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''more like Jesus''

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#57

You are not alone my brother in Christ and fellow traveler.

Isn’t it true that it was (in main) the religious people who hated Christ and gave Him much grief because He would not follow their social morays etc? I don’t think you or I should be surprised by religious folk hating us.
Didn’t Richard Dawkins say words to the effect that a person who wants to be bad, can easily be so, but it takes religion to turn a person who wants to be good into a thoroughly bad person?
Only religious people could come up with the obnoxious idea that one can love another person whilst at the same time hating them (“disliking” them). It is a fact that the majority of people active on this forum actually believe and promote this idea.


I remain shocked and appalled by the idea that any so called ‘christian’ can convince herself that she is loving with a godly love whilst consciously and contentedly harbouring feelings of hatred towards another soul. I think it is a cop-out.

We all find people in our lives who we admire deeply for their fruit (regardless of what badge they wear ). If we are highly respected by these people, whose lives are an example to us all, then let the religious hate us (whilst loving :unamused: ), let them throw their stones, enough for us that we are true to ourselves and to the God we serve in good conscience.
God bless you

Pilgrim (aka John)

#58

You are more than kind my brother Michael (or should I call you San Miguel)

Pilgrim (aka John :wink: )

#59

John

As one of the 85% (on average) of so-called christians on this forum who is perfectly comfortable to harbour, nay promote, the obnoxious idea that it is possible to love someone while disliking them, I am puzzled by your continued stance on this issue.

I had thought we were getting somewhere on the ‘love yet dislike’ thread itself. It seems I am mistaken. Just to reiterate, in case you or anybody else aren’t fully up to speed with that lengthy discussion, my position is that loving somebody, in the sense of Christian agape love, is entirely compatible with disliking them as a person. And disliking them is not hating them.

A simple, topical example from the real world will illustrate:

I vehemently dislike moors murderer Ian Brady. I also vehemently disliked his partner in crime Myra Hindley while she was alive. I vehemently disliked the horrible things they did, and consequently vehemently disliked them as people. For as far as I am concerned, the person and their actions cannot be separated. They are as intrinsically interdependent as the proverbial chicken and the proverbial egg.

Now you might argue that since Brady has been declared clinically insane by a court, his actions are somehow less culpable than Hindley’s. I would agree. If one accepts that a person – any person – is not in control of their mental faculties while carrying out an action – any action – then in what meaningful sense can we ‘blame’ that person for that action, or hold them responsible for it, however morally repugnant we find it?

I don’t know, I’m not a criminal psychologist. But I do know that as Christians we are commanded to love that person despite their morally repugnant, if not morally culpable, actions. That means treating them with kindness and respect and care, even while – say – imprisoning them.

And harder even than this, we are commanded to love not only Brady, the insane murderer, but Hindley also. And without the defence of diminished responsibility, Hindley’s crimes seem all the more heinous, do they not?

Now as to whether I did, or could, ‘love’ Brady and Hindley (as Lord Longford did, in Hindley’s case, at least), I confess I just don’t know. I certainly found the red top press’s obsessive vilification of Hindley pretty nauseating. I guess the best I could say is that I would have done the best I could.

But of this I am certain: my loving (or not loving) Brady and Hindley is in no way contingent on me liking (or disliking) them. And not only is it not contingent, it isn’t in fact related at all. The two attitudes – or positions, or actions, or however you wish to classify them – are distinct, separate. (They aren’t always, or even often, of course: I imagine that most of the people we love we also like. But not all of them.)

As I have said before on the other thread, you seem determined to conflate the words loving and liking, and indeed the words disliking and hating, to such a degree that your original question becomes, in effect, ‘can we love someone while not loving them’ – surely a meaningless pleonasm.

Or am I misrepresenting you?

All the best

Johnny

#60

Dear Brother Pilgrim - John

Let me deviate before further comment on this thread!

Here in Barcelona we are governed in part by the autonomous region of Catalunya whose people are very independently minded with their own language Catalán as different to Spanish as Portugues is to Italian but all the same based on Latin hence many similarities. Well the Catalan Govt known as El Generalitad have their own website which some more openly minded Catalan suggested that few people in the world could understand the content all written in Ctalán, and suggested there should be an option in English (note not in Spanish!). This was agreed and guess who was used to translate (no not me!)? Can you believe it - GOOGLE. It turned out to be reasonably understandable except for the names of the minister known as consellers. One whose real name in Catalan is Jose Maria Pelegri came out on the web as Joseph and Mary Pilgrim - he was not amused. But things stick and some now call him Merry Pilgrim!

Well now to your posts first you kind salutation to me! At once thanks but I am no Saint!!

