What's at stake?

[Elijah John]

Assuming that Jesus is not God, there seems to be a clear violation of the first commandment, that we are to have "no other gods before me (YHVH)".

What is at stake here, how serious an infraction of God's primary law is worshiping Jesus?

Does the gravity of this situation make those who worship Jesus more biased in favor of keeping Jesus as their God and the object of their worship, rather than opening themselves to evidence of the contrary?

Two or three things occur to me, that I will share after some replies.

I think that most Evangelicals swear that those who DO NOT worship Jesus spend eternity in hell...pretty high stakes.

But what if they are wrong, what if the reverse is true, what if there is punishment FOR worshiping Jesus, if he is NOT God? What then are the stakes, if worshiping Jesus is indeed a form of idolatry?

[Elijah John]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mick-moon ... lp00000592

Although the article is largely about the faith vs works controversy, it also deals heavily with consequences, and is somewhat, (though not completely) related to the OP.

The author's words and content could easily be a post or topic on these boards. I think maybe this article deserve a thread of it's own?

Giving the Pharisees a taste of their own medicine. Love it! Had not considered that interpretation of Jesus' preaching before.

[YahDough]

To get back to the OP, Yahdough or anyone else who worships Jesus, again:

Again, you haven't defined "worship". To give Jesus more glory than the One who sent Him would be wrong. To give Him NO glory would be to miss salvation.

What is at Stake??

Peace with GOD and everlasting life in Christ.

One's eternal destiny?

YES

What if you are wrong, how serious a sin is Jesus worship,

It pleases the Father. The Father sent Jesus.

is it idolatry?

NO. Jesus is Lord.

Something YHVH would send a person to hell for?

NO. It is something YHVH would send a person to heaven for. Jesus and the Father are one.

Or is that just the destination for those who do not worship Jesus in your world view?

That might be more likely.
" no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." - Jesus

Or do you think YHVH would understand your error, if your beliefs ARE in error.

Believing in Jesus is a/the requirement for salvation. YHVH would understand if a person is a believer.

Theist to theist, in the final analysis, GOD is the judge, not you or I, correct?

Correct. But remember GOD (Elohim) is plural. And Jesus is the "door" to the Father.

Jn:10:9: I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.

[kayky]

I'm not referring to God. I'm referring to humanity. If the Gospels are read with a mystical understanding, I think we find a Jesus that recognized his true identity in God--a part of the unity of God (the universe as an incarnation of God, so to speak). I think his message is that we are too.

That may well be true, but that's clearly not the message of the Gospels in general. The Gospels in general proclaim that Jesus was the promised messiah. He was prophesied to come. He was supposedly born of a virgin who was magically impregnated by God. He rose from the dead. Not to mention supposedly raising others from the dead as well.

I disagree. The Messiah was prophesied to usher in the Kingdom of God. And what did Jesus say about that? The Kingdom of God is within you. We are the Kingdom.

We are told in 1John 3:2

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.

This idea that we too are to be "Christed" is much more Biblical than any doctrine of a Trinity.

This whole "Christian Religion" is founded on these myths. Trying to view Jesus as just another Buddha may have some merit, but it's certainly not "Christianity".

You seem to be under the false impression that Christianity has always been only one thing. It certainly wasn't in the beginning, and that is even more so not the case today. It was only during the Dark Ages that the Church had a stranglehold on dogma, and--well--we call it the Dark Ages for a reason.

Speaking of Jesus as being the "Christ" like as if that is something divinely special is a mistake, IMHO. Especially if you're not agreeing with that dogma.

The Greek Christ simply means "anointed one"--someone set aside for a special purpose. The Jewish Messiah was never meant to be an incarnation of God himself.

Well, like I say, I too can see that potential in a possible "Jesus", but not in the "Jesus" that is described by the Christian gospels specifically. In other words, if Jesus was basicaly teaching the same things as Buddha, then much of what is in the Christian Gospels is exaggerated superstitions that attempt to make Jesus out to be the "Only Begotten Son of God". In fact, they make that claim very specifically.

