00:01Seven Jesus Quotes So Absurd the Church Wants Them Hidden.
00:07That's the claim, but does it hold up?
00:10They say the church cut them out, then admit you can go read them right now.
00:16So what is it? Exposed truth or recycled nonsense?
00:21Are these passages absurd or just completely misunderstood?
00:28The Truth About Jesus' Absurd Teachings
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00:58Recently, in my video feed, I saw a video claiming seven Jesus quotes
01:03so absurd the church begs you to ignore them.
01:07Clearly clickbait.
01:08But my first thought was whether this was a Christian trying to attract non-believers
01:13or a non-Christian attacking Christianity.
01:17It was the latter.
01:19But even though it was bad AI, I watched to see what their approach was.
01:24The video started with this claim.
01:26You grew up hearing about Jesus.
01:28Maybe in a church.
01:30Maybe from your grandmother.
01:32Maybe just from the culture around you.
01:34And the version you got was safe, careful, designed to make you feel warm.
01:41Maybe a little guilty.
01:43But mostly comfortable.
01:45What is interesting about the images is that they depict a past era.
01:51The most recent item was a radio.
01:54Most seem older.
01:56The idea is that belief in Jesus is clearly a thing of the past.
02:01As a side note, many Christians would agree with the video at this point.
02:06But a common criticism is that our view of Christianity is too comfortable.
02:12Some Christians do see Jesus as just a good buddy who helps them out of a jam,
02:17but asks little, if anything, from us.
02:21Other Christians argue against such views.
02:27That version exists for a reason.
02:30And today, we're going to talk about what they cut out to build it.
02:35Because there are seven things Jesus said.
02:39Direct quotes.
02:40Red letters.
02:42Stuff you can go look up right now.
02:44That are so strange.
02:46So uncomfortable.
02:47I so genuinely bizarre that the church has spent almost 2,000 years doing damage control on them.
02:55And not the kind of damage control where they explain the context and let you decide.
03:00The kind where they change the meaning, invent stories, and when none of that works,
03:06they just don't talk about it.
03:08This is a strange claim.
03:10The image shows a knife cutting a parchment and a woman arranging fragments.
03:15While the narrator refers to what they cut out to introduce the seven sayings of Jesus.
03:22This is common as claims about how the Bible was rewritten or modify abound.
03:28They are false and easily refuted.
03:31But they abound.
03:32Yet, after talking about what they cut out,
03:36the narrator says of these seven sayings that
03:39they are stuff that you can go look up right now.
03:42Now, this immediately raises the question,
03:45if they were cut out, how can we read them?
03:49The truth is, they were not cut out by the church or anyone else.
03:55They are all in the Bibles Christians have read and studied,
03:59and that non-Christians have been attacking for thousands of years.
04:04So, at best, what we have here is a difference over the meaning and understanding of the text,
04:10which is something people have been discussing for thousands of years.
04:14These aren't even hidden, much less cut out.
04:18All these verses are discussed in great detail in commentaries,
04:22and there are even many, many books written just on the hard sayings of Jesus.
04:28Thus, the video is hard to take seriously.
04:31Consider the first verse.
04:33And this is probably the one that hits hardest,
04:36if you had any kind of religious background growing up.
04:39There's this scene in Luke chapter 14,
04:42where Jesus has this massive crowd following Him.
04:45And these aren't like devoted followers who knew what they were signing up for.
04:50These are regular people.
04:53Families.
04:54You know, somebody's got a kid on their hip who's been asleep for a mile.
04:59There's some guy's elderly mother shuffling along trying to keep up.
05:04There's definitely someone there who didn't even want to come,
05:07but got dragged along.
05:09Just a regular day.
05:11Nothing dramatic happening.
05:13The descriptions of the crowd is how the video sets the stage
05:16and tries to build a context for its view of Jesus' comments.
05:22The Bible simply says,
05:23Now great crowds accompanied Him.
05:27With this context set, the video continues.
05:30And note how the AI Jesus is depicted.
