Luke
Introduction

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24

Contradictions
Absurdities
Injustice
Interpretation
Cruelty and Violence
Good Stuff
Family Values
Intolerance
Science and History
Prophecy
Women
Language

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Injustice in Luke

1. God strikes Zacharias dumb for doubting the angel Gabriel's words. 1:20

2. "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?"
   Just a few verses earlier (1:17-20), Zacharias is struck dumb for doubting his wife's angel-assisted pregnancy. Why wasn't Mary punished for her disbelief? 1:34-35

3. Those who fail to bear "good fruit" will be "hewn down, and cast into the fire." 3:9

4. "Be content with your wages" -- no matter how unjust they may be. 3:14

5. John the Baptist says that Christ will burn the damned "with fire unquenchable." 3:17

6. Peter and his partners (James and John) abandon their wives and children to follow Jesus. 5:11

7. Jesus says that people who are rich, well-fed, happy, or respected are going to hell. 6:24-26

8. "That he would come and heal his servant"
   Here was the perfect opportunity for Jesus to condemn slavery. All he'd have to do is say, "OK, I'll heal him. But then you must set your slave free, because slavery is an abomination to God." 7:2-10

9. Jesus says that he speaks in parables so "that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand." 8:10

10. Jesus, when told that his mother and brothers want to see him, ignores and insults them by saying that his mother and brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it. 8:20-21

11. Jesus heals a naked man who was possessed by many devils by sending the devils into a herd of pigs, causing them to run off a cliff and drown in the sea. This messy, cruel, and expensive (for the owners of the pigs) treatment did not favorably impress the local residents, and Jesus was asked to leave. 8:27-37

12. Jesus speaks harshly to his disciples because they couldn't cure epilepsy by casting out devils. 9:41

13. Jesus says that entire cities will be violently destroyed and the inhabitants "thrust down to hell" for not "receiving" his disciples. 10:10-15

14. Jesus blames all the deaths of the prophets [from Abel(?) to Zacharias] on his generation. 11:47-50

15. Jesus says that we should fear God since he has the power to kill us and then torture us forever in hell. 12:5

16. Those who "blaspheme against the Holy Ghost" will never be forgiven. 12:10

17. Jesus says that God is like a slave-owner who beats his slaves "with many stripes." 12:46-47

18. Jesus calls the people hypocrites because they cannot "discern this time." 12:56

19. "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." 13:3, 5

20. According to Jesus, only a few will be saved; the vast majority will suffer eternally in hell where "there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." 13:23-30

21. Jesus says that his disciples must hate their families (mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, children) and themselves. 14:26

22. If you want to be a disciple of Jesus, you must abandon everything, including your family. 14:33

23. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man goes to hell, because as Abraham explains, he had a good life on earth and so now he will be tormented. Whereas Lazarus, who was miserable on earth, is now in heaven. This seems fair to Jesus. 16:19-31

24. Jesus believed the story of Noah's ark. He thought it really happened and had no problem with the idea of God drowning everything and everybody. 17:26-27

25. Jesus also believes the story about Noah's flood and Sodom's destruction. He says, "even thus shall it be in the day the son of man is revealed ... Remember Lot's wife." This tells us about Jesus' knowledge of science and history, and his sense of justice. 17:29-32

26. Rich people cannot go to heaven. "For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." 18:25

27. In the parable of the talents, Jesus says that God takes what is not rightly his, and reaps what he didn't sow. The parable ends with the words: "bring them [those who preferred not to be ruled by him] hither, and slay them before me." 19:22-27