Because a lot of folks are feeling incredulous: Luke 14:25-27.
Shortpacked! by David Willis
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But how do you teach people who already think they know everything?!
…oh wait
Wow jesus is being a jerk.
Maybe he came back wrong.
Well, on a grand scale of ascending to the kingdom of heaven, isn’t this a GOOD thing for Leslie?
The character made it a habit relatively often in the bible to support leaving your family for him. I’m not a fan. I could pull up versus if you need but the point is I think the character jesus is a self important jerk.
…almost like he has a God complex, huh.
Probably a Napoleon complex as well!
But how can you have a Napoleon complex if you died before Napoleon lived?
*Insert Philosoraptor image here*
Napoleon had a Jesus Complex?
I just love that the one passage from the bible that everyone always refers to in regards to homosexuality seems more like a dirty joke than an actual stance.
I hope Jesus is joking.
He didn’t appear to be joking the first time he said it (Luke 12:49-53 and again in Luke 14:26), even though it appears to be in direct contradiction with the “honor your father and your mother” commandment (Deuteronomy 5:16).
Yeah. He was there to uphold the old stuff and he on several occasions told people to not honor their mother and father. He was a bit of a hypocrite.
It never said HOW to honor your mother and father…
Mike honored somebody’s mother, in the biblical sense. For a nickel.
Yea, totally saw that one coming, good job.
Well, there’s the trick, though. If you were supposed to honor thy father and mother, but your father and mother were, I dunno, making you eat pork or something that didn’t fit with the laws otherwise, which were you supposed to do?
As I understand it, you’re supposed to then go ahead and honour your mother and father anyways, because if you’re a disobedient teen they get to stone your ass to death.
So, yeah. Yummy pork, I guess?
Yay family values. >.>
You might feel kinda conflicted about the whole “honor thy father and thy mother” thing if your old man had this weird psycho plan that involved you getting tortured and crucified. I mean, that’s kinda crazy. I’d have some weird daddy issues too.
There’s nothing inherently contradictory with honoring people you hate.
it’s not in contradiction with honoring father and mother. it’s simply that phrase is understood now differently than how it was then, even though translation for the Greek is correct. in our vernacular- it means anyone who loves them more than christ. i think the term is called “softening”. it fits with the context of the acient world and the jewish culture of the day. Moral of the story- christians need to make the bible in modern vernacular instead of reinterpreting old English, because the English language sucks. it was still dam funny in the comic.
He’s not… KIDDING… he’s just using really goddamned oblique language.
Google “Luke 14:25″ and “Explain” and you’ll see a bunch of people trying to wrap their heads around that friggin’ passage. It makes sense if you think kinda sideways, and basically seems to suggest that to truly follow the teachings of Christ you have to follow them in all that you do, and give them priority over everything else in your life.
It’s not hate as in “dislike” but hate in a kinda… stupid sense of the term… wherein you put your faith before everything. You “hate” everything else and thus put it all second.
Most pro-Jesus scholars interpret “you must hate you family and life” as “you must love your family/life less than you love me”, yeah.
You do hear it said often that the opposite of love is not hate but apathy. Makes one wonder if that may be what happened with the translation (from the P.O.V. of someone who is not a student of the Bible, anyway). Could the message be as simple as not making your pursuit of truth/faith be blocked by blind fealty to family. Family is pretty much talking about tribe historicaly speaking so this could be counseling against the kind of tribalism that plagues the Midde East to this day
I’m pretty sure if Jesus said “I’m a child molester and have slowly tortured millions of innocents to death, and everybody who doesn’t follow me should die painfully” scholars would interpret it to mean he taught children good against bad practice, and will himself honor the world by cleansing it when the world ends.
Likewise, you can be sure if that was the case, authors who recorded (or made up) the words would have either edited such statements out or rephrased them.
Metaphor suffers heavily in the face of time and translation.
It seems to be a Christologic version of the old Zen saw about meeting the Buddha on the road. (There’s a lot of speculation that Jesus might have had contact with Buddhist evangelists; they certainly were present in the eastern Roman Empire of the period.) The books of the Old Testament had a significant underlying anti-family, or more properly, anti-tribal theme, and the political trend of Jesus’s reinterpretation of first-century Judaism was definitely along those anti-tribal, anti-familial lines. The whole point was to reject the ties of the clan, and replace them with a universalist social and emotional union with the Body of Christ, the Church catholic. This is why a lot of post-millenarian evangelical communities tend to shake out into utopian socialist movements after the point of disillusion. You see distinct flowerings of political radicalism following each of the first three Great Awakenings, first with the Revolutionary period, then with the Whiggish, utopian socialist communitarians, and abolitionists of the 1840s and 50s, and then with the Populist and Progressive “social gospel” radicalism of the pre-World War I period.
Thank you. It should also be noted that Jesus makes this statement for his DISCIPLES, and not really so much for everyone who was trying to be christian. The point being that if you’re going to be a disciple, you’re basically riding shotgun through all the shit Jesus was going to be in for through his life, so if you had a family who loved you, then you’d be giving them ridiculous amounts of grief and shame for doing it. (believe it or not, Christianity wasn’t really popular during Jesus’s life, with pretty much anyone)
So to be a full out disciple, you’d better not have any attachments to any other that stuff, or you just aren’t going to be able to meet the demands of the position.
