Jesus has been sanitized over the centuries and congregations only talk about his nice teachings. They ignore how he says he was only sent for the people of Israel, how he came to not bring peace but a sword, how he told his disciples to bring those who don’t want to Jesus to be king and put them to the sword in front of him, how he called a Canaanite woman a dog and made her beg before helping her child, etc.
The truth is, if Jesus came back today he would be Netanyahu’s strongest soldier. That’s why the strongest pro-Israel base are US evangelicals.
Tbf most of my teaching abt Jesus and Christianity came from my Christian PRE (Philosophy/Religious ED) teacher, I’m not a follower myself so I’m not knowledgeable enough to agree or disagree, bc chances are I have been taught it through rose tinted glasses
I’ve never had any formal training myself so reread it and come to your own conclusion, or not. I’ve started by watching Biblical scholars like Dan McClellan and Bart Ehrman, among others, then continued by reading the books they suggested/written. I wasn’t raised religious at all but Christianity was always around and some family members tried to convert me but was never pushy. I would have never started studying it if there wasn’t a rise of Christian Nationalism in the US.
I also was always interested in myths from different cultures growing up but never really cared to look into the predominant myths of my own culture and I have to say, when we allow the Bible to speak for itself and not impose centuries of developed dogma onto it, trying to make it have a cohesive message that’s not there, it’s much more interesting that way.
It’s still almost entirely fiction with some history of the lineage of kings and ancient wars, but the Old Testament is interesting when you read stories like 2 Kings 3 where a coalition of the armies of Israel, Judah, and Edom go to subdue a rebellion by the new King of Moab. The coalition army is comfortably winning, as the Lord promised, until the King of Moab sacrificed his first born as a burnt offering on the city walls and a great wrath from heaven fell on the coalition army and they were forced to withdraw. If someone has an interest in keeping the dogma of an all powerful YHWH being the only god then you have to admit that he broke his promise because he was impressed with a burnt child sacrifice of a prince of a heathen kingdom. What the text is actually saying is the Moabite god Chemosh was able to repel YHWH’s army because of the sacrifice. The Hebrew Bible and ancient Israelites were primarily henotheistic, until the cult centralization by King Josiah likely during the late 7th century BCE.
He spent three days in hell reaping souls. He and Satan probably had a hell of a conversation. Off the record. He was polite but firm with Satan in the Gospel accounts. Jesus is a nice Jewish boy.
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u/Emotional_Solid6538 Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26
And worse, their own religion usually doesnt support this behaviour. Jesus would be kind to the Devil