JESUS IS A GLORIFIED PAGAN IDOL AND CERTAINLY CHRISTIANS USE HIM THAT WAY
Jesus is spoken of in a very idealised way - he is God full of compassion and kindness and love. Yet the hate between Christians and Christian factions in his wake makes you think they are either disloyal and/or the problem may be with him in some way. A psychologist who has too many clients who commit suicide must have something to do with it but we may never necessarily know what it is.
If an ideal man can leave all that hate and trouble behind what would one with faults and sins do?
Jesus is not the paragon of virtue and honesty he is made out to be. The lies told about him and how great he is feed the problem.
Jesus for Christians is role model in the ordinary sense and also as in having the supernatural power and power over nature to form you according to this model. He is a natural role model and role model as in one who acts on you to make you good and holy. He is not role model but ROLE MODEL. No he is THE ROLE MODEL. No one can be more effective. Nobody else is needed.
We will find that if Jesus in himself is no idol he is still treated as one.
The worst thing about Jesus is how he is portrayed as a saviour from sin and who offers healing. The fact remains that the vast majority of Christian babies have died in agony. The fact remains that Christians are often worse than people of other religions. The religion offers vaccinations and treatments for our "sinfulness" that do not work and the Church comes up with excuses for that in true quack fashion. This is Jesus' own fault as well for making false promises.
There would be no medical quacks if people did not have a strong bad side. A quack might think the treatments work well but a few weeks will show them the real truth. And they continue with their lies. And bad people who like to look good rather than be good will defend them and pass around anecdotes about their effectiveness. A medical quack always has an excuse for useless treatments. The victim is typically blamed for not having enough faith. In one sense he cannot blame the victim for if you use the snake oil and nothing happens he cannot say you have not used it. Religion blames you for not using its treatments in the right spirit and blames you if they fail so it is the ultimate in quackery. Blaming you is abuse. Health is a terrible thing to deceive in but what religion is doing is worse for evil behaviour in human nature is a serious problem.
The fact remains that there is a legacy of lies and the religion thrives on confusing the vulnerable and taking advantage of the fact that people think they believe lies when fed them often enough. That is not a saviour. He cannot be a role model but let us check that out with further proof and evidence.
The Christians claim to put God first but then they disprove it by saying Jesus, a man whose existence is not as certain as that of JF Kennedy, is God. And Jesus' alleged perfect virtue is less certain and there are examples of his bigotry and extremism and racism in the New Testament. Christians go down to his level with too many "explanations" that are merely far-fetched speculation. Too many explanations is a warning sign. If it is true that God has to leave room for faith leaving absolute certainty that Jesus existed would still leave room for faith for faith is about who Jesus is. If Jesus claimed to be the only essential role model then he only proved that he cannot be. And it gets worse if he says he is God, the biggest role model imaginable! A Jesus whose career has led only to superstition and lies is just the seed of a bad tree. The fruit shows the role model is a bad one.
The popular saying, "What would Jesus do?" assumes Jesus was a good role model. It is a clever trick. You end up working out the best thing to do and imagine that Jesus would have done it. Thus Jesus gets glory he is not entitled to. Thus the priests and clergy and preachers get glory too for lying about this outstanding role model.
Christianity believes that Jesus Christ is the source of all goodness and when Christians do good it is really he who is working not them. If a Christian can be good it does not follow that Christianity or Jesus really is good. The evil done by organisational Christianity and many individual Christians could be down to them tuning into a spiritual force that pretends to be good but which is in fact manipulatively evil. The evil is common enough and serious enough to ask if Jesus is the spiritual cause. He allegedly exercises his role model skills through his people. What they do says something about him. The atheist who does not believe in spiritual entities believes that the problem is down to Jesus not being what he claimed to be. A false saviour damages those who depend on his strength and example for help. It is like drinking Kaballah water to purify your heart - it will not work. It will not help and it will leave you getting worse.Religion insists we must make a role model out of God.
Christians hold that we must regard Jesus as God and take him as our exemplar. You need a purely ordinary and purely human role model. You can love and copy such a person better than you can a sinless God-man!
If Jesus falsely claimed to be God or as good as God then we need to read the following from CS Lewis and his Mere Christianity: I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.
