Making Excuses for Jesus

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Excuse 5. When Jesus said the ‘Kingdom of God is coming soon’, what he meant to add was ‘but only in heaven and then in 1874. Or 1878. 1914? Er… 1975. After 2017?’

So say the Jehovah’s Witnesses. In 1897 they claimed that Jesus had started on his comeback tour in 1874:

Our Lord, the appointed King, is now present since October 1874, A.D., according to the testimony of the prophets, to those who have ears to hear it: and the formal inauguration of his kingly office dates from Apr 1878, A.D. Studies in Scriptures Series IV (p.621)

and

The year A.D. 1878 … clearly marks the time for the actual assuming of power as King of kings, by our present, spiritual, invisible Lord… The Time is At Hand (1911 ed) p.239

When there was no sign this had happened – and goodness knows what sort of sign there could possibly be – the JWs changed their minds again and said the real date for the start of the ‘full’ kingdom was to be 1914:

In view of this strong Bible evidence concerning the Times of the Gentiles, we consider it an established truth that the final end of the kingdoms of this world, and the full establishment of the Kingdom of God, will be accomplished near the end of A.D.1914. Studies in the Scriptures Series 2: The Time is at Hand (1889 ed) p.99

and

October, 1914, will witness the full end of Babylon, “as a great millstone cast into the sea,” utterly destroyed as a system. Watch Tower (Jun 15 1911) p.190

Alas, over a century later there’s no sign of the Kingdom’s ‘full establishment’, while the old, corrupt system (Babylon) carries on as normal. So, after another change of heart, and a quick, futile stab at 1975 as the right date, Jehovah’s Witnesses came up with a revised plan. Here’s how it looks:

Jesus will return while the generation alive in 1914 is still around, when he will finally get the Kingdom underway. This is the ‘generation’ to which he refers in his prophecies in the bible; his return and the Kingdom coming to the earth will definitely happen while the 1914 generation  is still alive.

But hang on! A person born in 1914 – and there are some still around – is now 103, while those who were already adults in 1914 are long dead. In other words, the 1914 generation has almost gone and there’s still no sign of Jesus or his Kingdom. Either he’s going to return real soon, before the last of the 1914 generation depart, or he’s going to miss the deadline yet again (Guess which it’s going to be).

But worry not, Jehovah’s Witnesses have this one covered too! When Jesus referred to ‘this generation’ he didn’t just mean one generation, but to the generation that ‘overlaps’ with that generation. There’s nothing biblical about ‘overlapping generations’, of course. Jesus didn’t say, ‘the Kingdom will come while this generation and those that overlap with it are still alive,’ but like mainstream Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses need to give Jesus and themselves an excuse if they’re to avoid admitting that he and they have got it wrong.

So, an overlapping generation would be one like my own, whose grandparents were children in 1914. But we can extend this – and we can be sure JWs will once Jesus fails to return on time – because, using the same ‘reasoning’, my granchildren’s generation ‘overlaps’ with my grandparents’ through me. My grandchildren’s grandchildren too will be connected with all previous generations, including that from 1914, because of those who have preceded them… and on and on, ad infinitum. In fact, Jesus could come back at any time in the future so long as someone is alive who can trace their ancestry back to 1914.

But he’s not going to. He wasn’t talking about a ‘generation’ almost 2000 years after he lived. He was certain the Kingdom of God was coming to his time and his people. All of these convoluted and ultimately unconvincing explanations of what he ‘really’ meant when he preached an imminent heavenly Kingdom on earth simply won’t do. While mainstream Christians mock Jehovah’s Witnesses for their silly conjecturing about Jesus’ return, they share the belief Jesus is coming back. Most won’t venture a date (though there have been plenty who have) because, they will tell you, Jesus also said ‘no-one knows the precise day or hour’ when the Son of Man and the Kingdom will appear (Mark 13.32). Nevertheless, they remain certain that Jesus will return: this year, next year, sometime… any time other than that which he actually predicted.

While evangelical Christians and others insist that the bible, where all Jesus’ failed prophecies appear, is the literal and infallible word of God, they refuse to take literally his pronouncements about the coming of the Kingdom. While he might have said he didn’t know exactly when it would arrive, he was certain it would be while his own generation lived. As he is made to say in Matthew 16.28, ‘some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom’.

