Tag Archives: Bible

There’s good news and there’s good news…

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Bat-Jesus

Mark, Matthew and Luke all tells us that Jesus preached the gospel when he was alive (Mark 1.14-15; Matthew 4.23, 9.35 & 10.5-7; Luke 20.1). So what was this gospel? What was Jesus’ ‘good news’? He had yet to die so it couldn’t possibly have been ‘you can be saved through my death and resurrection’ because this magic formula had yet to be arrived at by those who came later. Nor could it have been ‘accept my substitutionary atonement whereby I take the punishment you deserve in order to restore your relationship with God,’ for much the same reason. Nor could it have been, ‘you must accept me as your personal your saviour if you want to gain everlasting life in Heaven,’ because he didn’t regard himself in this way and he didn’t, according to the synoptic gospels, offer an eternity in Heaven. No, Jesus’ good news could not have been any of these because they are all later developments, mumbo-jumbo invented about him by others, not things he said himself .

Actually we needn’t speculate on what the good news was that Jesus preached because the gospels tell us: God was going to intervene in history very soon, rescuing his people from Gentile rule and setting up his Kingdom, in which he, Jesus, would be judge and king (Matt 24.27-34 & 25.31; Luke 1.33; 21.25-28). People, he said, referring only to Jewish people, should prepare themselves for this coming Kingdom by mending their ways (Matthew 10.5-6).

How soon would all this happen? In the lifetime of his hearers according to Mark 9.1, Matthew 16.28 and Luke 9.27, maybe even within a few weeks or months. When sending out the disciples to spread his good news he promised them, ‘you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel, before the Son of man comes (to usher in the new Kingdom)’ (Matthew 10.23). We can only assume that the disciples are back by now – in fact they return a few verses later – yet the Son of man still hasn’t materialised among the clouds in full view of ‘the tribes’ of the Earth (Matthew 24.30).

As the Bible records, Jesus was wrong in every respect; God did not set up his new Kingdom within the lifetime of those Jesus spoke to; the Son of man did not appear; the Romans were not overthrown; Jesus was not appointed judge and king of the world. The sarcastic inscription on his cross, ‘King of the Jews’, was the closest he came to having his self-aggrandising prophecy realised.

Is this the Jesus that Christians worshipped subsequently and still worship today? It ought to be as he’s the one revealed in the first three gospels. But the Jesus believers carry around in their heads is not this man. The ‘Jesus’ worshipped by Christians is primarily a construct of Paul’s – his ‘Christ’ – and their own collective imaginations. The mythical ‘Christ’ that Paul ‘did not receive from any man’, has replaced and almost obliterated Yeshua and his mistaken beliefs about the coming Kingdom (though Paul held on to the idea that it was indeed imminent; see 1 Thessalonians 4.15-17).

Admittedly ‘the Christ’ has had a far better shelf-life than Yeshua could ever have had on his own; the continual resurrection of the idea in the minds of believers – and only there – has ensured the perpetuation of the myth. When all is said and done, however, the Christ is nothing more than an imaginative recreation of a failed zealot with an altogether different gospel.* Yeshua’s good news of the Kingdom died shortly after he did and like him has stayed dead, its echoes preserved by Mark, Matthew and Luke and ignored by Christians everywhere.

* I’m aware there is a body of thought that gives primacy to the mythical god-man, ‘the Christ’, with the Jesus stories being seen as a later ‘in-fill’ designed to provide him with a plausible back-story. I’m not convined of this for several reasons, which I’ll explore at a later date.

See what you want to see

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dog's bottom2

Paul was a religious fanatic, a zealot is how he describes himself, whose raison d’etre had become the elimination of those who believed that Yeshua was the Messiah. The Jesus movement, which at this time was still very much a part of Judaism (it is Paul who will later uncouple it from its Jewish mooring) is in Paul’s eyes an aberration and he is prepared to brutalise and imprison those who subscribe to it. He is an extremist; religion is his life, his world, his being; he spends all of his time with his band of Pharisaic thugs and members of the new cult (trying to destroy them, admittedly). That’s all he does. He doesn’t have any other interests. No wonder then, that he starts to hallucinate, as fanatics are prone to do, perhaps while suffering an epileptic seizure.

