Read God Hates You, Hate Him Back: Making Sense of The Bible Online
Authors: CJ Werleman
Jesus shows shades of his father’s wrath, fury and jealousy in his parable of the ‘tree and its fruit’, when he warned:
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Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them… A good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Matthew 7:15-19 NIV)
Jesus apologists will defend this statement as purely a metaphor for the choice of wisdom, but don’t be fooled. This is soft-spoken Jesus calling for non-believers to be, “cut down and thrown into the fire” and for the death of those that try to sway you away from his side. How many pagans, Jews, heretics and witches were cruelly burnt at the stake during the Inquisitions because of this quote? The human suffering that has been inflicted by one religious denomination or sect on another because of this careless and wicked edict is incalculable. You cannot defend this as just something that man has taken out of context and thus misinterpreted Jesus’ meaning because Jesus doesn’t talk to us anymore, and naturally it is left to man to decipher. But again further evidence that shows a lack of measurable foresight that one might hope for in a loving human-god, with super-human intellect.
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The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. This is why I speak to them in parables: Through seeing, they do not see; through hearing, they do not understand.” (Matthew 13:11-13 NIV)
That’s a pretty fucking ordinary explanation given the fact that people are struggling to understand you the first time around and now you are making it more difficult by speaking in riddles. Now, before I admonish the anointed one for speaking in a manner so ridiculous, this is once again another effort of the author to match Old Testament prophecy to Jesus biography:
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So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet (in Psalm 78:2): ‘I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world’.” (Matthew 13:35 NIV)
If you are looking for a little more Jesus-fueled fire and brimstone, then you might like this one:
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The field is the world and the good seed stands for the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age and the harvesters are angels. As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 13:38-42 NIV)
Now, there’s some wholesome bedtime reading for the kiddies. And what is with the ‘gnashing of teeth’? Is that some kind of homo-erotic Freudian slip on behalf of the author? Buddha or Socrates, who preceded Jesus’ time, never said anything as remotely vindictive and indignant as this. What are we to make of a man that speaks in such a manner to those that dare challenge his preachings?
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You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to Hell?” (Matthew 23:33 NIV)
It is doubtful that we would anoint such a person with the honor of ‘enlightened’. Furthermore, if the action of a sin is a finite action i.e. cheating on your wife, then how is infinite torture a just punishment? Isn’t this perverted injustice wicked in itself?
Looking beyond the parable psycho-babble of Jesus, a stand out piece of narrative in this chapter is one which entails the people of Jesus’ hometown to question his Messianic legitimacy. Although his fellow locals were undoubtedly impressed by tales of his travelling magic show, they still harbored doubts in regards to claims that he was anything more than an ordinary man:
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Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things? And they took offence of him.” (Matthew 13:55-57 NIV)
How did Jesus react to this rejection by his own town folk? Well he gave the school yard equivalent of, “I am so the Messiah and you aren’t, so there!” then trudged off, as it is written:
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And he (Jesus) did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.” (Matthew 13:58 NIV)
Not only a form of ‘you will see when you believe it’, but also an ass-backwards strategy to convert as many Jews as possible to the holy path. It would make logical sense that if God wanted all of mankind to be saved and thus remove the possibility of man murdering each other in religious conflict, it would be more sensible for the Son of God, or God himself, to come before
all
of us and put the record straight once and for all. Why leave it to the oratory and argumentative skills of a few Middle Eastern farmers and one guy named Jesus to do all the convincing on his behalf? Therefore, we have one more charge to add to the growing litany of character flaws that God doth have – Idiot!
The parable of the prodigal son is told in chapter fifteen, in which Jesus tells the story of a father who has two sons. The youngest son demands that his father pay him his share of his inheritance whilst his father is still alive and kicking. His father agrees to the request and divides his net worth between the youngest and eldest son. The youngest son takes his share and heads off to foreign lands, to party like a rockstar. Squandering his money on booze and prostitutes until all cash is spent. Out of funds, he has to work as a pig farmer to survive, but decides to travel home to throw himself at the mercy of his father. His father welcomes him home with open arms and says:
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Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” (Luke 15:24 NIV)
The eldest son who stayed devoted to his father, working tirelessly for him and asking of nothing gets the shits for this favored treatment bestowed on his younger, party animal brother and lets his displeasure be known:
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Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!” (Luke 15:29-30 NIV)
To which the father replies,
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My son, you are always with me and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is now found.” (Luke 15:31-32 NIV)
Is this not another mindless message courtesy of ole Jesus? Effectively, it says do what you want, but as long as you say you’re sorry then all is forgiven. People should be held accountable for their actions in life, a principle this parable is not in synch with. This is an implication that we are free to hurt others, hurt ourselves, squander all, but as long as we repent when we have had our fun then all is good. Certainly, there is nothing wrong with forgiveness, but punishment must follow crimes that involve a victim. In this parable, the victim was the father and the bad son had to pay no penalty for his wrong-doing because ‘sorry’ redeemed his actions. Having read this why on earth would you want to be the good son? The bad son got to spend all the money on drugs and hookers and was rewarded for it, whilst the good son got no such reward for living a righteous life.
