Category Archives: The Bible’s unreliability

Sin Nevermore

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Remember the old hit Spirit in the Sky? It had the line, ‘never been a sinner, I never sin, ‘cos I got a friend in Jesus’. It doesn’t seem likely, does it? I don’t mean that Norman Greenbaum, who wrote the song, never sinned (he was Jewish, not a Christian) but that friends of Jesus are entirely sin-free. The idea that Christians never sin would be preposterous.

But actually, it’s true; Christians never sin. How do we know? Because the Bible tells us so. 1 John 3.6 says,

No one who abides in Christ sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.

And just in case we miss the point, the writer of the letter (almost certainly not the same John who wrote the gospel, nor the John who came up with the trippy Revelation) repeats it in verse 9:

Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God.

Christians love to say that awkward bits of scripture like these have been taken out of context, so please feel free to read them in context – you’ll find they say exactly the same thing. What John is claiming – without a glimmer of irony – is that anyone who really knows God/Christ ‘cannot sin’.

So next time you see Christians shooting people at family planning clinics, committing adultery, lying or even just judging others, remember they’re not really sinning. Yes, they may be behaving immorally, uncharitably or despicably but they are most definitely not sinning. That would be impossible because they’re incapable of it.

However, Christians are all too aware that they sin (that’s their choice of word, by the way; I’d prefer to say they sometimes – often – behave as badly as those of us who are not ‘saved’.) So where does this leave us or, more importantly, them? How do they square their capacity for sin with what the Bible says here? Does their behaviour demonstrate that God’s Word has it wrong? Or are they not really Christians, not really people who ‘abide in Christ’, not really born of God?

What a dilemma. Either the Word of God™ is wrong here, like it is in so many other places, or Christians are not as saved as they like to think they are. Perhaps it’s both.

Definitely it’s both.

 

You’re not as saved as you think

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God2So now you’re a Christian. You’ve listened to the street preacher or that Christian at work and you’ve accepted Christ. You’re saved and going to Heaven when you die.

Or are you? You’re not going to Heaven that’s for sure, because Heaven isn’t on offer – as we saw here, the Bible doesn’t promise an eternal life in Heaven. But are you even saved? Has ‘the most important decision of your life’ really made you one of God’s own?

If you think you’ve chosen God, you’re wrong. You don’t choose God, he chooses you (or not, as the case may be). And if he hasn’t chosen you, then any decision of yours is of no consequence. You can shout all you like about how you’re now saved, born again and a follower of Jesus but if God says you’re not, then you’re not.

How do we know this? Because the Word of God™ says so:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will… (Ephesians 1. 3-5)

In other words, you’re only saved if God decided you were going to be right back at the beginning of time. And if he didn’t, well, you can talk the talk and even walk the walk, but it will all be for nothing.

Jesus too is quite clear that it isn’t up to you whether or not you’re one of God’s chosen few. Here he is the middle of one of his tiresome parables about the Kingdom of God, where the King has told his slaves:

“Go… into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” His slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” For many are called, but few are chosen. (Matthew 22.9-14)

So, how do you know if you’re one of the special few hand-picked by God himself and not just one of those poor suckers who’s been invited along only to be thrown out? You don’t. Your capricious God won’t tell you till after you’ve died and you meet him face to face. There’s every possibility you’ll find out then that you’re not saved, because only a few of those called actually are. And then where will you be? Hell, that’s where. You’ll be no better off, according to the Bible anyway, than those who’ve not been duped by all of this nonsense.

So, you can believe all you like that God loves you. You can make all the right noises, study your Bible, pray, imagine you hear God’s voice in your head, go to church, sing the right songs and defend God’s standards, but there’s still a very good chance you’re not saved.

Jesus again:

Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord”, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?” Then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.” (Matthew 7.21-23)

But don’t worry, you were never ‘saved’ in the first place, nor lost, nor in need of Jesus; none of this mad fairy tale is real. Your only mistake – and it was a big one – was to think it was.

