Yes, it can sound condescending or controlling. I would be willing to bet my house that Jesus also sounded condescending and controlling to those who didn’t want to hear His message. That’s why many left Him when He started speaking truth that was too hard and harsh for them.
If He was condescending, and came across as such, then He would know that absolutely. God condescended to make Jesus in the image of a man. I don’t know that I see anything Jesus said to other men as “condescending,” in the way I normally use the term.
The typical dismissive comment about Him, remember, was ‘who does this man think he is?’ In other words ‘who does he think he is to be telling us what to do?’ - a sure sign that those saying so perceived Him to be condescending and controlling, more than a little bit ‘holier than thou’.
I see that more as arrogant, grandiose, blasphemous or delusional, but not condescending or controlling. Maybe I would have seen it differently if I were there at the time.
Since He was so easily misconstrued, then rest assured that nothing you can do will really ultimately make a Godly message more palatable to those who don’t want to listen. ‘If the world hates you, remember it hated me first’. That being the case, why compromise the Godliness in a useless effort to make the message reach a wider audience?
If He was so easily misconstrued in His time, why do we think that now we can know absolutely what He meant by the things He said? At least in a literal sense, that is.
For all intents and purposes that GOD needs to know, which is ALL intents and purposes, you do have cigarettes. You’re not just speaking to or for your friend, remember. You may be able to pull the wool over your friend’s eyes, at least until he spies the odd cigarette-pack-shaped bulge in your trouser pocket and catches you out in your lie, but not over God’s.
I have to take issue with your reasoning here. I challenge you to come up with any truthful statement that you believe to be factual, and then make the claim the even God could not find a loophole or a situation beyond the applicability of the statement, that nullifies the statement’s unconditional truth. I’ll even give you as many qualifiers as you want. If I were trying to meet this challenge myself, I bet I’d have dozens of qualifiers.
For example, I doubt any normal person would disagree with my assertion that, “the sun is hot.” Try to tell that to God, though, and it becomes presumptuous. I suspect He might just treat you like He did Job in Job 37-40.
In another way, what if my honest, knee jerk reaction was, “no, not for you,” but it didn’t sink in that I was holding back. I was completely honest, he assumed something different. Is that a lie?
Again, when we’re dealing with absolute statements, we must consider every and all possible exceptions.
We’re not all called on to be lawyers, and God knows oftentimes even we lawyers can’t think too fast on our feet. But we don’t need to treat lying as a viable and totally blameless option either.
Agreed. I have not seen any claims to the contrary.
When, in fact, did He really fail to admonish any sinner? ‘If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off!’ He admonished, and admonishes, ALL of us in the strongest possible terms.
If Jesus was talking figuratively by those commands, isn’t that a lie? People thought He was advocating self-mutilation. It isn’t because they were stupid, it’s because Jesus said something that was provocative and, well, let’s face it … misleading. He said it to make a point, not to be literally correct IMO. How can there be objective truth in metaphor and exaggeration?
That said, I’ll answer your question. When one person called another on a sinful act, He not only failed to admonish the sinner, but he chastised the one doing the observation. Examples: picking grain on the sabbath, and eating without ceremonial washing. In the latter example especially, they were breaking the law for no greater good or no avoidance of greater evil, as far as I can tell. Jesus stood up for them when they were called on it.
Makes me think if our duty is to tell another person when he sins, then once we do so Jesus might just stand up against me and tell me about the plank in my own eye.
Yes, and not just me. “Be ye perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect”. You think it’s impossible? With His help? Of course it isn’t.
That’s why I do not like to rely too heavily on the literal meaning of scripture. For centuries, scholars eminently more knowledgeable than me have argued about the specific interpretation, and all one has to do is look at more than one “Catholic” Bible versions and can see rhetorical contradictions.
I’m much more interested in the deeper senses of the scripture, which transform me and let God in to renew my mind and heart. Once this renewal begins to take place, I simply don’t have to worry about any rules anymore. The “living” rules have been written on my heart since I was conceived, and if we allow the Word to penetrate our conscious defenses, He will reprogram us so that we can access and benefit from those living rules.
Here’s one way to describe it. A guru lives in a house with a guard shack in the driveway. A messenger comes in with a message for the guru, and says, “confidential for the guru.” The guard opens the message, and determines whether the message is true and of sufficient value to let it go through to the guru. In a similar way, our obsession with defining and arguing about the literal meaning of this and that, and absolute truths and the like, actually erect barriers against penetration by the Word.
Give me a Lectio Divina prayer group anytime, instead of a Bible study.
Thank you again. As always, I enjoy these conversations.
Peace,
Alan
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