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John: Divine Or Designed?, Problematic Passages

problematic passages 

So let's move on to problematic passages. First, we have in John 2:13-16 the (26:45) cleansing of the temple. The story in John, even though we've seen it elsewhere, is a little bit different. Here we have Jesus taking the time to make a whip and physically drive them out. In this way, we can talk about justified anger versus non-justified anger. I do get Jesus showing forcefully even the unacceptable nature of which his father's house had been utilized, but also, wouldn't you expect the person who knows everything, who's been with God the Father from the beginning, to not have such human-like emotions? That becomes especially true when he's driven to physical harm.

(27:20) I think it just becomes less easy to entertain or excuse John 8:44, Jesus's speech to the Pharisees: "You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desires. He was a liar and the father of lies." Funny enough, this gets quoted to me quite often. We see Jesus argue with the Pharisees in other books, but it's usually to try to iron out these theological differences. I mean, he does name-call a lot, but calling them belonging to their father, the devil—don't all men belong to God? Are people really so evil that they become of the

(27:57) devil here on Earth, that they have a different father? It seems like a theological idea even more than it does an insult. And if it is just an insult, I would say he's gone too far. Where is the grace? Where is the love? Where is the forgiveness? And again, if you see my video on the Pharisees, tell me where they lied. Jesus is saying, "You are of your father, the devil, who is the father of lies," but where did they lie? All they did was quote to Jesus what he himself supposedly ordained to have written when he was God at the beginning of things

(28:29) about his own rule and law and how he's now breaking those rules and laws. It's just so heavily and highly problematic. John 14:6: Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." The statement is totally fine on its own if you want to believe it in the Christian idea, but it is at odds with what that means for anyone before Jesus was around. Also, what that means for works-based salvation, which is spelled out pretty clearly even amongst the New Testament. This free grace theology that mainly comes from verses like this in John

(29:06) where belief and belief alone in Jesus equals salvation. Then you get into all that gray territory—well, if you really believe, then your acts would show it. So it's not that your acts save you; it's that your belief does, but it's only true belief if you display it with acts. It gets pretty tricky there, but I just wanted to call out where some of that theology comes from. There's an interesting verse right away in John 1 that most people don't talk about a lot: John 1:11. "He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him."

(29:36) Historically, this verse has been interpreted as Jesus being rejected by the Jews, and thus why everything that has had to happen has happened. Because if the Jews had just received their Messiah, we wouldn't have had to go through all of the things that Jesus went through and the trials and tribulations that Christians will go through in the end times. There is a belief system here that we could have started the New Kingdom right away if the Jews had just accepted their Messiah, but because they did not, God has to do this workaround, and it's led to a lot of anti-Semitism and all of

(30:07) these horrible things that would be completely unnecessary if the author of perfect truth had just clarified some meaning for us here. John 6:53-56 is interesting, and I understand a lot of people on any of the verses I'm going to be talking about are going to say, "Yeah, you're just being too literal. Come on, metaphor." Yeah, I'm with you, but it says, "Jesus said to them, 'Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.'" Very truly I tell you, and then a very specific decree seems less

(30:39) metaphorical, pretty pagan for its source. This is not something that was uncommon amongst other belief systems of this time and place—this pagan cannibalism of receiving a spirit by eating the flesh of the person that contained the spirit. It's unique here because, again, in John, we don't have the Eucharist, so we're not having this "do this in remembrance of me" kind of thing. We have Jesus clearly saying, "Very truly I tell you, this is what you need to do." So again, not a hill I'm willing to die on, but interesting, especially in

(31:10) light of the differences between the Gospels. You know, it seems simple to most believers, but John 10:30 says, "I and the Father are one." If the Trinity has ever confused you, you're not alone, because church tradition has not been consistent or clear with this point. What does it mean, "I and the Father are one"? What does it mean, "Before Abraham, I was"? Is Jesus claiming to be God, to be part of God? He's obviously claiming to be the Son of God. Was he once God and begat himself? Was he birthed from God at the beginning of time in the alpha state

(31:43) before there was time? What does this actually mean? How does this physically play out? And again, as a believer, you don't want to get into the muck of this. You just automatically believe in the Trinity. For most believers, there are three of them. Brandon, it's not that hard to understand, even though no Christians can agree, and the analogies that they use, other Christians will call out and say, "That's not fair. That's heretical. You don't understand." But again, I wanted to point out a lot of it's coming from this book. Now here's one that I consider highly problematic, and I've called it out before, but it happens right here.