The Church responds that Jesus was the best man who ever lived - but it does that by making excuses for some of the terrible things he did and said. It makes excuses for his violent behaviour in the Temple - excuses that even Jesus didn't make. Without an explanation from Jesus, the excuses are just worthless speculation. The Christians do not look to excuse the scandalous antics of other gods.
You need a human role model. At least you can see and hear and be with the human role model! You need a good but imperfect role model. You will never be perfect so that is exactly what you need. Jesus is long gone. He was no good if he lived and he is no good now.
Christianity teaches that Jesus should be our only role model and thus it is clearly a stupid and fanatical religion and poses a hindrance to real goodness. Though you might think the saints are role models, we must remember that what makes them revered as saints is not their innate goodness but how well they copied Jesus and tried to be other Christs. There is only the one role model ultimately. The saint does good and then boasts about how Jesus did the good not her or him.
The Church teaches that Jesus shows what he is like through the saints - so he continues to be our role model through the saints. He has saved the saints from sin and made them holier and holier. But there are people who hate Jesus who are still saintly and heroic. There are people who deny that there is anybody else who can save them from sin. Yet they do incredible heroic things. They make a difference. If Jesus is presented to us as saviour - his name means saviour - and he is not saviour that is a very serious matter. To call Jesus your saviour and to say he is working on you when he is not is actually a form of self-righteousness. Christians claim to be humble but humility is arrogance when it is about trying to be humbler than everybody else. You never really know if somebody is really humble. Calling Jesus your saviour from pride and sin says more about you than him. But Jesus' teaching is largely to blame for your actions nonetheless.
The Church presents Jesus Christ as a role model and an exemplar for us. It says he was God and also a normal vulnerable man. This is stated by the Church in spite of the fact that if you are God then you can hardly be vulnerable like the rest of us for you have the power to get out of any situation. The Church just pretends that it thinks Jesus is God. It is wilful idolatry. The Church would say that the pagans are idolaters even if they say that God and the statue of God are two natures yet one person. So it is idolatrous itself.
Bible teaching on idolatry is very simple. If you adore a god who does not exist and who cannot hear or see you you are wasting your worship. If Jesus is not a god or is dead then the worship given to Jesus is idolatrous.
A false prophet is always behind idolatry. If you think your statue answers your prayers, then you are functioning as a prophet of the false god. It is said that a false prophet will prophesy on his own account and for his own benefit. Some do. The rest do it not for any obvious benefit and some even risk their lives for their lies such as Joseph Smith of the Mormons. These false prophets benefit simply from being listened to and taken seriously and they do not directly blow their own trumpets. They get their prideful thrill and exaltation from merely plotting and working to be seen as prophets. They know that it is necessary to be subtle at least most of the time in order to get lasting and acceptable results. Thus the false prophet who preaches about God all the time is as much a fake as the one who goes, "I am your saviour and whoever comes to me will be saved. Adore me and imitate me." But he is a craftier and more cynical fake. The fact that Jesus claimed to be a prophet makes his claims suspicious. And Jesus did in fact act like a false prophet who wanted to make it obvious that he was after adoration. And at times he did act like the craftier version of the false prophet who gets psychological benefits from pretending to be focused on God.
Those who say that idolaters deep down are not mistaken that there is a higher power such as God so they intend to worship him after all are only lying and making politically correct excuses for the idolaters. The excuse overlooks the fact that they are called idolaters because they treat what cannot hear or see or pity them as if it can.
It is idolatry when the Church gives you a God who became man to provide an example and when we have to pretend he gave us good example when he did not. If people really thought he did then why is his story in the gospels such a big yawn?
The believer must be careful not to think that Jesus was given the role for he understands our human frailties. That implies that God does not know all things. God does not need to become man to understand us. It follows then that his becoming man might feel useful to some but is essentially useless. Some believers admit that Jesus did not need to experience our trials to be able to understand them. For them it was one out of many ways he chose so that we can relate to him better. Sounds manipulative to me! Both on Jesus' part and theirs.
Religion says that idolatry is so attractive to us for it appeals to our wish not to be good but to be good in our own way. We care about looking good not about being good. So idolatry is refusing to look at God as he is but as we want to see him. We can easily fool people that we are true devotees of God. For the Christian, God needs to be brought down to the level of a supposedly good man who is seen as God himself. This is a way of feigning devotion to God while he is actually being belittled and seen not as he is but seen through the stained glass redeemer.