Loose Threads

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FamilyPick a thread. Any thread. And start pulling. Gently does it, no need for force. A gentle pull on any of the loose ends of faith and the whole fabric will come apart quickly.

Here, pull on this one marked ‘the infallibility of the Bible‘. See how easily it comes loose as soon as you realise that most of it, Old and New Testament alike, was written long after the events it purports to describe, some of it by imposters and forgers.

Or this one – the salvation thread, much of it stitched into place by an excitable chap prone to hallucinations. Pull it and see how its pattern is nothing like the one proposed by the man it claims to be about.

Pull the magic threads, the ones about Gods, supernatural beings, heaven and hell, eternal life. Watch them disintegrate in your fingers once they’re teased out into the real world.

Take hold of the threads about Resurrections, Second Comings, Raptures and Judgements; so fragile, these break away as soon as they’re touched. The only miracle is that they’ve lasted this long.

Then there’s the promises threads, about how believers are going to do fantastic miracles and heal the sick and raise the dead. Imaginative and colourful, these have never really fitted in.

Then there’s the prayer threads, whose embroidery tells us how prayer works, how God will give us whatever we ask for. Downright embarrassing, these – yank ’em out.

And how about the strands that those who say they love the cloth pick out themselves and throw away? You know the ones; the threads which tell them how to live their lives that they just don’t like the look of and think spoil the overall effect. These have definitely got to go.

What about the threads that weren’t originally there – the ones about ‘defending God’s standards‘ and having a ‘relationship‘ with a dead person? These grubby, greasy threads have been added in to replace the ones those who love the cloth have pulled out for themselves.

Choose any number of other threads – the ones that clash with other bits of the pattern, the ugly brutal ones, the fantastic, the ignorant – and give them a tug. Oh, look. They come away too.

And before you know it, the entire fabric has come apart in your hands. All that’s left is a pile of worthless, brittle threads, good for nothing but throwing in the bin.

Is there anybody out there?

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KenAnyone searching for extra-terrestrial life – NASA, SETI and so on – can stop now. We know definitively that there isn’t any out there. How do we know? Because Ken Ham says so. The Bible – Genesis specifically – doesn’t mention life on other planets so that means there isn’t:

(T)he notion of alien life does not square well with Scripture. The earth is unique. God designed the earth for life. The other planets have an entirely different purpose than does the earth, and thus, they are designed differently… where does the Bible discuss the creation of life on the “lights in the expanse of the heavens”? There is no such description because the lights in the expanse were not designed to accommodate life [this is utter gibberish; life within stars? Who has ever suggested that?] God gave care of the earth to man, but the heavens are the Lord’s. From a biblical perspective, extraterrestrial life does not seem reasonable.

But hang on a minute! The Bible doesn’t mention other planets, never mind whether there’s life on them. It doesn’t tell us anything about cultures outside of a small area in the Middle East, doesn’t mention the Americas or Australasia, doesn’t have anything to say about microbes, anti-biotics, computers or technology in general. It must follow, therefore – to use Ken’s logic – that none of these things exist either.

The reason the Bible doesn’t mention any of them, and a myriad of other things, is not because they don’t exist but because the primitive priests and ignorant scribes who wrote Genesis and the rest of Ken’s magic book didn’t know that they did. They had no concept that the Earth is a planet, let alone that there are others; they had no idea that the sun is a star, nor that other stars, which they thought were attached to the inner surface of a canopy surrounding the Earth, are suns. With such a limited cosmology, the possibility that there might be life on other planets was as alien to them as, well, aliens themselves.

Whether there is extra-terrestrial life, and whether any of it is intelligent, we may never know. But either way, Ham’s deity will have no bearing on it, nor it on the Christian God. The existence of aliens, like their absence, won’t breathe life into an already discredited idea.

Our Operators are Waiting to Hear from You!

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ApostlesHi! You’ve reached the Salvation Hotline. Calls may be recorded for training purposes. All offers are validated by our six day guarantee.* Please listen carefully to your options:

Press 1 for Matthew. With one of our less popular offers (but don’t let that put you off!) Matthew is waiting to explain our buy-one-get-one-free offer! Keep the Jewish law and be saved, plus, forgive others and be forgiven yourself!

