Can I think Jesus was wrong and be Christian?

First a caveat: I have never felt accepted by any church. I was baptized in a Baptist church at 13, and I was possibly baptized as an infant as either an Anglican or Catholic in secret by my Mother who was mostly rebelling against her religion, but may have had second thoughts when I was born.

I was born on Christmas Day, and therefore have lived under Jesus Shadow for my entire life, particularly on my birthday. I have less of a problem sharing my birthday with Jesus than with Santa to be honest.

I don’t think a day has gone by that I haven’t at the very least thought about Jesus, and contemplated such Christian concepts.

I am highly spiritual and most definitely believe in God.

I have not read the entire New Testament.

However, I don’t believe that Jesus is incapable of being wrong. I am not referring to misinterpretation or mistranslation, but to the idea that Jesus himself may have just been flat out wrong. Could Jesus have been in denial about some things, even if he truly was enlightened? I even wonder about the possibility that Jesus was a pompous ass about his revelation, and that this is what lead him to being killed.

So do you think that it is possible to be Christian under such circumstances?

Erek

Hi - no you cannot be a CHRISTian without accepting the teaching of Christ - mainly that the only way to God is thro Him.

Think about what you said for a minute - Jesus would let himself be crucified because he was just a pompous ass? WOT???

You have three choices here about Jesus

  1. he was a nutter
  2. he was a liar
  3. he was who he said he was

Why would anyone go thro the beatings and crucifixtion if he was the above numbers 1 or 2? That doesn’t make sense. And how come over 500 saw him alive after he was killed. And how come that even today, 2000 years on, He is still around? Many “false prophets” have come and gone, but He lives on…
Also you state that you have not read the NT and yet have made a decision that he could be wrong - how would you know if you havent read what he said? :smack:

You have to make a decision - He is or He is not! If He is not - then doesnt matter - carry on with you life and forget it. BUT if He is…that is the most important news of your life.

You cannot be a christian and not follow Chirst.

Be Blessed!!!

Do you have a point or two that He said that you don’t agree with, or are you merely considering the possibility that Jesus was wrong?

Or, 4. Jesus never existed and the people who wrote about him were lying or insane.

Or, 5. (the one I lean to) Jesus was a real person, but not everything that was written about him was true.

Or (6) He was misquoted deliberately several times along the way for the benefit of politicians seeking legitimacy (see: Emperor Constantine, King James I, etc.).

This is a quandary because if you don’t think the teachings of Jesus were correct, as least mostly correct, why would you want to be a Christian. My situation is different, I was also Baptist, but I read the whole New Testament along with the old one. What I learned was I didn’t want to be a Christian, but I did want to follow the teachings of Jesus.

What is it about His teachings that you don’t like or feel was wrong.?

Hi. This is a famous logical fallacy called the Trilemma. It was first contrived by C.S Lewis and has been reguritated as a “proof” by unsophisticated Christian apologists ever since (notably McDowell, for instance).

There are several holes in the argument. The first and most fatal problem is that the argument presumes that we have any reliable record of what Jesus said or didn’t say in the first place. All we have is what the Gospels claim that he said, and none of the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses. There’s also the fact that even what’s attributed to Jesus can be interpreted subjectively and there is no unambigious claim to personal Godhood attributed to Jesus in the Gospels. Indeed, Jesus consistently speaks of God in third person (or to him in the second) and on at least one occasion implies that his will and God’s will are not identical.

Furthermore, it is not axiomatic that a mentally ill person, even a deluded person, can’t be good or wise. Why not? I’ve known people diagnosed with schizophrenia or other disorders who are nonetheless capable of being smart, insightful and good.

It also is not a given that because a person lies or is mistaken about one thing that he can’t be right about other things.

So the Trilemma falls apart at every level. It has no persuasive power whatsover. There is nothing at all irrational about deciding that Jesus was right about some things and either wrong or misreported about others.

What makes you think it was voluntary? And what makes you think crazy people can’t be suicidal or deluded. Why did the Heaven’s Gate cult drink the vodka and barbituites if they were crazy or if their leader was lying?

There’s not a shred of historical evidence that this ever happened. I know you’re alluding to Paul, but the letters of Paul are not historical evidence and it’s not clear what he meant by that passage anyway.

He’s still around? Where?

He lives on where? I don’t see him. And what do you mean by “false prophets?” How do you know which ones are false and which ones aren’t?

By the way, the religious teachings of Buddha, Zoroaster, Mahavira and Krishna are all still alive as well and all of them predate Christianity by centuries. So what does that prove?

