I Disagree With John

Perhaps you've seen the "I Agree With John" shirts worn by Christians for proselyting. I actually wore one quite proudly myself back in my college years. There's actually a reason that Christianity likes John so much. It's because John is the only one of the 4 Gospels (the others being Matthew, Mark, and Luke) that is purely religious in nature. Christians quickly point out that John merely had a different focus, but I would sooner say he had a different agenda entirely.

I did a simple search within the 4 Gospels on two terms: "Believe" and "Kingdom". I individually counted up each time the term was used in context of "Believing in Jesus" as well as "Kingdom of God" and the like. The results were rather astounding. It becomes quite clear that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were entirely focused on Jesus preaching the Kingdom of God while John was focused on Jesus preaching "Jesus is God and died for your sins." In fact, the message preached in John regarding the propitiation of sins through the death of Jesus is nowhere in the other 3 Gospels at all. John didn't merely have a different angle, he changed the message entirely.

In the first 3 Gospels, Jesus preaches repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Repentance, of course, meaning a complete turning around from sin. It means actually changing who one is as opposed to merely apologizing. Now this is actually critical because this is the message that the religious were offended at. This is why they murdered Jesus. They had laws and Jesus was disregarding them. By their laws, you had to sacrifice and follow some other rituals to be forgiven. Jesus, on the other hand, was forgiving people merely because they repented. Jesus, again in the first 3 Gospels, completely dispelled the concept of religion and focused instead on the character of the person. He did not preach against the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes merely because they didn't "believe in him," but rather because they were terrible people on the inside.

The book of John, on the other hand, has Jesus running around preaching about himself all day. That was his only message in John with a little sprinkling of "be good" but then clarifying that "good" means "believing in Jesus." He criticized the Pharisees for not believing in him rather than for their character, and he spent his entire time trying to prove he was both the Messiah and God rather than teaching principles of character. This story is completely contradictory to that of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. As I mentioned in my article The Errant Bible, just because one is capable of making resolutions for the contradictions that does not make the resolutions honest and correct. We don't need to resolve John with the rest because it was merely written to religionize what Jesus taught and to completely disregard his real teachings.

Even beyond the contradictory message, there is also an extremely obvious discrepancy in Jesus response to his own death. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus asks and prays fervently to not be murdered. Quite understandable, of course. He continually pleaded, "Take this cup from me." In the book of John, Jesus suddenly has a super strong spirit as a supposed God in the Flesh would have. Jesus instead actually mocks the concept of fear and says, "What shall I say, save me from this hour? No, this is what I came for." His rhetorical question isn't so rhetorical in the other Gospels.

One can clarify all they want about the book of John to make amends and force its rectangular shape to fit into the square holes of the other Gospels, but this is merely intellectual dishonesty and wishful thinking. The truth is, it's a different agenda and a different story meant to crush the teachings of character and to uplift a concept of forgiveness through the murder of Jesus. John is the very symbol of Christian Religion and the very destruction of everything Jesus stood for.

As opposed to destroying one's faith, I personally feel that this conclusion should strengthen it. The mere fact that it was corrupted demonstrates a battle between doing what's right and doing what's wrong. It could support an active demonic force that is actually doing a great job at deceiving billions of people. Further, it gives evidence that Jesus existed and taught such things which was fuel to create a false and contradicting document. The Bible is filled with the contradictions of living to do what is right versus serving religious doctrine. The battle within it truly makes me believe there is a real battle being fought even today.

Number of times "Believe" appears in the Gospels in reference to believing in, on, or who Jesus is:

Matthew: 2

Mark: 2

Luke: 1

John: 79

Number of times God’s “Kingdom” is mentioned in the Gospels:

Matthew: 52

Mark: 17

Luke: 40

John: 3