Press 2 for John who will tell you how you can get your very own get-out-of-Hell just by believing! Eternal life awaits!

Press 3 for Luke. Luke wants to let you know you how you can be saved simply by asking for forgiveness. Note: this offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other.

Press 4 for Luke’s bargain Family Ticket! Only one family member need sign up and the rest go free!

Press 5 for Paul and to hear about a unique special offer! ‘God’s grace’ can save you without you making any real effort on your part! Not to be missed.

Press 6 for Paul’s great alternative offer: get saved for free! No need to do anything! (Offer good for Jews only. Terms and conditions apply.)

Press 7 for a special operator who passes himself off as Paul but isn’t. And he has a great offer for our female callers! He’ll tell you about how, just by having babies, you can be saved! It really doesn’t get any better than this, ladies! Get saved just by doing what comes naturally!

Press 8 for a very special guy of ours who wants to stay anonymous! But he will show you how you can escape death by buying into Jesus’ cosmic defeat of evil!

Press 9 for James who will tell you how you need to do good if you want to be saved. So, okay, Paul doesn’t think so, but we want to make sure you hear all our offers!

Please note: these offers are mutually incompatible so you might just want to hang up now and forget all about them.

*Our guarantee isn’t worth the paper it’s written on but for legal reasons, here it is anyway:
Press 1: Matthew 5.17-19 & 6.14.
Press 2: John 5.24.
Press 3: Acts 2.36-38.
Press 4: Acts 16.30-31.
Press 5: Romans 10.5; Ephesians 2.8.
Press 6: Romans 11.26-27.
Press 7: 1 Timothy 2.15.
Press 8: Hebrews 2.14-15.
Press 9: James 2.14-17, 24

The Seventeen Commandments

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mosesQuick – can you name the sixth of the ten commandments? That was the question in a quiz I went to last night. We got it wrong, but I have to to tell you, so did the quiz-master. If you Google ‘the Ten Commandments’ – which I can assure you we didn’t during the quiz – what you get is the list of injunctions from Exodus 20. You know the ones: thou shalt not kill, steal, commit adultery or covet thy neighbour’s ass. Read them all here if you feel inclined.

When, in a fit of pique, Moses destroyed the stone slabs on which these ‘commandments’ were written, God generously offered to provide him with a replacement set. The Almighty even made a point of saying, in Exodus 34.1, that the two sets would be identical. But they’re not. Here’s the lot from Exodus 34:

1. You shall worship no other god, because the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
2. Do not make any molten gods (idols).
3. Keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
4. The first born of every creature shall belong to me.
5. Work for six days and rest on the seventh.
6. Observe the Feast of Weeks.
7. Present all your male children to the Lord God three times a year.
8. Do not offer the blood of sacrifices to God with leaven and don’t leave the sacrifice of the Feast of the Passover until the morning.
9. Give the first of the first-fruits of the land to the house of the Lord thy God.
10. Do not boil a kid in his mother’s milk.

Far from being identical, only three commandments are the same in the two sets; missing from the Exodus 34 group are those about adultery, theft and killing, replaced with stipulations about ancient Jewish festivals and boiling baby goats (of great eternal significance, that one.) Just to complicate matters, this second lot is the only one referred to in the Bible as ‘The Ten Commandments’ (Exodus 34.28). The more familiar injunctions from Exodus 20 – the ones Google brings up – are not.

What is going on here? It’s as if ‘The Ten Commandments’ are not as immutable as Christians claim. What are they to do? Should they pick and mix between the two sets? Should they reject one and use only the other? Obey both lots – The Seventeen Commandments? It’s far from clear and yet, according to Jesus, their eternal existence depends on getting it right (Matthew 19:17).

