Well, here’s some more to the muddle:
I just saw a YouTube advert from a group called “One for Israel”. Not sure how the omniscient Google algorithm tagged me for this one?
Seems this lot are Jews who believe Jesus is the Messiah. Now, ignorant to the ways of religion that I am, I’d have thought that would basically make them Christians, right? Apparently not.
Can anyone explain this to me?
Indeed. They are Christians, who have forgotten or ignore the laws that Jesus taught.
Those are quoted in in the first TLDR below.
The explanation is that like most religions, the Abrahamic cults who believe in Yahweh and Jesus have always has a right wing supernatural believers, and a left wing who are not literal readers of their myths.
More on this from a Jewish perspective in the second TLDR below.
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On Jesus dying for Christians, from a moral perspective.
It takes quite an imagination and ego to think a god would actually die for us, after condemning us unjustly in the first place.
Christians have swallowed a lie and don’t care how evil they make Jesus to keep their feel good get out of hell free card.
It is a lie, first and foremost, because, like it or not, having another innocent person suffer or die for the wrongs you have done, --- so that you might escape responsibility for having done them, --- is immoral.
To abdicate your personal responsibility for your actions or use a scapegoat is immoral.
Christians also have to ignore what Jesus, as a Jewish Rabbi, would have taught his people.
Ezekiel 18:20 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.
Deuteronomy 24:16 (ESV) "Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.
Psa 49;7 None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him:
There is no way that Christians parents would teach their children to use a scapegoat.
Good morals and Jesus speak against the messianic concept and bids us pick up our crosses and follow him.
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I hope you can see how intelligent the ancients were as compared to the mental efforts that modern preachers and theists are using with the literal reading of myths.
https://bigthink.com/videos/what-is-god-2-2Further.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03132009/watch.htmlRabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."
Please listen as to what is said about the literal reading of myths.
"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."
Matt 7;12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
This is how early Gnostic Christians view the transition from reading myths properly to destructive literal reading and idol worship.
Regards
DL