Secondly yours to Stuart which, for my ease reference in reply, is here quoted in full:

by pilgrim » Tue Jul 03, 2012 4:53 pm

stuartd wrote:
:slight_smile: part of my point pilgrim is that if we were ‘‘more like Jesus’’ quiet possibly the only ones who would be infuriated with us and possibly want to slap us would be those who claim to represent GOD, perhaps its just me but I seem to have the ability perhaps to some extent the desire to make christians hate me

Pilgrim wrote to Stuart::
You are not alone my brother in Christ and fellow traveler.

Isn’t it true that it was (in main) the religious people who hated Christ and gave Him much grief because He would not follow their social morays etc? I don’t think you or I should be surprised by religious folk hating us.
Didn’t Richard Dawkins say words to the effect that a person who wants to be bad, can easily be so, but it takes religion to turn a person who wants to be good into a thoroughly bad person?
Only religious people could come up with the obnoxious idea that one can love another person whilst at the same time hating them (“disliking” them). It is a fact that the majority of people active on this forum actually believe and promote this idea.
viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3118
I remain shocked and appalled by the idea that any so called ‘christian’ can convince herself that she is loving with a godly love whilst consciously and contentedly harbouring feelings of hatred towards another soul. I think it is a cop-out.

We all find people in our lives who we admire deeply for their fruit (regardless of what badge they wear ). If we are highly respected by these people, whose lives are an example to us all, then let the religious hate us (whilst loving ), let them throw their stones, enough for us that we are true to ourselves and to the God we serve in good conscience.
God bless you
unquote

I am no scholar so please take this just as a frank and friendly personal comment:

  1. Certainly in the Gospels it comes across quite clearly that Jesus was hated by the religious leaders, but I think you are a bit misleading in saying it was because He did not follow their social morays, etc. The etc!? It was His claim to be the Messiah, Son of God, and His answers when challenged for healing on the Sabbath, forgivng the prostitute; for so many things that put an entirely new light on God, for example God’s love inclusive not exclusive to the “chosen” etc etc, love your enemies and so on. Further they hated him because they feared for their own positions of power. Well I am sure you agree with this anyway and are well versed in the Biblical references!!. He also spoke of joy!

I think the position now is very different to then. Christianity, Christians, the Christian Churches etc cannot be compared with the religious situation of the Jews when Christ came with Good News.

He would find Himself in a partially Christian, partially multi-faith, and partially secular environment. How He would act, how Christians would act is pure speculation.God alone knows!

  1. Religious folk hating you and Stuart - that is sad, so sad.

3.Obnoxious that some love those they dislike? Well enough said on another thread. In my own case I can add with shame that there are a few people who dislike me maybe even hate me but, and here is the shame, it has been as much perhaps even more due to my offenses to them that there is this estrangement. Should I not pray for forgiveness, should I not love them? I certainly do not hate them, nor dislike them for their attitude towards me. I believe Christ loved even those who hated or disliked him. Forgive me if I am wrong, but I believe He died for them, His enemies! John, Johhny, Dick, Andrew, clarify if you will as am getting a bit out of my depth here!!

  1. Do you and Stuart really believe that there are religious people, Christians, on this Forum who would hound Christ out of the Forum. If you really do as you have said before and implied in your post, then my friends, that saddens me, and it saddens me your comments about hatred or resentment towards yourselves. This is an exciting and stimulating brotherly sisterly loving forum, debates are debates, and there will always be differences, but hatred? Don’t believe it, dear Brothers.

It is this sadness why I am writing this to you,

With love ,

Michael in Barcelona

#61

This is a sensitive subject that hits a raw nerve. Love is a big word with a nebulous meaning. Is it an emotion? Is it a lofty principle? Is it is the opposite of hate? Is conflating “really liking” someone with loving them? Is saying “I love you bro,” saying I really like you and care about you because we have a lot in common and I got nice warm feelings about you?

From my own life experience the most painful thing is to be considered (really not considered at all) with indifference. No one cares whether you are alive or dead, no one cares what your thoughts and passions are, you are an inconsequential blip on the “radar” of those around you. This indifference takes you to the brink of the abyss where death is much more compelling than what passes for being alive in this world. This happens all to easily in modern urban life where neighbors don’t give the the time of day to each other, but will instead text and discuss on internet forums with “disembodied” others :blush:

Give me the obsessive, burning hatred of someone over their indifference any day. At least they are acknowledging you are alive and what you say and do has some impact on their consciousness so that they cannot simply dismiss your existence.

