Jesus and the Humanitarian Ideal

But I have to say, Jesus is ahead of all other religions, even by Hitchen's standards. First of all, Jesus sought reform, but accepted the persecution on himself. Apart from the others, reform is not to be imposed, but rather to be seen as a process which begins with the destruction of the prophet who announces reform. Jesus not only set up his own sacrifice, he also taught his disciples to accept persecution when it came. Interestingly enough, he didn’t insist that his disciples do as he did—actually manipulate the political and religious situation for his own personal demise. Rather, he told them to accept and rejoice in such persecution, but not to create it themselves.

(On a similar note, Mr. Hutchins, it may be “odd” or, as you imply, perverse, to manipulate the action of a prophecy. But Jesus insisted that he was fulfilling the holy text, not specifically the prophecies.)

So all of Jesus’ reform was never about war or the destruction of others. Rather it was using self-sacrifice to change the cultural and religious society. Thus, this is completely humanitarian, if not completely life-affirming as some would like to have Jesus’ teach.

Also, Jesus was and is the most consistent humanitarians in religious leaders. Admittedly, Buddha and others taught an equal affirmation of all life, but this proves difficult to be consistent in, as our very life requires the killing of other life, whether in our immune system or in our every breath. Jesus, however, taught the benevolence of all human life, without exception. This is, what “Love your enemies” means. Jesus is using the most extreme form of a moral statement—doing good to those who intend to harm you—to broaden a principle of benevolence to all of humanity, without exception. The fact that Christians continually find ways to find exceptions to Jesus’ broad rule is an example of their irreligiosity, not of a fault in the religion in and of itself.

Jesus also taught that all religious ritual is marginalized in light of this basic humanism. He spoke against the hardcore Jewish monolith, the Sabbath, to say that it is proper to work on the Sabbath—in opposition to all Jewish tradition—if that work is enacting mercy. Interestingly, Jesus’ followers continued in this tradition, claiming that all religious traditions—the Temple, circumcision, racism, ritual sacrifice, holidays—are not to be set aside, but marginalized in comparison to doing good. This is so much the case that the leaders of Jesus’ movement were not to be known as leaders at all, but slaves or servants.

In fact, I would say that were it not for Jesus, that religion would not ever been seen in humanitarian terms. I am not saying that Jesus was the first humanitarian, only the greatest populist spokesman for it. All throughout the Western history of the world, people have looked at Jesus, compared religions to him, and found the religion lacking. Indeed, I would say, that were it not for Jesus, there probably would have been no Enlightenment to begin with, for the idea of having a humanitarianism apart from ritual was most popularly spoken by Jesus—although first promoted in some of the Hebrew Scriptures. Many of the greatest humanitarian leaders since the enlightenment—Thomas Jefferson, William Wilberforce, David Livingstone, Albert Schweitzer, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Moses Brown, Florence Nightingale, Leo Tolstoy, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King—were all deeply influenced by Jesus and his humanitarian ideal.