Did Christ attract the wrong sort?

[marco]

Jesus attracted the sick, the blind, the leprous, the downtrodden, the deaf and dumb. Powerful people killed him. Jesus achieved what Paul and later churchmen wanted.

Muhammad attracted warriors who fought for him and what Muhammad wanted, Muhammad achieved.

Christ wasn't sure of things: he would return on a cloud some day. Muhammad was clear: he was able to bargain with God. Jesus didn't know the day or hour and said eye had not seen nor ear heard, exactly what an ignorant person would say. Muhammad knew about heaven's upholstery, to the very colour of the couches on which would sit maidens waiting for his faithful warriors.


"Who do men say that I am?" asked the hesitant Christ.

"This is my Prophet - respect him," said God through Muhammad. Christ had 600 years of a start on Islam, but already Islam has caught up.


Was Jesus inferior to Muhammad as a builder of religion?

Does Christ's lack of knowledge, his hiding in metaphors, reduce him in status?

Does the fact that Muhammad gave us God's own book, while Jesus gave us nothing but air, make Muhammad a better tradesman, a better founder of religion?

[Mithrae]

[Replying to post 7 by Mithrae]

The accomplishment, if it indeed was not Jesus' intention as you say, was solely that of his followers, Jesus convinced almost no-one with the theology he proposed being largely hijacked by those few followers and gained traction far away, 100 years later. Indeed people who knew him and saw his deeds did not believe him to be remarkable or theologically interesting at all. Only his few friends seemed to believe anything of the man, almost everyone else in the wider community considered him completely un-noteworthy.

The gospels claim that Jesus drew crowds numbering in the thousands on at least a couple of occasions. Acts suggests that there were some five thousand disciples in Jerusalem within a few years of Jesus' death. Those numbers may or may not be exaggerated; the latter would have been around 5-8% of Jerusalem's permanent population for example, so not obviously implausible. Both Jesus himself and later his brother as the leader of the Jerusalem church were killed at the instigation of the chief priests, which certainly implies some degree of notoriety. In fact as Josephus records the execution of Jesus' brother James and some others was carried out by the Jews themselves against Roman law, seizing a perceived opportunity in between procurators, but resulted in the swift replacement of that high priest: From the scanty information left to us after the ravages of the wars we can really only guess, but it may well be that the Christian sect had become quite a thorn in the Sadducees' side.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_ ... r_of_Jesus

[marco]

Jesus attracted the sick, the blind, the leprous, the downtrodden, the deaf and dumb. Powerful people killed him. Jesus achieved what Paul and later churchmen wanted.

My only response would be:

1. Jesus didn't attract the wrong sort, but rather came for those that the world considers the wrong sort.

2. What the world considers "winning" is, in the end, loss, and what the world considers "losing" is, in the end, victory.

For both, thanks be to God.

I have no problem with this response. To see the cosmos in a grain of sand or read magnificence in a leper's gratitude - these are miracles in themselves, and praiseworthy. If Christ's aim was to elevate the humble and put down the mighty from their seat - this is laudable, but unfortunately the lowly remain low and the powerful prevail, still. But then if his "kingdom was not of this world" who can argue about his success? We must wait and see - or not.

[marco]

...

Is the fact that Muhammad gave us God's own book, while Jesus gave us nothing but air, make Muhammad a better tradesman, a better founder of religion?

And the book says:

…The Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, was but a messenger of Allah …. …believe in Allah and His messengers. ..
Surat An-Nis�' 4:171
http://quran.com/4/171


If Allah and Muhammed are so great, why don’t people believe that and what Jesus said?

They do believe in Jesus and in Allah and in Muhammad, 1213. Jesus is just one of the many messengers of God. Muhammad, the final Prophet, brought the ultimate truth, filling the gaps that Jesus didn't fill. Instead of the Holy Spirit, God sent Muhammad. Or so it is thought.

[marco]

What exactly is 'the wrong sort' marco?