What happened to Jesus at Golgotha was not the wrath or hatred of God towards him as an individual or as a representative for the world. It was the abandonment, the indifference of God that Jesus experienced. Is this even possible? Is YHWH (“I will prove to be what I will prove to be”) who is agape, ever indifferent to His beloved other-- the creation? Or rather, does He prove to be the One who will faithfully expended the full measure of His life to reach into the the depths of the godforsaken despair of those who feel that they have been discarded into the trash dump of Gehenna. How many nameless, anonymous, countless others throughout history are numbered among those godless, forgotten, nobodies? Their pain, their despair, their suicides; where living another moment in this world, as it is, is more unbearable then the unknown of death.

Some of those suicides are atheists; real atheists, who protest and rail against the terrible inequitableness of this world in the face of the assertions of an omnipotent god. The first Christians were accused of being atheists by Rome. They were irreligious and yet stroved to be equitable to those who were their neighbor–the unbelievers and heathens. By doing so they were bearing witness to the equitableness of God. They were able to be a witness because of the resurrection of the Crucified One.

The resurrection of Jesus, the abandoned, godforsaken One reveals to the world God as He really is; not the holier than thou standoffish cosmic potentate demanding that we crawl towards Him over the broken glass of our suffering proving to him that we are worthy of His gift of eternal life – His Life. Rather He is the God who goes to those who are overwhelmed by their suffering and despair and brings his healing life to them to clean their gangrenous wounds, wash their bloodied, broken bodies and make them whole and alive beyond all that is thought to be appropriate and possible.

The resurrection is the indiscriminate splattering of the Life of God across the whole wide universe from the very beginning of time to the end of time. This is the agape of God. He gives His Life freely and indiscriminately to everyone and everything whether they be saintly human, sociopath or a virus.

The love of God doesn’t “like us” as were are and saves and preserves us eternally like some sort of Egyptian mummy as our “real self” at the moment of our death. No, He really, really does agape us. He wipes the slate clean (the eschatological Jubilee) of our so-called lives – with all the sin, brokenness and incompleteness (He remembers our sins no more) – and gives us a new start, a new birth as children born equitably and equally from the “loins” of Abba, Father. We will all have the same pedigree, the same heritage, the same logos (genome)from the very source of Life with none of the death derivative intermediaries that define the current reality.

Agape is not about being liked, it is about being born anew as truly human as Jesus, the very image of God.

#62

Agape is not about being liked, it is about being born anew as truly human as Jesus, the very image of God.

thats all very interesting but it is only slightly related to the gist of the original post ! and the topic of love is well and truely intertwined with what I have said Jesus is the very embodiment of love yet he clashed with those who claimed to represent GOD

#63
#64

Secondly yours to Stuart which, for my ease reference in reply, is here quoted in full:

by pilgrim » Tue Jul 03, 2012 4:53 pm

stuartd wrote:
:slight_smile: part of my point pilgrim is that if we were ‘‘more like Jesus’’ quiet possibly the only ones who would be infuriated with us and possibly want to slap us would be those who claim to represent GOD, perhaps its just me but I seem to have the ability perhaps to some extent the desire to make christians hate me

Pilgrim wrote to Stuart::
You are not alone my brother in Christ and fellow traveler.

Isn’t it true that it was (in main) the religious people who hated Christ and gave Him much grief because He would not follow their social morays etc? I don’t think you or I should be surprised by religious folk hating us.
Didn’t Richard Dawkins say words to the effect that a person who wants to be bad, can easily be so, but it takes religion to turn a person who wants to be good into a thoroughly bad person?
Only religious people could come up with the obnoxious idea that one can love another person whilst at the same time hating them (“disliking” them). It is a fact that the majority of people active on this forum actually believe and promote this idea.
viewtopic.php?f=38&t=3118
I remain shocked and appalled by the idea that any so called ‘christian’ can convince herself that she is loving with a godly love whilst consciously and contentedly harbouring feelings of hatred towards another soul. I think it is a cop-out.

We all find people in our lives who we admire deeply for their fruit (regardless of what badge they wear ). If we are highly respected by these people, whose lives are an example to us all, then let the religious hate us (whilst loving ), let them throw their stones, enough for us that we are true to ourselves and to the God we serve in good conscience.
God bless you
unquote

I am no scholar so please take this just as a frank and friendly personal comment:

  1. Certainly in the Gospels it comes across quite clearly that Jesus was hated by the religious leaders, but I think you are a bit misleading in saying it was because He did not follow their social morays, etc. The etc!? It was His claim to be the Messiah, Son of God, and His answers when challenged for healing on the Sabbath, forgivng the prostitute; for so many things that put an entirely new light on God, for example God’s love inclusive not exclusive to the “chosen” etc etc, love your enemies and so on. Further they hated him because they feared for their own positions of power. Well I am sure you agree with this anyway and are well versed in the Biblical references!!. He also spoke of joy!

correct it doesn’t however discount the angle I have put forward !

