The Gospel According to Meby John WinsorIf you're a Christian, you're the victim of a two-thousand-year-old con job. You may be skeptical of my assertions that Jesus didn't believe he was the Son of God; that his idea of salvation was admission to an earthly kingdom; that he based salvation entirely upon good works; and that he didn't believe anyone - not even him - was bound for heaven. However, I intend to demonstrate that these assertions are true. I'll use his own words - or the closest approximation we have - to make my case. Your preacher may have told you that the gospels are loaded with symbolic and mystical meanings that are beyond your comprehension, that you can't really read and understand what the gospels mean without guidance from the pulpit. In truth, they're relatively straightforward biographical accounts of the life of Jesus. Christian leaders have intentionally and deceitfully obfuscated parts of their meaning in order to support a false dogma. If you have a Bible, please get it out and look up the abundant references I provide in this text. Your preacher expects you to believe what you're told, but you really need to read the Bible itself. Here are some important caveats:
Despite these caveats, the message is so consistent in the synoptic gospels that it is almost certainly based on what Jesus believed. Mark is the oldest of the gospels. The authors of Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source. I refer mostly to text from Matthew and Mark below, but the same or similar passages exist in Luke. John was written much later than the others and offers a significantly different and less reliable message. The early Christian leaders waffled between including and excluding John when they assembled the Bible. There were many accounts of Jesus, his friends and relatives, his childhood, his life, his sayings, and so forth, but the three synoptic gospels were widely recognized as the most reliable and authoritative biographies in existence. For the early Roman Christians, the synoptic gospels presented a "Catch-22" of sorts: They wanted to win the ideological debate of the day, so they had to include these texts in their Bible in order to claim that they held the definitive truth, despite the vast discrepancies between the gospels and their own dogma. For Jesus, salvation was admittance into a future kingdom here on earth. He believed that the path to salvation was a life of service to the poor and the meek and that it required living day-to-day and hand-to-mouth - like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field (Matthew 6:26-29). Church leaders deceptively claim that "son of man" is a title for Jesus himself, but it simply meant people. When Jesus said, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath; so the son of man is lord even of the Sabbath" (Matthew 2: 27-28), he was referring to people in general. His point was that observance of the Sabbath was a guideline rather than an inviolable rule - for everybody, not just for him. The weeping and gnashing of teeth and the resurrection of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that Jesus spoke of in Luke 13: 28 applied to comparative status in the coming kingdom. Those who had done good works would be physically resurrected to happiness inside of the kingdom; those who hadn't would be physically resurrected to misery in Gehenna - an actual place that had a real trash heap outside of Jerusalem, where they would live amidst piles of burning rubbish. They would be able to see the people in the new kingdom but they wouldn't be permitted to enter it. This is why they would weep, not because of "hellfire and brimstone." Your Bible may refer to "Hell" instead of "Gehenna," but that is an intentionally deceptive translation. The first order of business was to prepare people for Yahweh's new kingdom (the "Kingdom of Heaven" or "Kingdom of God"). It was to be an earthly kingdom. It wasn't synonymous with heaven itself - something your preacher certainly didn't clarify. It was to be off-limits for those who failed to heed the message that Jesus and his disciples taught. For Jesus, salvation meant admission into the new kingdom, not into heaven. So, when he said that the son of man [the people, not Jesus] would come "in clouds with great power and glory" (Mark 13:26), what he meant was that Yahweh would use his power to miraculously remake Judea into a holy kingdom on earth and bring the righteous people into it. Note that it says that the son of man would come (i.e., the kingdom would be here and people would come to it), not that anybody would go to heaven. This passage from Luke should help to illustrate the point:
The house - the new kingdom - is occupied. The table is set. Righteous people can approach the kingdom from all directions. They're flesh and blood. They can sit at tables and eat. They're not spirits in heaven. The unrighteous are also physically alive. They can see inside, but they can't enter. They are exiled from the kingdom. The people inside will not sit and eat with them. Here's another passage that may be a bit more familiar:
Jesus says that the meek will inherit the earth but the persecuted will get the Kingdom of Heaven. Now, if "Kingdom of Heaven" actually referred to heaven, then the meek would be excluded. This is obviously not what Jesus meant. Another point about the Kingdom of Heaven is this: It did not yet exist, except as an idea and a prophecy - but it would come very soon:
Jesus was mistaken, of course. The kingdom didn't come and he was executed by the Romans for claiming the throne, but his own message - or, rather, its closest available approximation - is the best source of insight into what he regarded as important. Jesus offered hope for a hopeless people. One of the great mistakes that the fundamentalists make is to rely heavily upon the Old Testament for guidance (because it provides "us versus them" hot-button rhetoric). Although Jesus adhered to Jewish law, he strongly opposed the rigid, authoritarian rule of his day and sought to replace it with something much more tolerant. Jesus taught the Golden Rule as the highest measure of morality. He said, "So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets" (Matthew 7:12). It was a principle of tolerance that had been taught for many centuries before - at least as early as Zoroaster. It actually describes the common and natural human faculty of empathy. Jesus also said, "Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" (Matthew 7:1-3). Jesus was extremely liberal and tolerant - unlike most modern televangelists. He believed that the Kingdom of Heaven would be established at any moment, so every thought, word, and deed should be directed toward preparation for the event. He opposed public piety. He opposed the accumulation of wealth. He opposed ostentatious religious gatherings and rituals. He insisted that the path to salvation came only from good works. It is quite clear that Jesus believed the Kingdom of God was at hand - that it would be established here on Earth during the lifetime of his disciples, not a millennium or two later. Although Jesus was mistaken, this is an important point because it is the underlying principle that guided his teaching. If the kingdom was coming at any moment, then vigilance was crucial. There was no point in accumulating wealth because it would be worthless in the new kingdom. So, it was better to give everything away - providing a bit of comfort to one's fellow man in the little time that remained. He taught his own personal prayer to his disciples. I point this out because it makes no sense to suggest that he believed that he was Yahweh. If that had been the case, he would not have needed to pray and, furthermore, his disciples could simply have spoken to him in lieu of praying to his dad:
This passage is very revealing: It is Jesus' own prayer. He instructs his disciples to pray as he prays (a practice that would be unnecessary if he were a god himself). When he refers to "Our Father," he clearly means the father of all mankind, not his own parent. Indeed, nothing in his prayer suggests that he is different from his fellow men. He does not ask to be sent to heaven; rather, he asks God to bring his kingdom to them - to establish a kingdom "on earth as it is in heaven." The prayer constitutes a pact between Yahweh and mankind. Jesus expected to become an earthly king. He and his disciples set out to fulfill the Old Testament's Messianic prophesies. They believed that if they could prove themselves worthy by adhering absolutely to Yahweh's law as they understood it, then he would reward them by fulfilling the ancient prophesy. This, by the way, brings a clear meaning to "My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me?" in Matthew 27:46. Jesus and his followers believed that they had fulfilled their part of the bargain. Yahweh, however, violated his word (as it was described by the prophets) when he failed to establish the new kingdom and put Jesus on its throne.
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