Quote:
Originally Posted by Vizio
Just curious what everyone thinks Jesus wants us to do and be. This is NOT a question of how you think the visible church is acting today, but I want to know what you believe Jesus commanded the church to be and do.
Are we to just love everyone?
Are we to preach hate?
ARe we to preach something else?
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First of all, I want to be clear on who you're discussing here - are you getting Jesus mixed up with that fellow from Tarsus? Because I've never seen a very credible or persuasive argument that Jesus ever commanded "his" church to do or be
anything - because I don't believe he ever gave any credible indication that he even intended to found a church in the
first place.
In fact, he consistently taught his followers to reject churches and religious leaders; his message was that the kingdom of heaven already existed within each of us, and that the path to that kingdom was an individual path that already lay within each person who sought it. Jesus taught us that the path to the kingdom of heaven was to love - and, even more importantly, to
forgive - one another, to love god and relate to god
directly in whatever way felt most natural and authentic to each of us, to accept god's unconditional love for each of us and to honor, nurture, and amplify that love by reflecting it back toward others and sharing it with everyone we meet so that they, too, could come to learn it, understand it, and share it. The message Jesus taught was that love and forgiveness was the path to heaven (the
only path to heaven), and that this path lay within each of us.
It wasn't until long after Jesus' death that Saul of Tarsus (more commonly known as Paul) reinterpreted Jesus' teachings and repackaged them into an entirely new message. Whereas Jesus spent his entire life clearly and consistently teaching that each of us had an individual path to heaven that did not require a religion to find it or follow it - and in fact, that we should question and even reject religious leaders who tried to force us to follow their dogma - Paul teaches that the path to heaven is one of atonement and redemption; that only by atoning for one's sins and seeking redemption
within the context of the church's dogma can one hope to enter the kingdom. This is the interpretation of christianity that is commonly accepted today by christians, but it has very little to do with the message that Christ was murdered for teaching to his followers.
So I don't know how to answer your question. If I am to answer the question that is asked in the thread
title - that is, give an answer that reflects the purpose of what christianity in this day and age actually
is - then I would have to say that it exists to control society by rewarding people for following church dogma and punishing them for following the actual teachings of Christ. I'm sorry; I know you specifically said that you did not want the answer to be about what the church is actually doing, but in reality, what else is the purpose other than what it is doing?
If I am to answer the question that is asked in the OP (which is very different from the question asked in the title) then I don't know if it's even possible to answer the question at all. He never attempted to found a church, so it would not have been possible for him to command the members of his church to do
anything. If I were to answer the question in the context of what Jesus would want us to do (and in fact sacrificed his life to teach us), I would have to say that the purpose of Christ's teachings was to reject the religion that stole his name, because christianity is exactly what he spent and sacrificed his entire life teaching
against.
The ironic truth is that if Christ were alive today, he would most certainly
not be a christian. Christianity represents everything he fought against and taught against. In the eyes of Jesus, the most important commandment (and in the end, perhaps the only one that really mattered) was to love god, and in the act of so loving, love one another - because we are all brothers and sisters in the heart of god, and if you truly love god, then you must necessarily truly love all of humankind. If Christ came back today and tried to preach that same message once again, this time it would be the christians who crucified him.
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