First of all, this isn’t a thread shutting down people for their beliefs. If you can’t stand the thought of someone believing in something you don’t, f*** off.
Secondly, i’m a huge fan of Ben Folds. I’ve got most of his music including his commentary for iTunes original (for anyone who hasn’t heard these before it’s a great chance to hear the artist’s thoughts on their music and well worth the download/price). What i found interesting was his thoughts (in ‘A Walk Through Any City In America’) on ‘Jesusland’. Basically it’s his belief that if Jesus was around today he wouldn’t own much stuff (I mean, c’mon, he’s Jesus) and this would be a problem, a guy with no home, long hair and no posessions or money.
Personally i’m not religious but i thought it would be interesting to see what people’s opinions were on this commentary and well, Jesus. Obviously it would help if you’d heard ‘Jesusland’ and Folds’s commentary. Post away.
There are plenty of people like this in the USA. They’re called homeless.
America has a place for these people. That place is called the streets.
The streets is where Jesus would live today, just as he did 2000 years ago. Born homeless in a barn, lived wandering and sharing everything, believing that if His Father made sure the sparrows were fed, his crew should have faith they’d be cared for.
Just like then, he’d prolly hang with prostitutes and similarly excluded persons (gays, etc), and would continue to be a thorn in the side of organized religion.
You can’t tell people here that if they cannot tolerate other thinking, they should **** off. If you CAN tolerate it, you should – off.
You know I think that Jesus and the Buddha were pretty much the same person. Lived homeless on the streets, preaching love. The book The Dharma Bums says that some people believe Maitreya, the predicted Buddha after Siddhartha, was Jesus Christ, because Maitreya is Pali for Love and that’s what Jesus was all about.
And some say he travelled to the East to study with Patanjali, where he learned the yoga sutras, leading to his SIDHA powers to heal which make up lots of cool stories.
An interesting thread and discussioin within a religious context. Nice juxtaposition against the numerous blah blah for christ threads that advance little in terms of discussion.
Another interesting scenario: if we accept that Jesus would be on the streets were he alive today, what if he is? I’d say there is a fair chance that anyone living on the streets professing today what he did then would be looked at by the authorities as the “local loonie”. We don’t give a lot of credit to the words that come out of the mouths of the homeless, regardless of how profound or inspiring they might be. That’s our loss.