All of which makes me think how a single seamless garment has been created out of a ragbag of scraps and patches. The church and believers in general have told us that the shambolic writings stitched together as the Bible tell a consistent story. This deceit is a major accomplishment of the Christian faith because the seamless garment is an illusion, created by pretending there are no discrepancies or inconsistencies and by glossing over all the significant differences within God’s Word™.

This is why we never hear of the second set of commandments – they’re put away like a mad woman in the attic. The church doesn’t want people seeing them or hearing about them. Best to shut them away and make out they don’t exist. Same with the second account of creation in Genesis 2. It’s different from that in Genesis 1, though both are embarrassingly wrong about the means and order of creation. When Christians do acknowledge that there are two accounts (as Ken Ham does) they insist, that, of course, there are no real differences and they can all be explained (away). If there are no differences, why then do they need explaining?

Then there are the disparate accounts of Jesus’ life. Even where they share the same material each gospel presents it differently or gives it a spin that frequently contradicts the other gospels’ versions of the same events. Every one of the stories about the resurrection, for example, is radically different in both detail and significance from all the others.

There are even greater problems for Christians in explaining how Jesus’ supposed sacrifice on the cross brings about salvation. The writers of the New Testament aren’t clear themselves, suggesting at least a dozen largely incompatible ways between them. The four gospels alone have conflicting ideas about how it works (more on this next time), all of which differ from Paul’s salvation formula.

I suppose if Christians want to deceive themselves about their faith and their magic book, it’s up to them. But, please, righteous ones, don’t try and tell the rest of us it has a clear consistent message when it doesn’t. Don’t tell us it’s a seamless garment when it has tangles of loose threads and you’ve had to throw away all the material that doesn’t fit the pattern you pretend you can see.

 

Oh, and that sixth commandment? ‘Observe the Feast of Weeks’. But of course you knew that.

Idiotic Stuff Jesus Said 13: We Don’t Need No Educashun

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MegaBut you are not to be called rabbi (teacher), for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Matthew 23:8-12

Evidently these words were put into Jesus’ mouth by the community that produced Matthew’s gospel and reflect the egalitarianism and communism that characterised it. The phrase that gives away their origins is ‘you have one instructor; the Christ’. ‘The Christ’, as we know, was a creation of the early church and it is highly unlikely Jesus would have referred to himself in such a way. In the synoptic gospels he is reticent even about claiming the Jewish title of Messiah for himself. In any case, the reference is patently to a third party, and is by an author or interpolator who subscribes to the later, supernatural Christ.

In the unlikely event, then, that these words emanated from Jesus himself, all they achieve is to demonstrate his lack of understanding of human psychology. Even as ‘Matthew’ set about recording them, the newly founded church was already ignoring them, which is perhaps why he felt the need to have Jesus say them. Here’s Ephesians 4.11, written by someone pretending to be Paul round about 80-100CE, contradicting them:

Christ gave (us) the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers…

The imposter who wrote 1 Timothy (5:17) up to a hundred years after Jesus’ death goes further, endorsing the exaltation of those who teach and rule others:

Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honour, especially those who labour in preaching and teaching.

Why? Because human beings like hierarchies. Almost all human societies are hierarchical in nature and groups invariably arrange themselves hierarchically. There will always be people who see themselves as leaders and teachers and still others who look to those who’ve set themselves up as authorities to tell them what to do.

Despite what Jesus or ‘Matthew’ might have preferred – everyone being equal while those who ‘exalt’ themselves are humbled – it just doesn’t happen in human culture. It certainly wasn’t happening in the movement that emerged following Jesus’ death, in the church that existed by the time Matthew was making Jesus say that the only authority Christians should recognise was God’s and his own. The institution that was appearing in place of the end of the age – an institution that Jesus neither anticipated nor instigated – could not function effectively as the simple band of ‘brothers’ he is made to suggest. It was in need of structure, and a hierarchy was it.