I have always wondered how accurate that translation was, as it goes against the general gist of the teachings. Could it be possible that is is a mistranslation, and the original statement meant something else?
This is why you need translators notes when you start making different versions of a text…
He doesn’t know Leslie’s exact situation. He *did* say something like that, but it probably doesn’t actually apply here.
He’s not. The root meaning here of the Greek used is basically implying that if even love of your relatives is getting between your relationship with Messiah Yeshua, who was supposed to be Immanuel (which means “God with us”), you’re not a true disciple because you’re breaking the 1st of the 10 Commandments by letting something get between you and God.
She gon’ kick that Jesus feller’s ass.
I say kick his ass because he’s not actually Jesus. Jesus’s second coming is not going to be pleasant according to the Bible. Lay him out, Leslie. Save us from the firey brimstoney apocolypse.
if anything, this strip makes me think it is the second coming.
This needs a Mike infusion STAT.
Ethan’s last line is one of his best.
Ethan seems to be getting his Team Heart mojo back. That makes me happy.
Time for a Winger speech!
And that expression has been the justification for so much strife and animosity. I think something might’ve been lost in the Arameic to Greek to Latin to English, but apparently this Jesus does not.
Not really. His point is just that God is more important than your family.
I’ve always wondered WWJD. He’d p!$$ people off just as much now as then!
Of course he would. It would be funnier now tough, as people claim to know what he really meant.
What gets me is that he knows perfect english somehow but doesn’t bother putting things in clearer terms anyway.
…..It’s a mystery?….something about faith?….yeah, I got nothing.
Jesus is cruisin’ for a bruisin’.
An infusion of confusion should lead to the preclusion of bruisin’.
Is Leslie’s resolution to give him a contusion based in confusion or a family/faith hate fusion?
My conclusion is that disillusion based on exclusion is the source of Leslie’s delusion. Therefore, violence is…
… a foregone conclusion.
Frankly, I think a transfusion of an occlusion to who ever’s losing will lead to an intrusion by an authority of Dave’s choosin’
so many +1s
Unwilling to hate? This doesn’t sound anything like the Jesus I read about.
Or the one in the Picture Bible.
Wait, they have to *hate* their family? I just knew about having to leave their family to go live with him in the desert or whatevah.
Luke 14:26 (KJV) – “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”
I still really think some sort of nuance is lost in that translation of “hate” though.
Jesus musta been from bizarro world…
JESUS HATE SUPERMAN!
Even if you take it as simply “God MUST be the #1 priority in your life, over you, your family, EVERYTHING”…
Most people are not really prepared to live like that.
Yeah, Jesus is all about shocking language. Which is ironic since its fairly obvious from all the stuff he does for his mother and his buddies that he’s not really being literal.
The translation is correct. Take it from a Greek.
But was the Greek an accurate translation of what was supposedly said? I know it was the lingua franca of its time, but the carpenter’s kid was speaking to a group of locals when that was said.
When you get to the heart of it, the most concise translation comes down to, “Are you ready for how much this is going to suck?”
He said it in Aramaic, and it was written down decades later, translated INTO Greek. Translation FROM Greek is the least of our worries here.
Actually, he probably would have been speaking Greek- or at least a version of it. Koine Greek was the common language spoken by most people under the Roman Empire those days.
Go down that road and you might as well throw out the entire NT – it was all written down at least 30 years after the fact by obsessive Jesus fanboys, so it’s likelihood of being accurate is about zero.
Of course, your apparent goal with this position is to discard the text; you just want to afterwards select which parts to decide are ‘true’ again, based on your own preferences, and then claim it’s got validity because it comes from the very book you discredited previously. Which is not an uncommon way to construct a religion.
Hey, if these things didn’t require faith not neccesarily substantiated by reason to believe in, they’d be called histories rather than religions.
Cherry-picking and selectively interpreting or ignoring parts of your supposed scriptures isn’t an example of faith. It’s an example of making up your own religion from scratch and then lying to yourself about it’s provenance and the validity implied therefrom.
Its also how the majority of Jews AND Christians I’ve met formulate their beliefs.
This conversation become so much funnier when you read it as the avatars talking.
Wow, begbert2, you’re also way over your cynicism quota for the next twenty years.
Cynicism, realism, such a fine line.
The way I figure it is, every other mythology on the earth gets to be the result of the standard methods by which mythology and legends evolve; why should Christianity be denied that opportunity? Especially since we have a pretty detailed record of its development with meshes perfectly with it.
To be fair, the things we usually label as “mythology” spent millenia as oral tradition before being pinned down to words, by which time there were already innumerable versions to pin down. In the case of Judaism, Christianity, and a couple others, the mythology only had a period of decades (in the case of the Christian parts) to a century or two (in the case of one of the parts of the TaNaCh that we can date reliably easily) before it was pinned down to written word and preserved as is; the former were amorphic verbal tradition for most of their existence as dogma, the latter a written tradition, less mutable.
