Do you think if Jesus would have known that purely evil people would

[WCGreen]

invoke his name down through the centuries at the drop of a hat to justify actions as crude as murder, rape, war and destruction just to satisfy these so-called Christians lust for power, money and fame that he would have reconsidered letting himself be martyred...

I think he would have...

Since I don't believe in an afterlife complete with some medieval version of paradise, I like to think the man Jesus would have had second thoughts in the Garden that night if he knew of the countless cruel actions were to be committed under the banner of his name...

I think he would be sickened by the blood lust, the pillaged lives, the manipulation of the believing masses...

I think Jesus would have rode that donkey back to the Galilee and resumed his preaching of a life of peace and love and harmonious relationships between the men and women who only seek to live a life less dangerous...

[Divine Discontent]

1. I understand your feelings...

fortunately for mankind, Jesus loves us unconditionally....

how fortunate we are. cuz the stuff people do in general, and then, the stuff that's done in 'glory' to His name is disgusting. Lying because it's for a 'good' purpose, warfare because it's a 'holy' cause, etc...

www.cafepress.com/warisprofitable <<-- check it out, top '08 stuff

[WCGreen]

3. It's the best way to rally people...

What would Jesus do?

Probably puke...

[sandnsea]

2. Uh, he knew

He was the first it was done to.

If you believe in that sort of thing anyway.

[camero]

4. He knew

He talked about anti-christs in his teachings and told us not to be deceived. The definition of an anti-christ being someone who said they were for Christ but thier actions going against his teachings.

[WCGreen]

8. Jesus didn't speak of an anti-Christ....

Because he wasn't even referred to as Christ...

Cristo is a Greek word meaning king...

[CaliforniaPeggy]

5. Didn't he know.......

That we have free will?

I think he did...

And so he went about his mission even so, knowing what would be done in his name.

Hoping that we would choose the good path, instead of the evil one...

It must have grieved his heart to know how humankind would behave...

So often the seed falls on stony ground, you know... :hug:

[Joe Bacon]

6. If Jesus came back today, Robertson would tear him to pieces

AND Falwell would sit his fat ass on him as Paul and Jan Crouch pounded the nails in.

[bdamomma]

9. if he did come back he would probably just go back

and let us deal with this mess.

[BoneDaddy]

7. Nothing is one sided

Along with the shackles and pain organized religion has brought it has also given a good measure of peace and love to others. I know bad christians and good ones, bad republicans and good ones, bad liberals and good ones.

[WCGreen]

15. Unfortunatly, those who do the most harm using religion....

Are the ones with the most power and effect far more people than those who adhere to the teaching of Jesus...

[BoneDaddy]

18. And that is

as true for the Jews, Muslims and any other organized, fallible group of people.

[Tejanocrat]

10. Do you think if the Easter Bunny had known that people would hard boil chicken embryos and dye them

pastel colors in his honor, he would have hopped down a different bunny trail?

My not too subtle point: Your OP raises a peculiar question because

1. those who believe in Jesus as their Savior will probably find it ridiculous to question whether or not Pat Robertson and the other manipulators and abusers of the faith could cause Jesus to choose another path when Satan offered far more persuasive temptations according to the Bible and Jesus resisted those temptations, and

2. those who do not believe in Jesus will probably find any hypothetical about what Jesus would or would not have done to be a useless exercise in magical thinking.

[WCGreen]

12. I don't believe in Jesus as the savior and wasn't my point...

Jesus was a rabbi, if he existed at all, a man preaching a simple message that spoke of hope and a simple, non cluttered way to look at spiritual life...

Two commandments, getting rid of the rules at the temple that demanded all sorts of machinations in order to worship. love the neighbor, all the stuff that threatened to undermine the use of a vengeful god as a bludgeon to keep people under control...

I fell sorry that you can't escape the dichotomous boundries of your argument to discover what Jesus and other simple peaceful spiritual leaders were truly all about...

[Tejanocrat]

17. If you don't believe Jesus was the Savior and don't believe he was divine (I don't either, by the

way), how can you ask whether he would have chosen a path other than martyrdom?

If Jesus was simply a rabbi who preached a less orthodox approach to religion which focused less on technical rules and more on loving your neighbor and taking care of the poor (which is how I tend to see Jesus), how can you speak of his death as a martyrdom? If Jesus didn't die to fill the role of Savior (as you and I appear to agree he did not), doesn't that eliminate the martyrdom aspect of his trial and execution?

All I'm suggesting is that this whole discussion seems antithetical to what any religious Christian would believe and irrelevant to what any non-Christian would believe. Is there any extent to which we agree about that? If not, what point am I missing?

P.S. With respect to our apparently shared belief in Jesus as an very influential (but not divine) religious teacher, here are my favorite Bible passages in that regard:

The set up is best explained in Luke at 14:1-5 - "And it came to pass, as he went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the sabbath day, that they watched him. And, behold, there was a certain man before him which had the dropsy. And Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day? And they held their peace. And he took him, and healed him, and let him go; And answered them, saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day?"

But the punch line is best told in Matthew at 12:10-12 - "And, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered. And they asked him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath days? that they might accuse him. And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days."

[DavidDvorkin]

14. Good post

[Tejanocrat]

19. Thanks.

[Larry Ogg]

11. Using the same argument, what do you think the founding fathers of this country would have done

differently if they knew what evil future generations would do with this democracy they created?

[WCGreen]

13. How true that is....

[qwlauren35]

16. He would not have done anything differently.

According to Buddhist teachings, incarnations of the Buddha understand that the message will be lost over time. And accept it.

Typically, it takes 2000 years. The Buddha we call Siddhartha or Shakyamuni lived 2400 years ago. Two thousand years later, we started seeing Inquisitions.

It should be really interesting to see what happens around 2500, 2000 years after Muhammed.

Those who do their best to steer us toward good are usually wise enough to understand that the message will get lost over time. That's why they show up in the first place. Why was Jesus placed on earth? Because God's message was getting lost?

Something to consider.

[WCGreen]

22. If you read the Gospel of Thomas, you would see where many

feel that Jesus, or at least the people who wrote that particular Gospel, were influenced by Eastern religious beliefs...

[MOD]

20. It's not just christians. How about substituing

Muhammad for Jesus? Do you think if Muhammad would have known that purely evil people would invoke his name down through the centuries at the drop of a hat to justify actions as crude as murder, rape, war and destruction just to satisfy these so-called Muslims lust for power, money and fame that he would have reconsidered the whole thing?

Point is as much as might like to blame christianity it is really any system of thought, religious or political, that allows such actions.

[WCGreen]

21. For sure but I was raise a Catholic so I am more comfortable

about challenging my base of faith than those of others..

[Evil Librarian]

23. Personally, yes, I do, I think that was what the agony in the Garden was about:

when he realized the sins of the world, a sort of Kubrickesque montage of ultraviolence the system used on reprogramming Alex, not set to Beethoven's 9th.

Shades of the Last Temptation, rather the Penultimate Temptation, i.e., knowing he could be calling it all a halt and hightailed it to Egypt or Syria when he had a chance and not doing so.

[WCGreen]

24. Good Call....

[CaliforniaPeggy]

25. Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[AZBlue]

26. He would have realized that there was an even stronger need for his teaching.