All of which is a problem for Christians: if these predictions are not to be ignored, then they must be interpreted, explained and, eventually, explained away. The last thing believers want to do is accept them for what they are; the demonstration of Jesus’ failure. The Kingdom didn’t arrive when he said it would and, given how far it is past its sell-by date, it’s certainly won’t be now.

Making Excuses for Jesus

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Hokum2

Excuse 3. When Jesus said ‘Kingdom of God’ what he really meant was ‘heaven’.

According to many Christians, the Kingdom of God is a supernatural realm where those whom Jesus has redeemed are going to go when they die. This kingdom is not, despite what Jesus said, coming to the Earth; believers are going to it, and it’s called heaven.

This is probably the most prominent view among Christians today and it couldn’t be more wrong. As we’ve established, Jesus says repeatedly and consistently that the Kingdom is coming here, to the earth. As well as all of his assurances (cited in earlier posts), he taught his followers to pray to God that ‘thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as in heaven’ (Matt 6.10), a petition Christians affirm whenever they repeat ‘the Lord’s prayer’.

Nowhere does Jesus promise his followers that they will spend eternity in heaven with God. Neither does Paul, nor any of the New Testament writers. Heaven, according to the bible, is God’s abode beyond the clouds; it is not a theme park open for visitors or long term guests. True, Paul believed that deceased souls would enter the presence of Christ to be kept safe until the Kingdom’s arrival, at which point they would be housed in new, spiritual bodies (1 Corinthians 15:35-58; 1 Thessalonians 4.13-18). These new bodies would not be for life in heaven, however, but for a resurrected existence here on earth, once the Kingdom had been established.

Amazingly, Paul expected people to believe this appalling drivel. Later Christians evidently couldn’t, and so invented the idea that they would be going to Heaven permanently post-mortem. John 14.3, which makes Jesus say he’s going to prepare a place for his disciples ‘in his father’s house’, might be an early sign of this wishful thinking. On the other hand it might mean something else altogether – as usual Jesus is made to speak in obtuse riddles.

Whichever it is, Christians are not promised an existence in heaven when they die. The only offer is of a place in God’s Kingdom on Earth, which both Jesus and Paul thought was coming very soon.

 

Excuse 4. When Jesus said ‘Kingdom of God’ what he really meant was ‘an internal kingdom of the heart’.

The Kingdom of God, then, must be, as a commenter on Answers in Genesis recently assured me, ‘an internal kingdom of the heart’. But you’d be hard pushed to find this bit of fluff in the bible. The closest it comes to saying any such thing is in Luke 17.20-21 where Jesus announces that the Kingdom of God is ‘entos hymon,’ a phrase sometimes rendered as ‘within you’ but which is more accurately translated ‘among you’. It is not an assurance that the Kingdom of God is some sort of silopsistic comfort blanket for believers in the far-flung future. It is yet more evidence that Jesus (or his script-writers) regarded the Kingdom as imminent in his and their own immediate context: first century Palestine. 

That’s four excuses – four explanations that what Jesus really meant was what today’s Christians want him to have meant. It’s tough facing up to the reality that God’s Son – God himself according to some Christians – was so mistaken, so disastrously wrong. But he was.

So naturally, more excuses are needed…

 

Making Excuses for Jesus

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Excuse 2. When Jesus said ‘Kingdom of God’ what he really meant was ‘the church’.

Kingdom

So if not the transfiguration, then what? Christians can’t accept that Jesus was wrong in all he prophesied, and must invent some other explanation. How about the church – the body of believers who saw, and still see, Jesus as their saviour? The church must be the Kingdom! Yes, that’s it surely.

But then they’re left to explain why the church, even in its early days, bore no resemblance to what Jesus said the Kingdom would look like. Where was the Son of Man descending through the clouds? The hosts of angels in full view of ‘the tribes of the Earth’? The disciples judging and ruling the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt 19.28)? The last becoming first and the first last? The meek inheriting the Earth? The righteous being rewarded for their good deeds, while the unrighteous are sent to outer darkness?

