Did Christ heal Jews because he loved them?

[unknown soldier]

Recently I was discussing Christ's love for the Jews with our resident prophetess, Tam. As far as Tam is concerned Christ can do no wrong, and she can post Bible passages to prove it. She is fond of posting passages describing Christ's preaching love, mercy, and forgiveness. Who can argue with that? Christ we can assume had to have acted on his love for the Jews, and that's why he spent so much time healing them, for example.

Well, we all know what happens when we assume. So rather than assume we know what Jesus' motive was, let's see what he actually said about it. John 9:2-3 (NRSV) gives us the answer:

As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. ...

Did Christ say that his love for the Jews was the reason he was to restore this man's sight?

[Tcg]

JW wants us to comb through all four gospels counting the number of verses quoting Christ bragging and the number of verses in which he does not brag. Half of those verses would number 1890 (rounded). So if we can find 1891 verses or more that quote Christ's bragging, then JW presumably would admit that Christ was egotistical. If the number of verses is "only" 1890 or less, then we have failed to demonstrate that Christ was egotistical.

If we were able to provide 1891 verses that reveal Jesus bragging about his greatness, I suspect we'd then be faced with about 3782 paragraphs explaining that Jesus' bragging in those verses wasn't bragging.

Obviously, in addition to counting all those verses being for practical purposes nearly impossible, JW has a logical fallacy in his reasoning. There is no need to "count beans" to conclude if a person's words betray egotism. Just one arrogant quotation can do the trick.

Indeed, and as we have already seen, there are many quotes that qualify.

I think my main point is that apologists often get desperate when the evidence weighs against their beliefs. When that happens, they will come up with the most bizarre arguments. I don't know about you, but never before have I been directed to take a tally of the number of sentences in a collection of books to determine if a character in those books had a particular character trait. I don't think that's good psychology.

I agree, it is an absurd request. This is an extreme example but it gets the point across -> It'd be like claiming that we'd have to show that Jeffery Dahmer murdered half the people he ever met before concluding that he was a serial murderer.

People that have pathological character traits don't display them constantly or even often in most cases. A tally of how often they do isn't needed to conclude that they have them.


Tcg

[unknown soldier]

People that have pathological character traits don't display them constantly or even often in most cases. A tally of how often they do isn't needed to conclude that they have them.

I've tried to explain that to Tam about Christ. She thinks she can demonstrate his wonderful nature by posting some Bible passages in which he said or did something that at least superficially appears to be nice. She doesn't seem to understand that those who speak of love can be very dangerous and evil men.