If I read one page of a journal where someone claims that chickens have teeth, I don’t have to read the rest of the journal to know that person was wrong about at least one thing.

I don’t “have” to do anything and you are creating a phony crisis with a false dichotomy. I am perfectly free to decide that he “is” some things and “is not” others. The decision about what another person is required to believe in order to call himself a Christian or a follower of Jesus is completely up to them.

You don’t have to believe every single thing you read in the Gospels in order to “follow Christ.” Jesus himself said that there are only two requirements that matter.

One thing I’ve learned on the 'Dope is that it’s actually surprisingly difficult to define what exactly a Christian really is. You’d think it would be pretty straightforward, but it ain’t. Worse, nobody can even agree on how best to be a Christian, even if they acknowledge other points of view as essentially Christian.

So, I think you can basically call yourself whatever the Hell you want, and nobody can really argue with you. Or, I should say, they can and will argue with you a lot, but you’ll probably wind up feeling even less certain about the particulars than you were before, and will hence be forced to rely on your own convictions and personal revelation. Which is what anyone who agrees or disagrees with you also does.

So, sure, you’re a Christian, and I don’t think anyone can tell you different.

Well personally, my faith is pretty syncretic. I take bits and pieces from all over, and hesitate to pin my identity to one particular faith, but Christianity has loomed large over my entire life.

As I said, I have not read the ENTIRE NT, that doesn’t mean I haven’t read ANY of it. I have read the entire book of Matthew, (My middle name) and the entire book of Revelations multiple times, but have read bits and pieces of the rest.

I’m not a big fan of all or nothing philosophies. I think that the message of the Christ story overall is very compelling, but I also think that Christ could very well have let the whole prophet thing go to his head, even if he did have some great metaphysical insight. I am inclined to believe he did, otherwise he wouldn’t be remembered in the way that he is for as long as he has been. I would say that Buddha and Zoroaster have the same quality.

I also believe that a lot of what he said “I am the son of God.” isn’t something that is meant to be attributable merely to him, and has been twisted over the years. By definition, every male ever born is a son of god. So that he was a prophet, I have no doubt, his legacy confirms this to me. However, the idea that he was of some level of enlightenment that the average man cannot achieve, in my mind is counterproductive to the message.

When I go into churches I am disturbed by the fetishization of the torturous death that Christ experienced, and the idea of submission to some nebulous authority. In my opinion that submission is a submission to an idea of social conformity that everyone is conforming to because they think they are supposed to, though no one is really certain of what they are conforming to. I don’t think Christ intended to become the slavemaster that he has become, but I think to completely blame the followers that have come since doesn’t sit right with me completely, and I believe that a certain amount of the responsibility can be laid at Christ’s door without his overall life being worthless. That would be throwing the baby Jesus out with the bath water. :wink:

I also see a distinct lack of passion when I go into churches, between singers singing hymns with clenched throats, and Priests who need microphones to reach an audience in a building designed to carry the voice to every corner of the room. I oftentimes wonder these days where the passion and inspiration that created the Vatican, Notre Dame, and the works of Bach have gone.

In my opinion Christ was working out some sort of spiritual dilemma that was larger than his own life, and we have continued to work that out ever since in his name. I also believe that this idea of perfection that is laid at his doorstep is probably unfair to him because it blinds us to seeing who he really was.

The story of the Passion tells me that he was struggling with Satan his entire life and that it’s important to recognize the intimate relationship he had with his demon if we want to attain the spiritual evolution that Christ was attempting to evoke.

I think “Satan is the enemy and Love thine enemy” are overlooked through an irrational fear that tells us we are guaranteed to go to heaven if we just do as the preacher tells us.

Erek

Three of them were. The only writer who was not an eyewitness was Luke.

But you know, one of my uncles wrote his childhood memoirs a few years back and, boy, you should have heard the uproar from his siblings! There was always some detail that they remembered differently, some difference in interpretation, some what-ever that made one sibling or another howl like it was a life-threatening issue. The rest of the family finally got the siblings to calm down by telling them “well, perhaps it’s not the exact truth, but it’s what he remembers and it’s well-told, so what’s your problem?”

Police forces claim that one of the hardest parts of their work is to get decent descriptions from eye witnesses. People often see their attackers as bigger than they were, for example.

The gospel writers weren’t trying to write down every little thing Jesus did, they had different audiences in mind (Luke, being a doctor, is most impressed by healing; John focuses on salvation), and their memories weren’t perfect.

But hitting a dead nail again: either you believe he was, or you believe he wasn’t. In either case you can’t get physical proof - that’s why we call it faith and not scientific knowledge.

