The Real Jesus of the Four GospelsAtwater, John Birdseye
Religion
The Real Jesus of the Four Gospels
Atwater, John Birdseye
Jesus Christ -- Biography
At the risk of repetition, we will collect again some of the utterances
of Jesus which seem irreconcilable with the narrow, intolerant ideas of
the non-compromisers and the sacro-sancts: Judge not, that ye be not
judged; he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at
her; how wilt thou say to thy brother, let me pull the mote out of thine
eye, and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye; blessed are the merciful,
for they shall obtain mercy; blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall
be called the children of God; whosoever, therefore, shall humble
himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of
heaven; joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than
over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance; on these
two commandments hang all the law and the prophets, viz., Love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, soul and mind, and love thy neighbor as
thyself.
HYPOCRISY OR TRUTH
Hypocrisy did not die with the Pharisees. To an observer of modern life,
it might seem as if it has as rank and luxuriant growth today as in the
time of Jesus. The modern Christian must apparently keep up the
hypocrisy that he is always following Jesus, when, as a matter of fact,
he is every day making compromises with Jesus' ideals, in some instances
deviating widely from His teachings, and, in others, going diametrically
against them. The question is, if, in these points of divergence, it is
not better to speak the plain truth than to indulge in the hypocrisy of
"following Jesus." For instance, take the case of divorce laws. Jesus
explicitly condemned all divorces, except possibly on the ground of
adultery. His language is so definite, repeated in all three of the
Synoptics, that no quibbling over words or casuistry of logic can escape
the result. Consequently, when a Christian state authorizes divorce for
desertion, cruelty, drunkenness, etc., it is not following Jesus, but
going directly contrary to His laws. In this matter the Roman Catholics
are the orthodox Christians and most of the Protestants are heterodox.
The point here made has nothing to do with the expediency of these
divorce laws. The conditions of human life have so vastly changed--it is
quite possible that Jesus, speaking today, might lay down much less
stringent rules on this subject than He did two thousand years ago. The
important fact is that we have here an undeniable instance of
Christians, not only making a compromise with the acknowledged evil of
divorce, but also completely ignoring the views of Jesus in making the
compromise. Those who condone, or tacitly approve, these divorce laws
(as do the great majority of the Protestants in the United States)
should certainly be slow, in the matter of other evils, to urge "no
compromise with evil," or bring forward some utterances of Jesus as the
final argument on the subject. Let them first consider the beam in their
own eye.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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