I am being Devil's advocate, William. Christianity has jogged along for 2000 years and Islam for 1400, and Islam is fast catching up, and may overtake. So I am asking, did Jesus recruit in the wrong places? Maybe he didn't, but I am suggesting that blind, deaf and dumb people don't make good soldiers, though I can perfectly well see that in a paradoxical way they MAY be the best recruits.

Specifically, the Christian heaven is traditionally summoned by harps and chanting cherubim; the Islamic heaven is sensual and deliciously enticing. Do people really want to hear more church music? Crafty Muhammad left the singing and sack cloth aside and summoned beauties. Far from being sinful, sex is supreme - as he of course would have known.

I don't think that Jesus was about attempting to found a religion,

And I don't think Jesus thought so either but religions have sprung from his conundrums like mushrooms on morning hillsides, all with strange names. Built on Christ's body is the Vatican whose great church holds the stone figures of the faithful twelve. This is what ambiguity and woolly phraseology beget.

Jesus appears to be more focused upon encouraging humans to think about the next phase of life in regard to how they behave in this one.

Maybe. There's not much one can do with a sealed container, but guess its contents. The Koran, on the other hand, deals with the specifics of heaven and perhaps dwells on the quality of the water and the pomegranates found there. Such a pity we never had a head to head with M and J, but it is reported that Jesus was one of the incidentals that Muhammad met when he ascended into Paradise. At a stroke Jesus could have avoided confusion by saying simply that a false prophet called Muhammad would try to usurp his throne.... or some such unambiguous warning. He forgot.

[marco]

I think we both know that - even granting the dubious assumption that numerical or political success was the ultimate goal - had Jesus tried to do it in a way similar to Muhammad his uprising almost certainly would have been crushed by Rome and his name remembered, if at all, as nothing more than a failed and foolish would-be conqueror. An argument that Muhammad's way of doing things was superior seems singularly unconvincing in that light.

That is arguing for Christ's impotence, Mithrae. If the purpose was to fail with rsounding success, then your supposed results would not be so. Out of the tomb came sweetness and eternal life. The land of Christ was filled with Roman mercenaries. Muhammad's enemies were all around him too. A clever sermon from God might change everything - and of course if the messenger were genuine, Roman mercenaries and Arab tribesemen would be as stubble.

that was done very successfully by his followers and in the millennia since has been accomplished beyond their wildest imagination. Even a first-rate Plato couldn't have dreamed of his ideas being so widely read.

Not really. The bloodshed that has resulted down the centuries was NOT Christ's message. The horrors experienced by Christ's own tribe, as being guilty of deicide, was surely not in his plan. Because Christ's message about vines and ways and lambs and shepherds and neighbours and wedding garments is so ambiguous, his crazy "This is my body!" so ripe for literal interpretation, he has certainly attracted multitudes but they have been fed on the food of others, not on his bread of life.

[marco]

The accomplishment, if it indeed was not Jesus' intention as you say, was solely that of his followers, Jesus convinced almost no-one with the theology he proposed being largely hijacked by those few followers and gained traction far away, 100 years later. Indeed people who knew him and saw his deeds did not believe him to be remarkable or theologically interesting at all. Only his few friends seemed to believe anything of the man, almost everyone else in the wider community considered him completely un-noteworthy.

The multitudes who embraced Christianity were influenced more by the sword than the word. The threat of being burned alive wonderfully concentrates the mind on a Christian message, but it wasn't Christ's message.


Perhaps the people who could best inform us were his own family, who came to rescue their sick relative but were coldly rejected. Maybe Jesus was afraid of what truths they might offer. A prophet is not recognised in his own land - it seems - and yet when someone rises to glory these days, they are best celebrated in their home town. Surely it was ever so.

[1213]

…They do believe in Jesus and in Allah and in Muhammad, 1213. Jesus is just one of the many messengers of God. Muhammad, the final Prophet, brought the ultimate truth, filling the gaps that Jesus didn't fill. Instead of the Holy Spirit, God sent Muhammad. Or so it is thought.

That makes me wonder, if Jesus is God’s prophet and they believe it, why don’t they believe what Jesus said? Was their God incompetent when he sent Jesus as His messenger?

[William]

[Replying to post 14 by marco]

I am being Devil's advocate, William.