Even if we were to overlook the absence of these characteristics, all of which Jesus predicted would define the Kingdom, then isn’t the-church-as-Kingdom just a tiny bit, well… disappointing? It doesn’t embody either any of the conditions of the Kingdom that the Old Testament prophets promised it would (Micah 4.1-7 & Isaiah 11.6): nations continue to wage war, the lamb and the wolf don’t co-exist peacefully and God singularly fails to rule the earth from Mount Zion.

Instead, the church is all too human, riven with conflict and division. Despite the whitewash given to it by the author of Acts, Paul’s letters – 1 & 2 Corinthians, Romans and Galatians in particular – serve as a permanent reminder of the dispute and strife that have characterised it since its earliest days. It has also a shameful history of persecuting those with whom it disagrees and produces its fair share of criminals and abusers. Today, it is split into 45,000 different factions and, according to some of its own, is awash with ‘false doctrine’.

One thing it is good at – the very thing Paul insists it shouldn’t be (1 Corinthians 5.12) – is judging the rest of us.

The Kingdom of God it is not.

Making excuses for Jesus

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Excuse 1. When he said ‘Kingdom of God’, what Jesus really meant was ‘transfiguration’.

Hokum

However it might seem, Jesus’ mission didn’t fail! Absolutely not. Because after he promised those standing in front of him would see God’s Kingdom come in power and glory, the gospels relate how some of the disciples saw Jesus having a friendly chat with Moses and Elijah (Mark 9.1-8 etc). So, say his apologists, this was what he was really referring to; his being visited by two of Judaism’s great figures, on day release from Heaven or having travelled through time or, more probably, having being planted in a story that is pure fabrication. Whichever, this ‘transfiguration’ is regularly hauled out as ‘evidence’ that those standing with Jesus did indeed see him in his Kingdom. (Here, here and here, for example.)

Pastor Bob Deffinbaugh, for example, puts it like this:

Jesus then promised His disciples that some of them would see the “kingdom of God” before they died: “I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God (Luke 9.27). While there are numerous explanations as to what Jesus’ words here mean, the simplest explanation, especially in the context, is that Jesus was foretelling the transfiguration which was to come within a week’s time.

But this cannot be ‘the simplest explanation’ because it doesn’t fit any of what Jesus said the Kingdom would be like. Here’s his description as it appears in Matthew 24.29-31 & 34 (emphasis added):

Immediately after the suffering of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of heaven will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other… Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.

The transfiguration bears no relation to any of this, nor to his other predictions about what the Kingdom would be like – the meek inheriting the Earth, the last becoming first and so on – once it was established. The Kingdom of God as Jesus imagined it (and he did imagine it) was to be a far grander affair than a symbolic encounter ‘witnessed’ by a few disciples. It was to be seen by the entire world and would have far-reaching and long-lasting consequences. The transfiguration, no matter how much Jesus’ raiment is made to shine, simply doesn’t qualify. It can’t possibly be, then, what Jesus had in mind when he predicted the end of the age and God’s rule coming to the Earth. There is a fundamental dishonesty in claiming that it is.

Better luck next, Christians…

Whatever happened to the Kingdom of God?

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Jesus clearly and unequivocally announced that the Kingdom of God would soon be coming to the earth (Matthew 16.27-28; Matthew 24.27, 30-31,34; Luke 21.27-28, 33-34 etc).

This was his Good News. According to the synoptic gospels his entire ministry was about announcing the arrival of this Kingdom and demonstrating it was just around the corner (Mark 1.15; Luke 11.20 etc). All of his teaching was predicated on his belief that God was soon to intervene in human affairs to right all wrongs, repair injustices and punish the wicked (Matt 5.3-12; 25.31-46). He had no message other than this.

Yet many – most? – Christians refuse to acknowledge any of this. For Christians, Jesus was about something else entirely. Many of them argue that even though he might have appeared to say that God’s Kingdom was imminent, this wasn’t what he really meant.

When he promised it would happen ‘within this generation’ (Matt 24.34), they say, what he really meant was the generation alive after certain calamities had taken place (Matt 24.15-31), evidently more than 2000 years into the future. As I’ve suggested before, this makes him one heartless bastard, standing, as he did, in front of the meek, the hungry and the downtrodden and promising them all would soon be well, when he was ‘really’ referring to people who wouldn’t be born for another two millennia.

