Jesus is a Fictional Character

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

You say Paul was a fraud, yet if you knew him, his ministry, how he lived, what he did, how God worked through him you’d be ashamed and embarrassed at your comment.

You met him?

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

That were St Pat.

And from what I understand, no snakes were indigenous to Ireland either.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

I’m claiming that the testimonies in Acts are true, that God’s Word is trustworthy. I haven’t any reason to believe otherwise. But you on the other hand are what 40 years old or whatever your age and you know, well you don’t.

What if God tells you it’s not?

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

Could you name any other fictional character, in any form off media, who has had such a profound and lingering impact on history? Jesus existed over 2000 years ago. Most of his earliest followers who be slaughtered after he and his disciples were also killed. However, some followers would survive and someday their descendant would become part of the official religion of the empire of Rome. In that role, Christianity would grow to become a dominant world empire, the many countries of which would rule the world up to the 19th century. If he was fictional how did the impact of this fictional character linger so long and even be used to drive history?

We have Superman, but he does generate impulse in others to drive history. We have fictional characters in literature and TV with a large following. Once their day in the sun expires, we forget as new characters appear. How was this fiction of Jesus different, such that its impact would linger and lead to centuries of change with his followers in the drivers seat?

My only explanation is this character or person could reach very deep in the operating system of the human brain, such that it fundamentally altered human nature. Other fictional characters cannot go this deep. Even real characters of history, who could reinforce themselves, such as Hitler, would not linger at full strength for more than one generation. Instead with Jesus, we have more followers today than 2000 years ago. What was the difference since this data is readily available.

People are willing to send authors death threats. See Captain America and the Hydra thing. Religion is just theological fandoms.

 

[Colt]

I thought the doctor went to the sick, not the well.

He did, he gave you and his other enemies ample time to hear the gospel but they hated him and his Father also.

 

[lukethethird]

He did, he gave you and his other enemies ample time to hear the gospel but they hated him and his Father also.

Why enemies? Atheists don't have enemies.

 

[Colt]

Why enemies? Atheists don't have enemies.

You put a lot of effort into undermining faith. You are self-deluded if you think you don't have phycologic enemies.


Causes of Judas’s Downfall

"It was in the first part of the Master’s farewell message to his apostles that he alluded to the loss of Judas and held up the tragic fate of their traitorous fellow worker as a solemn warning against the dangers of social and fraternal isolation. It may be helpful to believers, in this and in future ages, briefly to review the causes of Judas’s downfall in the light of the Master’s remarks and in view of the accumulated enlightenment of succeeding centuries.

As we look back upon this tragedy, we conceive that Judas went wrong, primarily, because he was very markedly an isolated personality, a personality shut in and away from ordinary social contacts. He persistently refused to confide in, or freely fraternize with, his fellow apostles. But his being an isolated type of personality would not, in and of itself, have wrought such mischief for Judas had it not been that he also failed to increase in love and grow in spiritual grace. And then, as if to make a bad matter worse, he persistently harbored grudges and fostered such psychologic enemies as revenge and the generalized craving to “get even” with somebody for all his disappointments.

This unfortunate combination of individual peculiarities and mental tendencies conspired to destroy a well-intentioned man who failed to subdue these evils by love, faith, and trust. That Judas need not have gone wrong is well proved by the cases of Thomas and Nathaniel, both of whom were cursed with this same sort of suspicion and overdevelopment of the individualistic tendency. Even Andrew and Matthew had many leanings in this direction; but all these men grew to love Jesus and their fellow apostles more, and not less, as time passed. They grew in grace and in a knowledge of the truth. They became increasingly more trustful of their brethren and slowly developed the ability to confide in their fellows. Judas persistently refused to confide in his brethren. When he was impelled, by the accumulation of his emotional conflicts, to seek relief in self-expression, he invariably sought the advice and received the unwise consolation of his unspiritual relatives or those chance acquaintances who were either indifferent, or actually hostile, to the welfare and progress of the spiritual realities of the heavenly kingdom, of which he was one of the twelve consecrated ambassadors on earth.

Judas met defeat in his battles of the earth struggle because of the following factors of personal tendencies and character weakness:

1. He was an isolated type of human being. He was highly individualistic and chose to grow into a confirmed “shut-in” and unsociable sort of person.

2. As a child, life had been made too easy for him. He bitterly resented thwarting. He always expected to win; he was a very poor loser.

3. He never acquired a philosophic technique for meeting disappointment. Instead of accepting disappointments as a regular and commonplace feature of human existence, he unfailingly resorted to the practice of blaming someone in particular, or his associates as a group, for all his personal difficulties and disappointments.