According to Luke in Acts 9.5, Paul can’t make sense of what he thinks he’s ‘seeing’ in his head. He doesn’t immediately connect the light there with Jesus and is forced to interpret it, perhaps some considerable time afterwards (both he and Luke recount the experience only many years later) as being the cult leader whose followers he is persecuting. Once he has decided that this is what his experience was all about, he switches from one kind of fanaticism to another, from one kind of extremist Judaism to another equally fanatical kind.

He does not, I want to emphasise, go from being a Jew to a Christian; he has three years yet to spend brooding on his hallucinatory experience and to work up a convoluted interpretation of it. Only after that does he offer his own bizarre take on the Yeshua phenomenon that conflicts with the original cult and will eventually succeed it.

So, the risen Jesus, like ghosts today, was ‘seen’ only by those already infatuated with him, and even then not always in a form that was recognisably human.

There were no appearances to anyone in the outside world who might have provided objective verification of his return from the dead.

No appearance to any authority, none to the emperor.

There was no appearance in front of Pilate so that the resurrection might be become part of Roman records.

None to Herod to show him he had overcome death.

None to the masses who had earlier called for his death to prove to them he really was their King. 

None to usher in, at last, the Kingdom of God he’d been promising for so long.

None to Caiaphas to demonstrate that he, Jesus, truly was the prophesied Messiah.

None to Judas, to prevent his suicide and forgive him for his betrayal (or ask his forgiveness for using him as a pawn in the Great Divine Plan).

None, in fact, to anyone outside his own coterie, people who were already susceptible to ‘visions’ and psychologically primed to see him again – or to convince themselves they had, like the gullible people today who swear they’ve seen him in the clouds, in various food items or in the hallowed form of a dog’s bottom.

Keen amateur photographer Terry Buckman spotted the 'Face of God' in a cloud formation as he was taking pictures of boats sailing on the English Channel near Sandbanks in Poole, Dorset. Terry said that he was the clouds part and then suddenly the shape of the face appeared. *** Local Caption *** Disclaimer: While Cavendish Press (Manchester) Ltd uses its' best endeavours to establish the copyright and authenticity of all pictures supplied, it accepts no liability for any damage, loss or legal action caused by the use of images supplied. The publication of images is solely at your discretion.kit-katdog's bottom

 

 

The Stuff Christians Say… (part two)

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Balaam

Atheists don’t behave as evolution says they should: This ridiculous accusation is often slung at atheists by Christians who seem to see it as some sort of stinging rebuke. Answers In Genesis is very fond of it; the Hamster’s drones and other Christians seem to believe – without ever thinking it through (plus ca change) that because those who acknowledge the veracity of evolution don’t behave according to its principles they are somehow inconsistent in their ‘beliefs’ – hypocritical even. They seriously propose that because natural selection and the survival of the fittest (not one of Darwin’s phrases) are cruel, uncaring processes, then that is how, for the sake of consistency, atheists ought to behave too. We shouldn’t care, they say, when a child develops cancer or someone dies. We shouldn’t attempt to cure illness or work to prevent suffering because these are nature’s way and part of the mechanism of evolution.

While it’s true they are, it’s been a long time since our behaviour, our existence and continued success as a species has been solely determined by what nature does. Humans regularly override its mechanisms, natural selection included; every time we use birth control, show compassion for the weak, heal the sick, develop medicines, engineer genes and preserve life. And so we should.

Christians seem unable to comprehend that evolution is not a pattern to be followed. It is not a set of instructions for living, a prescription or a set of (a)moral guidelines. It is the best explanation, supported by considerable amounts of evidence, of how life developed on the Earth. As such it makes no ethical claims nor does it demand that its principles be blindly followed (that’d be religion). Are Christians truly unable to detect this difference?

Atheists have no reason to be moral: I’ve looked at this ignorant claim before. Of course we have reason to behave morally. We’re human, we live in human society. Morals help us do so while doing the least damage to ourselves and others. They may also enable us to bring some happiness or comfort to those around us. Atheists don’t look to an imaginary God to tell us how to be good; our morals come from our culture, upbringing and education. Christians’ morals do too, whatever else they may claim. They certainly don’t get them from that most immoral of books, the Bible.

