I'm a Christian and I love this post, but this part:
> There is often a big difference between being nice and being good.
... made me all giddy as a philosophy major :)
> There is often a big difference between being nice and being good.
... made me all giddy as a philosophy major :)
He did not call people to be nice, he called people to be good and faithful. There is often a big difference between being nice and being good. By contemporary standards, if Jesus had gone around being "nice," he never would have confronted anyone or accused them of sinning.
Jesus certainly did get angry sometimes, but his anger was justified, and he did not lose self-control.
You can't separate Christianity or Christ from God. Think about this: if Jesus was not who he claimed to be--the son of the living God--then he was surely crazy, because he got himself killed for nothing. He could have avoided all that suffering and death by just being nice and non-confrontational, and going to a place where people didn't want to kill him.