Jesus Christ: Moral Teacher or Cruel Sadist?

There are some things in society which appear to just be taken as a given, regardless of your political, ideological or religious persuasion. They are all obvious, and mostly common sense that any morally functional person would agree with. Murder is bad. Kindness is good. Not in the least bit controversial because they are pretty much accepted by humanity as a whole. There are, of course, those who disagree with these assertions but it is still shocking (or, at the very least surprising) when this occurs.

I would like to take this opportunity to challenge a certain idea which seems to be held by people without question regardless of affiliation. Namely: that Jesus Christ was a good person and an exemplary role model.

While there are a few people who are speaking out against this idea already, it seems as though the majority opinion is in Jesus' favor. Bill Maher (an atheist comedian who is often very critical of religion) states that Jesus was a great man who can be admired even if he was not the son of god. Political Editor of New Statesman magazine Mehdi Hasan (a practicing Muslim) likes to extol the virtues of Christ by claiming him as a liberal. People on both sides of the political spectrum like to claim Jesus as their own, or at least express admiration for the man. My question is simple: Why? Why would you want to have someone like Jesus on your side? Why must he be praised, even by those who claim not to believe?

I did not choose this topic without reason. I sincerely question the idea that he is to be admired. As I'm sure you will know by now I am an atheist. So right off the bat, the idea that this man was the human incarnation of a celestial creator is not one I lend much credence. My specific problem is with those who also take this view, yet still insist on claiming Jesus was a moral man.

One of the most common arguments in defense of Jesus and the New Testament is that the barbarism of the Old Testament is undone by the forgiving, loving Christ. However, if one were to read the Bible, it would soon be discovered that it is a faulty argument. For example, in the Old Testament, when genocide, infanticide, slavery, incest and rape are all condoned, demanded or glorified there is no mention of Hell. Once the god of the Old Testament was done with you, that was it. Not so with the loving, forgiving Jesus. It is in the New Testament that Jesus claims that his followers should fear a god who "is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matthew 10:28, also mentioned in Luke 12:5), condemns entire cities to this ghoulish afterlife (Matthew 11:20-24 & Luke 10:10-15) and also claims that anyone who does not believe in him will be "cast ... into the fire, and ... burned" (John 15:6).

With this terrifying vision of what awaits unbelievers after they die, what does Jesus recommend as a means for cleansing sin in the here-and-now? Self mutilation, naturally. For it is better to have cut your own hand or leg off, or plucked out your own eye "rather than having two hands or two feet ... with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire" (Matthew 18:8-9).

Oh, and those who are cast into the fires of Hell can not only expect punishment, but "everlasting punishment" (Matthew 25:46). So basically, if you don't follow the teachings of Jesus, your soul will be tortured forever and ever. No appeal. No second chances.

It was not just the frankly hideous ideas about eternal hellfire that leads me to question Jesus' moral character. He reaffirms the Old Testament rule that children who "curseth father or mother, let him die the death" (Mark 7:10). That sounds awfully forgiving, doesn't it?

I would now like to turn to the work of famous Christian apologist C.S. Lewis. He pointed out in his book Mere Christianity that arguments for Jesus as a moral teacher were flawed. He stated that:

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell... But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to (p40-41).

Lewis goes on to affirm his personal faith that Jesus was in fact the son of god. However, his argument against those who do not believe yet still claim Jesus as a good moral teacher is rightfully scathing. Anyone who reads the words of Christ and does not believe he was the son of god cannot also claim that he had any moral seriousness. The sort of things Jesus promoted were just as (if not more) horrific as the barbarism of the Old Testament.

I would like to conclude by saying that I harbor no ill will to any believing Christians. I do not share your beliefs but you are perfectly entitled to have them. My problem is with non-believers who simply bend to the conventional wisdom that Jesus, messiah or not, was a great person. All the evidence one needs is right there in the gospels. Any mortal man who uses ideas like Hell to frighten people to follow him, or encourages parents to murder disobedient children, or people to mutilate themselves is not, by any sensible person's definition, a good moral teacher.

Bachmann For President? Fortunately, I Doubt It.

While it is still only early 2011, American politics is steadily gearing up for November 2012. The next presidential election. We already know that the Democratic candidate will be incumbent President Barack Obama - frankly any talk of a primary challenge from the left is ludicrous and if it were to be taken seriously would be a frankly suicidal strategy for the Democrats to pursue. So that only leaves the question of who will be the Republican candidate? How will they regroup after the fiasco that was the McCain/Palin 2008 campaign?

While the current front runner appears to be former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (and I find it amusing that when the party looks for a new face they seem to turn to the face of the party during the Clinton administration), it appears as though Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (head of the House Tea Party Caucus) is setting up for a run at the Republican nomination. I highly doubt that she will be successful in her attempt to clinch the nomination, but a part of me is willing her to do so.

During my time at the New Statesman, I wrote two articles about Sarah Palin, and how if she gets the Republican nod, there is no way she will be elected President. Admittedly without looking at the numbers, I would be even more confident that this will be the case for Bachmann.

Bachmann first drew national attention to herself in 2008 when she appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC proposing that members of the United States Congress should be investigated to find out which of them were "pro-America" and which were "anti-America". It did not stop there either. Since then she has also claimed that CO2 is "a harmless gas" because it is "naturally occurring", has very little grasp of American history and has even used violent rhetoric while speaking out against President Obama.

It is fine to disagree with a sitting President, but Bachmann routinely gets the facts wrong when complaining about the Democratic agenda. Facts are important. Bachmann either willfully lies to the public in order to serve her own political ends or she is too ignorant to realize that she is wrong a lot. Either way you look at it, that is not someone that should be elected to the highest office in the United States. Ignorance, willful or otherwise, is not an attribute the most powerful person in the world should possess.

Bachmann is representative of the Tea Party as a whole, which is frankly a desperate, misinformed and uneducated resistance to an imagined threat. All one has to do is look at the actions of the Republican governors of Wisconsin, Michigan and Florida to realize what the nation would be like under a Tea Party government. That is a genuinely worrying prospect unless you are fortunate enough to be super-rich already, in which case you'll do wonderfully out of it. Luckily I suspect that Bachmann's woeful ignorance and propensity to use violent rhetoric will prevent her from getting anywhere near the levers of power.