onefaith wrote:It's unbelieveable that you were beaten by those people because you didn't believe. I mean, I believe you, it's just downright wrong. Those people weren't showing the love of Jesus at all.
Very likely he was beaten because he was different. The particular difference happened to be religion. The reason was that he was different. The cause of the difference was religion. It's a semantic difference, but an important one. Their religion likely didn't make them do it. Human nature did.
The only "violent" thing Jesus ever did was knock over a table.
If he was human, in any meaningful form of the word, Jesus likely suffered bouts of anger and the childhood violence that comes with it. Not every moment of his life was documented. What support is there for the view that Jesus was a perfect child?
But he healed many people, and he took his own beating and died on the cross out of love for us.
Again, you have to separate reason and cause. He was beaten and died because he was gaining power through his following and because that threatened the religious oligarchy of the neighborhood. His power was derived from his followers' belief that he was the messiah.
1In your situation, those who beat you I see as pharisees who hated Jesus. Jesus was in your position, and he knows what its like. I promise you, he didn't tell them to do that to you. He has been there too. He wasn't taking revenge on you. In no way were the people who beat you following Jesus, God, or the bible. I'm really sorry that happened.
I believe Jesus delivers his message as a gentle whisper, not by the end of a boot.
His followers may not follow that notion, however. His followers were protecting their social dominance. They were oppressing a contrary set of beliefs, while also gaining status points within their social circle by defeating that external threat.
You seem to be, as usual, giving religion a free pass with respect to its behavior. If he'd been beaten because of his nationality or his political views or his color there'd be no misunderstanding. But instead, those people were being "unchristlike". No, they were being thuggish.
I believe Jesus has always loved you and still does. I believe it would be very unlike him to die for you and then tell people to beat you up. I believe Jesus does believe in you. I believe that with all of my heart. Would he have died for you if he didn't? He died for YOU. He didn't exclude you from the people he died for. You are included. He sure doesn't hate you.
Let me ask you this: if good Christians shouldn't be responsible for what Christians who do bad things do, should the one who loves you more than anyone, who died for you out of love, who commands people not to hurt others, but has showed his love in so many ways, be blamed? If he speaks against violence between people, should he be blamed when people disobey him?
He is also the same God that made the Earth and mankind, and is responsible for how mankind behaves. He made the rules. Can you separate that from Jesus's message?
Is that perhaps why the idea of the Holy Trinity came about? Is it an opportunity to separate aspects of God's nature so that the good can be distilled in one spect while the destructive, petty nature of the old ruler God can be left to another, while the mystical, unworldly nature of God is left to yet another?