Is the an old meaning to the word hate that I am unaware of?
Wow! English translations of the bible are hardcore. In most portuguese versions I’ve seen (which aren’t that many, I’ll give you that) this passage reads more like “if someone comes to me and it doesn’t bother his father…”
The portuguese version is whitewashed. The english version is a correct translation of the original Greek.
See, I interpret this to mean “if you don’t have some serious problems with your home life, and you have anyone else who cares about you to turn to, you shouldn’t be turning to me.” Jesus was here to help those who really needed it, not those who were looking for a quick fix.
Anyone who is ‘Unwilling’ to hate and give up on their family?
Does that sound weird to anyone else?
Well, yeah. But not to the usual suspects. I’m surprised with this particular verse at hand that this many hours in I’m the first to get to post to these comments WESTBORO BAPTIST CHURCH.
Their own family is just about the only thing the Phelpses don’t hate.
Well yeah if he didn’t have the “unwilling” part it’d be like he was COMMANDING you to hate your family, rather than just telling you to if you have to. I hate to bring up the conspiracy theories, but that’s pretty much the whole opening of the Bagvad gita.
And suddenly Aslan shows up to calm everyone down.
He’d have been there sooner, but that friggin’ bus took forever.
You would think Aslan could afford a taxi.
How? He’s a lion. They don’t exactly carry wallets.
But you need money to pay for a bus, too.
That’s why the bus took so long. He had to wait for a blind person to get on first so he could pretend to be the guy’s seeing eye… er… lion.
After all, it’s not like the blind guy’s going to see what he’s doing, and who’s going to tell a blind guy that he can’t bring his lion on the bus?
Let’s just say that Caspian sent back some dough and had the Pevensie kids hook him up with a lifetime bus pass.
Jesus, wrong context, man. The family thinks they’re following you, she’s the family member who gets hated and left behind when people follow that instruction.
So they would be following the only reasonable context to take those versus and she is the victim.
I think the implication, in the comic and also the way people would use it to justify this, is that Leslie’s family are being “good Christians” by “hating” her and giving her up.
I think the context of the actual statement makes it far less like: “Kick people out of your family if they don’t conform to my will” and more, well…more about the fact the need to follow God/Jesus even if it means leaving your family and comfortable life behind. That is, the former is about taking action against others, and the latter is about taking action and accountability for yourself, if that makes any sense.
Well, obviously you’re not supposed to kick people out of your family if they abandon the faith and refuse your demands they return.
You’re supposed to kill them.
Luke 19:27
Remind me again, isn’t Luke one of the Gospels that was supposed to be written by one of Paul’s toadies. So follower of a guy that got on the ship after historical Jesus there was dead.
No idea. I’m neither a theologist nor a biblical historian.
Yeah, Luke was Paul’s physician, and his gospel is generally considered the most in line with Paul’s theology.
They were all written long after the events they describe, though, and technically all are written anonymously: the attributions are based on tradition but not present in the text, and are a little dubious.
He doesn’t know the what the context is.
It’s strange for an agnostic with a sour taste in her mouth for all things Catholic to be saying this, but…
Goddamn, I love Jesus.
Seeing someone mention a bad taste in their mouth with THAT avatar made me giggle.
Agnosticism isn’t a religion, it’s a philosophical viewpoint.
You can’t simply be agnostic. One can be an atheist and be agnostic or they can be religious and be agnostic. Agnosticism is just acknowledging that there is no definitive proof one way or the other on the existence of God.
So which are you? Agnostic atheist or agnostic religious?
… What if the answer is “I don’t know”?
Speaking for myself, I’d say “agnostic theist” – I can accept the *possibility* but not the *probability* of a God/Zeus/Odin/Great White Spirit/Flying Spaghetti Monster/whatever. Either way, I just want to live a good life and not hurt anybody. If that means I get to hang out with Jesus or Thor when I’ve had my time, then hooray! And if it doesn’t… meh, I lived a good life and didn’t hurt anyone.
Yeah Jesus, throw Ethan a bone……..if ya know what I mean!
HONH HONH HONH! -moustache twirl-
..he’ll willingly catch it.
Wait – are you suggesting some hot Jesus on Ethan action, because not only would that solve everything, but it’s kinda hot…
Wow – this little chapter of Shortpacked is making me say things I never thought I’d ever say…
Anyway – Ethan’s hot with his slightly greying hair. I forgot I’m supposed to say that every time Ethan appears so people remember it’s not just lighting – and that it’s hot…
Thank you…
Now you’ve done it. Now all folks will ask Willis to sketch at cons is Ethan leaning forward and with his eyes clenched shouting “YES, JESUS!”
Oh God, Oh God, yes! Jesus Christ, fuck yes!
It’s wrong on exactly THREE levels. An unholy trinity!
Leslie’s face in panel 3: adorable!
If I could I would hug Leslie. Poor girl is really hurting… v.v;
I like the Mathew version better. “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” and all that. 10:30-something?
