Eiade Posted June 26, 2004 Share Posted June 26, 2004 I am not a Christian (I am agnostic). But it is very hard to doubt the existence of Jesus the man. As a teacher, his purpose on earth was to give man sort of a role-model as to how to act, and his teachings were good. Here's something I want you guys to ponder. It something that I believe. I think that Jesus had but ONE main message. To love one another. If everyone loved one another, we wouldn't even need the ten commandments. Some say that Jesus' main message was to accept him into your heart, and believe in and worship God. But wouldn't that be kind of selfish? If God is so benevolent and good, why would he create man solely so they could worship him? My argument is that Jesus' message was to love one another. If this happened, then humankind could survive forever (or at least never be destroyed by themselves). Maybe even a utopian world would be created. And say that eventually it turned into where everyone did love one another. What would be the point of God? I have presented many questions and theories, so please use quotes when responding to something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyjet3 Posted June 27, 2004 Share Posted June 27, 2004 Jesus had several messages. Loving one another wasn't really one of them. It was more of an acceptance to people rather than love. Jesus was in his mind the son of god, god himself in human form. So it would make sense that he wanted people to worship him. It's wasn't really a selfish thing but as most christians would say, it was based on faith. You have to remember he didn't demand worship, he earned it by doing a bunch of maricles. Unfortunatly, even if "loving everyone" was the message, it was an impossible demand. Humans are naturally flawed and will always have feelings of arrogance, greed, hatred, jealousy, ect. God won't of asked for such an impossible demand knowing that not everyone one in the world would follow him. God is only one of the many gods that are in our world. This demand would have only worked if everyone was christian. I also believe that an utopian world for humans is just imposssible because of the same reasons stated above. Jesus was a great man, no doubt about that. But he wanted more than just love for all. In fact, he even stated that the only true, pure love, is love for God... ooc: I tried to avoid religious stuff like this but it seemed almost impossible on this topic... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark0ne Posted June 27, 2004 Share Posted June 27, 2004 Be warned about the outcome of this thread and this thread before posting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morgoth Posted June 27, 2004 Share Posted June 27, 2004 To love one another is one of the points of Jesu message, but not his entire message. The key point is that he preached about the heavenly kingdom (now, don't slap me if it's the wrong word) approaching to be established on earth. In order to gain salvation, people should repent of their sins and become a follower of Jesus. This includes, as the basic points of how people should treat each other, the love one another. However, this love does not exist out of itself, but is rather the result of an equally strong love of God.Jesus firmly believed that the heavenly kingdom would already be established very soon, and that everyone would have to change his/her attitude to gain salvation. (So, this was an attempt to explain the main points in four sentences, I'm sure I screwed up, but I don't want to spend the whole day trying to explain Jesu message ;) - which, in its entirety, is nigh on impossible to explain in one forum post ;) ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darnoc Posted June 27, 2004 Share Posted June 27, 2004 Yeah, not bad, Morgoth. And as Dark0ne said, I hope too that this doesn't turn into a flame war. It would be too bad if this thread about love should turn into a fight between different believers (you know, christians, atheists etc.). So, if you really want to discuss about the if Jesus really existed and the sense of religion (which will turn into a flamewar, I can promise), please do this somewhere else. Morgoth, I don't really agree with you. Love is the core-message of Jesus. He has furfilled the law of god by leaving just one law: the law of love. And everything Jesus did (or what they say he did) was about love. But as you also mentioned, Morgoth, Jesus said that you could only furfill this law with help from god, since it is impossible for humans to love eachother entirely (egoism always comes in our way). So a human being can't change his attitude out of himself, but needs the help of god for this. Jesus said that you would have to be reborn in order to furfill the law of god. With this of course he didn't mean to be reborn physically, he meant a spiritual rebirth and afterwards the holy spirit would live in you (as Paul said it, we are the temple of the holy spirit). The core message is therefore love, but love can only happen with the help of god (the holy spirit is one part of the trinity, as you might remember). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eiade Posted June 27, 2004 Author Share Posted June 27, 2004 So, if you really want to discuss about the if Jesus really existed and the sense of religion . . . please do this somewhere else. Good call. This isn't about existence of Jesus or the integrity of religion. This whole arugment assumes Jesus existed. I think as long as people have integrity and are considerate, this shouldn't generate flaming. Anyways... To Darnoc: I must agree with you in the point that according to Jesus, loving one another could only come with learning to love God (due to the human nature of selfishness). To tyjet3: Why wouldn't loving one another be a message of Jesus? Everything that he did was completely and utterly unselfish. And according to almost all renditions of the story of Jesus, they said that that was one of his messages. If it wasn't his message, then what is the point of the well-known christian saying, "Love thy Neighbor"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morgoth Posted June 28, 2004 Share Posted June 28, 2004 Darnoc: I tend to disagree. Love is one, if not the, key point of his message, but he did not preach it solely for its own sake. He tried to convince people that everybody should work towards the heavenly kingdom and try to work on establishing it on earth as far as possible for human beings (of course, humans alone are unable to actually bring the heavenly kingdom into existence). If his message were only about love, you would also get into serious trouble trying to explain statements such as "Let the dead bury their dead." (free translation by myself from German translation to English) when someone asked whether he could bury his father before following Jesus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darnoc Posted June 28, 2004 Share Posted June 28, 2004 This sentence I know and I have already studied it. With the "dead" he doesn't mean physical dead people, but spiritual dead people. To be more precise he said the following: "Let the spiritual dead bury this one who was not only spiritual dead but now also physical dead; instead follow me". Perhaps you know also the sentence that you have to leave everything behind in order to follow Jesus. This doesn't acctually mean that you just give everything up and live on the street, but it means that you shouldn't hang on your things, be not bound to them. If you're told to let go, you let go. If someone asks you to give him something, give it to him (money, food, whatever). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyjet3 Posted June 28, 2004 Share Posted June 28, 2004 Jesus had several messages. Loving one another wasn't really one of them. It was more of an acceptance to people rather than love. Jesus was walking around saying, "Peace and Love for all", he was telling people to be good people. He taught to be considerate to people, not to love. The only love he wanted to teach was the love for god, not the love from human to human. Jesus was a great man, no doubt about that. But he wanted more than just love for all. In fact, he even stated that the only true, pure love, is love for God... Yes, he taught love. Love to God. And also, Jesus didn't write the 10 commandments... They were found by Moses (i think). In fact Jesus didn't love everyone himself. It is clearly stated in the bible that Jesus was not very comfortable with homosexuals... They kind of doesn't make sense if he wanted everyone to love each other and he didn't even love everyone... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morgoth Posted June 28, 2004 Share Posted June 28, 2004 I'm well aware of that sentence's meaning, Darnoc, but I rather mean that if the message was only about loving each other, such rigidness would appear a bit out of place, there must be more to it than only mutual love. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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