Here's my summary of what I really think on the subject.
To start with a positive I think the message in the Parable of the Good Samaritan is definitely a great teaching, and the story that is used to convey it could hardly be improved on.
I'm not sure that we can really blame the historical Jesus for tearing apart families, which is a typical feature of cults. Jesus apparently did call on disciples to follow him, but perhaps their wives came too. Certainly in the era following his death, Paul speaks of Peter being accompanied by his wife. In Matthew 10 we find an extreme statement: "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." I could be wrong, but my best guess is that Jesus did not say this. Many of the texts in the gospels were inserted later by the church to meet its needs. It strikes me that this text deals with a life situation (Sitz im Leben) for the church decades after the time of Jesus, when the family might try to pull a recent convert away from the church, and the church just as much as the modern Moonies would tell their adherent that nothing is more important than his imaginary friend in heaven.
For much of the rest of his teaching I would say not so great.
He was, as I have mentioned before, an apocalyptic prophet who thought the world was going to end in his generation, most likely, was going to end in just a few years, and that colored almost all his teaching.
He was quite serious in his exhortation to take no thought for the morrow, because he believed there weren't going to be many morrows left.
What is precisely dangerous about his teaching is that he had considerable rhetorical talent. e.g., "Consider the lilies of the field, they spin not, neither do they toil, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these." The poetry impresses, and so does the hyperbole of a demand to "sell all that you have and give it to the poor" bad advice though it is.
BTW, with few exceptions like the Good Samaritan the parables are not moral teachings at all; they are analogies to convey his belief that the Kingdom of God will arrive soon and suddenly when many do not expect it.
Another objectionable feature of his teaching is the introduction of thought crimes, which would give so many people a guilty conscience. It's murder if you are temporarily pissed off with someone, and it's adultery if you look appreciatively at an attractive woman's cleavage ... which I certainly can't stop myself from doing.
Since the end is nigh for Jesus, marriage is contraindicated. It's better to be a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, which poor Origen apparently took literally a few centuries later. And of course Paul followed Jesus in the anti-marriage view, because for him too the end was near. Fundamentalists who prate away about "family values" would be hard pressed to find any support in the New Testament.
I have to mention one extreme teaching in particular, Jesus' well-known emphasis on non-violence. I think that both Gandhi and Martin Luther King traced their inspiration back to Jesus: turn the other cheek, if someone asks for your coat, give him your cloak also. It may have inspired them, but that was not what Jesus was talking about in his historical context. Again, the end is nigh, there is no point in standing up for your rights because God will soon wind up everything. I believe it was really Gandhi who added the essential element of confrontation, which made the method so effective. As for being a way to live apart from political confrontations, it is ridiculous to turn the other cheek. It's contrary to all our human instincts which include a demand for fair and equitable treatment.
To start with a positive I think the message in the Parable of the Good Samaritan is definitely a great teaching, and the story that is used to convey it could hardly be improved on.
I'm not sure that we can really blame the historical Jesus for tearing apart families, which is a typical feature of cults. Jesus apparently did call on disciples to follow him, but perhaps their wives came too. Certainly in the era following his death, Paul speaks of Peter being accompanied by his wife. In Matthew 10 we find an extreme statement: "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." I could be wrong, but my best guess is that Jesus did not say this. Many of the texts in the gospels were inserted later by the church to meet its needs. It strikes me that this text deals with a life situation (Sitz im Leben) for the church decades after the time of Jesus, when the family might try to pull a recent convert away from the church, and the church just as much as the modern Moonies would tell their adherent that nothing is more important than his imaginary friend in heaven.
For much of the rest of his teaching I would say not so great.
He was, as I have mentioned before, an apocalyptic prophet who thought the world was going to end in his generation, most likely, was going to end in just a few years, and that colored almost all his teaching.
He was quite serious in his exhortation to take no thought for the morrow, because he believed there weren't going to be many morrows left.
What is precisely dangerous about his teaching is that he had considerable rhetorical talent. e.g., "Consider the lilies of the field, they spin not, neither do they toil, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these." The poetry impresses, and so does the hyperbole of a demand to "sell all that you have and give it to the poor" bad advice though it is.
BTW, with few exceptions like the Good Samaritan the parables are not moral teachings at all; they are analogies to convey his belief that the Kingdom of God will arrive soon and suddenly when many do not expect it.
Another objectionable feature of his teaching is the introduction of thought crimes, which would give so many people a guilty conscience. It's murder if you are temporarily pissed off with someone, and it's adultery if you look appreciatively at an attractive woman's cleavage ... which I certainly can't stop myself from doing.
Since the end is nigh for Jesus, marriage is contraindicated. It's better to be a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, which poor Origen apparently took literally a few centuries later. And of course Paul followed Jesus in the anti-marriage view, because for him too the end was near. Fundamentalists who prate away about "family values" would be hard pressed to find any support in the New Testament.
I have to mention one extreme teaching in particular, Jesus' well-known emphasis on non-violence. I think that both Gandhi and Martin Luther King traced their inspiration back to Jesus: turn the other cheek, if someone asks for your coat, give him your cloak also. It may have inspired them, but that was not what Jesus was talking about in his historical context. Again, the end is nigh, there is no point in standing up for your rights because God will soon wind up everything. I believe it was really Gandhi who added the essential element of confrontation, which made the method so effective. As for being a way to live apart from political confrontations, it is ridiculous to turn the other cheek. It's contrary to all our human instincts which include a demand for fair and equitable treatment.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people — House
