If you do not believe that Jesus is God in the flesh as He claimed to be, how can you consider Him to be a good teacher or a prophet?
Many places in the New Testament, Jesus claimed to be God (John 8:58, 10:30 are obvious examples). If He was not really God, then He must have been either a lunatic, who really thought that He was God, or else He was a con-man who deceived people.
Why would you think a lunatic or a con-man was a good teacher?
(And if you think that the Biblical writers just "made up" Jesus' claim to deity, how can you trust that His teachings, which they wrote about, were really good?)
2006-11-22 02:59:42 · 20 answers · asked by 5solas 3 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
Danielle, no, my point is that Jesus claimed to be God and no good teacher or prophet would make such a claim if it was false. Thanks.
2006-11-22 03:04:28 · update #1
The askser's point is that there is no middle ground....either He was the Son of God, or a lunatic, or a madman. Lunatics and madmen aren't great prophets and teachers.
2006-11-22 03:05:34 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 3⤋
I don't think Jesus was a prophet. In fact - he made a poor prophet. He said that he'd return in the lifetimes of those standing around him , but he didn't.
As for a good teacher, I don't really think that either. Jesus spoke in parables that often had no point, or contradictory points. Sure, he said to be kind to your neighbour, but so did Moses and the tablets.
Furthermore, your point that a lunatic or a con-man could not be a good teacher is also false. Just because a person is a lunatic doesn't mean that *everything* they say is false or morally bankrupt.
2006-11-22 11:06:13 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
I'm afraid you are wrong Jesus did not claim to be God. He was a prophet and a good teacher. If he thought he was God who was he praying to? Himself? I don't trust the Bible, simple. It has been altered and changed so many times over the years by so many different people to suit there own religious needs. Jesus did say in the original Bible "there will be one final prophet after me and his name shall be Muhammad." But that did not suit certain people so they removed it. I do however trust the teaching of the Quran it has not been altered ever not one word. And before anyone jumps on there soap box. Yes it is "translated" into different languages and different languages have different meanings for certain words. But the Arabic version has never changed and I trust God when he revealed to us that Jesus was a prophet.
How can i believe that Jesus is a prophet and a good teacher?
Quiet easily, no problems at all.
2006-11-22 11:13:29 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋
'I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call Him Lord and God. 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.' -C.S. Lewis
2006-11-22 11:04:04 · answer #4 · answered by whitehorse456 5 · 3⤊ 1⤋
People who do not believe Jesus to be God usually don't believe the Bible.
This means that they come up with an explanation as to why they don't believe the Bible. This explanation usually has something to do with the fact that Jesus has never written anything to contribute to the Bible, and all accounts of him were written MANY years after he died.
To say that if we don't believe the Bible to be true, we cannot find value in the teachings the Bible tells of in its stories of Jesus is like saying we can't think that Aesop's Fables have good morals without believing that a tortoise and a hare really raced each other.
2006-11-22 11:05:29 · answer #5 · answered by Snark 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
We don't know what Jesus actually said, we weren't there. The gist of it is a good message and so, to me Jesus was a prophet. Jesus was connected to the Divine but so are we all. So when the writers wrote of Jesus and the translators translated the message a few times over, not one of these people had an agenda? Ask yourself that.
2006-11-22 11:08:01 · answer #6 · answered by a_delphic_oracle 6 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Hitler was a vile and disgusting man. However -- he was also a courageous man who helped to rebuild the German people's national pride after WWI and the League of Nation's attempts to utterly crush Germany, by standing up to the people who were crushing his people and by teaching his people pride?
Would he have still been a monster if he had done these good things without the whole war, slaughter, holocaust things?
Do his great and massive crimes against the whole world somehow make his smaller but still present good points invalid? Or does it just prove that mankind is good and evil in differing proportions?
If a lunatic comes up to you and says, "The demons in my mind tell me that you should love your wife," does this mean that his insanity negates the truth of his statement? And since a lunatic said it, should you stop loving your wife?
2006-11-22 11:07:35 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋
You'll really making a lot of assumptions.
First, people don't necessarily think Jesus was a con man, just because they don't believe he was the son of God.
Second, you don't have to be the son of a deity to be a good teacher.
Third, lots of crazy people have insightful things to say.
Fourth, just because the people who wrote the fables of the Bible were deluded to think Jesus was the son of a god, doesn't discount the lessons they may have learned from him.
Fifth, we can learn from anyone.
2006-11-22 11:07:06 · answer #8 · answered by Phoenix, Wise Guru 7 · 2⤊ 1⤋
I think the historical Jesus was probably a groovy Gandhi-type guy who had some good ideas that his followers got completely wrong after he died. I don't believe that you can trust everything the bible claims about Jesus. There's a lot we're never going to know.
People swear that Elvis is still alive: I don't believe them, but I still like his music.
2006-11-22 11:06:16 · answer #9 · answered by lcraesharbor 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
I have had some very good teachers-good in person and good in the way they taught-and they were not G-d.
Alot of Christians say Jesus said he was G-d, others say he never declared it-just hinted at it.
As I do not accept the NT--I do not believe a word of it.
2006-11-22 11:05:57 · answer #10 · answered by Shossi 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