better to do, back in the day.

Good and bad are more about conscious feeling than being….no one is born good or bad, these are just feelings after the awareness of them…for example…I think I’ve been bad, or I think I’ve been good…can only be know because we have experienced the sensations directly as a knowing conscious person.

Knowledge and feelings are profound in the human being…more so than in the non conceptual animals….without being able to verbalise our feelings…..there would never have been such a thing as a bible, god, or Jesus story.

[Harbal]

The bible story is a collection of allegories depicting the human condition..nothing more than a self help book…written by humans who had nothing better to do, back in the day.

I don't have any faith in self help books, in fact, an absence of faith is probably my most defining characteristic.

[Dontaskme]

The bible story is a collection of allegories depicting the human condition..nothing more than a self help book…written by humans who had nothing better to do, back in the day.

I don't have any faith in self help books, in fact, an absence of faith is probably my most defining characteristic.

Me same.


I actually feel physically ill and despair in total disbelief when I hear what I would usually consider to be normal people preaching things such as …if you do not choose Jesus aka goodness, as if we wouldn’t automatically do that anyway…the you will burn in hellfire for all eternity…I mean how sick do you have to be to believe that pile of disgusting dog turd…I almost feel like I’m already in hell just hearing this vile stupid diatribe spill out of what I assumed were intelligent human beings….it’s like what demented retarded deluded experiment is this crazy life we’ve been thrown into?

[Angelo Cannata]

I suppose I'm lucky in being able to stand in York Cathedral and be completely awestruck without having to believe the nonsense that goes with it.

I think what you are looking for is the historical (which means scientific) point of view. About this, there is an essential criterion to follow in the critical science of history: never despise, never devalue anything or anybody, never assume that things or people are stupid or nonsensical. Assuming that something is stupid or nonsensical means just not wanting to admit that we don’t understand. An academic serious historian never says that something is nonsense or stupid. On the contrary, you can find a lot of history scholars that have no problem to admit that they do not understand a lot of things. History and archaeology are full of unexplained things.

About the historical relevance of Jesus, the question becomes cultural. Obviously, it is very difficult to determine how much Jesus influenced the culture of his time and, more in general, our Western culture. However, I think some prudent things can be noticed. You already noticed the objective results in architecture and art. We can be pretty sure that a lot of philosophers, more or less indirectly or explicitly, have been influenced by the messages contained in the gospels; we can find a lot of more elements in literature.

I think that Jesus was a key figure in Western culture because he was born in a period when three great cultures where meeting, facing and conflicting each other: Greek, Latin and Hebrew culture. Greeks were already famous at his time for their culture of sport, the body, philosophy, and Jesus, to some extent, imitated the style of Greek philosophers: interest in debates, keeper of a group of disciples that worked like a school of thought, critical mentality. The Hebrew culture was strongly based on the relationship with God intepreted in a context of rules that must be respected. Romans were the founders of modern law. In this context, Jesus applied the criticism typical of Greek philosophy against the legal mentality of Jews and Romans.

I would say that, in his position at the crossroads of these cultures, he made an intelligent elaboration that I would synthetize this way: he opened the door of criticism against religion, rules, laws, conceptions about human being, by comparing these things with the self criticism of conscience, attention to subjectivity, connection of reason with the claims coming from heart, that is, from our being human.

I would even say that, from a historical point of view, he was just a product of the meeting of these cultures: in that historical-geographical context, if Jesus didn’t exist, I think that cultural context would have created all the same another Jesus, somebody else with his characteristics.

[Harbal]

I suppose I'm lucky in being able to stand in York Cathedral and be completely awestruck without having to believe the nonsense that goes with it.

I think what you are looking for is the historical (which means scientific) point of view. About this, there is an essential criterion to follow in the critical science of history: never despise, never devalue anything or anybody, never assume that things or people are stupid or nonsensical. Assuming that something is stupid or nonsensical means just not wanting to admit that we don’t understand. An academic serious historian never says that something is nonsense or stupid. On the contrary, you can find a lot of history scholars that have no problem to admit that they do not understand a lot of things. History and archaeology are full of unexplained things.

About the historical relevance of Jesus, the question becomes cultural. Obviously, it is very difficult to determine how much Jesus influenced the culture of his time and, more in general, our Western culture. However, I think some prudent things can be noticed. You already noticed the objective results in architecture and art. We can be pretty sure that a lot of philosophers, more or less indirectly or explicitly, have been influenced by the messages contained in the gospels; we can find a lot of more elements in literature.

I think that Jesus was a key figure in Western culture because he was born in a period when three great cultures where meeting, facing and conflicting each other: Greek, Latin and Hebrew culture. Greeks were already famous at his time for their culture of sport, the body, philosophy, and Jesus, to some extent, imitated the style of Greek philosophers: interest in debates, keeper of a group of disciples that worked like a school of thought, critical mentality. The Hebrew culture was strongly based on the relationship with God intepreted in a context of rules that must be respected. Romans were the founders of modern law. In this context, Jesus applied the criticism typical of Greek philosophy against the legal mentality of Jews and Romans.

I would say that, in his position at the crossroads of these cultures, he made an intelligent elaboration that I would synthetize this way: he opened the door of criticism against religion, rules, laws, conceptions about human being, by comparing these things with the self criticism of conscience, attention to subjectivity, connection of reason with the claims coming from heart, that is, from our being human.

I would even say that, from a historical point of view, he was just a product of the meeting of these cultures: in that historical-geographical context, if Jesus didn’t exist, I think that cultural context would have created all the same another Jesus, somebody else with his characteristics.

Thank you for responding towards me with more patience than I deserve.

[promethean75]

so what are u saying, Harb. are u saying jesus is great, jesus is good, or jesus is just alright?

[Dontaskme]

so what are u saying, Harb. are u saying jesus is great, jesus is good, or jesus is just alright?

You’ve got no choice but to be great like goodness. Good is great, because you know it’s not good not to be good….in this conception the knowledge of sensations and feelings.


Every knowing sentient feeling person is Jesus. a metaphor for the good place…and even in death you are in the good place….that’s if we insist on playing around with this concept known as GOOD