Certainly one of the most well-known lovey kumbayah messages attributed to Jesus is the ‘Love thy neighbor’ philosophy:
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Love your neighbor and love your enemies.” (Matthew 5:43-44 NIV)
What a majority of Christians are unaware of, is the fact this is a passage taken directly from the mundane and barbaric book of Leviticus:
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but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the Lord.” (Leviticus 19:17-18)
Still, this is unarguably Jesus’ most quoted remark and one that is often promoted by Christian evangelicals on bumper stickers. I am sure an overwhelming majority of believers are acutely unaware that Jesus makes a mockery of this teaching, when he says, according to Luke:
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But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be a king over them – bring them here and kill them in front of me.” (Luke 19:27 NIV)
Whilst this passage further shatters the myth of mild, peace-loving Jesus, it may offer some comfort to believers as it does at the very least show that he shared the same genetic predisposition for blood lust as his Biblically alleged father – God.
Most of us are already familiar with the more virtuous teachings of Jesus, including ‘love thy neighbor’; ‘turn the other cheek’; ‘do unto others’; ‘blessed are the meek’; ‘return good for evil’. These are what I call the Christian sound-bites that appeal to those seeking some sort of external guidance. These are the equivalent of the World War One recruitment posters that played heavy on emotion such as, ‘What did your daddy do during the Great War?’, or ‘Uncle Sam needs YOU’. Sound-bites sell because most people don’t have time to drill deep into the heart of the issues. But Christians will have you believe that Jesus has some sort of trademark ownership on these moral or ethical principles when as a matter of fact they were written many hundreds of years before Jesus’ time and by non-Jews too. It was Buddha that said the following almost seven hundred years before Jesus’ time:
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Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you.”
Likewise, others had said similar earlier:
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One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him” – Socrates
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Let us not listen to those who think we ought to be angry with our enemies and who believe this to be great and manly. Nothing is so praiseworthy, nothing so clearly shows a great and noble soul, as clemency and readiness to forgive.” – Cicero
Further, the Gospels contradict one another wildly on a number of occasions in instances where they are allegedly quoting Jesus. A standout contradiction that utterly makes a confusion of who Jesus really was, is recorded in the gospel of John whereby he writes Jesus saying:
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If I testify about myself, my testimony is NOT valid.” (John 5:31 NIV)
This declaration by Jesus, according to John, is not contradicted by Matthew, Mark or Luke, but by John himself. What hope have we of uncovering the truth of Jesus’ life if not only do the biographers of him contradict one another, but they also contradict their own writings? A mere three chapters later, John walks into his own trap of fiction, when he has Jesus declaring:
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Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony IS valid.” (John 8:14 NIV)
Other than self-contradictions, there are a number of irresponsible and unwise teachings of Jesus that include recommendations for fasting, love for enemies, choice between God and money and the stupendously ridiculous advice to his followers that they should not worry about anything during their earthly existence as Jesus says:
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Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your , what you will wear.” (Matthew 6:25 NIV)
If ever there was a teaching to discourage human endeavour and individual achievement then this may be the one. In effect, Jesus has told me that I can just sit on my arse, do nothing, and all will be provided for by the heavenly father. Life is good for the believer!
In Matthew’s repeated attempts to create the fictitious life of Jesus with alignment to prophecy, he makes the error of stretching the 21
st
century reader’s intolerance for bullshit, in confirming the story of the Prophet Jonah, in which Jesus is written to have said:
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For as Jonah was three days in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Matthew 12:40 NIV)
The Son of God has verified the ludicrous writings of a rambling 5
th
Century BC prophet that indeed a man can survive inside the belly of a fish for three days. Even if Jesus was ever a real person and claimed to be the son of the universal creator, this quote here would be adequate enough for me to dismiss him as mentally unsound. To then believe that it is only through him that I can enter the kingdom of heaven makes that a giant leap of faith.