Neither This nor That

(Being Jesus Part VIII)

Look at God's chosen Christians, slaughtering Muslims in the name of Christ. Do you think they follow the teachings of Jesus?

Both Jesus and Mohammed (I realize that some professed followers of both have preferred spelling that doesn’t match mine) seemed to have something entirely different in mind than either the “Christian Crusades” or the modern-day “Muslim Jihad.”

While a case can be made for both the Crusades and Jihad from a microscopic and myopic view of the “Holy Writ” of each group, both men stood for something entirely different.

Of course, where Islam beats Christianity hands down, is the fact that Muslims can point with pride that it was Muhammad (one of the “preferred” ways to spell it) who penned the Qur’an, whereas Christians only have quotes of Yeshua (ditto on the “preferred” spelling bit) from which to draw their conclusions.

Why bring this up? Only because I woke up with it firmly in my mind this morning and asked Dad, if I was supposed to write about it.

Whether you believe it is, of course, up to you, but Christians and Muslims have the same Dad. Arguably, most adherents on either side of the fence don’t believe that our Dad can guide the other, the extremists get their guidance not merely from what is written, but somebody else’s interpretation of what is written.

Both sides have extremes that prefer splitting hairs over miniscule bits of “scripture” which, according to some more moderate language experts within each camp, are apparently mistranslated as a means to justify their misguided hatred of each other.

Now that that’s out of the way, can we get down to the business at hand; what the hell does that have to do with you?

I’ve had devout Christians try to convince me that Islam is a religion hatched by demons. Oh? Perhaps the same could be said about Christianity, inasmuch that more than a few Christians refuse one staple of Jesus’ intent, er, uh, does the following little tidbit ring any bells:

Here is another good Christian fellow following the teachings of Jesus.

“It was said of old, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ but I say unto you, love your enemies, do only good for those who inflict harm upon you.”

The ignoring of this by many of the conservative bent in Christianity is just one of the myriad reasons I refuse to call myself a Christian and certainly and emphatically correct anyone else who attempts to place that label on me.

I saw a bumper sticker not too long ago that almost caused me to be guilty of reckless driving …I was laughing that hard. “Kill a whale for Jesus sake.” I realize it made no sense at all …well and again, unless we look at the crazy seeming reasons that religious people use to justify their positions.

I get e-mail frequently that suggests I’ve been led astray. Good grief, that’s not hard to admit …and many times over. There, does that help you somewhat? I want to point out that the religious people of both Jesus/Yeshua’s era and Mohammed/Muhammad’s era said the same thing about both Mohammed and Jesus.

Really, they play for the same team...just ask God...really.

Do I put myself in the same class as Jesus and Mohammed – well, to quote something Jesus purportedly said, “A disciple, when fully formed, will be exactly like his teacher.” To the extent that a large contingent of Jesus’ religion of birth said he was led by Satan himself, I guess I qualify …at least in that regard (one “man of the cloth” wrote that I was a servant of Satan not too long ago) Mohammed had the same kinds of challenges from the same source; people of his birth-religion …which, by the way was a form of Judaism practiced by many Arabs of that era. Interesting, what?

Here is why some of you may want to “hear” what I have to say: I decry that I am anything special, meaning I make the same stance Jesus made. Any individual, that’s you, that’s me, will do the very same things he did, including raising people from the dead, healing myriad diseases, giving sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf.

Ryan chided me in a recent podcast for being like those who are already relegated to a residence at a loony bin for saying I was Jesus …it’s worse than that, I say, “I AM,” but just as Jesus said that he didn’t say it, but rather our SPIRIT-PARENT in him spoke the words, it ain’t me saying it folks.

My question to you is, when are you going to start? Being Jesus.

I AM.

This entry was posted on August 8, 2011 at 10:49 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Perspective Seven Secrets by Ryan Bruce 1 Comment