Jesus Wasn't Perfect, Part One

Christians believe that Jesus was a perfect man (1 Peter 2:22, 1 John 3:5).  For Christians, Jesus needed to be perfect in order to be the ultimate sacrifice for mankind's sins.  Ecclesiastes 7:20, on the other hand, tells us a different story: "There is no man on earth that is so righteous that he doesn't sin."  Clearly, my Christian friends would disagree with me.  It would make Jesus' "sacrifice" meaningless.  Even though I already disproved the misconception that Jesus died for our sins, it's nice to find more textual basis to disprove Christianity. 

For Christian theology to be correct in terms of Jesus' "perfection," you would need to prove that Jesus never made a mistake.  As soon as you find even one error, one cannot argue, with intellectual honesty of course, that Jesus was perfect. 

The first place I would go is to see if Jesus were an all-knowing being, since that characteristic is implicit in the definition of an infinite being.  In Matthew 23:35, Jesus states that Zechariah was the son of Barachiah.  The reality is that Zechariah was the son of Jehoiada, not Barachiah (2 Chronicles 24:20-21).  Another example of Jesus' lack of knowledge: "Jesus said, 'How he [David] entred the house of G-d, in the days of Albiathar the high priest and ate the showbread....'(Mark 2:25-26)."  Alas, Abiathar was the high priest for Solomon (1 Kings 2:1, 23-26); Ahimelech was high priest for David (I Samuel 21:2).  If Jesus were perfect, i.e., all-knowing, he would not have mispoke.  Since Jesus did indeed err, it signifies that Jesus was imperfect.

Jesus' lack of knowledge isn't my only question regarding his imperfections.  His moral behavior should also make everyone wonder how anybody can consider this man to be divine.

Exhibit A, The Fig Tree Incident: What happens in this parable is that Jesus cursed a fig tree because it did not have any fruit, and then it subsequently withered and died (Matthew 21:17-22, Mark 11:12-14, 20-26).  There a couple major issues with this story.  Although apologists will opine [without textual backing] that the fig tree represents the Jewish people's unwillingness to accept Jesus, the fact of the matter is that Jesus directly violated Jewish law.  B'al tashchit, or wanton destruction, is derived from Deuteronomy 20:19, which states that it is a sin to destroy a fruit tree, even those of your enemy during a time of war.  The destructiveness is all the more perturbing in the Matthew version of the story (21:21): "I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done."  Some apologists will state that between the two fig tree verses in Matthew 21, there is a scene where Jesus was "cleansing" those in the Temple.  The supposed message is that, like the fig tree, the Temple services "did not bear any spiritual fruit," and was thus hypocritical because those conducting the Temple services were acting in a "holier than thou" manner.  The problem is that short of the proximity of the verses, there is nothing in the text that correlates or connects the two events, thereby making the interpretation a form of eisegesis.  Regretably, eisegesis is the main method for Christians to "prove" their text to be correct.  In short, the problem is that Jesus encouraging his disciples to be destructive was not kosher.  The fact that Jesus had violated the very law he allegedly fulfilled should be a red flag for Christians.   

My second issue is that Mark points out to that the fig tree is not in season (Mark 11:13) before he decides to destroy it (ibid, 14).  Let's make one thing clear here:  Jesus did not destroy the tree for show.  The man was hungry (Matthew 21:18, Mark 11:12).  If Jesus were all-knowing, he would have known that figs were not in season.  Instead, he acted like a five year old child and cursed it.  The fact that he cursed the tree brings up another problem: if Jesus were supposedly the "son of G-d," he would also have had the power to have the tree bear fruit.  Why didn't he do that instead?  If Jesus couldn't even forgive a tree for following its natural, seasonal order, what makes you think that he could forgive all of mankind for their sins?

To be continued....