Quakers and Jesus

Last night, at a talk, a Catholic asked a Quaker speaker if one could be a Quaker without believing that Jesus was God. The speaker said in his opinion no. If that means we are all equally God, then yes, that is fine with me, if by that he takes the gospel writers, Paul and John's meaning, I would react in some degree of ... discomfort.

An English king, angry at his friend once said, "who will rid me of this troublesome priest?" He then claimed plausible deniability when knights murdered Thomas Becket.

In order to accept the history of Hebrew Scripture as presented by Paul and John, thee must commit a great sin against every Jew who was ever born or will be born. They so misrepresented, even rewrote Hebrew Scripture, that for one to be true the other must be a lie.

I have stated my belief that sin is separation, and that we all must sin. The above is a perfect example, if for us to believe one thing, another must suffer the loss of our finger pointing, then we must find some way to atone. This, to me, is not how to do it. A fFriend writes to a fFriend on a Quaker blog...

"you said, "How much do you find that the Hebrew Scriptures have to say to you?"
Well a great deal, but without any superstitious (faith-based?) approach to it. The Great Commandment came from the O.T. through Jesus.

For me loving God with all you mind means taking a critical faculty to the scriptures-- all of them in fact. Be aware of the fact that the early Hebrews were primitives, with primitive values and emotions.

What they wrote is like a mine, a filthy place from which we occasionally extract diamonds and gold.

Some of the O.T. we're better off without. God gave you the discernment to work these things out for yourself. Remember that we all came up "out of the miry clay". But we don't have to live there now. "



I would give this fFriend the best benefit of the doubt... he self describes as an anarchist, and maybe he feels all theology is primitive, but even in that there is an expression of mono-culturalism. I assume his best intentions, however, the blatant anti-Semitism of this seems plain, it says our people lied in our writing, but out of our lies your God was born. There is no plausible deniability in the deaths which followed such statements, from the Jews killed as "other" by Roman Christian swords to zylon gas, we died for the sentiment above. I can only ask thee, how would thee atone?