Yeah, Matthew 10:34-37, which actually partially (mis)quotes Micah 7:6. However, Micah is saying that quote amongst a list of other bad things that he is waiting for God to put an end to. Why Jesus would want to bring about some of those bad things makes little sense.
Now I’m going to have a very strange Google history looking for the attitude toward lesbians in Julio-Claudian era Judea.
…or, screw it, I’m goin’ with Paul.
I always preferred John, personally. Or George.
Or Ringo.
Or Davy.
Hey, Judea, don’t make it bad.
“27 And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” – I am confused. Didn’t the cross come later? Did Jesus cryptically make his followers carry a cross around so as to blow their minds when he eventually became crucified?
I believe that carrying your own cross was fairly standard for Roman crucifixions. Don’t quote me on that, though.
Good catch. Yeah, that looks like a bit of an anachronism to me.
When you have god-magic it becomes easier to write effective spoilers. A little biblical product placement going on there.
Seems a bit fishy if you ask me.
I see what you did there.
Also when the entire thing is written down after the fact, it’s easy to put in foreshadowing. That’s what we call Lucas-magic.
Richard had it right Carrying a Cross was a common punishment of the era, and what with him associating with rebels and criminals, it wouldn’t be out of place.
Actually he wasn’t considered to be associating with rebels and criminals; if he had been, all his disciples and followers would have been rounded up and executed too. (The Romans had a very first-century attitude to insurrection.) In actual fact Jesus was almost certainly executed for looking like a potential seed of a riot; Jews reportedly had a habit of rioting against their Roman occupiers on their religious holidays and both the Jewish and Roman authorities worked to put a quick stop to that sort of thing. (The Jewish authorities tried to act first, because the Romans tended to get all martial law about it, but the Jews weren’t generally authorized to execute people, so the Romans had to handle that part. Pilate almost certainly rubber-stamped it, because according to contemporary records he was a brutal hardass, not the indecisive pansy the gospels try to whitewash him as.)
And now you know…and knowing is half the battle.
Yeah, the whole “said to be the King of the Jews” thing would not have looked good to the folks actually exercising political power over the Jews.
So they didnt kill him for inciting rebellion, they killed him for inciting rebellion?
oh, man. jesus shyamalan-ed everybody!
Probably it was just an unfortunately-chosen figure of speech. Like if someone said “don’t shoot the messenger” when people got mad at him when he delivered bad news, and later on someone actually shot him.
Doesn’t every cult say: “give up your friends, give up your family, they will lead you astray; listen only to us, we know what’s best for you, WE are your family now”?
(Most of them also ask you to give up all of your money.)
Jesus did that too…
OMG, Avenue Q is a cult!?
Gimme your moneeey! I need it for Kate!
Hey! Give us your money! All that you got!
Just fork it on over–or some puppets will get shot!
Sounds more like a robbery than a cult.
That was S.O.P. for the Jedi, sure.
The Jedi have an excuse for acting completely insane like that, though. Trying NOT to do it ends up creating a lasting attachment that can be used to cause their superpowers to invert and turn them into Snidely Whiplash.
Mmm, no. The Jedi may comfort themselves with such thoughts, but they were as much the victims of their own fear and mistrust as anything else.
Anakin: myth or warning?
Counterpoint: Jacen Solo.
A good guy until the VERY MOMENT he decided that going to the dark side just a little bit for the sake of loved ones was worth it (as in, “I love you more than anything else, so if it can save you its worth it)… and within months he was right up there with Rita Repulsa.
Dont get me started on those novels…..
The thing is, even if they manage to find and train such people (hey, it’s a big galaxy, anything’s possible), how are the resulting “perfect” passionless, attachmentless etc warrior-monks supposed to relate to the rest of the Republic they’re sworn to defend? How long until the Jedi Order and the Republic become utterly irrelevant and incomprehensible to each other?
A case could be made that this had already happened, and it was that that Palpatine was taking advantage of when he framed the Jedi for plotting a coup. Unfortunately, while this would make sense, there’s no real evidence for it onscreen (and some evidence against, with Obi-Wan getting along just fine with the folks in the diner, for instance).
Did the gay guy really just ask for a bone? Another unintentional double entendre, I suppose.
Oh, come on, historical Jeshuah! You’re screwing up your own quotes in regard to context, hyperbole, and language!
…Wait, why is he able to quote passages from the Bible in English, anyway? Sure, he’s learning English, but the direct quote?
Well, it’s not an exact quote, like you said. Maybe he just usually says stuff like this, and it’s the Bible that’s paraphrasing.
Maybe it’s like if you based your Star Trek canon on two thousand years of Japan/Russian/Turkish fanon, and then ran into William Shatner at a con. “Yes, I have a question, Mr. Shatner… Remember that time when you and Spock were cuddling in the hotel room on Earth Two after you guys did your Rocket Man routine at the Bizarro Vegas Convention… Why did Spock call you his “Pacmorah”?”
Shatner: “… The hell you’ve been smoking?”
“The hell. Have YOU…been smoking…?”