And so it was that, before long, the first popes emerged – ‘pope’ deriving from the Latin for ‘papa’. Each of these exalted figures would come to be referred to as ‘Holy Father’, a title still in use today. With complete disregard for Jesus’ instructions, other priests (meaning ‘elders’) in the Catholic church also assumed the title ‘father’. Evangelical churches, lest they think the Catholic church is the only guilty party, have their ‘pastors’, meaning ‘shepherds’, who, by definition, lead others. A common or garden ‘clergyman’ is a ‘learned man’, while a bishop is one who ‘looks down from above’. An archbishop is chief look-downer and exalted indeed. Elsewhere, showmen preachers in mega-churches ‘teach’ with a mixture of anecdote, wild conjecture and stuff they make up as they go along; tune into TV’s God channels for a taste of this particular brand of humility. The church in all its manifestations has, from the beginning, been hierarchical from top to bottom.

Jesus, however, didn’t want there to be a top or bottom; if Matthew 23.8-12 is to be believed, he commanded there shouldn’t be. He envisaged his followers living in harmony with everyone equal under his and God’s authority. No-one was to set themselves up as teacher or leader; no-one was to exalt themselves above others. If any did, they would need to be humbled. But this isn’t how human beings organise themselves, and never how the church has conducted itself. Shouldn’t he have known that?

Spontaneous Conversion

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st-paul-conversionThe missionaries pressed on into the Amazonian jungle. They were now in uncharted territory. No-one had ever been this far in. And then, sounds from somewhere not too distant; human sounds, human voices – singing even. The missionary troupe emerged into the clearing to an amazing sight. Groups of Amazonian natives gathered together, a rudimentary cross in front of them, towards which they were undeniably directing their worship. These people, whose existence had hitherto been unknown, and who had never before encountered Westerners, were Christians!

Weeks later once basic communication had been established, the tribe’s chief priest and the head missionary communed together. The priest explained how, long ago in the past, his ancestors had recognised God’s presence in the incredible world around them and had opened their hearts to him. As a result – Miracle of Miracles! – God sent them a vision of Christ himself, much as he had to St Paul and the other disciples, and the whole tribe came to believe in Jesus. Ever since then, the tribe had worshipped the one true God and his only son, that same Jesus Christ.

“Amazing,” said the missionary, “so it looks like St Paul was absolutely right when he said God reveals himself in nature and speaks to our hearts to make himself known to us. It’s not as if we ever needed the Bible, or to go round telling people how to be saved. God is more than capable of doing it for himself. Praise the Lord and pass the communion wine!”

What a story! And it happened time and time again as the world was opened up by explorers and missionaries.

Or maybe not. Definitely not, in fact. But it should have happened if what Paul says in Romans 1.18-21 is right, as Ken Ham believes it to be:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened.

If God is so obvious in the world that (supposedly) he created and if we humans can see and understand him through it, then why do Christians need to proselytise? Why doesn’t God make his personal presence felt just that tiny bit more clearly – with the odd ‘revelation’ like the one he provided Paul, say – so that people come to believe in him more fully? And by ‘him’, of course, I mean the proper God – the Jesus one. Why does he leave it so that folk seemingly pick up on the special vibes he’s placed in their hearts but then worship a ‘counterfeit’ god, like Allah or Jah or, back in Paul’s day, Zeus? Why doesn’t he provide revelations like he used to, to ensure everyone knows just who it is who’s standing at the door knocking?

If he did that, if God did indeed plant clues to his presence both around us and in us as Paul says he does, then the Bible wouldn’t be needed to convert people. But that’s not what we find, which is that the Bible is essential in perpetuating the God-myth. We wouldn’t even be aware of Paul’s ridiculous claims if they were not preserved in that ramshackle collection of writings.

The indoctrination of others is utterly reliant on two things and two things only. Not God-in-nature or inner prompting or visions, but on ‘the scriptures’ and those who are driven to spread the Jesus-meme. Now does that not strike you as odd? It strikes me as something entirely human, with nothing supernatural about it. If people have to be told, evangelised to and indoctrinated into Christianity, then it can hardly be the case that they see the one true God in nature or have an intuitive feel for him. If that were the case, then we would have discovered hitherto unknown groups of humans who already knew of him and the nonsensical clutter of beliefs that surround him. And we haven’t. Ever.

