Russell Brand said it perfectly: You'd think if Jesus was that concerned about homosexuality

[dixiegrrrrl]

You'd think if Jesus was that concerned about homosexuality he had the perfect opportunity to address the issue in his top ten dos and don'ts.

[roguevalley]

1. he was silent on it and also abortion

read Number 5:11-33 if you want to know what God thinks of abortion. You might be pleasantly surprised.

[arcane1]

5. Or Hoseah 13:16, for that matter.

[roguevalley]

13. I believe the bible is the history and emotional

status of the times. God if he is a father would never choose among his children who should die and who should live. A father loves his children and wants their best. I think that a lot of fuckers do bad things and use God as a shield. God is not in the middle of war or hatred in MO. I think that we are alone them. We are the architects of our own misery. God teaches love and caring. People who say otherwise are just showing their own psychopathic BS.

IMHO.

[arcane1]

22. Bill Maher calls it "laundering your hate through God"

And that's the best description I've ever seen of what you mention: a lot of fuckers do bad things and use God as a shield.

[bulloney]

48. Maher also called the Old Testament the Jewish book of fairy tales.

I consider it an accurate description when you read things like a 600 year old man building a boat large enough to carry two of every species of animals on the planet; people conversing with a snake; a man spending 3 days in the belly of a fish (whale?) and survived; that an all-knowing god knew enough to create a male and female of every species except his own and supposedly put the man to sleep and created a female version from his rib, and on and on.

[Human101948]

29. Jesus was as gay as they come...

Never married. Hung out and partied with a dozen other guys. Do I need to say more?

[libdem4life]

44. Gay Hippie, you mean...forgot the Long Hair.

[mikehiggins]

50. You seem to be overlooking Mary Magdalene (SP?) just like the Church fathers did

It seems Ms. M was a lady who had a very close relationship with God's kid. Later on, when the approved versions of the Gospels were chosen she was saddled with a rep as a harlot, etc., which might have been total crap. We'll never know since the stuff we read today was put out about a couple of centuries after JC bought the farm. All the eyewitnesses were just so much dust by then.

Another question might be did Christ ever masturbate? He was supposed to be a man, after all, as well as God. It would appear he would have gone through puberty sometime before he was thirty. As all guys can testify, the only people who claim they never masturbated are liars.

Lots of questions to be asked. No reason to care one way or another.

People who claim Christ condemns gays, or masturbators, or Republicans, are just looking for justification, not validation. Keep in mind the Words of Obama: If I walked on water, the Republicans would say I can't swim.

Everyone should live their lives and let God sort 'em out in the end.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

2. Jesus may have had little input into the Ten Commandments

since he wasn't born yet.

And there is a bit about coveting thy neighbor's ass, whatever that meant.

[ForgoTheConsequence]

16. If you believe the Bible he existed before he was born.

And has always existed along with God the Father and the Holy Spirit.

[Major Nikon]

30. Actually the only evidence for this in the bible is a forgery

The concept of the Holy Trinity was developed centuries after the death of Jesus out of a political need to deify Christ. The biblical evidence against the concept of the Holy Trinity is actually pretty overwhelming. Not even all Christians believe in it.

[libdem4life]

47. It was the pagan Sun Worshipping ruler Constantine back in the 300s or so who finally decreed

the Trinity so that the Christian Bishops would stop their squabbles. Not sure how Holy that is.

[Buzz Clik]

26. +1 for the ass

[awoke_in_2003]

65. I once coveted a neighbor's ass

too bad she was married

[Rex]

3. He must have meant Moses, Jesus was a long away future entity.

People back then were more worried about property rights, slave ownage and other chattel. Looking back on the 10 commandments, one could say they are the largest failure in western civilization.

[Bluenorthwest]

4. Things Jesus actually did say include never pray in public and never call any man Father but

entire religions pretend that Jesus said 'Call me Holy Father and the rest of them just Father while constantly praying out loud so everyone can hear you, it's better if people can hear how holy you are, God listens more if you have a TV audience'.

The Rick Warren Oath Prayer show. Had they followed Jesus' orders they'd not swear any oath at all because Jesus forbade them, hold no public prayer to consecrate this forbidden oath because public prayer is also forbidden. But they did all this, this honor to an anti gay preacher, in the name of Jesus who said not to do any of it at all and had nothing against gay people. He said anyone who prays in public is a hypocrite. He said oaths come from evil. So they pray on TV and take an oath 'for Jesus' while claiming gay people are the heathen.

