|>R()|)!G/-\|_
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2007
- Messages
- 1,134
I don't see anything about Jesus not wanting to be worshiped in the Gospels, Acts or Paul's letters. And as far as "religion" goes Paul wrote a lot of instructions for the early church.
I guess the impression I get from the Gospels is that Jesus served the people of Earth with humility. On almost every occasion where He heals, He asks the healed not to tell others. I always supposed this was because He did not want the glory. He wanted it given to His father, the Creator. I imagine He knew how badly things end up when humans worship or glorify other humans (kings, politicians, demagogues) and did not want to be the one glorified b/c it would detract from the message that God, the Creator wished for humanity to be at peace with itself.
It also seems that throughout the published Gospels the Pharisees and Saducees try repeatedly to get Jesus to admit that he wanted to be worshipped as God/a deity. If anything, Jesus' responses to these queries also provide evidence of an attitude of humility. The answers he gives deflect the glory from himself and put it back onto His Heavenly Father. At the same time, Jesus' answers show the Pharisees their own hypocritical behaviors and how they were poisoning God's plan for the world and humanity's proper understanding of that plan.
In Acts, Jesus lays the foundation for the early church but I don't see it as instructions to build a religion that worships him so much as an outline to rebuild humanity through adherence to 10 Commandments and their revisions, the beattitudes. I would like to think those principles make sense to any person regardless of their faith or lack of.