Jesus v. Paul Round 2: And the winner is…

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Make-overI’m re-reading Barrie Wilson’s excellent How Jesus Became Christian. Wilson makes the case that Paul’s Christianity was, and is, an entirely different religion from that of the historical Jesus. He shows how Paul’s ‘Christification’ changed the original mission of Jesus – to alert his fellow Jews to the imminence of God’s kingdom on Earth – ‘from one focused on the teachings of Jesus to one about the Christ’ (p242).

How right he is. This very the dichotomy troubled me in my own church-going days when evangelical Christianity, as it still does, consistently excluded the demanding, extreme and human Jesus of the synoptic gospels to focus instead on this illusory supernatural being. They preach sermons about him, sing hymns to him and intone creeds that skip glibly over everything Jesus said and did when he was alive. The Christ was, I came to see over time, an invention of Paul’s, the product of his strange hallucination sketchily recounted in Galatians 1.11-12 and 1 Corinthians 9.1 & 15.45. The Jesus he talks about is a sort of cosmic super-hero, a god-man of the type found in pagan religions in the first century. He has little or nothing to do with Jesus the Jew preacher and would-be Messiah, preserved – just about – in the three synoptic gospels.

So, the differences between Jesus and the Christ are profound. Here are a few of them, that I’ve drawn up, demonstrating that Christianity as we know it – essentially Paul’s ‘Christified’ version with inconvenient bits removed – bears little relation to the ‘good news’ of Jesus:

Jesus’ good news: God’s Kingdom on Earth imminent (Mark 9.1 etc)
Paul’s good news: Salvation through a dying/rising god-man (Romans 3.19-26; 4.24; 5.1-2; 5.10 etc)

Jesus presents as: Jewish Messiah claimant: ‘Son of Man’; Self-appointed judge and king in near future (Matthew 16.28; 13.41; Luke 22.30 etc)
Paul presents: Mystical saviour: The Christ, who saves those who ‘share’ in his death and resurrection; Christ as judge and ruler of mankind in near future (Romans 3.25; 6.1-11; 13.11-12; 1 Corinthians 15.20-28; Philippians 3.20)

Jesus’ qualifications: Teacher, preacher and healer; ideas rooted in Jewish prophecy; full of his own importance (Matthew 5.17; 7.12; 9.35; 25.40)
Paul’s qualifications: Builds entire religion on single hallucination; borrows heavily from pagan cults; full of his own importance (1 Corinthians 15.8; Galatians 1.15-16)

Jesus’ position: Adherent of Jewish Law; emphasises its importance (Mark 6.2; Matthew 5.19)
Paul’s position: Disregards Jewish Law; implies it is ‘dung’ (Romans 3.28; Galatians 5.6; Philippians 3.7-9)

Jesus insists on: Obedience to Jewish Law (Matthew 5.17-20)
Paul insists on: Faith in Christ and his resurrection (Romans 1.16-17; 3.22)

Jesus’ salvation requirement: Be righteous/perfect (Matthew 5.48; 13.43)
Paul’s salvation requirement: Faith (Romans 5.1; Galatians 2:15-16)

Jesus expects: Right behaviours and attitudes (Matthew 5.38-48)
Paul expects: Right belief (Romans 10.10-13)

Jesus’ teaching: Measure for measure morality (Matthew 6.38; 7.2; Luke 6.37); Forgive in order to be forgiven (Matthew 6.14); Show mercy in order to be shown it (Matthew 5.7); Give in order to receive (Matthew 6.38); Treat others as you wish to be treated (Matthew 7.12)
Paul’s teaching: Profess right belief (Romans 10.9)

Jesus’ commands: Love God (Matthew 22.37); Love your neighbour (Matthew 22.39); Love your enemy (Matthew 5.44)
Paul’s commands: Embrace Christ (Romans 8.35-38; Galatians 3.27); Be filled with the Holy Spirit (Romans 5.5; Galatians 5.16-18); Avoid those with different teaching (Romans 16.17; Galatians 6.6-9)

