JESUS WAS A THREATENING MORAL BULLY

Jesus said that it was worse to ignore his message that the reign of God was at hand than to ignore a message to repent (Luke 10). He prescribed insults and curses for those who did not accept the coming of the kingdom. He never picked like that on people who would not repent. He commanded that his disciples must wipe of the dust off their sandals, the dust of the sceptical town. That was a major insult and implies that the townspeople are so hated that the missionaries cannot bear to have their dust on their sandals. Pure and utter bigotry. It was more important to believe something than to regret and make amends for hurting others!
 
Perhaps repentance and faith go together and saying the kingdom is near implies that repentance must be done soon? But repentance and a specific KIND of faith do not go together. What would thinking the kingdom is around the corner have to do with repenting? You can repent without it or any religious dogma. The extreme urgency of the message implies that the door to Heaven was soon to be closed and soon as in a matter of days. There would be no point in God keeping the world anymore in that case and it would be brutally devastated by divine power and some would be safe in the kingdom. Seemingly, Jesus thought the world was about to end. It didn't so he was just another maniacal fake prophet.
 
For a religious teacher to threaten anybody because they would not repent fast enough even though there was no immediate hurry would be counter-productive. Jesus seems to have realised that for he stopped the ranting soon after emerging on the early pages of the gospels foaming at the mouth. Jesus knew he had to be nice to sinners to change them. And he partied with them. It is still true that his initial warning about the kingdom coming near implied that immediate repentance was being called for.

The episode may suggest that time was running out for sinners. Christians say that Jesus died to save the people who wanted to be saved. If so, maybe he meant that nobody sinful could change after his death so everybody then would be barred from Heaven. The time to repent was at his death or before it. This would make impostors of Paul and declare Christianity since his death to be apostate and satanic for it still preaches repentance and tells us we can go to Heaven.

If feelings of hate and resentment are there against your will God does not blame you. This shows that God belief cannot work to make everyone forgiving and even condones mercilessness up to a point.  The point is that if you can stop it then stop it. Otherwise it will have to do.  Yet Jesus pretended his teaching on forgiveness was so useful that it was worth trying to enforce!  In practice it has done more harm than good for he offered a loophole and tried to hurt those who were hurt.   He kicked those who were down by making them feel unspiritual and evil.  He led them to feel as if they could not object to what the harmful person did to them for they were made to think, "I cannot complain about what Tom did to me when I am deliberately reliving it and thus hurting myself."

Nowhere in the Bible, not even when Jesus was active in the New Testament, does God or any prophet indicate that forgiving wrong is fine or even praiseworthy when the offender does not repent.  Jesus expressly rejected that kind of forgiveness in Matthew 18.  In that story, Jesus says God will be like the man who forgave the servant.  The servant abused that forgiveness and would not forgive others so the master changed his mind.  The parable is about how one cannot be forgiven unless one admits what evil one did and wants forgiveness so help him become a better person who shows the same mercy to others as he got.  For Jesus, there is no duty to pardon that man.  And there is no wisdom in forgiving somebody who does not want to be affected positively and spiritually by being forgiven by you.

Forgiveness without the demand for repentance is not the way God does things and he does not let us do it either for it solves nothing and ignores the fact that the sinner offending you is a slave to sin and in danger of creating judgement and condemnation for herself or himself.  God would be offended if we forgive without caring if the person repents!  That is sort of siding with the sinner against God. 

Jesus did advocate that if somebody hurts you several times a day you must forgive.  He said that those who judge - ie fall out with another will be themselves judged.  He said the one who does not forgive will not be forgiven.  Yet we know nobody has the right to pressure anyone to forgive.  Or to threaten.  You cannot really forgive if you are being bullied into it.  We know nobody has even the right to ask another to forgive somebody.  What they need support for is in learning to feel less bad over what happened.  You don't need to forgive to move on.   

Jesus was a moral bully and his legacy has destroyed countless people.



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