What did Jesus ever do for us?

[Dubious]

Don't even TRY to make any sense of it. It's the most ridiculous story ever. No one understands what the fuck it's all about--they just pretend to.
Since religiious nuts are the biggest morons around, it goes without saying that it makes no more sense to them than it does to anyone else.
It was all a big joke on humanity and we are still paying for it.
If there was ever a 'Jesus' he would most likely have been a horrible person. Humans always idolise the horrible ones. Has there ever been a 'nice' dictator or historical leader? He was just a convenient figurehead in a power game. Nothing unusual for humans.
At that time in history, 'messiahs' were the trendy thing to be. The biblical equivalent of modern day rock stars. They were all over the place.

Maybe he was just pissed-off being forced to die in one of the worst ways imaginable for everyone's sins since Adam.

[Harbal]

"Great Caesar's ghost," as Perry White used to say to Superman. Steel country.

Not really. Sheffield was very much all about steel, but I live about 15 miles from Sheffield. Where I live was a coal mining area. There was coal everywhere, and miners. I reckon about 25% of the working male population where I grew up worked down the pit. There were about 8 or 9 coal mines within a 5 mile radius of my house. All gone now; most of them landscaped and "returned to nature". Most of the miners will be dead now, so I suppose they are also returned to nature, in a way.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Don't even TRY to make any sense of it. It's the most ridiculous story ever. No one understands what the fuck it's all about--they just pretend to.
Since religiious nuts are the biggest morons around, it goes without saying that it makes no more sense to them than it does to anyone else.
It was all a big joke on humanity and we are still paying for it.
If there was ever a 'Jesus' he would most likely have been a horrible person. Humans always idolise the horrible ones. Has there ever been a 'nice' dictator or historical leader? He was just a convenient figurehead in a power game. Nothing unusual for humans.
At that time in history, 'messiahs' were the trendy thing to be. The biblical equivalent of modern day rock stars. They were all over the place.

Maybe he was just pissed-off being forced to die in one of the worst ways imaginable for everyone's sins since Adam.

Did 'god' ever define 'sin'? Surely there must be more than 'seven'.

[Dubious]

Don't even TRY to make any sense of it. It's the most ridiculous story ever. No one understands what the fuck it's all about--they just pretend to.
Since religiious nuts are the biggest morons around, it goes without saying that it makes no more sense to them than it does to anyone else.
It was all a big joke on humanity and we are still paying for it.
If there was ever a 'Jesus' he would most likely have been a horrible person. Humans always idolise the horrible ones. Has there ever been a 'nice' dictator or historical leader? He was just a convenient figurehead in a power game. Nothing unusual for humans.
At that time in history, 'messiahs' were the trendy thing to be. The biblical equivalent of modern day rock stars. They were all over the place.

Maybe he was just pissed-off being forced to die in one of the worst ways imaginable for everyone's sins since Adam.

Did 'god' ever define 'sin'? Surely there must be more than 'seven'.

Well, I figure if one infringed any of the ten commandments that would be a sin not to mention all the other sins upon breaking any of the Judaic laws or customs. One has to remember that the first Christian cults were exclusively Jewish which Paul made great efforts to disengage from. Dying for our sins was merely a phony excuse by later Christians - the revised Pauline kind - to fill the gap of Christ's unexpected crucifixion. The range of sins expanded after that beyond all Jewish definitions that never subscribed to anything so ludicrous as Jesus having died for our sins. The creation of Christianity relied on one swindle after another. If it's so easy to deceive people even now, imagine what it was like then and for the next 1000 years when absurdity only required dogma to make itself legal.

[Dontaskme]

The good story, the love story, the story that you have associated with being a permanent presence in your reality....goes something like this...


From the moment of your birth, your parents, who wanted you, the ones who decided to create you, who manifested you as a result of their show of love for each other, then adored what they had made out of love. When you appeared on the scene as their offspring of love, you were just another part of the love that made you.

Now you have arrived into the loving arms of your mother and the loving gaze of your father, you felt adored, and loved, and needed nothing, as everything was taken care of for you by your loving parents. You were special to them, you could do no wrong, you were worshipped and praised as you passed all your milestones along the journey to adulthood, because you were being lovingly guided all the time, and they were proud of you because they had made you what you are. You were unconditionally loved and supported in every phase of your emotional development. You had your rosy little cheeks squeezed because your parents believed that you were the cutest thing they had ever seen. So you always felt very special and secure and protected, your life was perfect and no harm was ever going to come to you.