None of them were.

By tradition, only Matthew and John are even alleged to have been written by eyewitnesses. Mark was supposedly written by a secretary of Peter’s.

In actuality, all of the Gospels are anonymous works, written long after the crucifixion and none of them are first hand accounts. The authorship traditions are from the 2nd century and are not supportable by the evidence.

I’m going to repost below a short essay I wrote about this on another board and have posted before on SDMB. It’s thorough and will save me the effort of going through my whole song and dance all over again as I’ve done many times before here.
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An examination of the authorship traditions of the four Canonical Gospels

Only two of the canonical Gospels, Matthew and John, are alleged by tradition to have been written by Apostles but I will address the traditions of Mark and Luke just to be thorough.
First of all, I should say that none of the four canonical Gospels names its own author, none of them claim to be eywitness accounts or even to have spoken to eyewitness of Jesus. All are written in the third person and none of the authors tell us anything about themselves. All of the traditional ascriptions of authorship come from 2nd century tradition.

The first gospel written is Mark. Mark is not by tradition an eyewitness account but 2nd century tradition casts him as a secretary of the Apostle Peter who haphazardly wrote down everything Peter said in no particular order.

The basis for this tradition stems from a single claim by Papias who said (c. 130 CE) that he got the information from John the Presbyter (not to be confused with John the Apostle). That’s it. That’s the entire case for Mark as a secretary of Peter.

Now let’s examine the credibility of this claim.

First, Mark does not say that he knew Peter, talked to Peter, ever met Peter or got any information from any eyewitness.

Secondly, the author is extremely hostile to Peter. Mark is a decidedly Pauline, anti-Jewish and anti-Petrine diatribe. Mark is very hostile to the apostles in general and to Peter in particular. He takes every opportunity to depict the apostles as being dense and not getting Jesus’ true message (reflecting the tension between Pauline communities and the Jerusalem cult in the last half of the first century). More to the point (and this is important) Mark does not give Peter any redemption after his betrayal. Mark does not grant Peter and appearance from Jesus. Mark’s Peter denies Jesus, runs away and that’s it. Now why would a Petrine memoir not include a Petrine witness of the resurrection? Wouldn’t that be the most important part? How does it make any sense to exclude it?

Thirdly, the book is quote obviously a literary construction and is manifestly not a transcription of oral anecdotes. The literary structure of Mark, both in its chiastic forms and its use of the Hebrew Bible as a allusory template or “hypertext” preclude the possibility of transcribed oral tradition. GMark is a carefully constructed literary work.

It should also be mentioned that Mark is a Greek composition which shows no signs of translation from Aramaic, the language of Peter and the language he would have dictated his memoirs in.

Fourth, Mark makes a number of errors regarding Palestininan geography and Jewish laws and customs which show that his information could not have been collected from a Palestinian Jew. Mark’s passion, in particular, is so riddled with factual. historical and legal inaccuracies that it cannot be historical and cannot have come from an eyewitness. [I can address the specific errors in a separate post if anyone desires]

Fifth, the book could not have been written during the lifetime of Peter. Mark knows about the destruction of the Temple which means that Peter was dead (at least by Christian tradition) when the book was written.
To summarize, the canonical Gospel of Mark is an anonymous book written outside of Palestine in a Gentile language to a Gentile audience sometime during or after the Jewish-Roman War. The author is hostile to Jews and to the apostles. He does not know Jewish laws or customs. He does not know the geography of Palestine. He does not like Peter. He never makes any claim to have known Peter or to have ever been to Palestine.

In 130 CE some guy said he heard from another guy that the author was a secretary of Peter’s.

Let’s move on to Matthew. The Gospel of Matthew, by tradition, is attributed to the apostle of that name. Like Mark, this authorship tradition stems from Papias (it was also claimed by Irenaeus but he was probably parroting Papias). Papias clamed that, “Matthew composed the sayings [of Jesus] in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could.” In Adv. Haer. 3.1.1.

If such a Logia ever existed, it is not Canonical Matthew. GMatt is not a sayings gospel for one thing and was not written in Hebrew for another. Furthermore, GMatt is largely dependent on Mark and (most probably)another written sayings tradition (in Greek, not Hebrew) called Q. Matt’s dependence on Mark also puts its date somewhere around 80 CE (if not later) which is pushing the envelope for the plausibility of the author being a contemporary of Jesus. It’s not impossible, of course, but this is an era when people generally didn’t live much past forty or fifty years of age.

