Who is better, Jesus the god, or Jesus the man?

Jesus the man can be a role model and should be. Acting like Jesus is better than worshiping him, IMO. He never asked people to worship him, only follow him.

 

Not sure that is what cupid dave meant, but it is an interesting viewpoint.

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Good point!

 

But I like contradictions and ambiguity.

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Yeah, we should be arguing over other fictional characters, like who would kick the other's ass, Spiderman or Batman.

 

?
What is stupid about Bible criticism?

The Old Testament says Elijah was to return after he went to heaven.
800 years later, Christ appears, does every thing Elijah did over again for us.
And we are just reporting on that writing.

 

First one must read the NT and see that Christ was symbolizing the ideal of Truth, as he told us in Jhn 14.

Then we work backwards and realize the father of Truth would be Reality.
And we see that Truth is the image of Reality.
Truth is born out of Reality.

 

We can not believe anything we read in the Gnostic writings because only the Gospels have been preached over all the world for 2000 years now:

Matthew 24:14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.

 

The canonical books were decided by a committee of men. I have the Apocrypha in my Bible. Haven't read it yet, but will take those books into consideration when cementing my beliefs.

 

Why believe in any of it?

 

I think the books, while not literal events, teach us how to be more Godly and Christ-like. Of course, I also think other religions teach these types of things as well, so I read scriptures of other religions too.

 

The spirit of God is Truth which exists after Reality gives birth to it

Truth can also manifest inside of a person, as it did with Elijah 800 years before Christ appeared.
Elijah was prophesied to return again, and he did when we read the NT story and see what happened in 32AD:

Both Elijah and Jesus raised the dead

Both Elijah and Jesus were immortal.

Both Elijah and Jesus disappeared from the foot of a mountain.

Both Elijah and Jesus ascended into Heaven before witnesses.

Both Elijah and Jesus troubled Israel.

Both Elijah and Jesus were hunted down by the Jewish authorities.

Both Elijah and Jesus hid in a cave/tomb.

Both Elijah and Jesus pondered in the wilderness 40 days.

Both Elijah and Jesus walked on the water.

Both wrote letters to people on Earth after they had ascended.

Both appointed a successor, Elisha by Elijah, and Peter, by Christ.

Both were hunted by the Jewish authorities.

Both gave a successor the power to raise the dead.

Both gave a successor a symbolic authority, the cloak to one, the keys to the other.

Both asked that the this "cup" be taken from them.

Both are said to have had miraculous births.

Both multiplied the meal for many people they feed in the crowd.

Both destroyed the pagan worshippers and priests, one Baal, the other, the Pantheon of Rome.

Both were promised faithfulness three times, Elisha in the former and Peter, in the latter.

Both Elijah and Jesus raised the dead.

 

Yes, do all that but remember that THIS gospel is the NT which has no apocrypha...

 

But who needs these old scribblings to figure out how to be a moral, ethical person? It comes naturally to most people, as most have a healthy social instinct from the cradle that is further developed through parental and peer example.

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There is no "New Testament" except by virtue of a committee's decisions, you know. Those texts were not written down by their authors with the intent of being put into a compendium called The Bible.

 

The author of Matthew got his info from the author of Mark and the Q document, so it's not like it came straight from the horse's mouth.

 

The Holy Comforter was promised to be sent to us and the Gospels did come as promised:

John 15:26 But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:

 

While it's not necessary to be religious to be moral, those that want to get it from a scripture get reassurance from it, I think. I like picturing it in my mind when reading about Jesus. I am visually oriented.

 

Gays and harlots now abound in our society.
They recognize no authority in common man who claims that sexual promiscuity causes expensive welfare, many abortions, criminal behavior for kids raised by single mothers, and great child abuse to fatherless kids born every year.

God is a pretty good source for support in this opposition to sexual immorality.

 

Shouldn't some of the onus be on the father, who has every freedom to walk away from the mom and child?

 

Meaningless. People find comfort in all manner of beliefs. That comfort comes from within. It is a trick of the psyche to project inner feelings outward.

 

The same bastard guys of these single mothers also become fathers who have no intention of supporting the kids, as bastards will do of course.

We see in the Black communities today that 73% of the families are Welfare single mother situations, where brothers in the same family have different fathers who have come and gone.
70% of the black guys have police records, court cases pending, have been locked up, are on parole, or getting shot as they try to bully cops, like Trayvon and Brown did.

The White community also has bad seed bastards kids too, but they number about the same for a much larger (@90%) white community.
The white bastards kids are even worse that the Black bastards because police shoot 4 times as many of them.

 

No more than they have in the past, actually.

As if Christians, even the most conservative among them, did not break these arbitrary rules all the time.

God, an imaginary construct, is not the source of anything.

 

God has warned against Gays and Harlots displaying themselves in society for centuries before this Age, when today, we have Statistics which show what happens.
Sexual promiscuity first abuses the fatherless kids born out of wedlock.
Then Welfare becomes necessary.
When they get adult, these bastards become the criminal element.

So facts now support the Bible:

CHILDREN NEED BOTH PARENTS
63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes. (Source: U.S. D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census).
90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes.
85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes. (Source:\hich\af39\dbch\af31505\loch\f39 Center for Disease Control).
80% of rapist motivated by displaced anger come from fatherless homes. (Source: Criminal Justice and Behavior, Vol. 14, pp. 403-26).
71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes. (Source: National Principals A Report on the State of High Schools).
85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home. (Source: Fulton County Georgia jail populations, Texas Dept. Of Corrections, 1992).

These statistics translate to mean that children from fatherless homes are:
5 times more likely to commit suicide
32 times more likely to run away
20 times more likely to have behavioral disorders
14 times more likely to commit rape
9 times more likely to drop out of high school
20 times more likely to end up in prison

Children from "fatherless families of single mother" homes are*:
15.3 times more likely to have behavioral disorders
4.6 times more likely to commit suicide
6.6 times more likely to become teenaged mothers
24.3 times more likely to run away
15.3 times more likely to have behavioral disorders
6.3 times more likely to be in a state-operated institutions
10.8 times more likely to commit rape
6.6 times more likely to drop out of school
15.3 times more likely to end up in prison while a teenage
73% of adolescent murderers come from mother only homes

Daughters who live in mother only homes are 92% more likely to divorce**

 

Dear DarkDaimon
Given that Christ Jesus on the secular level of man's laws is Restorative Justice and is Salvation on the spiritual level of God's laws globally on a heavenly scale,
we need to first arrive at agreements and corrections
in Christ Jesus on MAN's levels of laws and justice. And then by settling and restoring relations on a worldly level that we can influence directly,
then we can receive universal peace and justice on the collective level that God governs in heaven.

So we make peace on earth in order to collectively invoke heavenly peace on God's level beyond our reach.
Christ Jesus connects the two, so it is both at the same time.

But the part that we can do first is invoking divine forgiveness, healing, correction and restitution
in the spirit of Christ Jesus or Restorative Justice to restore relations and unite all groups and nations as one in harmony and agreement in truth.

 

Gays and Harlots have displayed themselves quite a bit in the past, too. The bible's texts are about the times in which they were written. Homosexuality was an accepted practice in pre-Christian Greece and Rome, ya know, and prostitution wasn't frowned on the way it has been by Puritans and Victorians either.

 

It is pretty obvious that children of two parent homes do better than single parent homes, but there are many reasons why one parent is not in the home.

 

Even an atheist like Richard Dawkins has admitted that Jesus as a PHILOSOPHER (vs. a supposed divine being) did indeed have some good things to say.
Buddha and others also said much the same things, 500 years earlier.