But then came the split.. you were not a child anymore, you were told that you are not a child, but an adult..you started to feel separation from that unconditional love you had spend all your childhood feeling that was cosy and comfortable. You suddenly found yourself in a break away situation where there was a pressure to become an independant self, where you came to realise you had a mind of your own and that you could think for yourself, and that you no longer needed to rely on your parents who always had your best interest at heart. You could now make up your own mind up about your life, and the way your life was going to take you.

At this juncture in your life, you soon began to realise that things were not as cosy as they used to be as you were able to look back and remember how much you were unconditionally loved and secure, with no responsiblities other than to just wallow in the rapturous pleasure of having all your needs and everything met, and taken care of for you, by your loving parents.

Now you are an adult, some, not all of those adults, desired or craved those early memories of being in total bliss, and wanting that bliss to continue forever and ever.

That's when religion was born, that's when adults decided to substitute the lost paradise of childhood and made up their own paradise by inventing some new parents and they called these parents... God and his son Jesus.

The bad news is, no one cares about you once you are old enough to care for yourself, and that's all you can do for yourself now you are an adult, is care for yourself, it's no one elses responsiblity to care for you, but your own. No one is going to save you now, especially your imagined God and his son Jesus. Life for you now, is really all up to you...and you ALONE

[ThinkOfOne]

I know that Jesus is presented as the personification of goodness, but I'm not really sure why. I'm not trying to be provocative by saying that; I'm just one of those people who doesn't need to try. I know about some of the praiseworthy things Jesus is supposed to have said, but, when I think about it, I'm not aware of any commendable acts that he performed. I certainly don't know what he did that would justify the constructing of a religion round him.

Posted the following earlier, but it took a while to get moderator approval. Seems unlikely that you would have been notified, so I'm posting it again:

That's an interesting question. First, there are several things that need to be understood about Jesus and Christianity.

Christianity is a religion based on the Pauline "gospel" rather than the gospel preached by Jesus. As such, Christianity was constructed around what Paul and Paul's followers said about Jesus. The underlying concepts put forth by Jesus while He preached His gospel, from the beginning of His ministry through His death as documented by the writers of the four "gospels", are what are of true value. NOT what Paul and followers of Paul said about Jesus. NOT the mythology and beliefs that the writers of the four "gospels" wrapped around them. At best, they can merely echo His words. At worst, they deviate from His words and at times substantially so. So much so, that for all intents and purposes the underlying concepts of Christianity are antithetical to underlying concepts of the gospel preached by Jesus. Which as I stated earlier are what are of true value. Based on your OP, doesn't seem that you understand all this.

Thoughts?

[ThinkOfOne]

The essence of what Jesus did is his death and resurrection, that for him was a reinterpretation of the Jewish Easter. The Jewish Easter is a living memory of the story of liberation from slavery in Egypt. Jesus reinterpreted this and created a new Easter, meant as a liberation not from the slavery of Egypt, but from the slavery of sin. With the new interpretation given by Jesus (largely reinterpreted, in turn, by st. Paul), the good news is that your sins are forgiven before you commit them. This means that all your future sins are already forgiven. What is up to you is just welcoming this forgiveness that God has already given to you. You accept the forgiveness, already given to you by God, by accepting to enter the new life that he proposes to you. Accepting this new life means repeating in your life the celebration of the new Easter, symbolized in Jesus’ last supper, and trying to put it in practice by loving your neighbour the same way Jesus did. You don’t need to be perfect in this: as I said, all your sins, past, present and future, are already forgiven. You just need to put in this your will, that means your acceptance of this new Covenant.

This is the theology of the essence of Jesus. You won’t find expressed this way anywhere, because everybody, including Jesus himself, has given different interpretations of all of this. I have given you mine, based on my experience of 22 years of Catholic priesthood, now non-believer, but still strongly appreciating the depth of Jesus’ message.

Does this sound to you like something valuable that Jesus did?

Posted the following earlier, but it took a while to get moderator approval. Seems unlikely that you would have been notified, so I'm posting it again:

The concepts you cite were not at all a part of "Jesus' message", rather from Paul and followers of Paul. For example,
1) Literal death and resurrection / "Easter"
2) "all your sins, past, present and future, are already forgiven."
3) "You don’t need to be perfect". Actually, Jesus calls His followers to be "perfect" in their righteousness (Matthew 5)

As a matter of curiosity, how did you come to be a non-believer? As you may have surmised, I am not a believer in Christianity. On the other hand, for all intents and purposes, I am a "believer" in the gospel preached by Jesus.

