3:4-46, Jesus refers to the scribe and Pharisees as “hypocrites” and “snakes” repeatedly throughout the passage. In this section, Jesus also tells the crowds and his disciples, “But don’t do what they do, because they don’t practice what the preach,” which is ironic when one considers the sheer amount of senseless violence Jesus partakes in throughout the New Testament and his teachings about turning the other cheek (Matt. 5:39) and loving one’s neighbor.
Another instance of verbal abuse occurs in John 8:44, wherein Jesus tells the Pharisees/or possibly the Jews that they are “of your father the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies.”
In Titus 1:12, Jesus/maybe Paul (one of Jesus’s disciples) claims that “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons,” for…
The Cleansing of the Temple, which occurs in all four canonical gospels of the New Testament, is significant for a number of reasons because it demonstrates how Jesus was also both a practitioner and proponent of physical violence. One of the most notable of these acts occurs in Matt. 21:12, John 2:13-15, Mark 11:15, and Luke 19:45, wherein Jesus storms in the temple and flips the money-changers tables and vendors selling animals. While Jesus may have seen this act as abhorrent because business was being done in his temple, the moneychangers were not doing anything illegal; in other words, Jesus’s qualms with them were completely unfounded. At best, Jesus believed that the moneychangers were acting unethically by practicing business in his temple, but the destruction of property and making the men flee the temple was both unnecessary and illegal. Jesus and his twelve disciples were traveling to Jerusalem for Passover when Jesus stopped into the temple and then decided to flip people’s tables and whip them out of them temple. He accuses the money changers and sellers of turning his temple into a “den of thieves.” The Cleansing of the Temple is also significant because Jesus claims himself as the son of God when he refers to the temple as “my father’s house.” Oftentimes this instance is either referred to as “righteous anger” or out of character for Jesus, but this simply is not true. Jesus was pissed because the vendors and money changers corrupted the sacred nature of the temple with their actions. Jesus’s actions cannot be explained away as being rash because Jesus took the time to plan his scene at the temple before executing it. This is evident in Mark 11-19, as Jesus first goes into the temple one day but then doesn’t return to wreak havoc on its inhabitants the next. Furthermore, in John 2:15, Jesus even takes the time to create or find a whip before attacking the temple. The problem with Jesus’s actions is that the people selling animals and the money changers were not only acting within the law, but their actions were absolutely necessary for the temple to function properly. People often bought animals directly at the temple instead of bringing their own from home, and the money changers converted money into one common form of coinage for paying the annual temple tax; both of these things were required by Jewish law. Some argue that the act was symbolic, that Jesus was predicting the temple’s eventual destruction. Jesus’s “temple tantrum,” as some call it, highlights Jesus’s entitlement; again, the verse stating that everything on earth belongs to God, and therefore to Jesus, is relevant when considering Jesus’s lack of empathy for others and willful consideration of their property.
Another act of senseless violence appears in Matthew 21:18-21 and Mark 11:13-14, when Jesus kills a fig tree because it isn’t bearing fruit. While this act may not seem to be consequential in any way, in actuality the killing of the fig tree is a very accurate representation of Jesus’s attitude towards people: if they are not serving a purpose he deems profitable to him, they are useless and can be struck down if he feels the urge to do so.
Despite Jesus’s general depiction as a nonviolent man, Jesus both encourages the beating of slaves when necessary (Luke 12:45-47), and in 1 Corinthians 4:21, Jesus asks _____, “What do you want? Should I come to you with a rod, or in love and a spirit of gentleness?”
Jesus also does some things that do not neatly fall into the category of verbal or physical abuse but that are worth exploring due to their overall odd and unnecessary nature. First of all, Jesus reveals to his disciples that he speaks specifically in parables because he doesn’t want everyone to be able to understand him (Mark 4). In short, Jesus is vague as fuck on purpose.
Although some Christians do acknowledge the violent and unsettling acts Jesus perpetrates in the New Testament, many often argue that Jesus benevolent acts outweigh the bad, citing his multitude of miracles and his claim that he only acts according to God’s will. However, many of the “miracles” Jesus performed were either not done as an act of love and kindness or the results were detrimental to a number of people or Jesus was just fucking weird when he went about performing the miracle.
First, Jesus’s twelve disciples raising the dead (Matt. 10:5-15) was not an act of compassion, but a show of skill.
Next, Jesus heals a blind man by rubbing spit and mad into his eyes; the problem is, Jesus did not need to touch people to heal them (Mark 8:23, John 9:6).
Jesus calls a woman begging him to save her daughter’s life a dog, which is the equivalent of an ethnic slur when considered in the culture of Jesus’s time (Mark 7: 24-30, Matt. 15:21-28).
Lastly, Jesus kills around 2,000 pigs during an exorcism; however, Jesus’s actions during this section were not an act that benefited anyone. Instead, Jesus denied the Garasenes people a major food source, essentially robbing them of their property (Matt. 8:28-30, Mark 5:1-20, Luke 8:26-39). Technically, Jesus exorcise a demon from a possessed man, which in itself would be a miracle, except he then allows Legion to a possess a nearby herd of pigs which run off a cliff and tumble to their deaths in the ocean. While pigs were considered unclean for Jewish people (Lev.11:7-8, Mark 5:13), the Garasenes were not Jewish, and 2,000 pigs would have been a massive loss to the community. The townspeople ask Jesus and his disciples to leave after this incident, and rightly so. Oftentimes when Christians defend this specific event, they argue that Jesus’s purpose in killing the pigs was not to rob a people of their food source, but to show how powerful he is, how dangerous (and real) demons are, and that only he can offer protection from all the evils in the world. Jesus also probably intended for the owner of the pigs to receive his own special warning: if the owner was Jewish, pigs were considered unclean and should not be kept even as a food source, and if the owner was a Gentile, Jesus is calling him to turn away from sin and live a “clean” lifestyle. Again, Jesus abuses his power and his actions call to mind the verse about everything on earth belonging to God and Jesus under the guise of helping others and drawing attention to his power. Christians also defend this “miracle” by arguing that human lives are more valuable to animal lives
While Jesus was technically performing miracles in the selected instances above, they were not done in love and kindness, and were oftentimes entirely detrimental to a number of people. The statement that all the books in the world wouldn’t be enough to contain Jesus’s miracles in _____ takes an interesting tone when one considers