But then he’s more specific about who he intends the promises for, when says in Matthew 16:28, “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” ‘Some who are standing here’ – the people who were physically present, there in front of him, being addressed by him. It’s difficult to maintain that he meant people in the far future when he specifies those who are ‘standing here.’ Yet Christians maintain just this.

“Aah, yes,” they say, “but he was clear no-one knew the hour of the Kingdom’s return – not even himself.” Yes, he did say this – in Mark 13.32 – but there’s no conflict between this claim and his insistence the Kingdom would arrive soon. We all do this sort of thing when we say, ‘my parcel is due to be delivered some time today but I don’t know when exactly.’ This is what Jesus is claiming: ‘the Kingdom will be here very soon, though I don’t know precisely when.’ Too right he didn’t.

Nonetheless he thought he had a pretty good idea. In Matthew 10.23 he sends the disciples off to announce its arrival to the cities of Israel and tells them the Kingdom will have arrived before they return. When they get back (in the next verse!) the Kingdom is still conspicuously absent, so he and the gospel writers conveniently forget all about his rash promise. Where’s a good editor when you need one?

And then it all goes wrong for him. Jesus is arrested for his seditious idea that the existing system is about to be overturned and replaced (Matt 19.28), and he’s sentenced to death. Did he continue to hold out hope that God would act before the execution could be carried out? Did he expect his Heavenly Father to carry out a last minute rescue by bringing in the Kingdom with a great show of power? It seems likely, but as he hangs on the cross he realises, finally, that God is not going to act. God has let him down, as he always must, and deserted and despondent Jesus cries out in dereliction: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15.34). How could he have got it so wrong?

‘No, no, It can’t end like this,’ cry the Christians in return (and indeed it didn’t). But how to explain (away) the great failure of Jesus’ mission heralding the arrival of God’s Kingdom on earth?

Don’t worry, our Christian friends are up to the task.

Next time…

 

How to argue like a Christian (part two)

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Street-preachers

Five more ‘arguments’ offered by Christians in defence of their insupportable beliefs:

You’re not entitled to speak because you have no objective basis for your morality; morality comes only from God/the Bible.

Except it doesn’t, of course; moral codes existed long before the Bible or even the invention YHWH, who is, in any case, morally bankrupt. This ‘most unpleasant character in all fiction’ ‘wallows’, if I might borrow the term, in genocide (1 Samuel 15.2-3 etc) and slavery (Leviticus 25.44-46; Exodus 21.20-21 ); he relishes the death penalty for the most minor infringements of his petty rules (Leviticus 24.16; Deuteronomy 21.18-21, etc ad nauseam); fails to keep his promises (Genesis 17.7; Mark 11.24); does nothing to relieve human or animal suffering and lets millions of children die needlessly, year in, year out. It just doesn’t suit his mysterious ways, apparently, to behave like any halfway-decent human being would.

And even if he were the morally-upright paragon of virtue Christians delude themselves into thinking he is, they would ignore his moral guidance at every turn, just as they do now. Ministers, priests, evangelists as well as run-of-the-mill believers are convicted every day of the most despicable of crimes (Bruce Gerenscer keeps a tally on his blog-site) and that’s before we get to the more exacting moral demands Jesus makes. Going the extra mile (Matt 5.41), loving neighbour (Mark 12.31) and enemy alike (Luke 6.27), giving to all who ask (Luke 6.30) – these most Christians simply ignore. ‘We’re forgiven, not perfect,’ they whimper, even though ‘perfect’ is precisely what their unreasonable saviour tells them to be (Matt 5.48). But then I’m probably quoting out of context again… or something.

You’ve been hurt in the past.

This weak, ad hominem response is the converse of the charge that you’re immoral; good cop as opposed to bad cop. The Christian who says this is all-seeing and all-knowing and is able to evaluate your entire psychology and personal history from a single comment you’ve made. They can tell that you’re only disputing an aspect of Christianity because obviously at some point in your past a Christian – who wasn’t really a true Christian – hurt you. Or maybe it was a church you once belonged to that let you down. Well, you’ve every right to feel hurt! But that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the True Faith™ or those who subscribe to it! And so your point is neatly invalidated; you’re only responding emotionally and you’ll get over it.

