Category Archives: Christian Priorities

Jettisoned

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It’s all very well discussing how the gospels came to be, but are they true and do Christians adhere to what Jesus purportedly tells them there? Let’s take a look at one of his instructions from Matthew 23.8-10:

But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. 

Context: Matthew’s cult community is moving away from synagogue worship and so supplies Jesus with words condemning Pharisaic practices. Instead, because the new cult at this point is egalitarian, they have him endorse its practice. One teacher: the heavenly Christ. One church: the brotherhood. One Father: God in heaven. One Instructor: the heavenly Christ again.

How quickly the church jettisoned this advice! By the time of Ephesians (written in the late 1st or early 2nd and certainly not by Paul who was long dead) the church is awash with ‘the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, (given by Christ) to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up (Ephesians 4.11-12)

A little later still, 1 Timothy – again, not written by Paul – speaks of hierarchical structures of overseers (‘bishops’), leaders, teachers and instructors (the two words have the same meaning), while later in the first century, and in direct contravention of Jesus’ admonition, the Roman church started calling its priests ‘father’. The Pope, – the term means Father or Papa – soon became the Father of all fathers.

Did the early church not really believe that Matthew 23.8-10 recorded the words of Jesus? (They’d be correct if so.) Or did they think that they didn’t matter; were, in fact, optional? (Parenthetically, what is it with gospel-Jesus habitually referring to saviour-figures in the third person? He does it here – ‘one instructor: the Messiah’ – and when he refers to ‘the Son of Man’. Why should we suppose he means himself when he does this? He’s not afraid to talk at length in the first person about himself in John’s gospel, but in the synoptics he’s apparently too timid to do so and feels compelled to use the third person and hide behind alter-egos. Unless of course fictional gospel-Jesus, or his script writers, regards ‘the Messiah’ and ‘the Son of Man’ as beings other than himself.) 

Then there’s the modern church, with its pastors (‘shepherds’), bishops (‘overseers’), teachers, instructors and priests (‘elders’). Does it too consider that gospel truths about brotherhood, no father but God and no teacher except the Christ, to be optional – insignificant even? Apparently so.

Which other words of Jesus do believers feel free to jettison? We’ll take an occasional look in the weeks ahead.

 

My Gay Demon

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I am demon possessed. I know this for a certainty because Christians all over the Internet tell me. I am gay therefore I am possessed by a demon. Maybe more than one, I don’t know.

I’ve been trying to get in touch with my inner demon but he’s been keeping schtum. I assume he’s a him given he’s a demon of gayness, but again who knows. I’ve enquired in the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind and have searched my heart (though if I’m honest I wasn’t really sure how to do this) and can’t find him anywhere.

I was going to ask him why, if he’s a demon and therefore a real nasty piece of work from the pit of hell, why he’s led me to a happy and loving relationship with Dennis, one that has taken each of us from loneliness and depression to peace and contentment. I just didn’t know demons were so… well, so positive and creative. I always thought they were destructive and devious, like C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape. I think mine must be shy and more like Casper the Holy Ghost.

Alternatively, maybe there’s no such thing as demons, invisible evil super-beings who can’t be detected in any way. In my ‘worldview’ anything that’s invisible, undetectable and is a figment of rather dim-witted people’s imaginations is a being that doesn’t exist.

But then maybe that’s just me.

  And science.

    And every other academic discipline.

       And rationality.

         And reality.

It’s possible, after all, that a book written thousands of years ago by ignorant religious zealots trumps all of that.

The Power of Figments

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Since his death, no-one has seen the itinerant preacher now known as Jesus. Some dispute he existed in the first place and certainly the character depicted in the gospels is a fictional creation. Assuming, however, that there was a real individual on whom this character was based, no-one has seen him in the flesh for 2000 years.

This includes all or most of those who wrote about him in the early years of the cult and whose writing now forms the New Testament. They either learnt about Jesus by word of mouth, as most converts throughout history have done, or they had a vision within their own heads of – what exactly? Those who write of such visions are either vague about what they claim they saw (Paul in Galatians 1: 15-16), are evidently making it up (John of Patmos in Revelation) or their visions are related by third parties many years down the line (Peter and Mary in the gospels, Stephen in Acts.)

Either way, the character believers claim to have seen or have heard about is a fantasy figure, not the rabbi who may or may not have existed. It’s this fantasy who lives in heaven snuggled up to his equally fictitious father, monitoring people’s behaviour, listening into their thoughts while simultaneously observing ‘the destruction the world is bringing on itself’ and doing not a thing to help.

All this from the heaven no Christian can locate: in another unspecified, invisible, undetectable dimension is the best they can offer. Nonetheless, if only more people would turn to him, Super-Jesus would help us solve the problems we face.

Because theocracies have always been so effective. They’ve led to a more just, fairer world as wise compassionate religionists have listened to their heavenly leaders – God, Allah, Jesus, Muhammed – and have applied the principles of their holy books to the running of their societies. Only obstinate sinners have had anything to fear from the arrangement: the degenerate, like those who have sex outside marriage and want access to contraceptives; gay people (especially); women who don’t know their place; women who seek abortions; the powerless; other, ‘inferior’ races; those of other religions, non-believers and atheists. None of these would have a place in Jesus’s new perfect world either, just as they don’t in societies controlled by Muhammed’s holy ones. Jesus’ agents will be happy to exterminate them, just as he instructs.

Magic Jesus as a figment of his followers’ imaginations can be made to say whatever they want, just as he was when he was being created by Paul and the gospel writers. He is a perpetual work in process, constantly changing to conform to what those who claim to know him want him to be. It’s easy to achieve this with a non-existent being from a non-existent place.

The Guilt Legacy

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A couple of nights ago I watched a programme called Jehovah’s Witnesses and Me fronted by Rebekah Vardy. I know nothing about Rebekah apart from the fact she’s a footballer’s wife who was recently involved in a social media scandal, but her reflections on being brought up in a Jehovah’s Witness household were honest and sincere. She said one of the legacies of her mother being ‘disfellowshipped’ when she, Rebekah, was 8 was that she felt, and still feels, guilty about much in life. The teaching of the organisation was, as it is in many evangelical churches, that the individual is a hopeless sinner who cannot please Jehovah, though must nevertheless endeavour to work out their own salvation. For JWs this involved (and still does, as you may know from personal encounters with them) going door to door and standing for hours on end in public spaces with a trolley-full of Watchtower publications.

I could relate to Rebekah’s feelings of guilt. While not a Jehovah’s Witness (I was never that gullible) my years as a Christian left me with a legacy of guilt. For many years it was the dominant emotion of my life. While a Christian I constantly felt I was letting God down: not as good a Christian as those around me, not witnessing enough, listening to pop music instead of worship songs – practically anything could trigger my not-good-enough feelings. I also felt responsible for anything that went wrong, even when I couldn’t possibly be, and guilt about my secret sexual feelings and, most especially that I wasn’t been a good enough father. To this day, I feel awful if I’m unable to help with my grown-up children’s problems. I am moving away from such fruitless thinking, and recognise that possibly I am naturally inclined to blame myself for events both within and outside my control. Christianity nonetheless exacerbated the problem, with its emphasis on the sinful worthlessness of the individual who is nothing without Jesus. I have, I’m pleased to say, got a lot better since abandoning its negative anti-human philosophy.

What scars has religion left those of you who are escapees from religion with? I’d be more then pleased to hear it’s none, but most of the ex-Christians I know have not come away unscathed. Feel free to share in the comments.

Real Christianity v Catholicism

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I visited a Catholic cathedral in Santa Cruz, Tenerife, while on my latest adventure. Not, I hasten to add, as a worshipper but as a tourist. One of the Canary Islands, Tenerife is a Spanish territory with a long association with Catholicism. Its name means Holy Cross, reflecting its history and the pervasiveness of the church. The cathedral’s altar can be seen in the picture above, highly ornate and completely over the top, with a statue of Mary, the Holy Mother, as its centrepiece. .Her son, you’ll note, plays only a bit part in the picture above her.

Real Christians™ of course don’t regard Catholics as true Christians. They point to their reliance on the Pope, when Jesus himself says his followers should call no-one Father apart from God; the army of dead saints that intercedes in heaven when all people really need is Jesus; the need to confess sins to a priest and the worship of Mary as the immaculately conceived ‘Mother of God’, who works miracles on their behalf.

People – Catholics – who believe these things can never be part of the club. ‘Their ideas are as ridiculous as they are unbiblical. No-one in their right mind,’ Real Christians™ say, ‘should believe such fanciful stuff. Stick resolutely to what we know to be true: the resurrection of a dead man; the Virgin birth and the promise of eternal life. These things are biblical and as such we can know and trust them. Not rubbish about saints in… erm, heaven living forever, having to ask for our sins to be forgiven and thinking Mary was conceived free from the scourge of sin.’

It seems to me that it’s only a short hop from believing one lot of far-fetched rubbish to believing still more. Maybe the Catholic stuff isn’t strictly biblical (though at a stretch it could be said to have been drawn from the make-believe found there) but then there’s nothing particularly special, plausible or reasonable about that which has found its way into God’s Word. Just because something is in there doesn’t make it true. Those who invented Jesus’ Virgin birth, his resurrection and the promise of everlasting life were making it all up, just as those who, further down the line, created the phantasmagoria that is Catholicism.

Santa Cruz is nice though.

 

 

 

What Happens When We Die (According to the Bible)

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Street preacher Dale McAlpine was busy regaling the shoppers of my home town yesterday with the good news that they’re all sinners destined for hell. The God who created them will, Dale assured them, face an eternity of torture unless they turn to Jesus.

Dale didn’t have many (any) takers for this wonderful good news. One brave person, a young woman, asked him why, if people are resurrected, the cemeteries remain resolutely full. Good point! Dale, armed with his megaphone and hectoring ignorance, responded that it is the soul that survives death and is taken up to Heaven to live eternally with God. For those without Jesus, their souls will be consigned to hell where they will burn for eternity.

How unbiblical is that? The Bible does not teach that believers will go to live forever with God in heaven. Eternity in Heaven is not on offer. The New Testament writers anticipated the arrival of Heaven – God’s new Kingdom – on Earth. When it did, they believed, the dead would be resurrected: the saints to everlasting life in new spiritual bodies on a regenerated Earth (Revelation 21:1-4), the rest to eternal damnation.

Paul has some vague ideas about what will happen to those who die before the general resurrection – he thinks their souls will be kept safe ‘in Christ’ (whatever that mean but doesn’t suggest they will be living it up in Heaven. Rather, he describes them in 1 Thessalonians 4:14-15 and 1 Corinthians 15:20 as being ‘asleep’. Many Christian ‘thinkers’ really take exception to this idea, though Paul says this intermediate state won’t last for long; the Kingdom on Earth was imminent. He believed it would arrive while most of those he was writing to were still alive (1 Thessalonians 4:17; 1 Corinthians 15: 51-52).

It’s all tosh, of course. Paul had absolutely no idea what happens to people after death. He invented everything he said about it, from the independent existence of sleeping souls to Jesus arriving on the clouds to resurrect the dead in new spiritual bodies. These bizarre ideas come from a fevered brain convinced it had seen a dead person alive again and thought it had once taken a trip to the third heaven (whatever that is).

How do we know Paul invented it all? Because of the aspects of his teaching that should by now be history: the arrival of God’s Kingdom on Earth, the resurrection of the dead and Christians being supplied with new spiritual bodies ( while the rest of us roast in hell.) None of these things happened when he said they would, or indeed at all. We know it too because we are aware both instinctively and empirically that there is no continuation after death. When the body ceases to function so too does the ‘self’, which can be generated only by a living brain. We have no ‘soul’ that goes on alone after death and which will one day be clothed in a new sparkly body.

Here’s my challenge then to those who believe and propagate such nonsense; the Dales, the evangelicals, the fundies and the oxymoronic intellectual Christians of this world: provide evidence of one individual who has survived death in the way Paul said they would. Show us one believer who has been resurrected or whose soul is currently sleeps in Christ or who now lives in Heaven. The only proviso is that this must be a real person who is 100% human; not a mythical demi-God, not a character in a story, not someone for whom the evidence of a resurrection is extremely poor. Not, in short, Jesus. Where is the evidence anyone else has experienced a resurrection or embarked on their eternal life in heaven? Billions of believers have died since Paul created his fantasy. Surely there must be someone…

Sowing seeds

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The early church had multiple problems, many of which Paul and other New Testament writers refer to. Any reasonable person would have taken these problems as a sign that the faith they were pushing really didn’t work; didn’t produce new creations powered by a holy spirit. Some, including a number of the very earliest followers (Matthew 28.17), were leaving the church, disappointed and disillusioned. How were leading figures in the cult to explain this? Having supposedly encountered the supernatural Jesus these people were now having doubts that he was real and were turning their backs on him. This shouldn’t have been happening!

The writer of 1 John accounts for the departure of those who had come to their senses by suggesting they were never really true believers:

They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. (1 John 2:19)

It’s significant that the writer of this letter doesn’t allude to Jesus’ parable about the sower of the seeds from Matthew 13. Not one of the letter writers in the New Testament who address the problem of defections does so. This can only be because none of them knew of it when they were writing decades after it was supposedly told. The reason they don’t mention it is because it had yet to be written.

The parable of the sower is Matthew’s attempt to have Jesus address the problem of those who fell away from the cult. Matthew’s explanation is it’s because the good news – the imminent arrival of God’s kingdom on Earth – only takes root in the spiritually astute. Others, who might initially accept the gospel, are like stony ground on which birds gobble up the seed. They are those who allow the cares of this world – metaphorical weeds – to choke the message before it can flourish.

It’s a very colourful explanation designed to reassure those persisting in the faith that they are the favoured, while those who have defected have fallen prey to the shallow soil, birds and weeds. It’s neat and it gives reassurance and encouragement to remaining cultists.

Jesus could not possibly have known what was to become of his ‘church’ and the (non)arrival of God’s Kingdom – his good news – following his death. The parable was created for him, or more specifically, as Matthew makes abundantly clear in 13:11-12, for devotees of the early cult decades later. What it emphatically is not, is a story originally delivered by Jesus.

Saved by Faith Alone

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For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Hi!

I heard this fabulous new speaker last night and have given my life to Jesus. All the things I’ve said and written critical of God, Jesus and the Bible, I take back and repent of. Jesus now lives in my heart. Through God’s grace I am saved, and his grace alone. I have done nothing to save myself. The speaker explained I am saved by faith alone through the atoning blood of Christ. Hallelujah! Saved from sin, from the wrath I merit and from death and hell. I am going to live forever in heaven with God.

There’s nothing I need to do. God has done it all.

There was a wonderful Christian lady, Donna, whom I spoke to afterwards. She knew everything about God and Jesus, she really did. She’s been saved for most of her life. Amazing! Anyway, Donna told me it was really important I should start to work out my salvation. I wasn’t sure what she meant when the speaker had said faith was all I needed, but I will try. Donna also said that now I’m a Christian, the devil will increase his attacks on me. I never really thought about the devil before but now I know he’s real, I’ll be on the lookout for him. Satan and his demon hordes rule the world, but only because God lets them. Of course there’s the angels too, taking care of us, which makes up for Satan’s wickedness.

Donna said I should talk with Jesus as much as I can. He’s always listening and will guide me in my walk with him. She said I will hear him speaking to me. He wants to give me anything I ask for, which is just amazing. Or maybe it’s God who does that. I’ll have to check. She also said that I need to join a church and gave me the addresses of some locally. It’s important, she told me, to worship Jesus on a regular basis and to thank him for saving me. I must make sure I take part in the Lord’s supper too, sharing his body and blood, till he comes back to Earth to take us all to heaven. ‘Us’ just means those who believe in Jesus, obviously.

Donna said it was vital I read my bible as well because it’s the Word of God and is full of his Truth. I’m should get to know more about what the Lord requires of me in my daily walk with him. She recommended I join a bible study group, so I’m going to do that. I asked her about the stuff in the Bible that says to give money to anyone who asks and to forgive people loads of times, but she said that that was all metaphorical and I needn’t bother with it.

She told me I have to tell everyone I can that I now belong to Jesus. I’m never going to be ashamed of proclaiming his holy name and telling others how they can be saved, through his precious blood alone.

She told me my life should reflect the fact that I now belong to Jesus, so no more swearing, smoking or drinking for me! Not that I did those much anyway.

Which brings me to why I’m sending you this message, apart from telling you how wonderful it is to be saved by faith alone, of course. Donna was, I have to say, a little taken aback when I mentioned I was gay. She explained very patiently that it’s a sin God really, really doesn’t approve of. She said Jesus would help me defeat it and as a start I really, really couldn’t live with someone of the same sex any longer, not if I wanted to claim my inheritance from the Lord. I have to turn away from sin, especially that one. Donna says it seriously offends God and he’d never let me into the Kingdom of Heaven as, well… you know, as an abomination. So I’m giving up my previous life.

I know you’ll be a little upset by this, but it’s really why I’m writing. By the time you see this, I’ll have moved out. I still love you, course I do, but it’s for the best. I have to make all the sacrifices I need to preserve my salvation. And think of it this way, it’ll help you give up your life of sin too, so you can be redeemed.

Well, that’s it. Remember, you too can be saved by faith alone and the blood of Jesus and all those other things I’ve mentioned. Simple really. I hope and pray you’ll give your heart to Jesus soon.

Love in Christ who saves us,

Sam

This time it’s personal

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Desperately searching for another reason to dismiss recent critiques of Christianity, Don has suggested that my views and those of commenters here are somehow invalid because they’re ‘personal’. (I declined to publish Don’s latest comment in which he elaborated on this theme; not only was he already on enforced rest but he also decided to have a rant about ‘sexual depravity’. This would appear to have been directed  at my own happy same-sex relationship, as well as all other forms of consensual sex that God Don disapproves of.)

So what’s wrong with ‘personal’? My faith, when I had it was personal. I’d prayed the sinner’s prayer in which I confessed I was a sinner and I received Jesus into my heart (or so I thought) and began to live my life in accordance with what he required of me. This personal relationship with Jesus, as it was usually described in evangelical circles, was reinforced by the preaching I heard in church, by prayer meetings and Bible studies, by the devotional books I read, C. S. Lewis’s writing and the notes I used alongside my personal Bible reading.

I’ve written before how I abandoned all of this when, in a time of crisis, God wasn’t there, and I eventually came to realise, in what I can only describe as a moment of personal revelation, that this was because he didn’t exist.

I then set about discovering what it was I had believed for the previous 30 years; what were these beliefs that had shaped my life, determining what I did, who I married, my morality, my sense of guilt and failure… essentially all that I was. That quest, which began with my broadening my reading well beyond the bounds of devotional Christian books (how treacherous I felt when I first picked them up!) was personal. It was fuelled by the reaction of some Christian friends who attacked me personally when, still later, I came out not only as an atheist but as gay too. My dealings with one particular zealous and homophobic friend led to my first book and ultimately, over 12 years ago, to this blog.

RejectingJesus is a personal working out of my love-hate relationship with Christianity. It is, I hope, informed by my reading but it is first and foremost personal. The posts are my analysis of Christianity as it is practised and my own dissection of the Bible. I’m not a historian nor a theologian (thank god); my Masters is in English Literary Research and it is these skills, together with my knowledge of the Bible from my Christian days, that I apply in my sometimes irreverent analyses. Nothing is sacred, though I’m aware of the importance of providing evidence for my claims and, where relevant, in citing appropriate sources, which is why I provide links and reference relevant verses from the Bible. Perversely, Don also accuses me of being in thrall to the scholars I cite; the opposite of his complaint that posts are ‘personal’.

Do I then, as Don implies, try to discredit the Bible because I’m gay? Am I, as Don suggests, motivated by the ‘constraints’ the Bible places on my sexuality? I don’t believe so. Once I recognised that God didn’t exist, it followed that he could not have any opinion about homosexuality or indeed anything else. Like any other fictional character, his views were created by those who presumed to speak for him: ‘I am so mysterious and my ways unknowable. Oh, but by the way, I really don’t like those depraved gays. Feel at liberty to stone them.’ God’s self-appointed homophobes have to be challenged because of the damage they do.

Am I as an atheist predisposed to being critical of both faith and the Bible, as Christian readers sometimes say? Undoubtedly, but I’m no more predisposed than as a Christian I was predisposed to see God everywhere. As Nan put it in a recent comment:

Any individual who allows him/herself to put aside the centuries-long teachings of Christianity … and read the scriptures without bias and/or preconception … cannot fail to see the multitude of inconsistencies.

Nor can they fail to see the Bible’s flights of fancy, its reliance on dreams and visions, its make-believe and pretend fulfilment of prophecy, its forgeries and false promises, its disconnect from reality and magical thinking, its supernaturalism and sheer cultishness. Critically evaluating scriptures at face value, without making excuses for them or trying to guessing what the original writers might have ‘intended’ or deciding that unpalatable parts are ‘really’ symbolic/metaphorical is, however ‘personal’, by far the more honest approach.

To insinuate with a personal slur that having ‘personal’ reasons for criticising Christianity is a weak ad hominem. It does not address the arguments in question nor the issues at hand. Anyone who wants to demonstrate that what I say about the Bible, Christian belief and practice is wrong needs to provide evidence of their own. Insult, screeds of Bible quotation and ‘a legion of “work arounds”’ (Nan again) is not how to go about it.

 

No True Christian

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Why is it, I wonder, that every Christian I encounter thinks they are True Christians, while most others are not?

A recent survey in the States revealed that belief in God is in decline. Ken Ham of Answers In Genesis decided this is because:

We live in a day when the religion of secularism (naturalism)—with its belief that there is no God, morality is relative, my happiness is all that matters, and we’re simply the products of evolution—is taught as fact in public schools and through the media.

I suggested on Ken’s Facebook page that the reason more people are rejecting the idea of God might have a lot to do with Christians themselves; that Christians’ own public performance was a complete turn-off for many people. I meant by this the way evangelicals in particular:

  • align themselves with Christian Nationalism;
  • actively campaign to restrict LGBT+ rights (and in some cases to have gay people executed);
  • are obsessed with abortion;
  • disregard almost totally Jesus’ actual commands and instead –
  • waste their time online maligning atheists and other minority groups;
  • are downright unpleasant to those who don’t share their views.

Silly me! I was told by a real Christian called Tim Bodnar that Christians who behave like this are not real Christians (despite believing they are):

If we are to know fellow believers by their fruit (or as you say, “public performance”) – we then know that their fruits show them to not be the Christians they claim to be.  That’s why our relationship with Jesus Christ is a personal one.

When I pointed out to Tim that this was nothing more than the No True Scotsman fallacy, he told me – passively aggressively but oh so lovingly – that ‘it isn’t difficult to grasp’ what’s going on; Christians who aren’t real Christians are the same as people who impersonate police officers. In any case, he said, Jesus had it covered.

Maybe it’s a good thing Christians refuse to look to themselves to learn why others are increasingly rejecting their God and their beliefs. After all, if they were to make their worn-out old fantasies more attractive, more people might fall prey to them. ‘True’ Christians are to be applauded for discouraging, albeit unwittingly, belief in their non-existent God.