FAST FOOD (2018): Eighth Helping
Unconditional faith in Jesus as the Messiah precedes His teaching of unconditional Nonviolent Love of all under all circumstances—whether they be friends or enemies. How could unconditional faith in Jesus as God’s Messiah not precede committing to such a love within a humanity fed on a daily diet of evil, sin, fear and death? Without the absolute assurance of God that—the Way of Nonviolent Love of all under all circumstances as taught and lived by Jesus of Nazareth, God’s Messiah—is the Way to overcome evil and death as well as the Way to eternal life for one and for all. Why would any sane person ever commit to such a Way in a world where violence, deceit, fear and oppression not only reign supreme but are also justified?
Yes or No:
1. Is the Jesus of the Gospels God’s choice to be the Messiah of the Jewish people?
2. Is Jesus the Word of God “made flesh?”
What, if anything, in the teaching of Jesus—God’s Messiah of the Jewish people and the Word of God “made flesh”—is an absolute moral imperative valid at all times, in all places and under all circumstances, to which Jews and Christians must adhere with no exceptions because they are revealed by God Himself or by God’s uniquely chosen agent to be his moral will for the salvation of the Jewish people and through the Jewish people for the salvation of all people?
So, does the Jesus of the Gospels communicate any imperative Divine moral absolutes, e.g., the rejection of violence and enmity?
“No reader of the New Testament, simple or sophisticated, can retain any doubt of Jesus’ position toward violence directed to persons, individual or collective, organized or free enterprise, he rejected it totally…If Jesus did not reject any type of violence for any purpose, then we know nothing of him.
Jesus presents in His words and life not only a good way of doing things, not only an ideal to be executed whenever it is convenient, but the only way of doing what He did.”
—Rev. John L. McKenzie
Sounds like a moral absolute to me. Is it? Is anything in the Gospels?
—Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
