To deal first with the personality of Jesus. If one reads the
Gospels with a fresh mind, one gets a picture of the founder of
Christianity that is quite startlingly different from the traditional
"gentle Jesus." The conception of Jesus as meek and
gentle may derive in part from his refusal to plead his cause before
Pilate. But Jesus may well, by this time, have identified himself with
the "suffering servant" of Isaiah 53 ("He is brought
as a lamb to
the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he
openeth
not his mouth")-and have been consciously fulfilling the role
for which
he believed he was prophetically destined. In his preaching, he
continually extolled loving kindness and meekness, but, as so often
happens, his practice fell short of his precepts. He was, it is true,
gentle and affectionate towards his disciples and towards those who
took him at his own valuation: and he was tolerant towards
self-confessed sinners. But he was a fanatic; and, like most fanatics,
he could not tolerate disagreement or criticism. Towards the Pharisees
and others who were sceptical of his messianic pretensions, he was
often savagely vindictive. Any hint of criticism, any demand that he
should produce evidence for his claims, was liable to provoke a
torrent of wrath and denunciation. Most of Chapter 2 3 of St.Matthew's
Gospel, for example, is not, as we are encouraged to regard it,a lofty
and dignified rebuke: it is what on any other lips would be described
as a stream of invective.
"Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which, indeed,
appear
beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all
un-
cleanness ... Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape
the
damnation of hell?"
This can hardly be called loving one's enemies. Jesus, in fact, was
typical of a certain kind of fanatical young idealist: at one moment
holding forth, with tears in his eyes, about the need for universal
love; at the next, furiously denouncing the morons, crooks and bigots
who do not see eye to eye with him. It is very natural and very human
behaviour. But it is not superhuman. Many of the great men of history
(for example, Socrates) have met criticism with more dignity and
restraint.
Read also:-
Margaret
Knight- about
"Gentle
Jesus"
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