Wild theory time: This is actually a Kahless-like clone whose brain has been pumped full of Bible quotes and nothing else.
According to expanded universe novels, this means there is a fairly good chance he’s actually a clone of one of the disciples.
…Is it geeky that I know exactly what you’re talking about?
Charles Stross’s “Accelerando” has a bit about creating living simulations of historical writers that are just accurate enough to write their major works. I can see Galasso using Bible quotes for Christ and speeches for Reagan, plus maybe a catalogue of Major Acts of Assholery for Mike.
No, if anything this quote is milder than Luke 14:25-27, since there Jesus says that you *must* hate your family, and here in Shortpacked he just says that you must be willing to hate them, not necessarily do so.
Nope, at least if the Greek is faithful, there is just no other way to translate it. If Luke had an accurate source for his quotes, he actually said this, and wouldn’t say it in English any other way. (Of course, he was the furthest removed from the original disciples.)
Either something got lost in translation, or I just lost a LOT of respect for the guy, whether or not he was actually the Son of God
Stop going all Scientology, Jesus!
Forget translation: a lot gets lost in intent within a few hundred years.
Why do I have the feeling Galasso threw in a bit of himself to Mike into the resurrection process of Jeshuah…
Probably because you’ve bought the modern hype that he was all peace and love and non-violent. Keep in mind here that whenever Willis has Joshua go all biblical on us, he backs it with cites.
…I was thinking more that Galasso would think himself more powerful if he added a bit of himself into a resurrected “Son of God” or Mike would do it just to screw with religious people cause it would be funny for him.
Oh my cheese….Historical Jesus is Hitler!
There is some serious discrepancies between KJV and… well, everything else.
Including that particular verse!
Absolute nonsense. This is one of those verses that translates pretty much identically everywhere, and which is translated perfectly from the original Greek .
I know it’s convenient to attribute the particular verse to a mistranslation, but it’s not a mistranslation, that’s what the verse says.
It would be interesting to see if anyone has found a similarly ancient usage of the same greek word which also resulted in an awkward translation. Meanings of language also shift over time. Fewer and fewer people who aren’t homosexual brag about having a gay affair.
It’s the same word as the stem used in “misanthrope” and “misogynist”.
It translates to “hate”.
The translation isn’t awkward. It just means something people don’t like it to mean.
“You know, I think that a way to look at this is if you replace “Family” with “Family instilled values”. Because parents can be awesome, but they’re human.”
Except that in this verse, Jesus also instructs people to hate their children (and themselves).
When Jesus said things like that, it was generally in the context of “give up everything you have and come follow me.” He was generally telling a young person to leave his home and his parents and come and join him; he was quite the radical at the time.
In this context, I don’t think he’s saying to Leslie “your parents were right to abandon you”; he’s saying “You are doing the right thing and are a good person, even though it cost you your family.”
Not by my read. He’s saying “your parent were following me, so they were *right* to throw you out.”
But don’t worry, it’s very very normal to twist and ignore Jesus’s plain words when they don’t say what you want them to.
Plain words. Riiight…you can read greek/latin/aramaic as could a native of the time?
Greek? Sure. He said what he said.
I can’t read greek, but Aris Katsaris can. The words are indeed plain. Deal with it.
‘berg you assholameter is climbing pretty high. You’ve alraedy broken the Faz barrier and from there it’s just a loop around the Malaya pass until you go full Mike.
Point out verifiable fact = being an asshole.
Cool!
Like it was said above, Jesus wasn’t necessarily around to be nice to everyone. He purposely said things that he knew would get him into trouble because he believed he needed to meet his destiny to die for the sins of people who would hate him. Also, his death was suppose to be the final sacrifice…thereby rendering all those thousands upon thousands of animal sacrifices God told the Jews to do utterly pointless and worthless. Kinda makes you think, if God wanted to kill his own son to save humanity so badly, why didnt he just do it on the first day anyone sinned in the first place rather than go through all the pointless animal sacrifices? And some people wonder why Jews aren’t exactly keen on the New Testaments revisioning of their religion…
He did. It was The Great Flood where he washed away all the wicked (his children) saved for Noah and his family. But wicked still remained ( free will and all that) Plus didn’t the whole sacrifice thing end with Abraham and his son?
No, animal sacrifice was practiced regularly in the Temple.
And the prophesies are very specific about how its supposed to resume as it was back then once the Third Temple is built.
Human sacrifice ended with Abraham and Isaac. Jesus brought it back.
and subsequently made it unnecessary for the rest of time.
Perhaps Jesus has Schizophrenia and is acting out. Im in psych rotation for nursing school right now and its not so uncommon to here those kindsa phrases leave those patients mouths. Im reasonably certain that most if not all the biblical prophets were schizos or tripping out (i.e. revelations is kinda known for being written on an island named specifically for the psycho-active mushrooms growing there that people used to induce religious hallucinations.)
You do hear it said often that the opposite of love is not hate but apathy. Makes one wonder if that may be what happened with the translation (from the P.O.V. of someone who is not a student of the Bible, anyway). Could the message be as simple as not making your pursuit of truth/faith be blocked by blind fealty to family. Family is pretty much talking about tribe historicaly speaking so this could be counseling against the kind of tribalism that plagues the Midde East to this day.
