Introduction

This project is a re-examination of Jesus's words from a Satanist perspective. What if Jesus was not making personal claims to authority, but trying to teach us that each of us is our own authority? What if his examples of leadership are meant to inspire us to be confident in challenging the rules of traditions that came before us?

For the purposes of this project:

• I will be focusing only on the (supposed) words of Jesus.
• The site www.combinedgospel.com combined the four gospels into one continuous narrative, and I will use this source, as it seems better than going through 4 different versions of the same story or choosing only 1 of the 4 versions.
• I am referring to atheistic, or LaVeyan, satanism. This is in contrast to theistic satanism; devil-worship.
• I am placing a heavy emphasis on the particular satanist idea that each of us is our own god, and there is no external deity to worship. From Wikipedia: "LaVey espoused the view that "god" is a creation of man, rather than man being a creation of "god" ... the Satanist's view of god is described as the Satanist's true "self"—a projection of his or her own personality—not an external deity." I am not as interested in the other tenets of this form of satanism such as “indulgence”, “kindness to those who deserve it”, “responsibility to the responsible”, etc.

I do not necessarily believe the things that I write here. I don't even believe for sure that Jesus existed as a human being. I just think it will be an interesting thought experiment to consider his words from another perspective.