re: #360 capitalist piglet

Here’s what I don’t understand.

Why would anyone who did not believe in Christ’s divinity come to any conclusion other than that he was crazy? He told people who he was. Today, we’d call a person who said these things insane.

I believe he is my savior. I’ve chosen “Lord” in the lunatic or Lord question.

If you didn’t chose “Lord”, why would you give any gravity to the words of someone who believed himself to be “the way, the truth, and the life”? Why care about his words at all?

You think that he’s divine because you probably grew up in a place where that is the norm and accepted as fact. However, Jesus was not originally thought of as divine by everyone. His message is what convinced people, not just him going around saying that he’s the light and people saying “oh yeah, you know, you’re right…you are”. He made people see something because his message was very deep and important. His followers also didn’t just go around saying “you know, this dude Jesus, he’s the son of God because you just gotta believe, you know”… They presented his story and his sayings and arguments in testaments as to why people should believe. They couldn’t convince people any other way.

You think people only today would have called Jesus crazy if he walked around just saying he’s the son of God with no “proof”? People back then thought the same as well: that other Messiahs were crazy. In fact, that’s a darn good reason as to why he may have been also scorned by “his own people” - because they didn’t believe him. Some did believe him because they were convinced with a message that was different from other messages. To ignore all this is to ignore the story of Jesus and why it all mattered. It did matter. It mattered very much to Jesus and to his disciples. They didn’t go walking around the desert and Jerusalem and they didn’t go around pissing off Romans by saying you just gotta believe. They went around and spread a message.

And that’s the entire point. The message is what pissed off the Romans. It wasn’t just because Jesus thought he was the Son of God. We know that lots of other people thought that they were too. Not all of them were killed. Most were ignored. It was the message that pissed off the Romans. It’s a darn important part of the story.

I just can’t understand how anyone can be a Christian and not understand the vital importance of this point. There are so many reasons to believe in Jesus’s message. Again, even I as an Atheist can actually appreciate this in a very deep way. To just argue that it isn’t important is a very silly thing to do. Jesus’s message mattered very much - to him and to his followers, and to the followers that were convinced by it - and it alone - for centuries afterwards. The message was the only thing they had to convince others. Why anyone would suddenly say today that this message isn’t all that important is beyond me.

And as to Jesus’s insight on unthinking people at the time obeying without understanding: that was also part of the message. But that’s way too complex to go into at 12am, so I’m not going to. But if somebody doesn’t believe me, fine. Nobody has to. People can go and ask a minister if they really don’t believe me. I’m not going to sit here and justify every single thing about Jesus he ever said, or his intentions. It’s getting ridiculous.