Polycarp:
“Badchad, the purpose of this board is to fight ignorance – one’s own included! Therefore, I will expect you to take all my posts, analyze them, and point out and correct the errors in them, right here in this thread.”
Na, I’ll just call you on what I think is your most bothersome hypocrisy. Anything more and I’ll have to give you my hourly rate.
So Jesus hands down a bunch of commands that are quite literally impossible to fulfill without divine help – as illustrations of our own imperfection, and as ideals towards which we should strive. And yes, badchad illustrated my imperfection with a set of these ideal commands.
No I think you miss the point. It’s not that you can’t live up to Jesus’ commands, its that you won’t even make the effort. In fact if I list a few of them that Jesus said but which don’t mix with what are becoming the predominate values of our culture I would wager that you wouldn’t argue in favor of Jesus. Rather you would start coming up with your talk of analogy, mistranslation fabrication etc.
For the sake of argument I’ll try to pretend that Jesus didn’t endorse the law or be one with the god who wrote the law, and will just focus on what Jesus allegedly said directly.
I guess we can be sure that the “give to them who ask stuff” is out in your book, since that requires genuine sacrifice rather than the intangible easy stuff like loving people. How about some of these:
Do you think it would be wrong for a woman to divorce a mentally and physically abusive husband assuming no infidelity?
Do you think it is wrong if a man were to marry the above mentioned divorced woman and provide a good safe home for her and her children in a healthy relationship?
Do you think prayer in church is wrong?
Do you think it is wrong to give alms in church?
Do you think it is wrong whistle at a hot babe?
Do you think it is wrong for people to save a portion of their income for emergencies or for retirement?
Do you think one should hate/abandon their family to follow Jesus.
Do you think slaves should obey their masters?
Do you really think people should burn in hell for honest disbelief (and please don’t give me that cop out about heaven being real but hell another allegory, unless you have something better than wishful thinking to back it up).
You are welcome to take the Bible, read uncritically as a handbook, as your guide, and to quote Moses and Paul to justify judging others. And to reject any of Jesus’s teachings…
You are welcome to read the bible “thoughtfully” as only you can and to quote Moses and Paul when they agree with you and rationalize away all the times they don’t, just as you do with Jesus. Sure you can fool a lot of folks with this, but for beleivers and nonbeleivers alike who have actually read their bible, it’s pretty obvious.
And we’ll see who gets it right. If Czarcasm has the right of it, it won’t matter, because when we die, the neuroelectrical network that comes up with all this stuff will shut down, and we’ll be nothing whatsoever except a memory.
If Czarcasm is right it will matter plenty because you wasted a lot of your short life worrying about such trivial things as sin and guilt or spinning your debating wheels while fishing in a pond without fish. When you could be doing much more important things like working overtime, managing your portfolio, taking vacations, retiring younger because you invested 10% of your income in stocks and bonds instead of tithing, porn, orgies and other fun stuff. If the fundies are right then you miss all that fun stuff and still burn in hell. Wouldn’t that be funny. Of course as you mentioned you could be right. What are the odds of the latter? I say 0.0.