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)
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)
jerkface@lemmy.ca 4 days 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…