WWJD?

My family is very deeply Mormon, so I know my way around Christian ideology fairly well. And as I was sitting in church the other day, I took a little bit of time to wonder:

"Would Yeshua of Nazareth actually approve of his followers today? Would he teach what they teach?"

I mean, think about it: When Jewish and Roman law became super restrictive and arbitrary, that Galilean carpenter-turned-rabbi basically made a career out of hanging with the wrong crowd and breaking the rules in the name of compassion, decency, and sanity. He shocked and appalled church leaders of the day. He openly criticized those who made a public display of their worship, telling them that spirituality was a personal and private experience. He practiced free health care. He wandered around, waxing philosophical and telling the uptight majority to chill out and help their brothers for a change, rather than react with hatred and violence.

He sounds EXACTLY like the kind of person that the right wing constantly reiterates is going to hell. He's like a middle-eastern John Lennon!

I think that over time, his followers got too caught up in all the baggage that any organization or church tends to accumulate. They forgot what he actually said, and remembered only what somebody said he said. It's sad.

I think that people who choose to hold hateful picket signs, tell other people how to live their lives, reject science of any kind because they can't find any way to reconcile their beliefs, and have the unmitigated gall to believe themselves superior to anyone else are directly rejecting the teachings of the man they continue to force people to embrace. I'm going to go do some things frowned upon by the church now. Why? Because that's what Jesus would have done.