Ethical truths found in words of Jesus

All college students should be required to take a course in the Bible as Literature.
The moral and ethical truths found in the four gospels alone are guideposts in the Art of Living. Jesus said:
• “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” (Matthew 6:24) [All biblical quotations are from the King James Version but with modernized punctuation.]
• “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24)
• “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth…For where your treasure is there will your heart be also.” (Matthew 6:19 and 6:21)
• “For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” (Matthew 16:26)
• “If thou wilt be perfect go and sell all that thou hast and give to the poor.” (Matthew 19:21)
• Jesus, after overthrowing the tables of the moneychangers in the temple, cried out: “My house shall be called the house of prayer but ye have made it a den of thieves.” (Matthew 21:13)
• “And when thou prayest thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets that they may be seen of men.” (Matthew 6:5)
• “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” (Matthew 7:12) [The Golden Rule] Kant’s categorical imperative says essentially the same thing but in a more philosophical way: “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
Then there are the memorable sayings of Jesus: “a prophet is not without honor save in his own house and own country” (Matthew 13:57); “blind leaders of the blind” (Matthew 15:14); “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:21); and “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” (Mark 3:25) [Lincoln, the best writing president America has ever had, used biblical cadences and excellent supportive quotations in his speeches. He quoted the house-divided imagery at the Republican state convention in Springfield, Ill., June 16, 1858.]
My favorite biblical stories are the account of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37) and that of the “woman taken in adultery” (John 8: 3-11). The adultery story contains to me the greatest line in the whole Bible: “He that is without sin among you let him first cast a stone at her.”
I also like the widow’s mite story (Mark 12: 41-44). The widow gave a fourth of a cent to the church treasury--all she had--as opposed to those who gave much more but “out of their abundance.”
I have a great admiration for the life and wisdom of Jesus. But sometimes, in the judgment of this non-Christian, Jesus was wrong. I would argue that he was not perfect. For example, in Matthew 8:22. When one of his disciples asked if he first could go to the burial of his father, Jesus replies peremptorily: “Follow me and let the dead bury their dead.” Surely the humane path would have been to allow a son to pay last respects to his father.
Again, in Matthew 21:19. A hungry Jesus came upon a fig tree without fruit. Angrily, he shriveled the tree. Surely that was no cause for destroying a harmless tree.
As for the miracles of Jesus, this Doubting Thomas cannot believe them: cleansing a leper, healing a withered hand, walking on water, casting out devils and bringing the dead back to life. I also reject the divinity of Christ. Like Spinoza, the 17th century deist philosopher, I deny that “Christ is the living God.”
Indeed, many people in Jesus’ day surely must have thought him mad. Such messanic language as: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me” (John 14:6); it is “written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God”(John 20:31); and “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18).
Neverthless, Jesus was one of the most influential men who ever lived. It is a sad truth that so many of his so-called followers like President Bush and right-wing religious zealots have absolutely no understanding of Jesus and/or his message.