Comment on What's the term for someone that likes Jesus of Nazareth, but doesn't identify with church, religious dogma, or whatever?

• dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I was thinking John 6 is pretty nuts tbh. There are a lot of problems with Christ, like how quiet and accepting he seemed about slavery, or how fragile he is about his ego and being respected as God, the central message of Christ is about his divinity, not about moral teachings. He threatened anyone who disagreed with his divinity with eternal damnation and so on. Just not the kind of person you would think of as a “chill dude”, rather the description “crazy” comes to mind when I read the book of John especially.

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  • jerkface@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    His moral teachings are irrelevant. It’s like how when cops volunteer to do a charity car wash. Moral behaviour doesn’t get you everlasting life.

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    • dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      yeah, at least not according to him; but his moral teachings got a lot of people in the door and interested in following him, and the whole “faith without works is dead” thing (book of James is pretty lit tbh)

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      • jerkface@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        People who model their lives after the teachings of Jesus are pretty rare. I think it is more psychologically valuable because Christians are able to psychologically transfer the moral qualities of Jesus to themselves. Jesus is “good” in ways that most Christians today don’t even give a shit about, but it gives him moral character, and so it allows Christians to feel like they have moral character as well.

        In fact, I was going to link to the article about “moral licensing” as though I actually knew what I was talking about (I don’t) and I see there is a section about exactly this idea, where people see themselves as having the moral qualities of others in their in-group:

        en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-licensing#Group_member…

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