 

to be continued…

My preciousss is mine (and mine alone)

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bible3Christians have a monopoly on the Bible. No-one else should comment on it, criticise it or even quote from it. Or so Christians tell me. The reason for this, apparently, is that ‘it is absurd to contest the Bible when (you’re) missing the one main ingredient: Jesus’. Not so, of course; the Bible is there for anyone who wants to consider and ‘contest’ it. Granted one’s perspective will be coloured by how one regards it to begin with –

whether you approach it with a reasonable degree of objectivity or look at it through the myopia of faith;

whether you take what it says at face value or apply shifty exegesis to smooth out its many inconsistencies;

whether you acknowledge it was created over time by a succession of fallible men or assume it represents the accurately recorded words of God;

whether you regard it as beliefs of ancient tribesmen and religious fanatics or see it as the means of salvation and the ultimate guide to life.

It is only reasonable that those who take the first of each of these alternatives look to those who take the latter to see how closely they adhere to the demands the Bible makes of them. It’s reasonable because those who believe in its magical properties use it to tell the rest of us how wicked and/or lost we are and how much we need Jesus. If the Bible is the Word of God (as I’ve noted before, it doesn’t claim to be; it’s Christians who say it is), instructing believers on how to live their lives while spreading the gospel, it is not unreasonable for those of us on the receiving end of their ‘witness’ to take a look at how that works out. Not so well as it happens.

Now either this is the fault of the book – heaven forfend that it isn’t clear about what’s expected of God’s Chosen – or Christians themselves are to blame for failing to live as it expects. Unsurprisingly, it’s a combination of the two; a book of mixed messages in the hands of flawed human beings. When Christians refuse to acknowledge that the Bible is far from perfect they are faced with the challenge of making its impossible demands compatible with their own imperfections. They have a number of cop-out excuses that enable them to do this, several of which appear in the comments on this blog. I’ve discussed a number of them before, but here’s a quick summary:

Christians are not perfect and the Bible doesn’t say we should be (actually it does, in Matthew 5.48);

Others have no right to be critical of Christians when we’re doing our best;

You can’t use our own book against us when you don’t know Jesus (see above);

You’re a sinner so what do you know?;

You’re quoting out of context (and only Christians can do that);

You’re not applying the correct exegesis and/or hermeneutics (i.e. mine);

The Christians you’re criticising aren’t real Christians;

It is unfair to lump all Christians together.

Is it? Is it really unfair to lump all Christians together? Aren’t you all meant to be one body, the Body of Christ – you, the Pope, Westboro Baptists, the mega-churches and their celebrity pastors, Joyce Meyer, those who would stone gays, those who affirm gays, Franklin Graham, Alpha converts, abortion-clinic bombers, African witch-finders, Archbishop Sentamu, ‘Emergents’, those who belong to one of the thousands of other denominations and all your friends in your own little church? Who are you to say who’s saved and who isn’t? All Christians represent all other Christians, who represent Christ himself. The Bible says so in 1 Corinthians 12.12-26, Ephesians 4.14 -16 and elsewhere. Or did it get it wrong again?

The Embarrassment that is the Old Testament

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bible2

When does the Old Testament count and when doesn’t it? When does what it says matter and when doesn’t it?

The answer to both questions is when Christians say so. It counts when something from it can be used to underline how wicked the rest of us are and when they think it’s pointing to the coming of Jesus, many years in its future. It doesn’t, of course, foretell of Jesus as such, despite its predictions of a coming Messiah and/or Son of Man. Jesus doesn’t fit its descriptions of either of these figures. Rather, Jesus’ story is read back into the older texts, their characters and events forced to serve typological and prophetic purposes for which they were never designed. The entire endeavour, which began very early in the development of Christianity, is entirely back to front, with the gospel writers, Paul and other New Testament authors pillaging older Jewish texts and forcing them to fit Jesus retrospectively (and often laughably.)

Regarding ancient Jewish texts as an Old Testament – that is, as representing a previous agreement/covenant between God and his people that has since been superseded – is a political, interpretive manoeuvre of the later religion. (While it’s true Jesus is made to speak of a new covenant, it is debatable how authentic his words are; rewriting the past is not only confined to the New Testament’s treatment of the Old.) This kind of slippery manoeuvring was also endorsed by those who later compiled the Bible as we now know it,* when they relegated the writings that Jesus and all the New Testament writers would have regarded as sacred Scripture to nothing more than a forerunner of the real thing.

