What Would Jesus Do?
For many mainstream Christians (usually not the fundamentalists), religion isn’t about divine truth. In fact, to these particular Christians, their religion isn’t even about the Bible. Instead, religion basically boils down to one simple question, what would Jesus do?
When I say this however, I don’t mean that these mainstream Christians think that their religion is about the answer to that question, but rather the question itself. It seems that for the average mainstream Christian, Jesus is more of a role model than the only begotten son of God.
This position is both good and bad. For starters, in order to hold this view one need not even believe that Jesus really existed. In fact, one need not even believe in a god. There is no logical problem with using a fictional character as a role model. We do it all the time. Lots of kids look up to and admire Harry Potter. Harry is a great role model. The fact that we all know that Harry Potter is a fictional character does not diminish our ability to ask ourselves, “What would Harry Potter do?” In fact, we can put any character real or imagined into that role model position. Personally, I use Yoda or Batman (depending on the situation).
That’s all well and good, but can this really be called Christianity? Almost half the Christians in America seem to think it can and that makes arguing against Christianity a difficult job.
Another bad aspect of this position is that the only source material for Jesus is the Bible and while there are certainly some positive things that the character of Jesus says, he also says and does some pretty horrible things. It seems that many of these mainstream Christians have just not read their own holy book.
They seem to forget that the character of Jesus says that we own to cut off our hands and poke out our eyes if thus parts of our body tempt us. Sure the mainstreamers with claim it is a metaphor, but what is it a metaphor for, exactly?
The character of Jesus also states specifically that he did not come to bring peace, but rather that he came with a sword. Obviously he did not come literally with a sword, but typically a sword is a symbol of violence which seems to follow from the first part that he didn’t come to bring peace.
In the Bible, Jesus also states that in order to follow him, one must hate their entire family. Is this the family values guy? It just seems like he is a narcissistic asshole to me. I wouldn’t pick him as my role model. Even Eric Cartman would be a better role model than this ass-clown. I’m just say’n.
Filed under: Mainstream Christians, Religion, Vague Higher Power, wwjd
