Could you and Jesus be friends?

[Augen]

DaRev said:

Augen said:
That is hard to say. I mean I get along with most people as have agreeable disposition, but not sure what Jesus (assuming he existed) would be like given all accounts came from secondary sources after his death. If he was a man of bronze age Palestine then we'd likely have very different zeitgeist on basis of cultural shifts and centuries of social upheaval. A very tolerant person even a hundred years ago could seem old fashioned or even hateful to us now.

So, I'd have to let a person speak and have a thoughtful discussion before making a judgment as asked in this thread. My answer is, I do not know and not really sure how anyone could claim to know such a thing.

Understandable, but I think you might be complicating things a bit. For example, if I said to you that we should kill all black people or kill all white people, could you be friends with me, would you need to have a discussion face to face with me to make up your mind of whether to befriend me or not? Jesus said love your enemies, do you agree with that, and based on such other teachings, could you be friends with Jesus?

I think it is a complicated question.  You are asking if I would be friends with someone I have never met, who if they lived did so 2000 years ago and all accounts of their words are second hand.

You are a product of the 20th and 21st century so I have different expectations of someone from that period.  Still, if a secondary source told me "DeRev said we should commit genocide" I would have the decency of letting you explain yourself. Afterall, it could be slander or it could have been taken out of context. Perhaps it was parody or you were trying to illustrate a greater point and had a provocative line to get audience attention.  In any event, I'd let you defend yourself or investigate the matter before coming to a conclusion on your character.

So, again, we do not know what Jesus said.  What we know is people years later wrote about what he said.  What was their motivation for doing so? Why do any accounts differ? What does it tell us about the region, culture or era in history?  I ask these things because Jesus can "say" a whole myriad of things to support the speaker's view.

Now, we move to the idea, which can be separated from the man.  If you think this hard to believe I will submit a more recent historical figure: Thomas Jefferson.  Jefferson is held up as a scholar and great thinker of his time, his writings are well known and respected and the man wrote "All men are created equal" which is a noble sentiment.  However, because we know much more about Jefferson and his lifestyle we know he owned slaves.  This makes things complicated because we respect his work and detest his lifestyle.  So, we have to understand the period of time he existed in.  It does not excuse the practice, but shed light on how cognitive dissonance in such a matter that "all men" meant "all land owning white guys" and how ideas grow and change based on our own experiences and views.

Turning to the notion "love your enemies" I would have to understand better what the notion of love and enemy meant.  I would counter we should strive to better understand one another, because in the vacuum ignorance thrives and breeds hatred.  Thus, we would move towards the removal of labels such as enemies in discourse.  We may not agree or love one another, but I think becoming a more tolerant society is a reasonable expectation to put upon us as a species.

So, I close saying as I did before that my natural instinct is to be friends with anyone I meet, but I cannot speak to someone shrouded by antiquity and interpretations by others.