Believers want to hang on, naturally, to Genesis, because that’s where it tells them God created everything using nothing but magic and breath from his holy lungs. It relates too how everything went pear-shaped after some mythical people ate some fruit. Noah’s ark is there too, which is a jolly good fantasy, apart from that weird bit at the end where Ken Ham gets an eyeful of his old man’s old man (Genesis 9.20-27). Christians are less keen on those Old Testament stories where God instructs the Israelites to massacre other tribes (1 Samuel 15.2-3; Deuteronomy 2.34 etc) and rape their women (Isaiah 13.15; Zechariah 14.1-2 etc) but nonetheless they’ll defend these unpleasant, barbaric stories just because they’re in the Bible. The Psalms are nicer, what with their words of comfort and paranoia, but best of all are the Old Testament pronouncements that can be used for clobbering sinners. Leviticus 20.13 – ‘If a man lies with a male as with a woman both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them’ – is a particular favourite, as is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah for much the same reason. But when it comes to other diktats, Christians are less interested; rules about not eating shellfish or wearing clothes of mixed fabrics, they are quick to point, are entirely negated by the new covenant; they don’t count any more, even though they’re in the same list of largely petty rules as the homophobic one (Leviticus 11.10 & 20.9.)

So how do Christians decide which Old Testament laws are applicable and which are now inessential? There is no shortage of know-alls Christian scholars who make it up as they go along and can tell them. It’s easy you see; the old ‘ceremonial’ rules of the old covenant are now redundant while the moral precepts still stand. Needless to say, the Bible itself suggests no such thing, with Jesus saying precisely the opposite in Matthew 5.17-18 and Luke 16.17; evidently another of his strange ideas that can safely be ignored.

So how do we know which of the Old Testament’s prescriptions are ceremonial and which moral? The same self-appointed experts can tell us this too, though it’s actually easy to work it out for oneself. As a general rule of thumb, verses that condemn other people are still applicable while those that Christians themselves don’t care for are not. So the shellfish and mixed fabrics directives can be disregarded, because obviously they’re ceremonial, while the anti-gay stuff isn’t – obviously. And there’ll be no public stoning of wayward teenagers (Deuteronomy 21.18-21) because that’s obviously ceremonial too – and don’t even think of having sex with the slaves, not even ceremonially. These days, thank God, it’s considered so uncivilised (even if, in Numbers 31.17-18, Yahweh says it’s okay. )

The Old Testament then; an embarrassment Christians are compelled to defend as part of their magic book but which they nevertheless feel free to use selectively, according to taste. Not unlike the New Testament really.

*There are, we should note, several variations of the Bible within Christendom; God can’t seem to decide which books are or are not part of his Holy Word.

Hermeneutics = Sameoldtrics?

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Paul&JCHermeneutic consistency is the means by which Christian apologists try to harmonise disparate parts of the Bible. Saddled with the premise that the Bible is the Word of God they need to demonstrate a consistency it doesn’t have because God, as its ultimate creator, could not possibly be the author of confusion (1 Corinthians 14.33). Consequently, they set about ironing out the Bible’s many discrepancies and contradictions to arrive at what they claim is a consistent and uniform Salvation Plan.

Unfortunately, this being an essentially dishonest enterprise, they have to pretend that New Testament authors with conflicting ideas about what it means to be a follower of Jesus are really saying the same thing. As I demonstrate in Jesus v Paul Round 2, there are vast differences between Paul’s good news and that ascribed to Jesus in the synoptic gospels. In the latter, Jesus is made to say that ‘righteousness’ can be cultivated in a measure-for-measure arrangement so that the extent to which a person forgives, gives to others and demonstrates compassion and mercy is mirrored exactly in how much God forgives, gives and shows mercy and compassion to that person in return. Paul on the other hand sees ‘salvation’ as being entirely undeserved. It is, rather, the result of God’s ‘grace’, which is given even though unmerited. According to Paul, showing compassion and mercy and offering forgiveness has no bearing on whether one is saved or not. These – Jesus’ path of righteousness and Paul’s unearned salvation – are two entirely different, and mutually exclusive, ‘ways to God’. Christians choose to remain blind to this fact.

