What if the small handful of men on whose backs rest the entirety of Christianity were actually liars?
Hello again.......
And ...... No!
You can't title a thread about folks possibly being
wrong, and then in your very first sentence of OP ricochet off in to folks possibly being
liars.
That is a cranked approach...... you surely can see that? I've been wrong about so much, all through my life...... but I wasn't a deliberate liar.
I believe that the turning of Jesus the protester in to Jesus the Christ was wrong, but the apostles were surely honest in their belief and that is shown by their inclusion of so many verses which opposed or made difficult their claims.
It seems to me that this is greater issue for Christianity that most other religions as Christianity rests almost entirely on the back of a previous code of law that directly commands not to have the very belief that Christianity requires. Unlike Islam which denies that there was a previous code of law different to itself, Christianity says, yes, there were laws that prohibited Christian belief, but those were changed.
Ah ha! Yes to this! The brilliance of the Christian Canons is that they can cherry-pick from and duck'n'dive amongst the old laws to suit their purposes. Christianity was surely a way of controlling multitudes of people through fear and favour.
I mean, the Romans could control by the ultimate punishment of three days of agonising shameful slow death, but Christians could offer an eternity of endless horrific torture and shame. Clever!
And while the Jewish people point to an entire generation of ancestors who received this code of Law via Divine revelation, the Christian must rely on a handful of individuals who are said to have witnessed some miracles which convinced them that this original law had been uprooted.
Well, Jesus had no intention of uprooting anything, he wanted to restore the lot. The Priesthood was totally corrupted. Christians needed to twist and crank the Jesus story somewhat, but they weren't liars, they clearly believed in what they were doing.
I've sometimes seen Pascal's wager given as an argument to believe in Christianity. I may be biased, but it seems to me that based on Pastor Noel's words wagering on Christianity is already a pretty heavy risk.
Thoughts?
Yes, of course it's a heavy risk, ion fact it's a no-brainer that Christianity was nothing to do with Jesus, which is a bit of a problem, but a believer is a believer.
I can acknowledge belief, I get grumpy when belief turns in to dominating controlling judging junk, which sadly can occur.