Monthly Archives: March 2024

The Great Resurrection Scam

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Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.  For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 (circa AD 49-51)

Paul said that because Jesus died and rose from the dead others would too. How does this follow?

He also claimed that all a person had to do to be sure of a spiritual resurrection was to believe that Jesus had already risen (1 Corinthians 15:20, AD 53-54), How did he know this? Almost certainly it came to him in one of his visions and his subsequent ‘revelations’ (‘the Lord’s word’ as he puts it in the letter to the Thessalonian sect).

Possibly, though less likely, he learnt it from the Christians he persecuted prior to his conversion. If so, where did they get the idea from? That the cult members in Thessalonica had to ask Paul what would happen to those who had passed away suggests this wasn’t a significant concern prior to this point. Paul and other early believers thought the Messiah/Son of Man was going to appear within their lifetimes (‘we who are still alive’ etc). It was only when cultists started dying off in noticeable numbers, and the Lord remained a no-show, that it started to become an issue. Paul had to make something up. And make it up he did.

Just suppose…

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Let’s imagine that the gospels were all written by eye-witnesses or the associates of eye-witnesses. Let’s suppose that prior to their composition there was a vibrant oral tradition that accurately preserved the Jesus story and his teaching in particular. Let’s suppose that Paul learnt what he knew of Christianity initially from the early believers he persecuted and then, following his miraculous conversion, from his meetings with the disciples. Let’s suppose that the later books of New Testament were written by people who knew Jesus personally or were really by Paul. Let’s suppose that everything in the bible was inspired by God and is truly his word. Let’s imagine that as result of all this, everything predicted and prophesied in the gospels, in Paul’s letters and the later ones by apostles, came to pass.

Because we’d have to imagine this. Even if everything we’ve supposed was true, none of the prophesies, predictions or promises have materialised in reality. Not one. No Son of Man beaming down from heaven while the disciples and Pilate were still alive, (as he promises in Mark 9:1 and Mark 14:62 respectively), no visit from the Messiah while Paul and his acolytes were living (1 Thessalonians 4:17), no final judgement, no Kingdom of heaven on Earth, no Christians performing miracles greater than those attributed to Jesus. Not even any ‘new creations’ imbued with the Holy Spirit (‘by their fruits shall ye know them.’)

Apologists put a lot of effort into explaining away these failures, some even arguing the Kingdom is actually with us now (how incredibly disappointing it is if this is the case!) Most disappointing of all is that no Christian has ever resurrected from the dead. Not Paul, not Peter, Mary Magdalene nor any other early follower, and no-one since: not Martin Luther, Charles Wesley, C. S. Lewis, Billy Graham nor any bishop, minister or evangelist who has ever lived. All have remained resolutely dead, just like everyone else who has ever ‘fallen asleep’ and everyone who will in the future.

However much Christians want to insist the Bible is true, accurate and God-breathed, in the end it simply doesn’t deliver.

Religiophobia?

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Is criticising Christianity and the way some people practise their religion a form of Christophobia? Strictly speaking a phobia is an irrational fear of whatever precedes it, as in homo-phobia, trans-phobia, Islamo-phobia and the like. In the accusations of whatever-phobia we hear today – and they invariably are accusations – ‘phobia’ seems to have come to mean ‘hatred of’; a hatred of Christianity and therefore of Christians; of homosexuality and therefore of gay people; of trans-people; of Muslims and so on.

Reasonable criticism of belief systems is not hatred. I don’t and am sure I never have had a hatred of Christianity or of any other religion. I certainly have views about Christianity as a seriously flawed, cock-eyed superstition (I hope I’m not giving my position away too early.) Reasonable criticism of it, mockery even, is perfectly legitimate, for reasons I’ve outlined before, just as criticism and mockery of any belief in the fantastic is legitimate. Ideologies based on belief in imaginary beings do not automatically merit respect nor do they have a de facto immunity from criticism. The same applies to those who subscribe to such fantasies, particularly when they attempt to force them on others. Calling out believers on their inconsistencies and hypocrisy is perfectly reasonable.

Is it fair then to express critical views of homosexuality and by extension of gay people? Of course. We are not immune from reasoned criticism, though much of it doesn’t qualify as ‘reasoned’; we have suffered much from emotional reactions to our existence and still do. (See Bruce’s recent post in which Republican North Carolina’s lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson rants about godless homos. When comment deteriorates into vitriol it becomes an incitement to hatred and, sometimes, violence. When this happens, the modern sense of phobia is justified.)

