Atheists can say the nuttiest things, and sadly most of it comes from ignorance. Much of their hate is misdirected irrational hate that most likely comes from a deep seated self-loathing. Some of it comes from arrogance and pride and a deep seated belief in the infallibility of man (in particular themselves), and other times it's a deep seated need to be offended.
But the vast majority comes from complete ignorance of what they're complaining about. I'll list a few examples and you tell me if I'm wrong.
1. Jesus is a bigot because of Matthew 10:5-6 and Matthew 15:24.
If the complainant had actually read Matthew he would know that in Matthew 10:5-6 Jesus was sending his disciples out on their first evangelical mission, he wanted them to deal with familiar people in a familiar setting. You don't send a novice evangelical out against Bill Mahr and Rosie O'Donnell on their first outing. In Matthew 15:24 Jesus was testing this woman's faith and using it as an example for his disciples. Had the complainant actually read Matthew 15 and assessed it spiritually he would have seen that. Maybe.
Actually he wasn't calling non-Jews names. Here we go again - cherry picking the bible, taking verses out of context, not attempting to understand what was going on in a theological, geographical and historical context. Jesus was telling his disciples that the words of God are precious beyond measure. Two thousand years ago in a desert community like Israel, pearls were highly sought after because of their extreme rarity, you can't dig up pearls in a desert like you can gold and silver. There's just no oysters in Israel which makes pearls insanely valuable. Casting pearls before swine mean to waste something highly precious on someone who has no ability to appreciate it, so in effect what he was telling his disciples was that when you're preaching and someone refuses to listen, don't waste it on them. Just move on. (However if you feel a deep seated need to be offended, Jesus was talking about Jews and no one else.)
3. Jesus encourages theft as seen in Matthew 12:1-2
Again: cherry picking the bible, taking verses out of context and not attempting to understand what was going on in a theological, geographical, and historical context. Picking heads of wheat and eating them as you walked was not considered theft. Jesus and his disciples were walking as this was the only method of transportation available to the average man 2000 years ago. Walking along the road means that you're at the edge of a field. Picking heads of grain from the edges of the field was called gleaning which was not only allowed, it was commanded from God to farmers to allow to happen for the wayfaring stranger and the widows and orphans. The "illegality" the pharisees mentioned was not stealing wheat but the act of picking it on the sabbath. Had the unbeliever read further he would have realized this, and he would have seen where Jesus said "Backoff, I'm the Lord of the Sabbath and I say it's ok"
4. Jesus encourages people to be bums Matthew 6: 25-34
The author is making stuff up here. Jesus is telling his followers to relax, don't worry and trust in God. The very worst thing you can come up with here is the invention of a new commandment: Thou Shalt Not Worry, which actually is a pretty good commandment. To infer that Jesus is telling his people to panhandle for a living is either an inability to understand simple English or a real hate-based stretch of the imagination
First of all, it's funny seeing an atheist worry about disrespect, but then again: cherry picking the bible, taking verses out of context and not attempting to understand what was going on in a theological, geographical, and historical context. Today calling your mother "Woman" may be considered disrespectful, probably because the feminist movement has taught women that they are second class citizens and they should be ashamed to be a woman. But two thousand years ago women were not ashamed of being women or being called a woman. That was how you addressed your mother back then.
At no time did Jesus preach disrespect to fathers, this is a real good example of injecting modern "moralities" on an ancient writing. Jesus is condemning pride and pretense, he's condemning the use of titles such as "Father" by a person to elevate themselves above other people. Like priests do.
Jesus told a parable about a dishonest man and admonished his followers not to follow this man's example. In effect what this atheist did was read a speed limit sign and said "Hey! The cops are telling us to go too fast!" As you can see, discernment is not a skill or gift that atheists are adept at.
One More Time! cherry picking the bible, taking verses out of context and not attempting to understand what was going on in a theological, geographical, and historical context. This is my favorite complaint to hand back to atheists and watch them choke on. Yes, Jesus spoke of slavery in this parable, slavery was a normal fact of life two thousand years ago, should he have ignored it just to please some selfrighteous whiner in the 21st century? Back then a full two thirds of the people living in the city of Rome were slaves. And the nasty facts that atheists chose to ignore and cover up was that in Jewish tradition slaves were freed after a maximum of 7 years of service, they could also request to remain a slave forever, and that a majority of slaves entered into servitude voluntarily. But what atheists REALLY hate is that Paul's letter to Philemon did more to end slavery on this planet than all the efforts of everyone that followed combined, and they can't share in that victory over slavery because this was done by a God that they don't think exists.
There's nothing judgmental or narcissistic in this verse, I'm thinking that this atheist used that accusation because he couldn't figure out how to work "racist" in to his diatribe. Did I mention that discernment was the skill most lacking in atheists? Let's look at the verse this way: when you tell someone not to jump off a cliff and they go out of their way to find the highest cliff to jump off, all you can really do is tell them "It's going to sting at the bottom". And there's nothing wrong with exercising judgement, absolutely nothing, especially when judging your own actions.
Cherry picking, plain and simple. Had this person read the context of these verses he/she/it would have never said anything as ignorant and poorly thought out as this.
I've been doing quite a bit of research on this and getting back to my original question - why do atheists hate Jesus? It's hard to say, their inability to read a passage in context, to quote accurately, to use discernment when reading scripture, their refusal to actually read more than a rare snippet of scripture means that they never get to know anything of Jesus. My best guess is that they hate Jesus because they were told to by someone else that it's cool to hate Jesus and they don't have the courage or backbone to find out about Jesus for themselves.
Or as my son would say "Haters just gonna be hatin'"
No comments:
Post a Comment