My problem with that story is that's the one time Jesus chose violence, vs the bajillion times he said to love your neighbor and turn the other cheek. But I've seen tons of posts by right wingers like "we should kill people we disagree with! Jesus was all about violence, did you hear about the time with the whip!?!?" using it as justification for their hate and totally ignoring all of Jesus's messages.
Oh, I meant IRL.
The worst was when I got treated like I was stupid for not just assuming that someone with atypical facial features had some kind of mental disability.
I mean, it was apparent that they did once I began talking to them, but like Hell am I just going to assume that based on someone's looks.
I always figured Jesus was trying to piss everyone off and martyr himself. He showed up to Roman controlled Jerusalem, during a pilgrimage month, got the local leaders riled up, has people worshipping him and calling him king, (don't call yourself a king in a Roman province unless you wanna see what Romans do to Kings), his followers are lopping off ears, and disturbing the pax Romana.
Really didn't leave Roman authorities much choice but to please the locals by taking him out.
You should probably read the book some time. People called him king but it wasn't a title he wanted or requested; the only title he used of himself was "Son of man". He didn't request anyone to lop ears off (and in fact repeately tried to drill into people that the way forward is love) and on the one occasion it's documented he rebuked the lopper and stuck the ear back on. It was the Pharisees and Sadducees that got riled up because Jesus exposed their hypocrisy, and the local leaders originally weren't interested because they just saw it as an internal religious matter, but the P&S knew what buttons to push and that's what got JC crucified. Pilate actually said he couldn't see what Jesus had done wrong.
That's the story told by his followers decades later. He would have been an apocalyptic peasant preacher, and most of those people have some combination of narcissism and mental instability. Most likely, he got killed for exactly what the sign on his crucifix said. Whitewashing his personality came later.
It's no good reason to kill someone. The Roman Empire was a brutal place. But he probably was guilty.
I was driving through, I think Utah, a while back and I remember seeing a billboard ad for a local bank. They were heavily leaning into religious marketing (or maybe they were a "Christian Bank") and I remember thinking "Y'all im pretty sure Jesus had major issues with using the lord's name for business" lmao
The issue today is Jesus was washed away in mainstream media as a rebel against Rome. They didn't want to sell that part of the story because, well, the Lord whipped and cursed them and they're still doing it.
