Israel Folau, your Jesus isn’t the one I believe in
Israel Folau has completely misinterpreted Christianity, writes Claire Harvey. It’s enraging that churches, and bigots, have claimed Christianity for themselves and preach messages to suit them.
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Israel, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick about this whole Jesus thing.
I think you’ve completely misinterpreted Christianity.
It’s subjective, of course, but the Jesus I believe in wouldn’t tell a gay person — or for that matter a drunk or a fornicator, or anyone else who’s marginalised — they’re going to hell. He’d sit with them, talk to them, be their voice, try to help them find happiness in whatever their reality happens to be.
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Jesus, in my understanding, wasn’t about sin and hellfire. That’s the wrong Testament entirely. The power of Jesus’ message, whether he was a real human being or just an extended metaphor (and I’m not entirely sure, but I don’t think it matters), was that love trumps hate every single time.
Jesus was a radical pacifist in a violent world; the one man with the courage to stand up to oppression, to tell the religious establishment they were wrong to reject prostitutes and lepers and single mothers.
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He was kind to the thief on the cross. He preached tolerance and understanding, forbearance and fortitude in the face of hatred and despair.
In one of the many commonly misinterpreted messages, Jesus said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me”, when his over-prim disciples were trying to shoo children away from their rock star personage.
People quote half that phrase, “suffer the little children” as if Jesus was saying he wanted kids to endure something horrendous.
It’s typical of the misinterpretation of Christianity and, I think, the corruption of those pure ideals by churchmen with their own interests at heart.
There’s a reason the story of Jesus captivated and then irrevocably transformed the Middle East, the Roman Empire, and, ultimately, the entire world.
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His message of equality and understanding resonated at an instinctive level with the oppressed and the downtrodden. Jesus was a hero for the disadvantaged.
They were his people. The lowest among us; the outcasts, the shunned.
If he were alive today, Jesus’ people would have been precisely those Israel Folau suggests we reject — the alcoholics, the gays, the prostitutes, the mentally ill, the troubled.
I call myself a Christian in the purest sense. I’m inspired by, and try to live within, the philosophy espoused by Jesus Christ.
Did he exist? I’m not sure. I don’t care. I like the ideas associated with the Gospel and, for me, that’s enough.
Too often, I think, the churches — both traditional and Pentecostal — preach the opposite of Jesus’ message; that deceptively simple notion that in empathy and kindness we might find our eternal peace.
It enrages me that the churches, and the bigots, have claimed Christianity for themselves.
They don’t represent most Christians. They don’t speak for me. And I don’t think they speak for Jesus.
Claire Harvey is the deputy editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
Originally published as Israel Folau, your Jesus isn’t the one I believe in
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