THE WAY WE ARE TAUGHT AS CHILDREN

By Bishop Spong, Edited by Hugh Fogelman

As children, we all believed what our parents and our pastors or priests told us about the bible. Without thinking, the pictures they painted were believable. Would they lie?

Bishop Spong wrote in his book Liberating the Gospels , while growing up in an evangelical part of the Christian Church, he was convinced that Jesus must have been a Swede or at least an Englishman as every picture of Jesus portrayed him with fair skin, with blonde or light colored hair and blue eyes. Jesus had the “angular look of a Northern European.” A very striking looking man, as a leader should look.

However, Christians love to quote Isaiah 53 claiming that this prophet spoke about Jesus. They misquote many verses in chapter 53 pointing out “see here, that is Jesus.” Let us just look at one verse Christians claim is about Jesus:

“For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.” Isaiah 53:2 (KJV)

Does the image of Jesus fit Isaiah’s supposedly description of him, the Messiah? NO!

Bishop Spong wrote that, as a child, he did not realize that Palestine was not part of Europe. When he saw movies of Palestinians, he noticed the people who lived there were dark-skinned with black hair. Did the Jesus that Bishop Spong grew up seeing look like them? NO!

You will not find too many Jews with natural blonde hair and blue eyes. Palestine was near North Africa, having a dark-skinned population. Jesus, being Jewish would indeed have had dark hair, dark eyes, and very tanned skin; having long curls hanging from the sides of his head and probably with a long wiry beard.

Bishop Spong admitted that even though he heard the words, he did not realize and understand that Jesus was Jewish. However, the bishop was made to realize and understand that one of Jesus’ disciples was indeed a Jew and Judas Iscariot was his name, and “the prejudice of my religion painted this disciple as dark, sinister, and evil.” Bishop Spong continues; “Those were the characteristics that I had been taught were typical of the Jews, but not of Jesus or his mother, or his other disciples.”

As a child, Strong’s Sunday school classes had clearly taught him that Jesus and his disciples were the “good” people while all the rest of the Jews were the “bad” people in the biblical drama. The New Testament tells very clearly that the Jewish High Priests, all the scribes, the Pharisees and the Sadducees were the “bad people.” The New Testament, the Christian Bible, clearly tells that the Jews were Jesus’ enemies who constantly plotted against him, even being called “Christ killers.”

So what would any innocent child think? The church makes you take sides and which side would the young “believer” take?

It is up to the pulpit to teach the truth, not rely upon traditions of biased gospel writers who were anti-Jewish and anti-Judaism. For example Christianity claism that Jesus knew his fate―that his death was pre-ordained. So by Christianity not explaining that no one-group of people was to blame for Jesus dying, it only proves just how biased Christianity―the gospels and the clergy―really is, even today!

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