05:33And Jesus stops, turns around, looks at all these people,
05:39and says, verse 26,
05:42If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother,
05:46wife and children, brothers and sisters,
05:50yes, even their own life,
05:52such a person cannot be my disciple.
05:54This is the end of the verse.
05:56But the video continues to emphasize its views.
06:00Hate your mother.
06:02Hate your father.
06:04Hate your children.
06:06Hate yourself.
06:08One thing to point out here is that
06:11there can be little doubt that Jesus actually said this.
06:15The AI depiction is made up,
06:17but not the words.
06:19After all,
06:21if this statement is so problematic,
06:24why did Luke ever put it in his gospel in the first place?
06:28And why had, according to the video,
06:31the church been trying to cut them out for 2,000 years
06:34if Jesus did not say them?
06:38The narrator continues to expand and emphasize
06:41their understanding of the text,
06:43and then tries to say that the church's view
06:47is that the Greek word here translated hate
06:50does not really mean hate.
06:53The latter is a distinct possibility,
06:56given the setting,
06:57but the video makes too much more fundamental errors.
07:01Thus, it is easier and quicker to point them out
07:04than to dive deeply into the lexical domains
07:07of words in first-century Judea.
07:10If you really are interested,
07:12a good place to start is
07:14Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek
07:16by David Allen Black.
07:18The link is in the description.
07:20The Bible was written in the common language of the time.
07:24For Luke, that would have been first-century Greek,
07:27what we now call koine, or common Greek.
07:31It is not a legal monotone,
07:33but uses the types of speech common at the time,
07:36including prose and poetry.
07:39Thus, one does not need to dig deep into the Greek,
07:43but can look at the common uses of terms
07:46in our own time period,
07:48as these have not changed all that much.
07:52The first issue is absolute versus relative.
07:56Hate, and also love,
07:58can be used as absolutes or relative terms.
08:02Consider how you have used these terms in your own life.
08:05Has the meaning of hate or love ever changed?
08:09You have probably said you hated something,
08:12not because you actually hated it,
08:14but as a relative term.
08:16The same is true for love.
08:19Consider the following two sentences.
08:21I love ice cream,
08:23and I love my mother.
08:26Are they using love the same way?
08:29Does love mean the same in both sentences?
08:34No.
08:35It's most likely that the first,
08:37I love ice cream,
08:39is a relative use of love,
08:41while the reference to mother is absolute.
08:44The second is similar,
08:46as we often use words hyperbolically for emphasis.
08:49That the Bible and even Jesus
08:53uses such ordinary types of speech is clear.
08:57When Peter asked Jesus
08:58if he should forgive someone seven times,
09:01Jesus said to him,
09:03I do not say to you seven times,
09:06but 77 times.
09:09Matthew chapter 18, verse 22.
09:13This is not setting a literal rule
09:16that you must forgive 77 times,
09:18but at the 78th,
09:20you no longer have to.
09:21This is hyperbole,
09:23indicating that there are no bounds to forgiveness.
09:27With these two issues,
09:29Jesus' comments in Luke chapter 14, verse 26,
09:33that the video finds so absurd,
09:36are no longer hard to understand,
09:38particularly given the overall context of that section,
09:43which is the cost of discipleship.
09:45Read in context,
09:47this is a difficult saying,
09:49but by no means absurd.
09:53So what do you think?
09:55Do you think the video is correct
09:57and Jesus really did teach
09:59that we should hate our parents?
10:01Is this an absurd teaching?
10:04Tell us why in the comments.
10:05We love reading your comments
10:07and reply to many of them.
10:09Let us know if you would like us
10:11to address any of the other six
10:13so-called absurd statements.
10:16If you've made it this far in the video,
10:18consider watching one of our other videos
10:19and supporting our channel on Patreon.
10:22Thank you for watching Into the Desert,
10:24exploring the wilderness of ideas.
10:26And to our fellow adventurers,
10:28a special thank you for helping to support
10:30this channel out on Patreon.
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