I think it simply comes down to “when given the choice between Jesus and family, always choose Jesus.” That being said, there are a LOT of instances where no such choice needs to be made at all. For instance, one does not choose Jesus by forsaking your children, even if they are gay. You can love your gay offspring and love Jesus at the same time. This is where Leslie’s parents screwed up.
Interesting line to point out. I really don’t remember ever hearing that pointed out to me, and I attended years and years of Catholic school.
While you could say that picking and choosing one line and ignoring another isn’t right, I will say that doesn’t seem to be pointed out as a major precept, at least not for me. I will acknowledge that my experiences tend to be with more tolerant and less mean Christians. I never knew that was used as some kind of excuse for some bad attitudes. And from what I know, most anti-gay stuff comes from the Old Testament.
No, most anti-gay stuff comes from thin air.
Leviticus lists a whole mess o’ other stuff as abominations unto the Lord, and there’s a lot of disagreement that any of the other passages were translated correctly.
God hates shrimp!
Also when I say “any other passages”, I mean only like. Two. There’s not a lot of stuff about being gay in the Bible, period, for all that people whine about it constantly.
I think the best point on it is to compare the number of times Jesus tells you to take care of the poor with the number of times even the Old Testament mentions not being gay and then see how many self-described Christians think it’s okay to be rich and make speeches about how poor people don’t want to *try* in life and see how that shakes out.
You know, I think that a way to look at this is if you replace “Family” with “Family instilled values”. Because parents can be awesome, but they’re human. Meaning they’re prone to error, especially in their understanding of something. So to be willing to give up your family’s views and be open minded…that sounds pretty Jesus to me.
Also: I’m not Christian, I don’t follow any religion. I just follow logic and hope there’s a god of some sort who’s keeping things on an even keel.
This is how the “hate” has always been taught to me: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+14%3A25-27&version=NASB (See footnote b). ie: the magnitude of your love for me should be so great that it makes your love for all other things seem like hate.
Nerts to all this religion talk, NERTS I SAY!! We’re passing up a perfectly placed Jesus boning Ethan joke because of your religious hum drudgery!
Nail him like a crucifixion Jesus!!
There was no crucifixion. It was just the most embarrassing carpentry accident of all time.
http://partiallyclips.com/2002/01/27/roofers-3/
The only book of the Bible I would trust to determine things Historical Jesus would actually say would be Mark. It is generally accepted that Luke was written using second and third hand information (like Mark and the ‘Q source‘).
But, at least you’re not quoting John.
The words I am giving my Historical Jesus are the quotes that are shared across the Synoptic Gospels, or, yes, likely from Q. A lot of these quotes are the more apocalyptic sayings attributed to Jesus, the ones about the Son of Man and the coming Kingdom of God. There are some other things (which often intersect with the previous group) from the Synoptic Gospels that seem more likely attributed from the actual Jesus, versus stuff made up later. For example, no Christian is likely to make up that Jesus said to hate your family. Why would they make that up? It’s kind of inconvenient and ugly-sounding. On that basis, it’s more likely to be authentic.
I think this might be more of a logic problem. If they loved their family, they would never leave them. Therefore logically to leave them and follow Jesus, they must hate their family.
I think it’s not a quality they should choose to develop, but one that develops naturally.
I definitely have agreed with your word choice up until this point (and it’s not like I’m any kind of expert at any rate) but this particular quote, which is something your version of Jesus seems to think rather important given his timing, only appears in Luke. Personally, I don’t find your “No Christian would want the Messiah saying something like this so it’s probably true” statement compelling, since Luke was not your standard-modern-Christian, but a first century one. Paul was getting closer to “modern” Christian… but now I’m digressing.
Anyway, I understand it’s important to the joke he says something like this, and as the bit continues you’re going to have him say more and more, thus more and more people will start to disagree on what Jesus would “really” say. I certainly salute you for tackling such an interesting -and polarizing- subject, and I look forward to seeing how this plays out regardless of any personal disagreements.
tl;dr
Keep up the good work!
I disagree that the sentiment of hating your family was a later evolution of the theology. I feel it fits perfectly in line with the apocalyptic teachings of Jesus, the stuff about the world ending imminently. Families aren’t important if God’s going to show up tomorrow and invert the social paradigm. The historical Jesus was teaching a lifestyle that isn’t sustainable in the long term, and abandoning your family and friends and giving up all that you own are among those sorts of things.
By the time of Luke, Christians had begun downplaying those things.
Fair enough.
Based on my understanding of the subject it does seem likely Historical Jesus felt/acted as you say, and I agree with your reasoning here. I guess this quote is more likely to have been said by Historical Jesus than I first thought.
He was specifically talking about leaving your family in order to follow him, and being prepared to have your family turn against you. The message was always that in order to become a follower of Christ, you had to be prepared to abandon everything.
From another quote from the book of Luke on the same subject:
“57 As they were going ralong the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” 58 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” 59 To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” 60 And Jesus7 said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” 61 Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” 62 Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.””