Islam is as irrational as Christianity and other religious belief systems. It is as legitimate to criticise and, when appropriate, to condemn Islam, just as it is Christianity. It is reasonable to question Muslim’s treatment of women, to insist it is inappropriate, particularly in a Western context. It is appropriate to oppose Muslims’ opposition to Western values rather to accede to their opposition to, for example, freedom of speech or the teaching of evolution and sex education in schools. It seems increasingly to me that in Britain we are conceding too much to Islam and to Muslims because we fear both the accusation of Islamophobia and, not entirely irrationally, a disproportionately aggressive response. Reasonable criticism of a belief system and those who subscribe to it is not hateful. We have a duty in a largely secular society to say so. To resist irrational belief in the supernatural when that belief, be it Christianity, Islam, Judaism or any other of the 4,200 religions human beings have dreamt up seeks to impose itself on others is neither hateful nor irrational. It is essential.

I‘d write more about Islam if I knew more about it. I’m disinclined to learn more, however, having already wasted much of my life in thrall to that other ‘great’ religion, the one I spend so much time deconstructing here. Who needs to know more about another? Saviours, Prophets, Gods, angels, signs and wonders – they’re all equally meaningless. Instead of claiming they’re victims of Christo/Islamophobia, religionists would do well to develop thicker skins as we ‘abominations’ and ‘perverts’ have had to do. They should ask themselves whether criticism of their practices and worldview is justified. They might just find it is.

Final Judgement

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‘So,’ the-God-who-is-above-all-others boomed at me, ‘did you hate your family in order to follow my Son and further my Kingdom on Earth?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ I replied. ‘I love my family and I wasn’t going to hate them to follow you or anyone else.’

God tutted, a sound like a clap of thunder. ‘Mark him down in the book,‘ he growled to the grotesque creature beside him. It was like something out of a third-rate horror film with bat’s wings and multiple eyes. It dutifully scratched away in the large book it held open in front of it.

‘Did you, then, accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour?’ asked the Almighty.

I squinted, my hand over my eyes as the dazzling light that obscured his face almost blinded me. ‘Once. Yes,’ I admitted.

‘I suppose, once is good enough. And after that did you lead a blameless, righteous life?’

‘I doubt it. I did my best but righteousness wasn’t particularly high on my agenda.’

‘Another black mark,’ God said to his ugly angel. ‘Tell me,’ he said, his shiny visage turned again in my direction, ‘did you feed the hungry, visit the sick and clothe the naked?’

‘Sometimes,’ I said. ‘Did you? Or having created us, did you just abandon us to manage as best we could, all the time carping about how we were going about it?’

‘You see my dilemma, don’t you?’ he said, suddenly acting all reasonable. ‘You gave your life to Jesus sixty-five of your Earth years ago and I am bound to honour that; you know, ‘once saved always saved’, as I promise somewhere or other. It’s just that it doesn’t look as if you’ve upheld your end of the bargain.’

‘I thought you did it all,’ I said.

The Almighty sighed, his perfumed breath gusting through the great hall. ‘Did you, for example, manage to avoid fornication, gossip, unnatural sex, thievery, rebelliousness, drunkenness, drag acts, adultery, coveting (whatever that is) and, erm, sex.‘

‘Most of it. Not so much the sex that you seem so obsessed with. As I’m sure you already know, being omniscient and all that, I was in a same-sex relationship before you killed me off.’

‘Christ!’, he spluttered, the Heavenly sputum drenching all who were present. ’You do know this excludes you from my special club, the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. Have you never read what old whatsisname said about this sort of thing? He warned you.’

‘I don’t care what old whatsisname said. I don’t care what you think either. I’ve treated other people fairly, tried to be kind and helped others when I could. I’ve never cheated or taken advantage of anyone. I’ve never taken a life and I haven’t, unlike you, ordered a murder. If that’s not good enough for you, then that’s your problem, not mine.

‘You think so?’ he sneered. ‘Not when I hold all the cards.’

‘Do you know,’ I said, with nothing left to lose, ‘You’re the worst excuse for a God imaginable. And you are imagined. You’re petulant, impetuous and unjust. Your solution to every problem is to torture and kill people. Your so-called salvation plan is muddled and contrived…’

‘Enough! Take him below!’

A cartoon demon appears by my side and prods me in the ribs with his pitch-fork. I wake suddenly and sit bolt upright in the pew. ‘You were snoring,’ Dennis says. We’re at the funeral of a friend who, for some reason – insurance maybe – insisted on having it in church. The minister is still delivering his soporific eulogy, hardly mentioning our friend and droning on instead about Jesus.

‘Sorry,’ I whisper to Dennis. ‘I just saw God. In my dream, which I know is the only way you can see him.

‘Shush,’ hisses the octogenarian American in the row behind.

‘Dreams and in your imagination,’ I can’t resist adding.