5:39
A quick note before we begin: I use the ESV translation, as it is the easiest to read while - as far as I can tell when comparing its OT to the JPS (Jewish Publication Society) - keeping as close to the original meaning as possible, at least in Hebrew. In either case, I also used a website called biblehub.com to confirm that most mainstream translation carry similar wordings. Each section heading will contain a link to the comparisons, unless the particular "lesson" takes up multipe verses - for some reason, biblehub can't handle that. These will be linked to biblegateway.com. They have a prettier, more intuitive interface anyway. You just need to do some work yourself to make the comparison.Fuck that. I decided to make it easy for you morons out there who hate doing your own research. Don't say I never did anything for you: I could've just stuck with them, or not even given you a link and made you look it up yourself. You probably have a bible somewhere at home as it is.
As you can see, 5:39 (and it's surrounding passages) look pretty good at first. All about turning the other cheek, etc. But look at that first sentence again: "Do not resist the one who is evil". All well and good when you are the victim, but what if you are a third party to evil? I checked: there is no scenario where Jesus has a witness to evil attempt to stop it, at least in Matthew. And no, that "go and sin no more" incident in John is not Jesus resisting "evil": he was stopping a (at the time) lawful execution. Nor is the Good Samaritan an example: that is the Samaritan picking up after the evil has happened, not seeing or stopping an evil in front of him. What would Jesus do if an evil was happening in front of him? Given both the passages afterwards and what I know of the bible, I think he would - at best - do nothing.
Realize what Jesus is saying about what you should do. Turn the other cheek. Give him your tunic. Walk with him further. That isn't just passiveness, that is outright appeasement and rewarding of evil. What would Jesus have you do to someone stealing in front of you? Murdering in front of you? Why would one of the (allegedly) great moral teachers have you be passive in such a situation, when every other one would tell you to stop that motherfucker?
...let's move one before I pop a blood vessel, shall we?
5:27-29
Ah yes, thought crime the first. You can't even think "damn she's hot" without being condemned by this asshole. Not to mention this completely redefines adultery from "sex with a woman while you're married to another woman" to "even thinking about how hot a woman is when that woman isn't married to you." It removes the actual action, and it removes the requirement that you actually be married to commit the crime. Why anybody would consider thought policing - especially anybody in America of all places - a good thing is entirely beyond me.
5:31-32
I like to call this one "Jesus the wife-beater". If you don't get why, let me spell this out for you: A man can be as abusive to his wife as he wants. Kick her, rape her (well, TODAY'S definition of "rape". Spousal rape wasn't a thing back then), cut her, burn her, whatever. So long as she doesn't die, she can't get out of the relationship. She's stuck with the sunovabitch. And even if she DOES get out of it somehow, she can never marry again, but the man can. What the blue bloody bumfuck is that? Who the blue bloody hell thinks people are that damn good, especially if you think that we live in a "fallen" world? Or are women property to you, like slaves are?
6:25-33
Now this is one I'm always surprised to see, because the GOP and conservatives - who always cry about their "Christian Values (TM)" are always praising worth ethic, when their "savior" is saying "don't worry, mon. Jus' sit back and relax, da lord'll provide for ya." It is encouraging you to not do shit other than sit on your knees and pray. That's all it wants you to do. Don't do shit but eat, shit, sleep, and pray. Hell, I'm unemployed and I STILL do more work than Jesus wants me to, and most of you assholes think the unemployed are just lazy bums. Such hypocrisy is astounding.
8:21-22
Jesus encourages you here to ditch your family if they don't agree with you. Granted, this is only implied here and not outright stated, but it's a pretty strong implication. Who are the "dead bury[ing] the dead"? The people left behind by Jesus' followers. Why are they being left behind? Because they don't believe in Jesus. We call groups that encourage such disconnections "cults". And that word does NOT have a good connotation, partially because of this very practice.
8:28-34
Ah, the famous story of the pig exorcism. You remember this one, right? Where Jesus exorcises Legion from the pigs, who then run off of a cliff. Of course, you have to wonder: who did these pigs belong to? If they were wild, why are they called "pigs" and not "boars"? Granted, I do not know if there is a difference in Greek, but assuming there is, and that it reads for the domesticated variety, this passage shows Jesus effectively stealing someones livelihood. Goodbye, lots of money I need to feed my family! And why couldn't Jesus just cast them into the aether as he usually does in his exorcisms? Because the demons asked? Since when does he listen to them? It would appear that Jesus doesn't give a damn about anyone but himself.
10:34-39, 12:46-50
Remember what I said about how it was implicitly suggested you should ditch your family? Yeah...not so much here. Here, it's outright asserted. You SHOULD do that if they don't believe as you do. So much for "family values" here, eh?
13:10-13
Here we have Jesus admitting that he is intentionally tricking those who honestly and earnestly come to him for knowledge. He tells us he speaks in such a way that only a few people - who have some secret knowledge - will understand, while everyone else - those who trust him, but don't have this knowledge, included in this category - will misunderstand what he has to say. Any teacher who did this nowadays and did not correct his students' errors would be considered guilty of misconduct at best and of fraud at worst. Oh, and if you think that he actually cares about those who DO have the secret knowledge, I suggest you read
13:24-30
where he encourages letting those who do not understand flood out those that do understand, possibly convincing those that do into a wrong understanding of his teaching, thus having more "weeds" (to use the term he does) than he started with. If anything, this shows that he does not actually give a damn about you, or anyone else, at all.
15:21-28
I suggest you read that again. Yes, that is indeed Jesus comparing someone to a dog. Yes, this is a racist passage in the bible. An intentionally, explicitly racist passage in the god damned motherfucking bible. You did indeed read that right.
20:1-16
This one isn't bad morality, per se, but it is fucking stupid, and does technically encourage sloth. It's really just a bad analogy about pay, where everyone gets the same set amount of money whether they worked one hour or twelve. The analogy falls apart when you realize that the wages being talked about are infinite, so nobody really has room to complain, which is why it's bad.
21:18-19
And finally, we have the famous fig tree, with more destruction of property, where Jesus destroys someone else's fig tree, but this time it isn't to save someone else. This time is because the tree doesn't have any fruit for him to take. So not only is Jesus stealing, he's destroying something because it doesn't have anything to steal.
Join me next time when I go through Mark for this stuff. It can't get much worse, right? No. It actually most likely can.
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