[Harbal]

Based on your OP, doesn't seem that you understand all this.

Thoughts?

You are right, I don't understand it.

[ThinkOfOne]

Based on your OP, doesn't seem that you understand all this.

Thoughts?

You are right, I don't understand it.

Specifically, what is it that you don't understand?

[Harbal]

Based on your OP, doesn't seem that you understand all this.

Thoughts?

You are right, I don't understand it.

Specifically, what is it that you don't understand?

I don't understand what Jesus did to justify the fuss that eventually came about because of him. I'm not interested enough to invest any effort into understanding why, though, so please bear that in mind if you reply.

[ThinkOfOne]

You are right, I don't understand it.

Specifically, what is it that you don't understand?

I don't understand what Jesus did to justify the fuss that eventually came about because of him. I'm not interested enough to invest any effort into understanding why, though, so please bear that in mind if you reply.

There's a distinction that needs to be made between what Jesus says He intended to do and subsequently did and what Christianity says He did. There's a wide gulf between the two.

From what I can tell, your knowledge is limited to a very superficial understanding of what Christianity says He did with, for all intents and purposes, no knowledge of what Jesus says He did. What's more, you have little to no interest in understanding either. Yet you created a topic for discussing it. If that's the case, why did you bother to create a topic for discussing it?

[Harbal]

What's more, you have little to no interest in understanding either. Yet you created a topic for discussing it. If that's the case, why did you bother to create a topic for discussing it?

Well I did discuss it a bit to start with, but then I got bored with the subject. There was also the chance that I might have outraged somebody with my blasé attitude towards Jesus, which might have been fun, but that didn't happen. You can't really plan these things, you just post a thread and either it happens or it doesn't.

[ThinkOfOne]

What's more, you have little to no interest in understanding either. Yet you created a topic for discussing it. If that's the case, why did you bother to create a topic for discussing it?

Well I did discuss it a bit to start with, but then I got bored with the subject. There was also the chance that I might have outraged somebody with my blasé attitude towards Jesus, which might have been fun, but that didn't happen. You can't really plan these things, you just post a thread and either it happens or it doesn't.

Okay. Sounds as if you were just looking to have some "fun", i.e., troll.

Regardless you're perfectly justified in having a low opinion of Christianity and all that it entails. It not only doesn't hold up to scrutiny, it very well may be the most self-serving system of belief created by man.

That said, the words attributed by Jesus while He preach His gospel are reasonably sound and reasonably coherent within themselves. What's more, much of what was attributed to Him is remarkably deep and quite profound.

FWIW, I'm hardly the first to draw these conclusions. As an example, there is what Thomas Jefferson had to say more than 200 years ago:

1816 January 9. (Jefferson to Charles Thomson). "I too have made a wee little book, from the same materials, which I call the Philosophy of Jesus. It is a paradigma of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book, and arranging them on the pages of a blank book, in a certain order of time or subject. A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen. It is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel, and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what it’s Author never said nor saw.

Pasted from <http://www.monticello.org/site/research ... us-beliefs>

Unless I am missing something, your beef isn't with Jesus, per se. Rather it is with Christianity.

[Dontaskme]

Based on your OP, doesn't seem that you understand all this.

Thoughts?

You are right, I don't understand it.

One of the reasons you do not understand it is because it's just someone else's story, and not your own. In reality, you are born without a story. You have no conception of anything, you are just pure non-being.

It's a story, that's all...a story about goodness and love.....The good story, the love story, the story that you have associated with being a permanent presence in your reality. It all started when your parents gave you a name, you became twoness, a duality...you took on as your own someone else's story... then coupled with your name, they also planted the seed of love in your heart when they told you that they loved you. You became self aware when you attached yourself to your name.

You are nothing without your story. You and your story are like two peas in a pod. The outer casing is inseparable from the content. The book is inseparable from the story.

It's all a fictional illusion...appearing real.

[Immanuel Can]

"Great Caesar's ghost," as Perry White used to say to Superman. Steel country.

Not really. Sheffield was very much all about steel, but I live about 15 miles from Sheffield. Where I live was a coal mining area. There was coal everywhere, and miners. I reckon about 25% of the working male population where I grew up worked down the pit. There were about 8 or 9 coal mines within a 5 mile radius of my house. All gone now; most of them landscaped and "returned to nature". Most of the miners will be dead now, so I suppose they are also returned to nature, in a way.

Well, those were tough days, no question. And South Yorkshire's better off without the mines.

I have family in North Yorkshire. That's how I know York.