If there’s no God then life is meaningless.

Used extensively by some Christian blog-sites, this non-sequitur translates as, ‘I’m not going to address anything you say. My neediness demands there’s some point to life and I’ve decided that it comes from the fantasy I’ve bought into.’ Questions of whether that fantasy is actually true (which by definition it can’t be) and whether life is meaningless without it, are never considered. Believers’ need for the delusion to be true, their fear of working out meaning for themselves and their subsequent investment in Christianity’s empty promises, compel them to hide behind what is an essentially… er, meaningless solipsism.

Unbelievers have no right to criticise those who belong to Jesus.

Haven’t we? We put up with all the nonsense Christians spout, their attempts to influence everything from elections to what we can see on TV, from their opposition to gay rights, same-sex marriage women’s rights, abortion and adoption issues to the restrooms people can or can’t use and their judging of the rest of us as hell-bound sinners. In return, we unbelievers are perfectly entitled to hold Christians accountable. At the risk of repeating myself, do they do what Jesus tells them to? Do they turn the other cheek (Matt 5.39)? Sell their possessions to give to the poor (Mark 10.21)? Give more than is demanded of them (Matt 5.40)? Avoid judging others so they’re not judged in return (Matt 7.1-3)?

What do you think?

You’re of the devil/an enemy of the cross/wilfully blind/apostate/a troll.

If all else fails (and it will) the faithful resort to an insult carefully selected from the extensive bank of Christian cliches. That way, there’s no need to engage the brain at all. God love ’em!

 

How to argue like a Christian

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If you’ve ever tried discussing matters of faith with a True Believer™, you’ll know how difficult it can be; like wrestling with a jellyfish – and just about as poisonous.

So here’s a guide for the unwary; 10 of their favourite lines (5 this time, 5 next), all of which I’ve experienced more times than I care to remember.

“You don’t know your Bible!”

Point out that Jesus’ ‘good news’ was nothing like Paul’s or that they were both wrong about the Kingdom arriving in the first century and this old canard gets trotted out. Even if you quote chapter and verse, a clear indication you do know the Bible, they still produce it. What they mean is ‘how dare you quote the bits of the Bible we true believers don’t like and prefer not to acknowledge.’

“You’re quoting out of context.”

I’ve posted about this one before. Seemingly as a sceptic you have no discernment when it comes to selecting Bible verses. How ever many you reference – one or a hundred – they will tell you it’s not enough; that you’ve not, somehow, caught the true meaning of what the Bible is saying, which is, naturally, what they say it means. Unsurprisingly. quoting isolated verses is something the Righteous themselves like to do all the time…

“The bible says…”

It doesn’t matter what point you make, this will appear somewhere in the Christian’s response, followed, of course, by some random verse from the book in question. Christians seem to regard it as the ultimate clincher, the way to silence any opponent, as if quoting the bible to those who recognise neither its credibility nor its authority persuades anyone of anything.

“You’ve no right to criticise Christianity when you can’t ‘prove’ how something came from nothing/how life arose/evolution.”

It’s unlikely anyone can explain these biggies in 140 characters or a Facebook comment, but we can direct those issuing the challenge to scientific works that offer viable theories soundly based on the evidence available. Needless to say our Christian smart-Alec is unlikely to read them, claiming instead that one’s inability to comprehensively explain the Big Bang or evolution ‘proves’ it must have been – watch the sleight of hand here – YHWH.

“‘People like you’ only want to wallow in your own sin (which is why you won’t let me have my own way).”

Now I like to wallow as much as the next man, but outside the Christian bubble, ‘sin’ is a fairly meaningless concept, designed only to induce guilt in others. Which means the point of this unpleasant finger pointing is to side-step any discussion and to dismiss whatever point you might want to make. What this retort really means is ‘you have an ulterior motive for saying what you’re saying and, in any case, your inherently evil nature doesn’t entitle you to have an opinion.’

More next time…