(32:13) Jesus does a miracle where he heals someone. This is in John 9:2-3, and his disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the work of God might be displayed in him." So we have a lot that's happening right here. We have an admission, even in the New Testament, that generational sin and curses were a thing, thus the disciples wanting to know, was it the man himself or was it the parents? Jesus doesn't say,

(32:46) "That's silly. We would never punish someone for what their parents did." He's like, "No, not this time. This time it was for my glory. I chose purposefully, or at best my Father, to make this person blind from birth, not based off any sin, even though I've said punishments are for sin. I have unjustly caused this man turmoil for his entire life so that I could be here in this moment to heal him and receive glory." Every single time you think about how much Jesus loves you and is your best friend and is here to personally help you and encourage you

(33:19) and lift up your spirit and take on your burdens, sure, some of that is represented in the Bible, but so is this: God has no problem cursing you for no reason or no justified reason other than to lift himself up higher—a perfect being that somehow needs glory. This is one of the most disgusting verses in the New Testament for the reasons that I've just listed. The implications of what this actually means about this God-man are tough to swallow if you're an actual believer. Don't be mad at me when I make

(33:53) a video on this very soon, and I'm redundant, but I want to start pointing out some of the worst verses in the Bible, especially the ones from the New Testament where people just don't think there's any issues. This is a huge issue, and there's plenty more that we could do. Like John says, if I were to cover all the issues with this book, the whole world could not contain it. Obviously not true, but there are a lot, and hopefully, through some of the other gospels that I've covered in the contradictions, you can just see this is it. This is a mess.

(34:22) No one agrees. The Son of God came down himself, sent himself to Earth to die to himself, in some cases just for the Jews, in some cases to graft in the Gentiles, in some cases only to graft in the Gentiles to make the Jews jealous so they would come back to him. Sometimes he spoke in riddles to confuse people, sometimes he hid his divinity, sometimes he outright boasted about it, sometimes he ascended, sometimes he didn't, sometimes he had transfiguration, sometimes he did not. There are just so many issues amongst the gospels, and when

(34:53) you take the time to do this, and I hope that you've stuck with me for these four, you're going to see the holes and the gaps that have had to be filled by apologists, by the early church fathers, by future books of the New Testament, and even those aren't going to work with each other or be consistent. It's a troubled religion built off a false myth, trying purposely to bring about fulfillment of confused prophecy, let alone Judaism today that doesn't believe the Messiah has yet come. Within the very words of Jesus, we get confusion on what it takes to be saved.

(35:31) Within the very words of Jesus in these four gospels, we get confusion on if hell is real and physical and everlasting, or if there's a burning process of refinement, or if there's just annihilation. We get confusion on baptism and the necessity. We get confusion on if works save you or belief in the character and work of Jesus Christ. How can there be this many issues in these four books that are supposedly all supposed to be, according to tradition, eyewitness accounts of the life, words, and actions of Jesus Christ? Hopefully, I've been able to show you a path that

(36:03) actually makes all this confusion make sense, which is that these are anonymous accounts written with agendas and bias decades after the fact and decades between themselves, trying to concoct and create and fix the mistakes of so many other things that came before. This is man-made. That is the biggest thing I got from truly studying and understanding the gospels. There is no reason to believe this is a perfect true story inspired by a perfect true God of perfect love, light, and justice. This has the marks of man all over it, and not

(36:42) because it was some true thing that man mucked up in our fallible, fallen state, but because from its very beginnings, you can see an evolution of myth and lore growing, building, being fought over, contradicting itself, being mutually exclusive. If this is indeed from a real God and this is indeed the best he could do or his plan to communicate to future generations one truth for one people for all time, this is inexcusable. This could 100% be done better is a phrase no one should ever be able to say about the perfect truth of God, the

(37:18) creator of the universe. So that's it. I am so excited to move on from the gospels and start getting into individual books. Next, we have Acts, which is a sequel to Luke, so still a lot there, but at least we're covering some new ground. Stick around on this ride of secular Bible study. Thank you so much for being here. I will see you Sunday with a new episode, and until then, keep thinking. I wanted to personally thank my top tiers of support: Mylist and Boris Gvi, Jacob, Joe, Martin, Oliver, Perry, Rocket, and Shan, my humanist heroes Jared, James, and Christe, my atheist advocates Caleb, Imposter Jeff,

(37:50) Jeffrey, Karen, Paul, Sparky, and Todd, as well as all of my secular scholar patrons. If you believe in the mission of this channel or you just enjoy the content, please consider joining these fine people today.

Main Points: Problematic Passages