Jesus would be ashamed of Christianity (Vignette Three)


Yeshua ben-Yosef was a radical, and died like one. It doesn’t matter whether or not he was divine. Not really. The man had the radical idea of treating other people well. He said that we shouldn’t profit from the pain of others. He said that all people – even the treasonous Samaritans – were the children of God.

A thousand years later, kings waged wars in his name. A thousand years after that, we drop a few dollars in a plate, sing some songs – twice a year, maybe once a week if we think we’re especially pious – and think we’re following his example.

Because doing what he actually said wouldn’t make much “sense” to our way of thinking.

We call treating everyone well “utopian”. We call it unrealistic. We call it anything, everything, except our responsibility to other humans.