That’s the context here. It’s about how you need to be willing to give up everything if you want to follow Jesus; I would say that he knew that he, and anyone who became his disciple, was going to have a really hard time in the next few years.
I think the context is Jesus is telling these people to give up their families and their jobs, right now, immediately, for reals.
Otherwise, why say these things? Why would he speak to First Century Jews in literal terms but actually be speaking to Everyone Else Years Later in metaphor?
The guy Jesus told to forget burying his father… did he understand Jesus was half-joking?
There’s also the parable about the bridesmaids; over and over the NT impresses that if you tell Jesus “okay, but just give me a sec”, you get thrown out.
Epileptic tree: Jesus hasn’t come back yet because people won’t leave their families and keep populating the human race. The NT wasn’t a forecast of the end of the world and the coming of the new one, it was instructions!
Jesus was rather “Jedi” like back in the day. No Earthly attahcments and all; the Christian were like a crazy social-youth movement of the day (ironic I know) being told to have to be willing to abandon your family makes sense when you realize your family had a real high chance of abandoning YOU (Romans for the subversiveness, Jews for the seemed blasphemy). I mean think about it, how many family members of Christians do we see? Even Jesus straight up told his family to sod off while he was busy being Jesus.
The part I think people are missing is that this verse occurs in the middle of a parable Jesus is telling to the Pharisees after he goes to see them one day on the Sabbath. So first of all, it’s not Jesus saying these things but the character in the parable. Read the rest of Luke 14 – Jesus sits down with them and they exalt themselves by seating themselves in the grandest room. Meanwhile he comes across a sick guy and decides to heal him. The Pharisees scowl and are annoyed because it is the sabbath and they equate his action with working on the sabbath. He points out to them that if their ox or donkey fell into a pit they’d be quick to get a rope and pull it out – sabbath or not. Then he chastises them for thinking so highly of themselves and tells a parable, the gist of which is the usual the meek shall be exalted while the arrogant shall be debased.
He then tells a story about a man who invites all sorts of grandees to come to a dinner but they all made excuses for why they couldn’t come, he invited in the sick, the poor, the homeless, and the lame until his home was full to capacity. And he fed them, and then when they were gathered he (the character in the parable) told them that people who couldn’t hate their family, who couldn’t sever themselves from all other connections could not be his followers. This comes just after all the people he originally invited fobbed him off saying they had other commitments. The character was saying that these people were his followers because they had put coming to him ahead of other concerns.
Hate is the word that we’re all getting strung up on. I appreciate Aris Katsaris is pretty darn certain that the word used in the original texts converts accurately to the modern word hate as we understand it today. What I would point out is we’re dealing with ancient greek translations of an aramaic text written down from oral tradition talking about concepts that are 2000 years old. What we think of when we think of hate today is not necessarily what they were thinking of when they chose to translate the word as hate back then. In context the parable seems to be about not being self-obsessed or overly concerned with the ties of our own lives to the point where we begin to think of ourselves as too grand or more important than another. To be humble, to think of others and to be willing to sacrifice our own concerns for the good of others.
Heavens, such an awful thing to talk about!
Luke was not originally written in Aramaic. It was originally written in Greek.
Nontheless, my point about the parable and its actual meaning stands.
Oh, it’s not that he was half-joking. He was entirely serious about how you had to be willing to give up everything and come and follow Jesus right then and there, and not look back. If you weren’t willing to do that, you shouldn’t bother.
It doesn’t mean that you should literally “hate your family”; you need to love your neighbor as yourself. But it does mean that you had to be prepared to have your family disown you for being a Christian, you had to be prepared to accept that risk.
That’s an interesting version of the “criterion of embarrassment” – why would a Christian not make that up? At the time, they were a quite isolated, persecuted cult. Surely anyone who’d join up would have to have a grudge against the world.
Technically, if it’s in all three synoptics, then it’s probably not in Q, at least how Q is usually defined. The whole point of the Q hypothesis is to explain the quotes that are shared between Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark.
Ah, I remember that translation. My parents played it down a lot.
Personally, I’m under the belief that some of the quotes attributed to “Jesus” were actually made up by the people whos books the qoutes appear in.
However, I have yet to confirm this. Anone know of any similar quotes in Luke?
This wording is unique to Luke, so it’s probably not in the Q source – the sentiment, however, also appears in Matthew and John, but not Mark, so it’s possible it was just propaganda for the cult.
All of the gospels were written an number of years after Jesus’s death, in a time when very few of the common folk would bother to write things down (or be literate at all) – in some senses anything that Jesus is written as saying has probably morphed some over time, whether the writers intended to do it or not.
But yes, both words and the history itself were subject to being altered to better get the author’s desired point across. (Notable examples: Minimizing Roman responsbility for Jesus’s execution; inventing a story retconning the Nazarine’s birthplace to comply with prophecy.)
There is a little bit more context if you go further, Luke 14:28-33 reads a bit like “be aware of the costs before you start, you don’t want to go half ass” and “being a disciple means giving up everything in your life, so if you like something about your life, you might want to rethink this”
I think this is more about the cost of being a disciple and the total change that you would need to experience if you follow rather than a statement that your family life sucks so you should head to Vegas with the J-man.