I have a coffee table book put together by Marcus Borg and beautifully illustrated called The Parallel Sayings of Jesus and Buddha. It is amazing just how similar their teachings are--so much so that some believe that Jesus must have traveled to the East at some point in his life and was exposed to these teachings. As a matter of fact, studying Buddhism has shed a great deal of light for me on the teachings of Jesus.

I'll go with that too, but I think the only rational conclusion at that point it that Jesus was indeed crucified for blaspheme just as the Gospels claim. And it was not part of any "God's Plan".

I think it is much more likely he was crucified for causing a public disturbance during Passover--a time of heightened Roman security when the population of the city nearly tripled. The Gospels were written after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE when there was a sharp split between Christianity and Judaism, when Christians were literally expelled from synagogues. This led to the resentment that played out in the Gospels in anti-Semetic elements such as blaming the death of Jesus on the Jews. This seems like a much more likely scenario since I doubt that the Romans had any sensitivities concerning the Jewish religion.

To try to hold your views up as "Christianity" seems absurd to me. What you appear to be suggesting is an interpretation that is dramatically different from orthodox Christianity anyway, but then I see you have already agreed to that.

Well, it isn't just me. It is a growing reform movement occurring in the mainline denominations and among progressive scholars. I believe we are the future of Christianity.

~~~~~

The only thing I ask is why not just support Buddhism directly as being basically the same thing that Jesus mean to teach but Buddhism isn't contaminated with all these other absurd concepts from the Old Testament and a judgmental Godhead.

That's an interesting question since I actually considered converting to Buddhism before returning to Christianity after a ten year absence. The bottom line for me was a cultural divide. While I greatly admired Buddhism, its stories (yes, they have their stories too!) did not speak to me in the same way the Christian story did.

The problem Jesus is the fact that he was not only crucified on the cross (which has become that Christian symbol of salvation), but he has also been nailed to the Old Testament as the "Only begotten Son" of the God of the Old Testament. And so Jesus is laden with all this unnecessary and erroneous baggage that comes with Christianity via the Old Testament.

If you look at the God of the Old Testament and compare him to the God of the New Testament, you cannot help but notice an evolution in thought. The question Progressives ask is why that evolution should have halted nearly 2000 years ago. The Canon may have technically closed in the fourth century, but that didn't put a stop to a rich legacy of Christian writing over the centuries--some of which I find to be more profound than anything in the New Testament.

It's not only just what's in the Old Testament, but people like Paul dredged all the Old Testament stuff up and preached it in Jesus name in the New Testament as well.

Jesus made references to the Old Testament as well. And keep in mind that it was Paul who said that Gentile Christians were not subject to Old Testament law.

It's impossible to free Jesus from the baggage of the Old Testament. For most Christians Jesus is nothing on his own. The only thing that gives him any clout at all is the idea that he is the virgin born son of the God of the Old Testament.

The New Testament grows out of the Old. It is impossible to separate the two or to understand the New without knowledge of the Old. The Gospels were written to provide a liturgy for the young church, and the life of Jesus is made to follow the events of the Torah or at least the life of Moses. Jesus was to be seen as the new Torah, the new Moses. That fact alone should make it clear that the authors knew they were not writing literal history.

So Jesus comes with that inseparable baggage. There's no way to free Jesus from that baggage. Matthew made sure of this by proclaiming that Jesus did not come to change the law and that not one jot nor one tittle shall pass from law until heaven and earth pass. Those jot's and tittles necessarily refer to the Old Testament. Nothing else had been written down when Jesus was teaching.

It complicates matters that Jesus never wrote anything down and the Gospel writers never knew him. As a Christian, however, I see the Bible as a part of my literary heritage: the good, the bad, and the ugly. I think its readers need to learn to discern among the three instead of this childish idea that God controlled every word written therein.

So it really makes no sense to try to turn Jesus into a Buddha when he's already been nailed to the Old Testament God. That cannot be undone it's too deeply ingrained in the dogma.

I'm not trying to turn Jesus into anyone. The fact of the matter is that, unlike the Buddha, the historical Jesus is mostly lost to us.