They see no difference between the two ways to redemption because they are taught that Christianity is one grand scheme, woven, as it were, from a single piece of cloth. From this perspective, Jesus and Paul are simply drawing attention to different aspects of what is taken to be a consistent pattern. But this isn’t so; the New Testament is more like an untidy patchwork, a series of explanations by at least a dozen hands of what Jesus was about. Its most prominent voice is Paul’s (and those who pretend to be him); Christians prioritise Paul’s teaching over and above that of the synoptic gospels, which is markedly different, and interpret their ‘good news’ in the light of Paul’s mysticism. What doesn’t fit, they discard.

This has been a problem ever since the start of Christianity; the differences and disputes between Paul and the original disciples is well documented in the New Testament itself. Paul did not regard those who had walked and talked with Jesus as having a grasp of the true gospel (his) and was not reticent about saying what he thought of them. In Galatians 5.12, for example, Paul is so pissed off with the apostles he wishes they would accidentally castrate themselves.

Enter Luke, the original hermeneutic harmoniser. His Acts of the Apostles is designed to reconcile the radically different doctrines. By and large he succeeds, with most believers down the ages, perhaps because they haven’t wanted to, unable see the joins. But Acts doesn’t get Paul’s itinerary right, let alone his theology. The speeches Paul makes in Acts are not about the salvation through grace that concern him in his letters. They make concessions to other teaching – that of repentance and forgiveness (for example in Acts 13.38 and 17.30) while the real Paul makes no such compromise. There are no exhortations to repentance nor the promise of forgiveness in Paul’s own writing; there he mentions repentance only once, in a strikingly different context (Romans 2.4), and forgiveness not at all.

Moreover, Paul is adamant that he did not receive his doctrine from Peter or anyone else (Galatians 1.11-12). Instead he insists he got it direct from the Lord – i.e. through the hallucination he alludes to in Galatians 1.11-12 and 1 Corinthians 9.1 & 15.45 – which explains why it is so radically different from the original believers’. In Acts, however, Luke isn’t very happy with this – he’s trying to harmonise, after all – and has Paul meet Peter and James very soon after his conversion (Acts 9.26-30). Following some initial sheepishness, Luke implies, they all get on famously.

According to Paul, however, he and Peter didn’t meet for the first time until three years after Paul’s conversion (Galatians 1.18) and it was fourteen years later before he talked with a larger group of disciples (Galatians 2.1), when ‘the pillars of the church’ summoned him because of his wayward teaching. Paul records how he ‘rebuked’ Peter shortly after this (Galatians 2.11-13) because he objected to Peter’s interpretation of what was involved in following Jesus. In short, Paul and the apostles could not agree on what constituted belief in Jesus and what part Jewish law played.

Two questions result that Christians need to ask themselves, though invariably they don’t:

1. Where there are discrepancies between Paul’s theology and account of events, and Luke’s – written 15-20 years after Paul’s death – which is more likely to be correct?

2. Who is more likely to have the greater understanding of Jesus’ teaching: Paul who never met him but made it all up in his head, or Peter and the other disciples who spent years with him, listening to what he said?

In answer to the second, Christians down the ages have opted for Paul, the one who made it all up. His Salvation Plan is, after all, easier to buy into than Jesus’ mad idea of giving everything away and loving your enemies. Having chosen their man, it follows that the rest of the New Testament must be forced to comply with Paul’s ideas.

This is hermeneutics in the hands of Christians; an intellectually dishonest sleight of hand designed to bring everything into line with their interpretation of Paul’s idiosyncratic take on a man he never met. As for those who are unimpressed by their contortions, well, it must be that they have a faulty hermeneutic. Praise the Lord!

Consensual text

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BiblePastor Chris Linzey has taken me to task for quoting the Magic Book out of context. Interestingy, the latest post on Chris’s blog, written by his father, does just that, so it must be okay for Christians to do it even if no-one else can.

Let’s take a close look at a couple of verses, Matthew 19.4-6, that God’s Chosen like to quote out of context, entirely altering their meaning in the process (but that’s okay, because you know, Christians are doing it):

Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning “made them male and female”, and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.’ (Matthew 19.4-6; Jesus quoting Genesis 2.24 out of context).

