Challenging the Church #1: The Divinity of Christ
In both of religions' holy texts Jesus (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) worshipped only God the father, and when he said the path to paradise was through him isn't it possible that he was referring to God's word that he was relaying to us? In Mathew 6:6 and Mathew 6:9 Jesus said to pray only to the father. When he said he is the way, in my view, he was referring to how he is the perfect example of how God's people were meant to act on this earth to be able to reach paradise. I understand after he died the apostles and subsequent Christians prayed to Jesus, but Jesus himself said to pray to the father and never once told us to pray to him.
And when He had come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, "Who is this?" So the multitudes said, "This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth of Galilee" (Matthew 21:10-11)
My desire for a hereafter isn't the motivating factor of my faith though, in fact if consciousness did cease to exist after death that would be far easier than having to live righteously to earn a place in paradise and avoid damnation. I'm religious because I set out to be as logical and educated as I can be by exploring philosophy and the religions of the world. What I found is that creation absent a creator isn't possible. That if there was no God, prophets, heaven, or hell there would be no humans and if atheists were correct in their absurd assertion that all complex life and human civilization happened at random by chance and came from nothing for no reason, there would be no civilization. Modern science continues to confirm the lessons of the bible and the Quran, despite people thinking science and religion can't intersect.
Human instinct isn't to love your neighbor, treat the weak with compassion, be monogamous, praise God, etc. All of those things would never exist if God didn't, because our base instincts are actually selfish, greedy, aggressive, and immoral. The existence of Jesus and the 3.5+ billion Jews, Christians, and Muslims is evidence for God. I am religious now because Allah guides whom he wills, even people who strayed as far and spoke as evil as I had in the past, because he is the most merciful and high. He gave us the ethics that allowed us to build friendships, alliances, moral societies, charitable organizations, etc. To me it is a contradiction to worship the Messiah that was prophesized for thousands of years when he never told us to do that. I feel Jesus would be unhappy with worship of him. Messiah never meant "literally God in flesh" and the idea of a trinity wasn't doctrine for almost 3 centuries after his death before the Catholic Church created it.
The holy spirit, or the divine aspect within humans, is within all of us and was not unique to Jesus but is also not God. If God created the universe then he exists separate from it. If God is all powerful then why would he need to have "a son" for the purpose of being tortured and killed in order to be able to forgive us and allow us entrance to heaven? He could've just forgiven us. Which is what I believe, that God forgave Adam when he repented and that original sin is a warped doctrine that does not fit scripture.
Jesus (Peace Be Upon Him) was a prophet
Jesus performed many miraculous wonders, and he without doubt said a lot of wonderful things about himself. Some people use what he said and did as proof that he was God. But his original disciples who lived and walked with him, and were eyewitnesses to what he said and did, never reached this conclusion. The Acts of the Apostles in the Bible details the activity of the disciples over a period of thirty years after Jesus was lifted up to heaven. Throughout this period they never refer to Jesus as God. They continually and consistently use the title God to refer to someone other than Jesus. Peter stood up with the eleven disciples and addressed the crowd saying:
"Men of Israel, 'listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited to you by God with miracles, wonders and signs which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know" Acts 2:22.
It was God, therefore, who did the miracles through Jesus, to convince people that Jesus was backed by God. Peter did not see the miracles as proof that Jesus is God. In fact, the way Peter refers to God and to Jesus makes it clear that Jesus is not God. For he always turns the title God away from Jesus. Take the following references for example:
"God has raised this Jesus …" (Acts 2:32). "God has made this Jesus both Lord and Christ" (Acts 2:36).
In both passages, the title God is turned away from Jesus. Why? if Jesus is God. To Peter, Jesus was a servant of God. Peter said: "God raised up his servant," Where the title servant refers to Jesus (Acts 3:26). This is clear from a previous passage where Peter declared: "The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus" (Acts 3:13). Peter must have known that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob never spoke of a Triune God. They always spoke of Jehovah (Yahweh) as the only God. Here, as in Matthew ch. 12: 18-20, Jesus is the Servant of Yahweh. Matthew tells us that Jesus was the same servant of Yahweh spoken of in Isaiah 42: 1. If Matthew, and Peter are right, then Jesus is not Yahweh, but Yahweh's servant.
Some will say that this whole discussion over the divinity of Jesus is unnecessary. The important thing, they say, is to accept Jesus as your personal savior. On the contrary, the Bible's writers stressed that, in order to be saved, it is necessary to understand who exactly is God. Failure to understand this would be to violate the first and greatest of all the commandments in the Bible. This commandment was emphasized by Jesus, on whom be peace, when a teacher of the Law of Moses asked him as follows: "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" Jesus replied: "The most important one is this: 'Hear 0 Israel, Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one. Love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength" (Mark ch. 12, v.28-30). Notice that Jesus was quoting the first commandment from the book of Deuteronomy, ch. 6, v. 4- Jesus confirmed not only that this commandment is still valid, but also that it is the most important of all the commandments.
If Jesus thought that he himself is God, why did he not say so? Instead, he stressed that Yahweh alone is God. The man who The Bible Says No! questioned Jesus understood this, and what the man says next makes it is clear that God is not Jesus, for he said to Jesus: "Well said, teacher, you are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. - ." (Mark 12:32). Now if Jesus was God, he could have told the man so. Instead, he let the man refer to God as someone other than Jesus, and then he even confirmed that the man had spoken wisely (see v. 34).
Some other interesting verses are;
"Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone." (Mark 10: 18)
"I can do nothing of my own authority" "I do as the Father has commanded me" (John 5:30). (John 14:31 RSV).
"The Father is greater than I" (John 14:28 RSV)
"Behold my servant whom I have chosen." (Matthew 12:18)
"The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus" (Acts 3:13).
Consider the following sayings of Jesus found in John's Gospel alone:
John 14:9: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father."
John 6:35: "And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life."
John 8:12: "I am the light of the world."
John 8:58: "Before Abraham was, I am."
John 10:7: "I am the door of the sheep."
John 11 :25: "I am the resurrection, and the life."
John 14:6: "I am the way, the truth, and the light."
John 15: 1 "I am the true vine."
Christian scholars tell us that if Jesus had made all these fantastic claims about himself, the first three gospels would surely have recorded them. Mark was written around 70 CE, followed by Matthew and Luke somewhere between 80-90 CE John, written around 100 CE, was the last of the four canonized gospels.
Sources
https://d1.islamhouse.com/data/en/ih_books/single/en_Is_Jesus_God.pdf
https://youtu.be/n4joxQUkf-w
http://triggs.djvu.org/djvu-editions.com/BIBLES/DRV/Download.pdf
https://www.alislam.org/quran/Holy-Quran-English.pdf
https://d1.islamhouse.com/data/en/ih_books/single2/en-the-true-message-of-jesus-christ.pdf
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