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RE: The Failure of Institutional Remedies: The Philosophy of Jesus Christ
Great post Rich. Interesting points made. Personally I don't know one way or the other. Would love to have the strong faith that some do and I want to believe but unfortunately all religions think they are right.
If Jesus was alive in the present day though I wonder what his thoughts would be of how the human race has become
Jesus kinda got lost in the shuffle. Personally, I believe that religion is the worst thing ever to happen to God. Religions are man-made institutions, the exact thing Jesus came to fix. Judaism, at the time of Jesus, had come to resemble the political institutions of the Romans- they had a symbiotic relationship. If you look at things from an historical perspective, up until the 18th century literacy wasn't widespread and people needed preachers to read the Bible for them and explain it. Now we have printing presses and almost universal literacy (although I'm beginning to question that) and people can read their Bibles themselves. I went to numerous churches looking for God but He wasn't there...what I found were businesses! I found Him in AA (go figure).
Hi, @ianstrat...
Want Jesus without the "religion" thing?
I can't recommend strongly enough that you read the book John wrote about him. If you really "want to believe," that's about the best place I can think of to start getting it "without the filters."
Caveat: Pretty much all translations have some kind of bias. One simple example, in John's book you'll find references to "Jews" - should have been translated "Judeans," i.e. a group of people living in a particular geographic area. There are other examples. If you hit anything that seems particularly offensive or "off-base," I'd be happy to comment on it in case it happens to be "one of those" translation glitches.
But I think, by and large, anyone who reads John with an open mind will find an amazing story of Jesus and his followers. I personally believe it was written by a man who was actually there at the time and saw the entire story unfold. SPOILER ALERT: There is a very funny passage about a blind man in the ninth chapter. The story shows this guy making well-deserved asses out of the religious leaders of the day.
A final tip: You can read it for free here, but I'd recommend clicking on the "gear" symbol, unchecking all the boxes, and then clicking on the "printer" symbol to get an uncluttered page view.