I don't know, do you?Ricker, Marilla M. (Marilla Marks)
Religion
I don't know, do you?
Ricker, Marilla M. (Marilla Marks)
Agnosticism; Free thought
Jesus tells us that our Heavenly Father will feed us because we are
better than the fowls of the air, and that he will clothe us because he
clothes the grass of the field. Our earthly fathers seem to have done
more in the way of providing food and clothing for us before we were
able to take care of ourselves than any Heavenly Father. Others may put
their trust in God for something to eat and drink and wear, if they
wish to, but I prefer to give the matter a little thought myself.
Jesus concludes these admonitions by saying, "Take no thought for the
morrow." This is bad counsel, and it shows the good sense of mankind
that it has never been followed. The whole world lives in what one of
our poets called, "The bright tomorrow of the mind."
We will refer to only one more of the peculiar moral injunctions of
Jesus. In the fifth chapter of Matthew, in the forty-fourth verse,
we read, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to
them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and
persecute you."
If we were to do as herein commanded, we should have an inverted
morality which would place the crown of virtue upon the forehead of
vice.
Let us see if the preacher of this doctrine practised it.
Did Jesus bless the Scribes and Pharisees when they refused to
acknowledge his claim to be the Messiah? This is the blessing which he
pronounced upon them: "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,
for ye devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers;
therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation." "Ye serpents, ye
generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of Hell?" That is
not a very sweet blessing!
And these men did not curse Jesus. They only did not agree with his
opinions. Jesus, also, in his wrath against his enemies, calls them,
in the seventeenth and nineteenth verses of the twenty-third chapter
of Matthew, "Ye fools and blind," forgetting, doubtless, that he had
previously declared, when preaching on the Mount, "Whosoever shall say,
'Thou Fool,' shall be in danger of hell-fire."
The moral teachings of Jesus were inspired by a false estimate of all
earthly things. There is no doubt that Jesus believed the world was
coming to an end in his generation. How to get into the Kingdom of
Heaven was of more consequence than how to reform mankind, or improve
the world, since the end of earthly things was near at hand. This
appears to have been the thought of Jesus, and explains much of his
language.
But today we do not believe that the earth has run its course, and
that the end of all material things is near at hand. We are living
without fear of failure on the part of the universe, and are giving our
attention more to human wants than to divine commands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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