Jesus’ extremism: Give up everything you have (Mark 10.21; Luke 14.33); Give to all who ask (Matthew 5.42); Turn the other cheek (Matthew 5.39); cut off own hands, remove eyes (Mark 9.43-47); Consider castration (Matthew 19.12)
Paul’s extremism: No interest in anything Jesus taught when was alive; intolerance of Jesus’ original followers (Galatians 2.11-21)

Jesus’ guarantees: Resurrection/eternal life through demonstration of one’s personal righteousness once the Kingdom comes (Matthew 25.31-36)
Paul’s guarantees: Resurrection/eternal life for those with right belief and faith when Christ returns soon to judge mankind (1 Corinthians 15.20-28; 51-52)

Jesus’ outcomes: No Kingdom on Earth; no appearance of the Son of Man or a returned Jesus; disappearance of the movement that subscribed to Jesus’ ‘good news’
Paul’s outcomes: No appearance of the Christ; no rapture; no resurrection; no cosmic judgement

Jesus’ result: Failure
Paul’s result: Becomes mainstream Christianity; Paul wins!

As Wilson makes clear, the two are, despite some small overlap, very different belief systems. The Christ Christians worship is not the same as the Jesus they ignore. Nonetheless, they continue to pretend they are one and the same, unable to see that the join is, and always has been, a gaping hole.

 
Notes:
i) Biblical references are by no means exhaustive; there are many others that support each point and difference.

ii) Details of Wilson’s book are:
Wilson, B. (2008) How Jesus Became Christian: The Early Christians and the Transformation of a Jewish Teacher into the Son of God. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London.

The Revolution Has Been Postponed

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LiteralSo we all sat down on the grass and waited for the great man to speak.

“You’re a winner,” he said eventually, “if you’re ordinary and oppressed, because one day you’re going to rule the Earth!” Everyone gasped. We were all of us just ordinary, plain-speaking folk and things like this didn’t happen to us.

“Yes, really,” he said, “because God is going to establish his kingdom on Earth. And when he does he’ll sweep away the rich and the powerful, and you’ll be in charge. This I promise.”

We couldn’t believe it – proper gobsmacked we were.

“You’re in luck too,” the teacher went on, “if you’re poor, because once God’s kingdom comes, you’ll be rich beyond measure. And as for those of you who are hungry, you’re going to be filled like you’ve never been filled before. God, you see, is going to turn everything upside. Those of you at the bottom of the heap now – and let’s face it, that’s all of you sorry schmucks – are suddenly going to find yourselves at the top. And those who are on top now will be right down at the bottom. This, I promise you, is how it’s going to be.”

I can tell you everyone was beaming. We could already feel the change in the air.
Then Eli, sitting next to me sticks up his hand. “Hey, boss,” he shouts.

“Eli,” I says to him, “don’t be disrespectful. This bloke obviously knows what he’s talking about. He’s a messenger from God.”

“Yo, boss!” shouts Eli again.

“Yes,” the man up front says to him. “What?”

“When’s all this going to happen, then?” asks Eli. “When can we expect this big change?”

“Oh,” the teacher says, “I was thinking… maybe in a couple of thousand years?”

“What?” Eli says. “What good is that to us? From the way you were talking we thought all these wunnerful things were going to happen soon. What’s the point of telling all of us, sitting here in front of you, that we’re gonna be top dog and everything if it’s not us you’re talking about.”

“Good point,” the great man says. “All right then. How about if it’s sooner?”

There’s a lot of murmuring and everybody thinks this a good idea.

“Great,” he says. “Then that’s settled. We’ll make it sooner, so that you guys are still around. How does that sound?”

Everybody says it sounds marvellous.

“Great,” the big man says again. “It’s agreed, then – it’ll be soon. On that, you have my word.”

That was good enough for us and so we all set off home to get ready for the big changes we’d been promised.

“Thousands of years in the future,” Eli scoffs. “What a bloody con. Who does he think he is? God Almighty?”