[saturnsring]

8. MATTHEW 6.6

The Lord's Prayer
5"When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. 6"But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. 7"And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words.…

[saturnsring]

6. excpt jesus didnt write the 10 commandments

[Major Nikon]

18. Sure he did

Jebus, his daddy, and the holy poltergeist are totally the same entity even though there's no unedited reference to the Trinity in the canonical gospels (there was one unauthorized reference to the Holy Trinity inserted centuries later). The suggestion that Christianity isn't actually a monotheist religion would have gotten you burned at the stake for heresy not all that long ago.

[whatthehey]

31. So. You don't buy the Trinity then. Technically still a heresy that.

[NightWatcher]

7. Russell proving once again that he's no Mensa member

All he had to say was "god" instead of Jesus and he'd had a better joke.

[Bluenorthwest]

9. In Brand's defense Jesus preached on and on and never got around to amending that

list to include 'don't be gay'. He had years to do so. He couldn't take ten minutes away from making water into wine to get it said? The Sermon on the Mount is pages long, blessed are these, blessed are those but not one blessed word about 'those people'.

I often think modern Christianity is an active reversal of the things Jesus suggested, most of which Christians really don't like. Sell what you own and give it to the poor. As if!

[saturnsring]

37. if i sell everything i own and give it to the poor - then they will not be looked upon so favorably

because they are not so poor but I will be poor so the newly not-so-poor will have to give me what I gave them making them poor again and me not-so-poor so now I have to give it to them which will make them not-so-poor

[GeorgeGist]

12. He reminds me of Dennis Miller ...

not funny.

[bobthedrummer]

10. Jesus did have a lot to say about protecting children, unlike the history of tptb, right? Jesus

also condemned all the religious hypocrites, priests and their political power structure.

I know you're no hypocrite, dixiegrrrrl. Below is a gift for all that love the truth and despise hypocrisy.

Chapter 21-Omaha
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016139460

[Major Nikon]

19. On the morning Jesus was arrested, they found him with a nude boy

Mark 14:51-52

Just sayin'.

[uriel1972]

21. Who had drunk of the "Milk" of the "Lord"...

Make of that what you will...
It's in the BOOK go read it if you don't believe me.

[Major Nikon]

23. The tale of "the disciple that Jesus loved" makes for interesting reading

[lancer78]

59. wow

I guess parts of the new testament are a homo-erotic thriller.

[Major Nikon]

60. John 13:3-17 is ate up with the podophilia

[uriel1972]

20. What on Earth is TPTB?

Enquiring minds want to know.

[wickerwoman]

24. The powers that be?

Guessing

[bobthedrummer]

55. Of course it's the powers that be/tptb, wickerwoman, aka shadow government etc...

Chapter 21-Omaha
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016139460

[Angry Dragon]

25. The Powers That Be

[Coventina]

11. Fail. The "10 Commandments" predate Jesus.

What Brand should have said is that if Jesus was worried about homosexuality he would have been married and quit hanging out with a homo-social group of guys.

[whatthehey]

32. Another one who doesn't get the Trinity is still official Christian teaching.

[padfun]

36. The seven Gods dont like you talking about Trinities.

They will smite you if you continue.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

14. This is mindblowingly stupid.

Quite apart from the authorship of the 10 commandments, Jesus came from a culture where homosexuality was near-universally considered wicked.

As Russell Brand says, if he'd disagreed strongly with that, he'd have said something about it.

Since he didn't, it's a fairly safe assumption that he agreed with everyone else.

[wickerwoman]

27. Well, not wicked, just not butch.

In Roman culture, as long as you were on top it was fine. It was just taking the "girl" part that opened you up for ridicule. There were no Classical gods that considered homosexuality "evil" in the sense that modern evangelicals mean it. It's just an undesirable quality like being bald, fat or having a stutter.

And the Greeks thought homosexuality between men was a positive virtue that developed intellect and character. Many of the Near Eastern courts practiced Greek customs and had both boys and girls in harems.

[uriel1972]

28. Unfortunately for those men who preferred men in Judea...

There was a powerful social move against such practices at the time as being "Foreign/Greek"

[Bluenorthwest]

33. Jesus lived under the rule of the Romans. Did they think it was wicked?

Why not really, no. Same for the Greeks. The Greeks had left Helleistic Judaism which was a form that much like today's paradigms, did not see religious laws as appropriate in secular society while the more traditional Judaism was into that rule by the book.