As it stands, this passage seems to suggest that Jesus is endorsing marriage between one-man and one-woman (only) but pan out from the isolated section and this not what he’s talking about at all. He’s discussing divorce. Here’s the verse in context:

Some Pharisees came to (Jesus), and to test him they asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?’ He answered, ‘Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning “made them male and female”, and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.’ They said to him, ‘Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?’ He said to them, ‘It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but at the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another commits adultery.’ (Matthew 19. 3-9)

What the one-man, one-woman verse can now be seen to be saying is that once a couple are married, they should stay together and not divorce; Jesus isn’t prescribing marriage at all. Add even more context and what we find following the lines about divorce is this:

His disciples said to him, ‘If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.’ But he said to them, ‘Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.’ (Matthew 19.10-12)

In other words, Jesus doesn’t recommend marriage in any shape or form, not even between one man and one woman; his view is that it is better not marry at all. He goes further still: it is better to be completely sexless, as if without testicles, for the sake of the Kingdom of God. He acknowledges, bless him, that not everyone will be able to comply with this ‘teaching’ – who’d have thought it?

Zoom out further still and set this part of Matthew’s gospel against Luke 20.34-35 where Jesus really is talking about marriage:

He said to them, ‘Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that [Kingdom] age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.’

This time the message is that only those mired in the ways of the world marry, costing themselves a place in the coming Kingdom. Those in the know, however, avoid it and so guarantee their resurrection and transition to the new age. Whatever else it is (wackadoodle nonsense?) this is not a ringing endorsement of marriage. The verses from Matthew and Luke when taken together show clearly that not only did Jesus fail to endorse one-man, one-woman marriage, but that he disparaged the entire institution. He believed that when the Kingdom came to the Earth, marriage would be done away with altogether and advocated abandoning it in the interim as well. You wouldn’t know this though from the decontextualised use of Matthew 19.4-6.

We might ask here why it is that today’s Christians don’t comply with his directive. Why don’t they shun marriage as their Lord and Saviour says they should? Why do they regard his commands as optional? Why don’t they want to guarantee themselves a place in the coming Kingdom by vetoing marriage? Have they abandoned all hope of God’s Kingdom ever coming to the Earth? Shifty hermeneutics won’t help them here either, because Paul is of a similar opinion (1 Corinthians 7.8-9; 28-29). Evidently this is the kind of teaching Christians are free to discard, perhaps because they see it – unjustifiably – as specific to the first century, like the coming Kingdom itself.    

So, yes, context can be important, given the haphazard and disjointed fashion in which the Almighty chose to express himself. But it doesn’t always produce the result Christians might like. That’s where the sleight of hand known as ‘hermeneutic consistency’ comes in. We’ll try that out next time.

 

 

Some material in this post has appeared before; specifically here. I hope I didn’t take it out of context.

 

Con Texting

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Cross2Pastor Chris Linzey didn’t like my previous post. He attacked its shoddy journalism(?), complained I exercised faulty hermeneutics and was upset I quoted bits of the Bible ‘out of context’. What he didn’t do, of course, was address the point made in the post, that Christians are selective about the parts of the New Testament they’ll accept, nor did he answer my question about how they decide which commands to follow and which not. Ironic, really, for someone whose blog has the strap line ‘Turning the Bible into Behavior’.

Christians are inherently dishonest about which parts of the supposed ‘Word of God’ – the New Testament specifically – they’ll acknowledge, believe and apply to their own lives. They mask this dishonesty, from themselves as much as anyone else, with a sleight of hand they mistake for hermeneutics (more on this in two post’s time) and by wilfully misinterpreting those who draw attention to their inconsistency. Pastor Chris didn’t seem to understand the fairly simple points I made in ‘Pick and Mix’ so came up with a couple of avoidance strategies. First, he took a swipe or two at my writing style (fair enough, though no-one was compelling him to read it) before, secondly, setting up strawman arguments to attack. They certainly weren’t my arguments he was tilting his lance at, that’s for sure. I guess this is what Christians mean by putting on the armour of God; you gotta deflect criticism by whatever means possible.

I’d like here to address though, Chris’s claim that I was quoting the Bible ‘out of context’. I have to say I find this one of the most unconvincing rejoinders – it hardly qualifies as an argument – that Christians offer in defence of their beliefs, right up there with ‘you wouldn’t dare say this about Islam’.

A quotation from any source, not just the Bible, is necessarily out of context no matter how much of it one uses. There is no way round this, even if one resorts to quoting extensive amounts of material, which I do when the meaning isn’t apparent from a short quotation, like here, for example. Nonetheless, a lengthy quotation is still decontextualised, from its letter or gospel as well as from the original time, place and culture in which it was written. In addition, while long quotations might be appropriate for longer academic papers (I have some experience of these and even there, great chunks are rarely necessary) they’re not always suitable for short, pithy blog posts.