I think the position now is very different to then. Christianity, Christians, the Christian Churches etc cannot be compared with the religious situation of the Jews when Christ came with Good News.

now here is where I disagree with you !, YES there are differences but there are also similarities !, the obvious one being exclusivity but I believe there are other similarities also.

He would find Himself in a partially Christian, partially multi-faith, and partially secular environment. How He would act, how Christians would act is pure speculation :question: .God alone knows!

  1. Religious folk hating you and Stuart - that is sad, so sad.

perhaps ‘‘hating’’ is in most cases too strong a word but I have to say that I have encountered a percentage of christians who have become enraged when even gently confronted with their precious beliefs

  1. Do you and Stuart really believe that there are religious people, Christians, on this Forum who would hound Christ out of the Forum. If you really do as you have said before and implied in your post, I’m afraid you have misunderstood me as in I’m not that firm on the outcome but it still comes back to the gist of my original post - being ‘‘more like Jesus’’ only seems to upset those who claim to represent GOD :exclamation: then my friends, that saddens me, and it saddens me your comments about hatred or resentment towards yourselves. This is an exciting and stimulating brotherly sisterly loving forum, debates are debates, and there will always be differences, but hatred? Don’t believe it, dear Brothers.

It is this sadness why I am writing this to you,

With love ,

Michael in Barcelona

#65

Woh!

The issue of christians hating was brought up and so I responded with what I thought was relevant but this thread is in danger of being hijacked by the “Love yet dislike” topic which has its own thread.
It would be a crime if this thread was sidetracked because it is too important.
[size=150]Suggestion:
Can those who wish to debate the “Love yet dislike” issue please do so on this thread:[/size]

I will copy and paste over to that thread so that the “more like Jesus” remains intact.

I hope this makes sense to you Stuart.

God bless

P.S. DaveF - I’d like to reply to you on the other thread.

#66

Dear Pilgrim - John,

Thanks and agreed so am transferring Stuart’s post to me, which includes text of my post, to the thread on love, like and dislike!

Meanwhile thanks Stuart and I will keep following your thread here.

Hasta pronto1

Michael in Barcelona

#67

Agape is not about being liked, it is about being born anew as truly human as Jesus, the very image of God.

Isn’t the topic of the thread “more like Jesus?” The question is how do we become more like Jesus. You asserts that Jesus is more complex and multidimensional than what is usually in the mind of those who use that expression: “compassionate , humble , loving,” a sort of Jewish Buddha figure it would seem. You say there is more to Jesus than that. I find him to be challenging !, provocative , surprising , grating , blunt , controversial , politically incorrect! You will get no argument from me about that. Jesus was dealing with and confronting the real on the ground grittiness of the world as it is. 1st century Palestine under Roman occupation was an incredibly tough neighborhood to live in, especially if you were among the majority who were dirt poor and under the thumb of both Roman political authority and Jewish religious elites. Jesus meek and mild would have had no impact on those bullies, but He did bring acceptance, compassion and healing to the bullied–the soft side of Jesus if you will.

A Buddha like figure and pacifist would not have been crucified. Crucifixion was reserved for the hardcore trouble makers who threatened the authority of Rome. Insurrectionist slaves like the 6,000 followers of Spartacus who were crucified along the appian way from Capua to Rome and many thousands of others since then. Anyone who was seen as direct subversive challenge to the established order of Rome. Jesus wasn’t a pacifist, but he did challenge and overturn all the oppressive death-dealing powers through non-power. The love of God is tough – tough on Himself.

Don’t misunderstand where I am coming from stuart. I don’t identify myself as a christian because like the word love it has become a word that means both anything and nothing much in particular. I am more interested in whether or not someone represents God to others as Jesus did or instead bullies them with religious dogma and threat.

I don’t subscribe to Jesus as a warm and fuzzy glad-hander that many today imagine him to be. He could be a very hard man indeed when dealing with the religious bullies of his day. Not for his own sake but for the sake of the bullied ones.

Jesus clashed with the arrogant, self-righteous, religious elite that told the poor, illiterate, common people; the outcasts and “sinners” that God could not stand the stench of them; that all of the misfortune and suffering they experienced in life was God’s punishment for them being who they are. For those bullied by the religious elite he gave them everything the religious elite would not. He touched the ritually unclean, (the diseased) and by doing so healed them; he engaged socially in the open with women who were not family members and treated them as equals (unheard of in 1st century Palestine and still is in many parts of the middle east today); he ate and drank with the religious and social outcasts, a profound demonstration of social acceptance in that 1st century society.

