I don’t think there was a real Jesus but I concede you do have a point. Everyone builds Jesus in their own image, even atheists. It takes effort not to. The natural tendency of anyone who was ever infected with this meme or has Christian friends is to try to find something redeeming about him.
Have heard male homosexuals tell me he was gay, heard black power types tell me he was black, heard a scholar in Greek literature tell me he was a secret Hellenistic Jew, heard him described by hippies as a hippy, by fire and brimstone types that he laid down the law, by SJW that he was a social activists, by communists that he was a communist, by a pacifist that he was a pacifist, by rabbis that he was a rabbi…
He can’t be all of those things, he can however be none of those things. He is the blank slate that people scribble on what they want, and what they want is a version of themselves with super powers.
That’s a very good point, and it’s interesting that you rarely (if ever) hear atheists claim that he was an atheist because he made himself equal to God and abolished the church of his ancestors in order to replace it with his own. It’s almost as if they either didn’t understand the Gospel, or they simply do not want that kind of responsibility, and prefer to endlessly complain about organized religion instead.
I don’t think there was a real Jesus but I concede you do have a point. Everyone builds Jesus in their own image, even atheists. It takes effort not to. The natural tendency of anyone who was ever infected with this meme or has Christian friends is to try to find something redeeming about him.
Have heard male homosexuals tell me he was gay, heard black power types tell me he was black, heard a scholar in Greek literature tell me he was a secret Hellenistic Jew, heard him described by hippies as a hippy, by fire and brimstone types that he laid down the law, by SJW that he was a social activists, by communists that he was a communist, by a pacifist that he was a pacifist, by rabbis that he was a rabbi…
He can’t be all of those things, he can however be none of those things. He is the blank slate that people scribble on what they want, and what they want is a version of themselves with super powers.
That’s a very good point, and it’s interesting that you rarely (if ever) hear atheists claim that he was an atheist because he made himself equal to God and abolished the church of his ancestors in order to replace it with his own. It’s almost as if they either didn’t understand the Gospel, or they simply do not want that kind of responsibility, and prefer to endlessly complain about organized religion instead.