In any case, the objection really only has validity if quoting ‘out of context’ somehow distorts the meaning. If it doesn’t, if the meaning is apparent from the lines referenced, then quoting more isn’t necessary. Readers who have any doubts can always check the source material for themselves – I always provide chapter and verse – to gain a sense of the wider context for themselves. Remarkably, the verses I cite invariably turn out to have the same meaning in their greater context as they do when quoted in isolation. The Christian objection to them being ‘out of context’ is usually nothing more than a smoke screen to avoid addressing the point being made.

What of Christians themselves? Do they ever take ‘scripture’ out of context? Oh my, yes, and they’ve been doing it from the very beginning. The gospel writers, particularly Matthew, wrenched snippets from the ‘Old Testament’ to make ‘fulfilled’ prophecy out of verses that weren’t prophecy to begin with, and, as we’ll see next time, Jesus too lifted lines from their original context to allow him to make theological points.

Nor are Christian bloggers and apologists today averse to doing the same. Then there are those devotional posters with a single, ‘comforting’ verse of scripture on them (like the one I used to have that said, ‘Heaven and earth will pass away but my words will never pass away’); the placards that surround street preachers with ‘For God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son’ and ‘Ye must be born again’; the banners at marches and parades that declare ‘Repent or Perish’ or ‘Christ died for the Ungodly’. Each and every one out of context. I suppose if the original sense is more or less preserved then these might be seen as legitimate (if not entirely useless) but evidently taking scripture ‘out of context’ is something Christians are allowed do but others shouldn’t. Yet another case of do as I say, not as I do.

Next time, we’ll take a closer look at how believers ease their cognitive dissonance – between what the Bible says they should believe and do and what they actually believe and do – by disregarding context when it suits them.

 

2015: How was it for you?

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2ndComingI promised this time last year to revisit my predictions for the year that lay ahead. So how did I do in my prophecies for 2015?:

The first was that there would be no Second Coming in 2015. Well, how wrong could I be! As we all know Jesus returned on September 13th, just as John Hagee hinted he would be. It’s been so great, hasn’t it, living in Hell / God’s Kingdom on Earth (delete as appropriate) since that time. Fantastic. I’m so pleased to have been wrong about this one.

On the other hand, maybe what I said last year still stands: Jesus won’t be back this year. Just like he wasn’t back in 2014, 2013, 2012… 1985… 1914… 1868… 1497… 1000… 446… 35. Just think of all those years – count ’em, nearly two thousand – when he’s failed to return so far. Actually, he promised he’d be back while his followers and those listening to him were still alive, around AD30 or thereabouts. Safe to say he’s not coming back at all, just like dead people don’t. Not in 2015, not ever.

Of course it still stands. As ever Christianity fails to deliver. That hasn’t stopped True Believers™ from telling us that he’ll be back very, very soon. Which was prediction number 2: Christians will go on believing that Jesus is going to return any day now. I gave up collecting examples well before the end of the year – there were just too many – but here’s a few of them: here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Will the gullible Born Again ever come to their senses and stop listening to idiots like these? (Nope).

Prediction 3. There’ll be no natural disasters or human calamities as a result of gay marriage. There have been lots of disasters and calamities during the year, but here’s the thing – natural disasters have natural causes, not supernatural ones, and similarly, human calamities have human causes. Not one of the events this year (or any other) was the direct result of gay marriage. This hasn’t stopped the religious from claiming – as I predicted they would in prophecy number 4 – that disasters and calamities are God’s punishment for gay marriage; here, here , here, here, here, here and here, for example.

Prediction 5: More than one prominent Christian will call for the execution of gay people. Yup. Here are those loving men of God doing just that (and here, here and here too). Jesus would be so proud.

Prediction 6: Christians in the west will claim they’re being persecuted when they’re being expected to treat others fairly and equally, and not to discriminate against them. Yes, I know Christians are persecuted in some parts of the world, but the moaners I’m talking about are only focused on their own self-serving, self-inflicted ‘marytrdom’. Again, there are just too many of these to link to them all, but here are a few (and here, here and here).

Prediction 7. Christians will respond to criticism with clichés like ‘they wouldn’t dare say that about Muslims’… ‘Christians are the last group who are fair game’… ‘It’s time for Christians to speak out’… ‘Stand up for God’s standards…’ etc. Yes, predictable in more ways than one. 

