Are There Any Genuinely Good Characters In The New Testament?
Several recent Monday School classes have been spent searching without success for genuinely good people in the pages of the Old Testament. It is with great relief that I now leave the many reprehensible killers of the OT behind and hurry forward to the New Testament in a desperate attempt to find at least one truly moral person in the Bible. Are any to be found? Let’s start with the likeliest candidate: Jesus. Perhaps no character in all of history has been more often presented as the epitome of morality than Jesus. Is there any evidence to support this designation? Not that I can see. Instead, I find these less than praiseworthy characteristics: —– Jesus promotes hate “If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). —– Jesus promotes war and division “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matt
