Well, what other people said he said, as agreed upon by various organizational consensuses over the centuries, anyway.
Any case, christianity as it exists today only exists because of a lot of things that have very, very little to do with the scripture or its believers, heh. Lot of it doesn't even have anything to do with the religion itself, per se, save insofar as it was used as a sometimes genocidal bludgeon against various governments' designated punching bags.
That's religion for yeh, tho'. You'd think there'd be at least one major one that didn't have that somewhere in their history, but... not as far as I'm aware. Frikkin' jainism, whose primary teaching is nonviolence and the reduction of harm, even had a period where they were the major religion in an expansionist state 
Honestly yeah basically. That's why I go full sola scriptura, I want as few people as possible telling me what to believe and I basically made up my own mind.
Makes sense. I personally doubt the scripture (not that I can read it directly) but not nearly as much as I doubt all the politics that went into the selection and translation of, say, the King James version. Or even the first Council of Nicaea.
I really respect wanting to minimize that manipulation and get to the deeper, more original truth of it. I think my own spirituality works in a similar direction.
(I do like playing Biblical Literalism "games" to expose the hypocrisy of supposedly Biblical bigots. It doesn't convince the bigots, but I hope there's value in pointing out when they literally make shit up and claim it's Biblical. It's also cathartic for some reason.)
I'd find it much more likely that Jesus was born a man, and was homosexual.
I mean, c'mon. A jewish man, in his thirties, no wife, in that time and age? Not to mention spending most of his time with 13 other men?
I don't like this interpretation, just because it feeds further into this venomous idea that homosexuality is a necessary precursor of male homosocial bonding, and that a man may not love a man except in being physically attracted to them. It produces a much colder male world, where a woman may be as close physically with a woman and still both be friends, and no one makes assumptions on their preferences of sexuality. Even a man and woman may be close physically, and not always have any assumptions of being partners. But Sam Gamgee can't carry Frodo in the 21st century without everyone saying friendship without wanting the Baggins in Bag End is impossible and... It's a darker, lonelier world.
Same. Jesus's whole thing is loving everyone (platonically?). I think it'd be weird for God Manifested to be in romantic love with anyone, even several people. There's literally a power gap and age gap for one thing, and I don't just mean that as a joke.
For him to experience the whole range of human experience I would understand if he's romantically attracted to *everyone*, but I don't think there's much basis for that. And it'd be weird if he acted on it. His love is depicted a that of a teacher and parent, which is appropriate.
On the other hand he did wash people's feet. I'm not implying that's sexual, but it's rather intimate. I think a weakness in Jesus's story is that he only appeared in a very tiny area of the world, and was closely involved with people there, but nowhere else until after his ascension. Mormon Jesus is a hilarious band-aid on this serious issue.
Hey LW, you like SMAC, did you know that I have a whole folder of text files with SMAC quotes sorted by character and by theme?
I freaking love SMAC. I practically know all the quotes off by heart, there's just so much love... Blew my mind when I was reading the game manual and they were giving a recommended reading list and telling what the atmospheric composition of Planet was
Ooh really? I have to get my hands on that manual sometime. I'm
obviously a fan too, though I rely mostly on in-game descriptions and the Paean:
https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/Why would I want anyone to be "screwed" in this life or the next? That would bring me no joy. (Although I admit, I feel selfish pleasure when I see a traffic offender get pulled over. So I'm not really as good as I seem on TV.)
I don't get it either, but a lot of Christians seem to revel in it or at least accept it as "justice". Particularly the rich ones who explicitly have a miniscule chance of reaching heaven themselves. Modern Christianity is very strange sometimes.
I guess that's what happens when a Roman Emperor establishes a Christian theocracy which then violently suppresses all the "heretics" living in simple communion as Jesus preached.
And even when its empire crumbles, as all do, the most successful "reformations" retain either the greed or the hatred or both.
There were exceptions though, and I think more Christians every day are returning to the original gospel of egality and fraternity.
As I'm reading about "Religious Freedom" being the stick with which to beat the LGBTQ community, I wonder if the following statement would be protected under Free Speech and Religious Freedoms:
Jesus was born a woman, and self-identified as a man.
I still unironically believe this, actually, as the most reasonable interpretation of the scriptures.
Though I'd adjust the phrasing:
Jesus has existed for all of time as a man, and incarnated as a clone of Mary.So yes, basically a trans man.
It just makes sense to me.
I think we can posit that Jesus received *some* genetic material from Mary. She's famously his mother. Also, there's no mention of Jesus looking unusual for someone of Judah, so his body is presumably ethnically similar to his family rather than some average of all humanity or special divine ethnicity from the dawn of time.
If he's partially of Mary's genetics, is there another half that God Himself created just for this? I don't think so. For one thing it's just weird for God to create a gamete specifically for this purpose. If He did, wouldn't it be something special that made Jesus stand out? I guess He could have chosen a gamete from Joseph, but that would make Joseph a much more notable figure than he is.
Also, I don't think God had sex with Mary in any sense. Even the most clinical.
So yeah, I think Jesus is genetically a clone of Mary.
A lot of Catholic artwork seems to vaguely agree... but that's metaphor and kinda squicky and offensive, so I'd rather not get into it. Also it's the Catholic Church, booo.