4. He was given to holding grudges; he was always entertaining the idea of revenge.

5. He did not like to face facts frankly; he was dishonest in his attitude toward life situations.

6. He disliked to discuss his personal problems with his immediate associates; he refused to talk over his difficulties with his real friends and those who truly loved him. In all the years of their association he never once went to the Master with a purely personal problem.

7. He never learned that the real rewards for noble living are, after all, spiritual prizes, which are not always distributed during this one short life in the flesh.

As a result of his persistent isolation of personality, his griefs multiplied, his sorrows increased, his anxieties augmented, and his despair deepened almost beyond endurance.

While this self-centered and ultraindividualistic apostle had many psychic, emotional, and spiritual troubles, his main difficulties were: In personality, he was isolated. In mind, he was suspicious and vengeful. In temperament, he was surly and vindictive. Emotionally, he was loveless and unforgiving. Socially, he was unconfiding and almost wholly self-contained. In spirit, he became arrogant and selfishly ambitious. In life, he ignored those who loved him, and in death, he was friendless.

These, then, are the factors of mind and influences of evil which, taken altogether, explain why a well-meaning and otherwise onetime sincere believer in Jesus, even after several years of intimate association with his transforming personality, forsook his fellows, repudiated a sacred cause, renounced his holy calling, and betrayed his divine Master." UB 1955

 

[lukethethird]

You put a lot of effort into undermining faith.

Not really, I just take pot shots, no effort required.

You are self-deluded if you think you don't have phycologic enemies.

Is that what Jesus had?

 

[kaninchen]

Causes of Judas’s Downfall

If Reuben had come up with the idea of selling off Joseph to the Midianites for 20 shekels, would there have had to be an apostle called Reuben Iscariot?

Did Judas get 30 'pieces' because of inflation?

 

[Colt]

Not really, I just take pot shots, no effort required.



Is that what Jesus had?

Jesus had enemies in the sense that they decided to rebel against the Universal Father's authority. Lucifer and all who followed him into his ideological war were afforded ample opportunity to repent, accept forgiveness and rehabilitation. But "the way of the fool seems right to him".

 

[Colt]

If Reuben had come up with the idea of selling off Joseph to the Midianites for 20 shekels, would there have had to be an apostle called Reuben Iscariot?

Did Judas get 30 'pieces' because of inflation?

A "Reuben Iscariot"? That may have been a popular deli sandwich among the Ishmaelites. But of course, after Moses heard some more genocidal voices in his head, he had his troops murder the parents of 16,000 little Midianite virgin girls and distributed them into slavery among the Israelites for free!

 

[night912]

Could you name any other fictional character, in any form off media, who has had such a profound and lingering impact on history? Jesus existed over 2000 years ago. Most of his earliest followers who be slaughtered after he and his disciples were also killed. However, some followers would survive and someday their descendant would become part of the official religion of the empire of Rome. In that role, Christianity would grow to become a dominant world empire, the many countries of which would rule the world up to the 19th century. If he was fictional how did the impact of this fictional character linger so long and even be used to drive history?

We have Superman, but he does generate impulse in others to drive history. We have fictional characters in literature and TV with a large following. Once their day in the sun expires, we forget as new characters appear. How was this fiction of Jesus different, such that its impact would linger and lead to centuries of change with his followers in the drivers seat?

My only explanation is this character or person could reach very deep in the operating system of the human brain, such that it fundamentally altered human nature. Other fictional characters cannot go this deep. Even real characters of history, who could reinforce themselves, such as Hitler, would not linger at full strength for more than one generation. Instead with Jesus, we have more followers today than 2000 years ago. What was the difference since this data is readily available.

Why aren't you a Muslim?

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

He did, he gave you and his other enemies ample time to hear the gospel but they hated him and his Father also.

I worship the Truth, the Way, and the Life. I’m only an enemy of Jesus if he is not into the whole truth thing.

 

[lukethethird]

Jesus had enemies in the sense that they decided to rebel against the Universal Father's authority. Lucifer and all who followed him into his ideological war were afforded ample opportunity to repent, accept forgiveness and rehabilitation. But "the way of the fool seems right to him".

Yes, what set of beliefs would be complete without ad homemims directed towards non believers of the true religion.

 

[Muffled]

Ok but how can you verify?

Maybe my image is correct. Can't prove it is not, even if unlikely.

I know of no way to verify. I simply accept what God gives me verbatim since I have never found Him lacking.

 

[Muffled]

I worship the Truth, the Way, and the Life. I’m only an enemy of Jesus if he is not into the whole truth thing.

I believe He did not say that He was into the truth; He said that He is the truth.

 

[Muffled]

It’s cute you think the church would preserve the words of Jesus correctly when supposedly he complained about the apostles not understanding him.

I believe one does not have to understand something to quote it. If you are looking for understanding, then read the book of John.