The bigger obstacle for apostolic authorship is that fact that Matthew copies so extensively from secondary sources. An eyewitness should not be expected to copy verbatim from a non-eyewitness.

There is also the fact that GMatt contains some of the more demonstrable fictions and signs of OT cannibalism but more on those aspects in their proper sections.

It also bears repeating that the author Matthew never claims to have been an apostle or a witness, never states his name and never claims to have known any other witnesses.

To sum up for Matthew:

Papias claims that an apostle named Matthew compiled a sayings Gospel in Hebrew.

The Canonical Gospel of Matthew is written in literary Greek and is not a sayings gospel. The author never claims to have been an apostle or an eyewitness. It relies heavily on secondary Greek sources as well as the Septuagint. Once again, an eyewitness would not rely on the accounts of non-witnesses to recount events that he had supposedly seen for himself. It was written at least 50 years after the alleged crucifixion. The author includes demonstrable fictions which can clearly be shown to have been derived from the Septuagint.

Papias’ Logia, if it existed, has never been found.
Let’s do Luke.

The traditional author of Luke-Acts is supposedly a physician and travelling companion of Paul named Luke.This is a dubious tradition at best. First of all, the author of Luke-Acts never claims to have known Paul. The earliest known claim for this tradition comes from Irenaeus in the late 2nd century who probably based his conclusion on the “we passages” from Acts as well as a stray mention of someone named Luke in Philemon (the name turns up in a couple of the non-authentic Pauline letters as well but the authentic corpus onle mentions the name once in passing).

There is no reason whatever to suppose that the Luke mentioned by Paul has aything to do with either GLuke or Acts.

The “we” passages in Acts are those passages during which the narrative voice changes from third person to first person plural. This is the source of the supposition that the author of Luke-Acts was a companion of Paul’s but Vernon Robbins has made a strong case that this was merely a Greek literary device for describing sea voyages.

Furthermore, Luke knew Josephus, which puts that gospel into the mid 90’s CE at a bare minimum and probably later. This means that Paul had been dead 30 years before Luke-Acts was written. It is highly unlikely, then, that the book was written by a companion of Paul and there is absolutely no reason to connect the “Luke” who is so casually mentioned by Paul in one letter to the composition of Luke-Acts.

Furthermore, Luke is dependent on both Mark and Q which (contrary to some Christian folklore) means that Luke had no access to first hand accounts from other witnesses.

There are also historical inaccuracies in Luke as well as contradictions with other Gospels which I can address if anyone requests.

So, to sum up Luke, it is an anonymous gospel whose author makes no claim to first hand knowledge and no claim to knowledge even of Paul. It was written more than a half century after the crucifixion, is dependent on secondary sources and contains numerous historical errors and contradictions with the other gospels.

The fable of a physician named Luke who travelled with Paul comes from a claim made 150 years after the crucifixion and is corroborated by nothing in the text itself.
Time for John.

By tradition, the GJohn is written by the apostle of that name and is also identified as the mysterious “Beloved Disciple” mentioned within the text. This tradition, like Luke, stems from a late 2nd century claim by Irenaeus (who is known to have confused John the Apostle with another John, called 'the Presbyter" and may have been doing so again).

As with the other canonical Gospels, the author of GJohn does not identify himself or claim to be a witness (The seeming self-identification in 21:24 is a later redaction to the book, not part of the orginal manuscript and did not name the author “John” in any case. It is also not really a first person singular assertion, (“I wrote this”) but a first person plural avowel that “we know” these were the words of a disciple (without naming the disciple).

Looking at the text of GJohn, we can see that any claim to the book as an eyewitness or apostolic account does not hold water. First of all there is the very late date (c. 100 CE if not later) which puts it at the absolute edge of any plausible lifespan for a contemporary of Jesus. It also shows a heavy Hellenistic influence, both in its literary style and its theology. How does an illiterate Palestinian fisherman suddenly become proficient in stylized literary Greek and become aware of Alexandrian Jewish-Greek concepts like the Logos?

GJohn is also arguably the most anti-Jewish work. It goes beyond being just a polemic against the Pharisees or the priests and becomes a full on indictment of all Jewish people. Kind of weird since the author (like Jesus) was allegedly a Jew.

GJohn contains some of the longest, most otherwordly and most implausible speeches for Jesus. The length of the discourses in itself mitigates against their historicity simply by virtue of the implausibilty of those speeches surviving verbatim for 70 or more years in the memory of this fisherman (and nowhere else. These discourses are found nowhere else in early Christian literature). They do not have the short and sweet anecdotal quality of the Q pericopes which are easy to remember and transmit through oral tradition.