Context doesn’t necessarily smooth out all verses in the bible, but this one seems to lose a lot of it’s bite once you read the verses around it.
I figured it wouldn’t take too very long before things got taken out of context. I suppose I should commend Mr. Willis for holding off as long as he did, but it’s disappointing nonetheless.
Looks like it’s in context to me; to be Jesus’s follower, you have to hate (-retcon retcon retcon) be willing to discard all non-Jesus things in your life, specifically including family. He heard Leslie’s parents are his followers; thus he objects to them being criticized for discarding Leslie due to his religion; he specifically said they should do so.
The historical Jesus was essentially a cult leader, and it’s common for cults to encourage families to fracture if the families have any chance of becoming a problem. Pretending otherwise is pretending otherwise.
I think people here are all mixed up. This is a real teaching of Christ, taught consistently in not only Luke, but multiple gospels. And not only in the canonical gospels, but also non-canonical gospels from the same period (the gospel of Thomas, equal in antiquity to the canonical gospels, has tons of quotes about leaving your family). It does not seem unreasonable for him to have said this to me. The Jewish community was overwhelmingly opposed to him, so it makes sense, that he would warn people to prepare for conflict with their own families if they join him. Lots of new religious movements teach this exact same theme, looking at it without preconceived bias, it is obvious that Willis’ usage here is actually correct. Assuming the gospels at all credible, Jesus taught this many times.
Everything you say is true, but I’m interested in the translator’s notes on these.
There are a number of places where the Hebrew-English translations leave something to be desired.
…the NT was not written in Hebrew.
Pissed-off Leslie cracking her knuckles totally and absolutely made my day ^^
Willis is still doing great with these. I just may borrow this comic for an argument forum thread I’m currently in where atheists have been saying religion only makes people hate minorities and science.
Premise 1. If you aren’t willing to hate and give up your family, you can’t be Historical Jesus’s Disciple.
Premise 2. Leslie has good reason to hate and give up her family, them being douches and all.
Conclusion: Leslie will become a disciple of Historical Jesus.
Premise 1: If you are Socrates’s son, then you’re not Socrates.
Premise 2: You are not Socrates’s son.
Conclusion: You are Socrates.
Hi Socrates! [[waves]]
Omigosh, I think I might be Socrates too! We should start a band!
We could call it, “The Socratic Method”!
No, I’m Socrates!
I’m Socrates, and so’s my wife!
And I’m his best friend, Jes- oh wait.
Frankly he brings up a point here. Who is Jesus talking about at this point?
Two obvious possibilities would be Leslie or her Parents; her parents are a better fit because they’re actually his followers and thus subject to his conditions about being his follower, while Leslie is not and thus is not.
A third possibility is he might be talking about Ethan. Sure he hasn’t heard anything to give him a reason to believe one way or the other that Ethan has failed to hate or reject his family, and frankly I can’t recall if the comic has mentioned it either way. But this is Jesus – maybe he just knows.
Jesus is a Red Lantern!
Seems more Sith-Lordish to me.
So, is this when the contraversy Glasso wanted starts?
Call down an angel to smite Leslie if she hits you, Jesus! MAKE HER BURN!
But he’s HISTORICAL Jesus. The closest things to historical angels are probably aliens. And if Jesus calls down aliens, Robin will be there to deffend her.
… I kinda want this to happen.
So… you accept the historical existence of aliens but angels are right-out, eh? Willis, you’ve crafted an odd world.
Yeah, he sure did.
And you know what makes it weirder. I acctually am a Christian. XD
Well, this is the sequel to a comic about people fighting aliens, so yeah, in the comic aliens are a historical fact.
Just goes to show no matter the situation, Jesus will find a way to turn certain groups against him even when he doesnt mean to
I just imagine Historical Jesus talking like the Ultimate Warrior.
It makes more sense.
“Queerin’ don’t make the world work!”
To be fair, I’d just like to point out that Jesus only put those requirements on people who wanted to be his DISCIPLES.
Not the general public, I don’t think.
So, since I doubt Les cares about getting a gospel named after her…
Actually, the term “disciple” encompasses all followers of Jesus. The apostles were the twelve dudes bein’ Jesus’s homies.
I stand corrected!
Yeah I’m glad this was touched upon. For me, reading the Bible put me on the fast track to Atheism. And most Christians like to talk down on the Old Testament, but to me the WORST parts of the Bible were in the New Testament. Where Jesus would say things such as putting him before your brother or giving up your family to follow him. That was the really bad stuff.
I for one HATE when the thing I believe in and the Book is put out of context. If you don’t mind David, I’d like to post the link that gives a better understanding of that verse. It did almost catch me off guard, but then I remembered the real meaning and not the meaning that we interpret it is today.
I’ve read an awful lot of books about the subject from folks who’ve studied the New Testament all their lives and know more about the verse’s context than either me or you. I don’t think an Internet link is gonna change much.