[Nye Bevan]

38. So when he said "love your neighbor as yourself",

you think he didn't mean that literally? That gay neighbors were implicitly excluded from that statement?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

61. Do you think adulterers were included or excluded?

My guess is that Jesus thought homosexuality was a sin, just like adultery.

He opposed the stoning of the woman taken in adultery, but he also said to her "go forth and sin no more".

[joeybee12]

15. None of the quotes from Jesus in the Bible mention homosexuality...

Clearly wasn't a concern of his.

[uriel1972]

17. Maybe he thought Leviticus and the three lots of 10 commandments...

were enough to settle the matter.

[Bluenorthwest]

34. As the OP clearly points out, the 10 commandments don't say a word about it.

Also, a great deal of Jesus material revolved around his views on 'The Law' of Moses and he is recorded as being asked many questions about those laws, in rather great detail.
So just like when God the First made the Top Ten Lists, the whole gay thing just did not make the cut in the Jesus letters. He got around to saying you can get your sheep out of a ditch on the Sabbath, very pressing issue to all persons. He managed to take a view opposed to Moses on divorce which he forbade, and remarriage which he called prostitution. However he never got around to 'the gay'. Could have. Didn't. Nor did Big Daddy Sinai with his Desert Island Do's and Don'ts.

[uriel1972]

39. There are three sets of ten commandments in the Bible...

Two are The Laws and Commandments of God, which are similar and number ten each and are commanly thought of as the "Ten Commandments", but not labeled as such.
However, there is a third titled The Ten Commandments, which is mostly concerned with ritual/belief.

Just a FYI

[mikehiggins]

58. Leviticus? Is that the one that forbids tattoos?

I love seeing the morons sporting their Leviticus quoting tats.

I keep resisting the temptation to ask them if they know what irony is.

I don't particularly dislike homosexuals. I do dislike stupid people, however.

Oh, and Republicans...

[sarge43]

40. No, not specifically

however, he did say he had come not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it (Matt 5:17). To him the law was the Torah, first five book of the Bible which includes Leviticus 18:22 "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."

[joeybee12]

46. You're supposing that that was the law he meant...

Anyway, I don't think he even existed and if he did, then most of what is attributed to what he said or did was made up.

[uriel1972]

49. I don't think he existed either...

and that this would only be a matter of academic interest, if only people weren't trying to run countries and legal systems based on what this probably fictitious person wants.

[joeybee12]

51. yup...

And they're very selective in deciding what this fictitious person wanted, accepting some things, totally ignoring others.

[yeoman6987]

52. He existed. There is proof of that

Question is what exactly was he? A prophet? A preacher? Son of God? Many believe different things.

[uriel1972]

53. I'm not going to get into an argument about this...

You think he existed. I don't.
I have my reasons, as I'm sure you do for your position.

[yeoman6987]

54. I wasn't trying to pick a fight. I am sorry if I appeared to do that.

Have a great night.

[uriel1972]

56. Didn't say you were...

It's just that when these things come up, they can get pretty heated and I was trying to stop a potential flare-up before it started.

[sarge43]

57. You wrote that homosexuality was clearly not a concern of his

If he didn't exist, then what's your point? If he existed, as practicing Jew there was only one law for him and would have been the Torah. He certainly didn't mean Roman law.

[Nye Bevan]

35. Also, he turned water into wine when the booze ran out.

And stepped in to prevent someone from being stoned to death.

Definitely a few contrasts between Christianity and certain other religions.

[Roy Rolling]

41. That about covers it

There's nothing more informative than a meme by Russell Brand sharing his deep knowledge of religion, followed up by vigorous debate by the religious experts on DU. Case closed.

[uriel1972]

43. Gosh...

No need for a discussion board then.
Our local expert on all things has spoken. Case closed.

[Yavin4]

42. For the record, I can't stand my neighbor's oxen.

Damn thing shits every where and is fucking loud. You'd think that NYC wouldn't allow oxen in a residential bldg, but you'd be wrong.

[kentauros]

64. Just cover your neighbor's ox:

[uriel1972]

45. You'd think if Yeshu was concerned about slavery...

He'd have mentioned it?

[frizzled]

62. Arguing from an insane premise to reach a conclusion you like is a mistake.

It doesn't matter a damn what the Bible says, and anyone with more leisure time than you can construct some half-assed argument against yours.

[Skittles]

63. love Mr. Brand