The so-called “born again” Christians who imagine themselves to be a special class of believers, and an uber class of human being, worthy and ready to be raptured away when TSHTF are not at all what I have in mind when I say “born anew.” It is nothing as insipid or elitist as that. It is nothing less than the resurrection itself. It is nothing less than when everyone, without exception, gets the first class treatment from God. The only truly born again person is the resurrected Jesus himself – we have yet to be resurrected.

Being more like Jesus is all well and good as far as it goes in this life, actually becoming like Jesus will require an event as profound and universal as the re-creation of the universe. Until then we challenge and debate and indeed we must because we are all groping through the fog of this world. Those who believe themselves to be on the road to perfection – well ahead of the lost, deluded herd of humanity – leaving the unwashed masses in their wake are the most deluded of all. I’ll stay with the herd and try to offer a word of encouragement and hope as best I am able until the good shepherd comes home to where we live.

#68

Wow!
What a superb post DaveF! Thank you once again.

Years ago, someone told me that great harm had been done to the image of Christ simply because, in the English language, ‘mild’ rhymes with ‘child’. How many religious folk actually worship a castrated ‘Gentle Jesus meek and mild’, rather than the KING of Love, who loves the bullies and the bullied enough roar an outraged roar of the Lion of Judah.
I think C S Lewis’ Aslan has been a very helpful image.

As for being ‘born again’ YES, I look forward to being born again as soon as I have shed this failing earthly shell.

God bless

#69

Keeping this on the ‘more like Jesus’ thread,
Michael in Barcelona said:

Firstly I must apologise for my appalling spelling of ‘social mores’ which has been quoted -my bad.

Michael, didn’t Jesus keep His ‘Messiah’ claim quite until very late in His ministry? Wasn’t He hated by the religious leaders well before then? I think so. I agree with much of your comment including that they also were fearful of losing their power but I stand by my thought that they also hated Him because He presented them with a radically different view of what it means to be ‘righteous’ which was nothing like the ‘righteousness’ of themselves (the pharisees).
Jesus walked all over their idea of ‘righteousness’ (ie their social mores) by healing on the Sabbath, associating with ‘sinners’ and tax collectors and those things mentioned by your good self.
If Jesus were to post incognito on this forum, don’t you think that His approach, once again, might be so radical and uncompromising, so surprising to many of us (including myself of course) that He may be seen as rude and provocative?

Michael:

Consider the church/christendom throughout the last 2000 years. Are you seriously saying that Jesus wouldn’t have adopted a similar approach to those religious leaders? The Papal concordat with Hitler? Calvinists burning Servetus? Witch hunts?
And more recently, just because the ‘church’ is now impotent in society, does that make us religious folk more likely to be righteous or just self-righteous?

#70
#71

I’ll stay with the herd and try to offer a word of encouragement and hope as best I am able until the good shepherd comes home to where we live.

:smiley: this is becoming a habit I confess, grabbing the last sentence of yours . just for your info I left the circus years ago and on the odd occasion when my wife decides we need to ‘‘go to church’’ I begrudgingly go along but I assure you I am rather uncomfortable , so I much prefer to simply [in your words] stick with the heard as there are plenty on lovely non-believers who aren’t pretentious , they have no ulterior motive in getting to know you and besides I do believe a good percentage of them shall be going through those pearly gates before a good percentage of christians do , besides I’ve always found it way more satisfying when a non-believer asks you ‘‘what do you believe’’ :wink:

#72

besides I’ve always found it way more satisfying when a non-believer asks you ‘‘what do you believe’’ :wink:

OK this is slighly less related to the topic so I’m not quiet sure why I pegged it in ? but felt it was worth saying and somewhat related as if we were more like Jesus perhaps we would be less inclined to [share] ‘‘preach at nonbelievers’’ [at least that is the way most of them rightfully see it] compared to having them ask us what we believe. :wink:

#73

Dear John,

Many thanks yours which I missed until now. Apologies for that.

No I am not saying that. I am not in any way referring to the past, but to the situation today. As to your second question, sorry, but I am not sure what you mean. If you are referring to less attendance at Church in British Society, I would guess that one reason for those who still do attend has quite a lot to do with what this thread is all about.

Affectionately,

Michael in Barcelona

#74

I was starting to wonder where you had gone too ?

#75

Got side-tracked to love/dislike :confused: and, like yourself and many others, posts to Johnny Parker which had a happy conclusion ! :smiley:

#76

no problem ! :smiley: