Category Archives: faith

If not Metaphor, then what?

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I’ve been arguing that everything in Mark’s gospel is metaphor (because he says so) but there are some pronouncements credited to Jesus in the synoptic that do seem to read as if they’re not. These look as if they are meant to be taken at face value: 

Mark 9:1 And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.”

Mark 10:21. Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.

Matthew 5:39. But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.

Matthew 5:40. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.

Matthew 5: 43-44. You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,

Matthew 6:24. No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

Matthew 6.25. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?

Matthew 7:6. Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

Luke 6:30. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.

Luke 14:26 If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters – yes, even their own life – such a person cannot be my disciple.

Perversely, these are the very commands that most Christians insist are intended metaphorically. This includes those who oppose the idea that, Jesus’ parables excepted, the gospels are in any way symbolic. I know from experience that they have any number of unconvincing arguments of why Jesus doesn’t really mean what he is made to say. For example: ‘these pronouncements are too severe and impractical to be taken literally’; ‘the verses are being taken out of context’, and ‘they have a deeper spiritual meaning’ (oops – that’d be metaphor, wouldn’t it?). Ask these same folk if the statements are therefore metaphorical and you can expect to be met with barrage of abuse.

If they’re not metaphorical, why do we not find Christians striving to live according to them: renouncing wealth, giving to all who ask, selling all they have, resisting no-one, judging no-one, hating family, becoming a slave and having no care for their own welfare for the sake of the kingdom that Jesus promised was imminent.

Because they don’t believe him. Easier to disregard his words about the kingdom arriving within his disciples’ lifetime and the instructions for living in the short time until then. The hard stuff is treated as metaphorical when it makes demands on Christians themselves.

Possibly they’re right. I’d suggest that the pronouncements like those above were not Jesus’s at all. They’re cult-speak; the extreme demands of cult leaders seeking to control their acolytes. In case this sounds like an about face on my part, let me assure you it isn’t; I’ve long argued that among the metaphor and the reworking of Jewish scripture, the gospels include copious amounts of early cult rules.

Whether they’re metaphor or extreme demands once imposed on cult members, no-one today takes much notice of Jesus’ commands. What does this tell us about their worth? What does it tell us about Christians from the earliest days until now? What does it say about their willingness to crucify themselves (definitely a metaphor) in order to follow him?

Real or Metaphor?

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Don has been asked repeatedly by Ark to ‘explain how to tell the difference between real and metaphor in a biblical context’.

Don has so far evaded the answer, gifting us instead his lectures about how we don’t really understand figurative language (I didn’t publish the latest), or telling us it all depends on whether the event described somehow feels real.

Let’s see if we can’t pin him down to a direct, unequivocal answer. Please tell us clearly, Don, whether the following account, from Acts 1:9-11, is real or metaphorical and how you know.

Now when (Jesus) had spoken these things, while they watched, he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw him go into heaven.”

No prevarication now, Don. None of your ‘it could be both’ bluff, nor your ‘it’s stylized history that isn’t really history’ evasiveness. No answering by turning the question back on us or suggesting we’re all too dumb to understand.

Is it real or is it metaphor, and how do you know?

Bible Study

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Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come here.” And he said to them, Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him. (Mark 3:1-6)

Greetings, my beloved Brethren. Today we are going to look at God’s Holy Word as revealed to our dear brother in the Lord, the one who will one day be called ‘Mark’. We’re looking specifically at the passage above, because some of you have expressed difficulty in discerning the full import of the text. I have to say I’m surprised at this. You only have to bear in mind Mark’s rule of thumb that everything in his gospel is a metaphor, which, when looked at with discernment, reveals a previously hidden mystery: 

To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that “‘they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven’” (Mark 4:11-12, referencing Isaiah 6:9)

Our passage today begins with the Lord healing a man with a withered hand, which should straight away alert us to the fact we are dealing with metaphor. All of the healings in the gospels are. They stand for something more significant than any actual healing.

Some of you might already have made the connection between the use of ‘withered’ here, with its use in another story (Mark 11-12-14), where Jesus withers an unfruitful fig tree. Of course, no actual fig trees were harmed during this miracle. The fig tree and its withering are metaphors.

The tree, you see, is a metaphor for the Jewish system of worship, the old Covenant of the Law. This had reached the end of its life. It was fruitless and God was done with it. He was in the process of replacing it with salvation through Grace. All of this is represented metaphorically by Jesus cursing the fig tree and causing it to wither.

So it is in our passage today, except this time, God offers healing to the Jewish nation. He is nothing if not gracious, reaching out and offering acceptance into the new Covenant, expressed here as the healing of a withered hand. You won’t have missed the fact – again symbolic – that the healing occurs in the synagogue, the Jews’ place of worship. We might also remember Deuteronomy (6:8) where the Lord God instructs the Jews to wear his Law on their foreheads and, more significantly, to tie them to the backs of their hands. But now their hands have, metaphorically speaking, withered away, just as the fig tree will.

God knows of course that few will accept his proffered healing, insisting instead of labouring blindly under the old Covenant. The rest of the story reflects this stubbornness and the incalcitrant attitude as the Pharisees – metaphors for the Jews as a whole – round on Jesus and castigate him for breaking the Sabbath laws in healing the man – in spiritual reality the Jews themselves. That Jesus heals on the Jews’ sacred day is metaphorical too, demonstrating as it does that all the old laws are now surpassed. Jesus, and more importantly his followers – you, my dear brethren – are no longer under the yoke of that law but have new freedom serving Jesus under his new yoke, which is easy to bear. At the end of the story, the Pharisees – the Jewish leaders of our own time, lest we forget – leave to plot against the Lord; in reality against us. With his help we will of course bear this persecution stoically.

So you see my brothers, this story was written for you, to remind you that you are saved. You are the New Covenant. The Old has passed away. You can follow Jesus’ example and do good, yea, even on the Sabbath. You need not fear the Jews or others who might persecute you because the Lord is with us. The Jews, on the other hand, will soon be cast into outer darkness when he comes in person. Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly.

I hope this has made clear to you the mystery hidden in this part of Mark. I know there will be some of you who are not sufficiently advanced in their understanding of the mysteries, being still babes in Christ, and may yet object to this exposition of the deeper secrets of the Lord. So be it. But don’t say you haven’t been made aware of the Truth.

Next time, if there are those who need to know more of the mysteries hidden in God’s new revelation, we can look at the next part of Mark, though I trust that you are, by now, developing sufficient spiritual insight to discern for yourselves the hidden mysteries embodied by the gospel’s metaphors.

Beyond The Grave

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A few years ago, a friend of mine was working in his front garden when he spotted what he was sure were a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses further down the street. He aimed to back inside before they reached his house, from where he could safely ignore them. But he timed it badly and before he knew it, the JWs were upon him.

My friend was under some stress at the time so when they asked him, ‘Wouldn’t you like to live forever?‘ he responded with, ‘Good God, no. This life’s bad enough. Why would I want it to go on forever?’ This took the wind out of their sail though didn’t divert them from their sales pitch for very long.

I’ve been in the same state of mind myself, and maybe you have, when life was so difficult I spent far too much time contemplating whether being dead might not be a better option. Thankfully, I couldn’t really contemplate doing anything about it, and was aware of the effect it would have on my loved ones if I did, but nonetheless I spent too much time considering – desiring even – my own non-existence.

I was pretty sure this was what awaited after death. I hadn’t, by this stage of my life, the conviction of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and mainstream Christians that a better life, one that would last forever, lay beyond this one. Instead, I made radical changes to my life in the here and now, to lift myself out of the slough of despond in which I found myself.

I love life now. It isn’t without its difficulties, not least the physical problems that come with older age, but I enjoy it to the full (apart from supermarket shopping). Having found my pearl of great price, I hope life will last for many years yet. I can’t guarantee it will, of course, so I make the most of every moment, surrounded by people I love and who love me.

Would I like my life to go on forever? Certainly, but I know it won’t. There is simply no evidence life continues after death. Assurances that it does in religious texts is no evidence at all. Even if it were, the type of eternal life suggested by the Bible, worshipping a needy, despotic God for evermore, is not the way I’d like to spend eternity.

Ask Christians how they know they will and the best that can come up with is that the Bible tells them so or that Jesus promises they will (which amounts to the same thing.) Ask them where this everlasting life will be lived and you’ll get one of two answers: in heaven or here on a restored Earth, once Jesus ‘returns’. The earliest writings in the New Testament support the here-on-Earth scenario. The later ones – perhaps because their authors had begun to realise Jesus wasn’t coming back any time soon – start, like John 14:2, to hint at a celestial existence.

No Christian – no non-believer either – has survived death to face eternal bliss or eternal damnation. Some will tell you that rising from the dead happens in an ethereal way immediately following death. The soul (or whatever) is resurrected either to be reunited with God outside of time and space or thrown to the demons in hell. The biblically savvy, like the JWs, will tell you the resurrection will not occur until Jesus’ return at some point in the future. Significantly, both expectations occur off-stage: the first in a undemonstrable plane of existence, the second in a future that never arrives. Both are wishful thinking, scenarios dreamt up by those frightened of their own non-existence.

The offer of everlasting life is one of the New Testament’s most pernicious lies. The idea is not to be found in the Jewish scriptures that make up the Christian Old Testament. It is a later development, dreamt up by extremists who convinced themselves, on the basis of a few visions, that God would ensure their continued survival, just as he had Jesus’s.

If this isn’t how the promise of living forever came about, then what is the evidence there is an existence beyond death? Empty assurances by first and second century cultists are not it.

  • Show me someone other than Jesus – whose ‘resurrection’ is metaphorical at best – who has risen from the dead.
  • Show me evidence that ordinary human Christians have already gone on to eternal life.
  • Show me, if you don’t subscribe to this view of immortality, the souls who rest with God awaiting a future resurrection (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Revelation 6:9-11).
  • Show me just one human, Christian or otherwise, who has gone on beyond death.
  • Prove that the promise of eternal life is real.

Jesus’ Ungrateful Slaves

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Jesus really liked telling stories about slaves. It’s as if he’d no objection to the inequitable arrangement of one person owning another. You’d think, if he really was the Son of God, he wouldn’t be quite so ready to assume unquestioningly, the zeitgeist of his day that decreed slavery was acceptable; necessary even. His being a man of his time, incapable of thinking beyond the assumptions and indoctrination of his culture might suggest he wasn’t a heavenly being at all. Either that or his creators, the writers of the gospels and the likes of Paul, were incapable of seeing beyond the zeitgeist and so made their god-man in its image.

In any case, they have Jesus tell a parable in Matthew 18:21-35 about forgiveness, which is populated once again with slaves and a slave owner. The story, in which a slave is forgiven by his master but fails in turn to forgive a fellow slave, ends with the following:

…after he had summoned him, his master said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Shouldn’t you also have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And his master got angry and handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he could pay everything that was owed. So My Heavenly Father will also do to you if each of you does not forgive his brother from his heart.”

Of course, the slave owner, referred at the start of the tale as ‘the king’ is – predictable metaphor alert – Jesus himself. He’s fond of casting himself in the role of kingly slave owner, with ordinary mortals his slaves. As we’ve seen already, this is the favoured analogy of New Testament writers to describe the relationship between their manufactured saviour and themselves.

Actually, the moral of the tale in this instance isn’t too bad; if you’re forgiven much it’s not unreasonable to suppose you could, in turn, forgive others their more minor offences. But this isn’t quite enough for Jesus’ script writers who have him drag jail, torture and retribution into the story. These, Jesus concludes, are the very things his wonderful Heavenly Father – based on the despotic rulers of the time – will inflict on anyone who doesn’t forgive as generously as they might.

What hypocrisy! Forgiveness is all according to Jesus but his Heavenly Father, he says with relish, will torture unforgivably anyone who doesn’t comply. What were the cultists who created this awful malicious character thinking? Jesus and everything to do with him is anti-human and soul-destroying.

As for me, I’d recommend forgiving others where you can, learning from the experience (once bitten twice shy and all that) and moving on. You won’t, whatever you do, be tortured by a fictitious, vindictive slave owner and his bullying idea of a god.

 

 

Parables

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Jesus’ parables are analogies: similes or metaphors. ‘The Kingdom of heaven is like’; ‘there once was a man…’ Every one of the parables tells a story that didn’t actually happen. There was no literal Good Samaritan, no Prodigal Son or Sower. Jesus, or more probably the gospel authors, made up these stories to illustrate ‘mysteries’ (μυστήριον; gnosticism anyone?) What do they say about the parables? The majority appear in Matthew’s gospel, though Mark and Luke also include them. There are none in John. Did he, a supposed eye and ear- witness, not know of them?

Mark has Jesus say to his disciples:

To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that “‘they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven’” Mark 4:11-12

Mark lets his readers in on the ‘secret’ (μυστήριον again) because there are mysteries within the cult, secrets available only to the initiated. Remember, the parables were written – they are almost certainly literary creations – 40 years after the cult was established. Only cultists would understand the secrets/mysteries embodied in the parables. Parables, Mark tells us, are intended to disbar those who are not spiritually attuned from salvation/the kingdom of God/eternity.

The word translated as parable also means ‘riddle’, designed to puzzle or obfuscate. But Mark doesn’t just say the parables are intended to do this. He says ‘everything is in parables’. What did he mean by ‘everything’? All of the teaching he attributes to Jesus? All of the episodes he relates? Could it be that the entire Jesus story, crucifixion and resurrection included, is one long, extended parable? A metaphor, if you like.

You bet it is.

Related:

Stories about Jesus

The Jesus Story v. Reality

Cruci-fiction

Inventing Jesus

Evidence of God

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As for evidence, you might be aware of Israel. That nation has been in the news much of late. So, without being flippant at all, I present Israel as evidence. Think about it. They are living the script written thousands of years ago. Not by chance.

Israel as evidence for the existence of God. I’m thinking about it as Don suggests.

Where did it all begin, this bizarre notion that one tribe in the Middle East was chosen by God to be his special people? According to the Genesis myth, it was when YHWH promised Abraham he’d be his best buddy forever and ever, so long as he mutilated his body and those of his sons in perpetuity. They would also have to keep every one of this bullying god’s 365 rules and regulations, including the petty and piffling ones. So far so good, apart from the fact it was all very one-sided, and the mutilation of course. You’d think this would’ve been a sign that things weren’t quite kosher, but no; Abraham and his descendants buy into it and almost straight away, YHWH begins to let them down.

God’s Chosen Ones soon find themselves slaves in Egypt. A second mythical character is needed – up pops Moses – to get them out of this scrape. Unfortunately, after Moses has finished chatting with YHWH, who identifies as a burning bush on the top of a mountain, the sulky deity feels slighted by something the Israelites are doing. As is his way, he has many of them slaughtered and the rest he forces to troop around the same small plot of land for 40 years. This is how best buddies treat each other!

Later, the Jews find themselves defeated by the Babylonians and are carted off into exile. This exile, which YHWH does nothing to prevent, lasts 70 years. Still, it leads to a pleasant song made famous by Boney M in 1978 so I suppose it was worth it.

For the next few hundred years, Israel falls under the rule of other nations more powerful than itself. Not to worry though, YHWH is still ‘looking after them’, particularly those who are slaughtered in the rebellions that ensue. As Robert Conner says in a recent comment on Debunking Christianity, ‘If Yahweh ever threatens to bless you and your children, just kill yourself and get it over with.’

Fast forward to the Roman occupation of Israel. YHWH, having undergone a makeover, reneges on his promise to take care of his Chosen Nation forever and ever and comes up with a different plan to save people from his own cussedness. Now, if they want to continue as his friend, they have to believe a supernatural being has returned from the dead.

Abandoned by God, as he now wants to be called, Jews who haven’t defected to the new faith see their sacred, eternal temple destroyed by the Romans in AD70. Thousands of them are massacred and the Jewish nation ceases to exist.

This sets the pattern for the next two millennia in which God’s new friends organise pogroms, massacres and vicious persecution of Jews. This culminates in the Final Solution of the Third Reich which seeks to eliminate the Jewish people entirely. While awaiting extermination in a concentration camp, Andrew Eames scrawls on the wall of his prison: ‘If there is a God, He will have to beg for my forgiveness.’ God allows six million of his Chosen People die at the hands at the Nazis.

Following the second world war, Israel takes possession of the area surrounding Jerusalem, then occupied by Palestinian Muslims who are themselves descended from earlier immigrants. Thousands on both sides are slaughtered in the conflict that follows. In 1948, after almost 2,000 years, Israel becomes a nation once again; not through any miracle of God but as a result of human endeavour and bloodshed.

Tension and further skirmishes followed, leading to the present day when Israel finds itself under attack by Hamas terrorists. Thousands of innocents – women, children and babies – have been slaughtered without mercy. Israel is, as I write, retaliating and intends to enact further vengeance. And where is God in all this? You guessed it: nowhere to be seen.

All of this, according to some – including the naive writer at the top of this post – serves as evidence of God’s existence. That Israel has persevered for so long, despite opposition, persecution and the holocaust is not, however, evidence of God, any more than the great cathedrals of the world are. It is instead testimony to the resilience, resolve and sheer bloody mindedness of the people themselves. Perhaps their belief in YHWH (they don’t of course recognise his Christian counterpart) has fuelled their persistence, as it has their territorial claims.

Jewish beliefs and history are not evidence that YHWH exists. If anything, his apparent abandonment* during their many trials and tribulations is evidence to the contrary.

*Of course a non-existent entity can’t actually abandon anything, any more than it can lend its support or favour one group of people over another.

Jesus Is Cool With It

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I was handed a sticker the other day that read ‘Jesus is cool with it’. Just what the hip Jesus of the sticker was cool with was explained by an accompanying leaflet, and the fact I was at a Pride event at the time.

I worked out from the leaflet and his rainbow flag, that what Jesus is cool with is homosexuality and all that goes with it. He might also be cool with transgenderism and other variations in human sexuality, but who knows; the leaflet didn’t say so directly. It did, however, have a list of websites that support those who are religiously afflicted and gay, transgendered or of unorthodox sexuality. It suggested that through these sites it might be possible to find a gay affirming church in the local area.

I was at first pleased to see that Jesus had had a change of heart. That he had in fact made a complete u-turn from his previous position, which evangelicals have long assured me, is that homosexuality is a heinous sin and a ‘violation of God’s design for human sexual behaviour’.

Eagerly, I logged into my favourite – I use the word loosely – Christian sites to see how they were celebrating this new revelation from the Lord. Unfortunately, they had yet to be updated and so weren’t conveying the news that Jesus was now ‘cool’ with gayness and the like.

That was over a week ago. I’ve just checked again only to find that they’re still not proclaiming this particular piece of good news. In fact, some have published even more rants well considered pieces about the evils of homosexuality, drag acts, people who are changing sex and the rest. They are so uncool about it that they’re still quoting the Bible: the Old Testament verses where it says that for a man to lie with another man is an abomination, and Paul, who, channelling Jesus (or so he’d have us believe) insists that homosexuals won’t make it into God’s Magic Kingdom. Some sites also mention Jesus’ pronouncement in Matthew 19:14 (yawn) that God made only male and female and the only time they’re allowed to get jiggy with each other is when they’re married.

I’m left wondering who is right. The ‘Jesus is Cool’ brigade or the great preponderance of evangelical churches that say he isn’t cool, not one jot or tittle, with same-sex doings.

The thing I’ve learnt through this, is that Jesus can be whatever you want him to be: a really cool guy who gives the thumbs up to whatever consensual sex you enjoy or a grouch who didn’t die just so you could continue in your old sinful ways. Take your pick. He’s both, depending on which bits of the Bible you prefer.

I wouldn’t care one way or another if it weren’t for the damage done by those who think they speak for the grouch.

A Reply to a Slave

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I’ve discovered this new gizmo that lets me look stuff up on the Interweb. Goober or somesuch. I used it to find the meaning of ‘doulos’ that the absence of dictionary prevented you from doing. All of the results Goober brought up described doulos thusly:

Doulos (Ancient Greek: δοῦλος, Greek: δούλος, Linear B: do-e-ro) is a Greek masculine noun meaning “slave”. Wikipedia

Doulos (a masculine noun of uncertain derivation) – properly, someone who belongs to another; a bond-slave, without any ownership rights of their own. Biblehub (Christian site)

…anyone could become a slave, in a sense. However, once someone was sold into slavery, they remained a slave for life, and all of their offspring automatically became slaves as well. The only standard way of obtaining freedom was to earn enough money to pay your owner back as much as he had paid for you in the first place. This was a nearly impossible task to accomplish because slave owners did not often facilitate their slaves ability to earn money on the side. As such, most slaves, and their offspring remained slaves for the totality of their lives. Slavesandsons (Christian site)

Doulos is a Greek word in the Bible that has only one true historical option for accurate translation into English, which is slave. It literally means to be owned by someone for a lifetime. This word is found at least 127 times in 119 verses in the New Testament scriptures. It is used in the context of human slavery, which, sadly, was very common throughout the ancient Roman Empire for hundreds of years. Recorder.com (Christian site)

You’ll see none of them say what you say, Don. None think slavery was a nice amicable arrangement. Christian sites especially emphasise how slavery was a downright awful thing so’s they can sermonise about how Jesus saves us from slavery to sin.

If you’re going to reduce real world, God-approved slavery to something akin to a nice comfortable arrangement, you diminish the metaphor of Christ’s redemptive work to… not much at all. (Which of course it isn’t.) I noticed you didn’t comment on this point when I mentioned it in an earlier post and here you are digging yourself in deeper with your ‘slavery wasn’t really all that bad’. Good work, Don!

You’re certainly enslaved to all this Christian mumbo-jumbo. To Christ though, not really. There’s no such being and you certainly don’t give the impression of being a slave in any real world sense. Perhaps that’s because you have no understanding of what slavery was and is.

Jesus Shows How To Treat Slaves

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Jesus’ parable of the talents

Three slaves are given money by their owner, two invest it while the third buries his share. He is castigated by his master (yes, it’s Jesus as his favourite metaphor: slave master) who says to him on his return:

I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me. (Luke 19:26-27)

I know, that last sentence doesn’t fit the rest of the story, but it tells us what a despicable s**t Jesus was, quite happy to see those who didn’t want a peasant with delusions of grandeur lording it over them exterminated. Thank God the Romans got to him first (if indeed he existed.) No-one likes a dictator, specially not another dictator.

How about the conclusion to the actual parable, the one about the slaves and the money? The talents are evidently a metaphor for something or other. According to Christianity.com, it’s that the third slave, ‘didn’t take joy in the promise of the master’s return but instead wasted his time, his opportunities, and the master’s money.’

In other words, it’s fanatic talk aimed at those with a lack of commitment to the cult and its beliefs, including the ‘master’s’ imminent return, when wastrels will be in big trouble. As Christianity.com puts it:

Those who are not (faithful) may face the harsh reality of being called a wicked and lazy servant. Worst of all, they may not share in the joy of their master’s presence when he returns.

And there we have it, the softening of Jesus’ dictatorial original: ‘will’, as in ‘will lose everything’ becomes the hedging-your-bets ‘may’ while ‘slave’ (doulos again) becomes the watered-down ‘servant’. After all, we wouldn’t want to draw attention to how much of a cruel bastard Jesus was originally conceived as being. (Because, yes, these stories were invented by the early Jesus cult.)

The cult took no prisoners; in terms of commitment. It was all or nothing. Waiver in that commitment and you risked expulsion when the slave-master returned. So much for being redeemed unto salvation, so much for salvation by grace alone. If you weren’t utterly committed you stood to lose it all. What the original cultists weren’t to know, of course, was that the master would never return. The whole sorry parable was as irrelevant then as it is now.