GJohn also shows layered authorship. It is not the contiguous work of a single author but the result of multiple redactions by multiple hands.

What is really the nail in the coffin, though, is that GJohn anachronistically retrojects the expulsion of Christians from Jewish synagogues (an event which occurred c. 85-95 CE) to within the life of Jesus. A contemporary of Jesus could not have made this mistake.

To sum up for John, it is an early 2nd century book which is heavily Hellenistic in its language and theology. It is markedly anti-Jewish, it contains speeches for Jesus which are not only incompatible with the character of Jesus as he is presented in the synoptics (not to mention that it simply strains all credulity that a 1st century Jewish audience would tolerate a guy claiming he was God) but simply cannot be plausibly defended as authentic transcriptions of speeches remembered verbatim for 70 years by an illiterate Palestinian fisherman (and by nobody else) and then translated into Greek by that same fisherman. It contains contradictions with the synoptics, it shows muliple hands of authorship and it contains an anachronism so glaring that it is a fatal blow to any consideration of eyewitness testimony.

Its traditional authorship stems from a single unreliable claim by Irenaeus (a guy who couldn’t keep his “Johns” straight) around 180 CE.
None of the Gospels were written by apostles and we have no extant writings or eyewitness accounts from any apostle or eyewitness of Jesus

There might be room for that in Christianity:

“But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” John 1:13-14

John 1:12-13 :smack:

Well, there is plenty of room for viewing the contents of the Bible as being incorrect representations of what Jesus said and did. But even taking what is in the Bible gives us that Jesus is God made man. How absolutely ‘man’ is Jesus? Since ‘man’ is capable of sin (including lieing) was Jesus equally capable of sin? No one can answer that for you, only you can answer that from your own faith.
For the view that Jesus is not uniquely the son of God but that all people are children of God look to coffeecat’s reply, or just the first line of the Lord’s prayer “Our father, who art in heven” not “My father” or “The father” but “Our father” seems to me to suggest a parental relationship between God and mankind.
Personally, I see Jesus as the embodyment of the best possible Human being, as such I believe he could lie, but that he never did. That said much of what he said was complex and open to missunderstanding and that is reflected in much of the interpretation of what he said and did written within the Bible.

Exactly.

And, 6. When Jesus said “only God is good” (ie perfect, meaning that he - Jesus - wasn’t. Necessarily).

Judging by the wide variety of beliefs held by people who claim to be Christians, you are one if you say you are one. Nothing else, not grace, not works, is required. Go on in, but keep your wits about you; it’s a big rowdy tent in there.

What, nobody’s pulled out their copies of Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes, and Who Is This God Person Anyway?

Christianity’s a big, rowdy tent, but I can’t think of a denomination that regards itself as Christian, yet believes Jesus wasn’t God in some form, and believes that he made mistakes.

Now, one can believe different things about the Scriptures, including those describing Jesus, and still be a Christian. You wouldn’t want to attend a church that subscribes to Biblical inerrancy, though.

What about someone who follows Christ in an inspirational manner, and feels that they are building upon a legacy of a very exceptional human being?

You may have a case for calling yourself a Christian by philosophy but not by faith (ie- you believe JC has a lot of good ideas worth living by but not that he is the next best thing to God or your infallible Leader).

I think it’d be better to call yourself a Jesus-admirer, but not further confuse the meaning of the term Christian by applying it to yourself. Biblically & historically, a “Christian” believes in Jesus as the unique & supreme Revealer/Son of God & God’s deisgnated ruler of Creation, if not the Incarnation of God.

Now, this guy wants to be christian, but he doesn’t want to believe in jesus. I don’t believe in jesu either, but I don’t want him on my team, no matter how nice a guy he is, since he will keep on sneaking over to speak to christians. That in mind, I seem to recall reading a list of contradiction in the bible which, among other things, supported the idea that belief in jesu in not necessary to being admitted to the christian heaven, and worshipping yahweh.
One would be that jesus didn’t tell everything to people, so who knows.
Jn.16:12
“I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.”
Another praises people who doubt things
Pr.14:15
“The simple believeth every word: but the prudent man looketh well to his going.”
1 Th.5:21
“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”
Does Jesus judge people?
Jn.8:15
“Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man.”
Jn.12:47
“And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.”
Oh, and a ton of verses that state that people are saved by works, not by beliefe in jesus.

P.S. a big point in the "jesus was a crazy loon argument is his lasts words:
Mt.27:46
“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
Now, it is import to note, that while the above verses seem to give support to not believing jesus is so important, via a via being a god good worshiper, they are contradicted elsewhere.