Prediction 8: Christians will continue to dismiss and disparage anyone who doesn’t share their views, especially atheists. Look out for ‘atheists have no morality’,’the fool hath said in his heart there’s no God’ and ‘atheists want to oppress Christians’ occurring with tedious regularity. And they didn’t disappoint: here, here, here and here.

Prediction 9: There will be more revelations about the abuse of children by church ministers. Of course there were. Christians may be new creatures in Christ but that doesn’t stop some of them behaving in the same old despicable ways, God love ’em.

Ditto number 10: Church hierarchies will attempt to cover up the abuse of children by their ministers. And here they are at it. The body of Christ certainly seems to have an unhealthy interest in the bodies of others. Still, they always ever so modestly cover up afterwards.

Prediction 11. There will be the usual manufactured ‘war on Christmas’. Ho-hum. And you can guess who did the manufacturing.

And finally I offered number 12: these predictions have far more chance of coming to pass than any of the so-called prophecies of Bible. And do you know, they did. That’s because none of the Bible’s predictions have ever come to pass – not those purportedly about Jesus himself, nor of the second coming, nor the judgement of sheep and goats, nor God’s Kingdom on Earth – and (here’s another prediction) they never will.

So, another year of empty promises, failed prophecies and superstitious fantasy in the wonderful, wacky world of religion. May you all be safe from the effects of faith and fundies in the one that lies ahead.

We owe it all to Jesus

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MarySo the UK is a Christian country. Prime minister Dave Cameron has decreed it. In his hallowed Christmas message he proclaims that Britain derives all of its values from Christianity:

As a Christian country, we must remember what (Jesus’) birth represents: peace, mercy, goodwill and, above all, hope. I believe that we should also reflect on the fact that it is because of these important religious roots and Christian values that Britain has been such a successful home to people of all faiths and none.

‘Peace, mercy, goodwill, hope and tolerance’. Doesn’t it warm your heart? This country of ours has these wonderful sentiments at its core and all of them derive from the baby Jesus. I’m not sure about where our other values – capitalism, colonialism, democracy, free-thought and expression – originate but no doubt Dave will tell us they too spring from our ‘religious roots’.

What about the values he mentions though? Do they originate with Jesus as Dave claims?

Peace we covered last time: Christianity have not brought peace into the world, ever. Dave seems to have forgotten that Britain is currently at war; the so-called ‘war on terror’ Is he now suggesting that as a ‘Christian country’ we should turn the other cheek and propose peace, because that’s what Jesus would want? I doubt it, somehow.

Mercy? Here’s the kind of mercy Jesus proposed: ‘But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them – bring them here and kill them in front of me’ (Luke 19:27). Nice.

Goodwill? Jesus always extended goodwill to others. Like here: ‘It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs (non-Jews)’. And here: ‘Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs (non-Jews again), lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you’ (Matthew 15.26 & Matthew 7.6).

Hope? The Bible does speak about hope – hope that this will all soon be over and God will consign non-believers to hell, set up his kingdom on earth and put Jesus in charge (Matthew 19:28 & 24.51). Is this what Cameron means by hope?

Tolerance? Paul on tolerance: ‘do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men’ (1 Corinthians 6:9). It’s difficult to see how modern notions of equality and acceptance can derive from bigotry like this.

No, Britain does not get its values from Christianity or the Bible or baby Jesus. It has worked them out for itself, principally through social progress and the reforms of modern times.

The UK is not a Christian country in any other sense either. Christians are required to turn the other cheek (Matt. 5.38–42), give all they have to the poor (Luke 14.33) and buy into a convoluted salvation scam plan (2 Timothy 1.9 etc). Can a country do these things? It would be unthinkable for it to give away its wealth, accede to other countries’ demands and respond non-aggressively to attack. Individual Christians don’t or won’t do these things and it would be nothing short of suicidal for a country to attempt to; yet this is what Jesus insists is involved in following him. It’s impossible for individuals to live this way, let alone entire nations.

Cameron can’t even claim that the majority of the population subscribes to the great salvation plan either. A recent government poll showed that only 49% of the population admits to being Christian and in any case, the plan is designed for individuals, not countries. So let’s hope (hah!) the Prime Minister will stop fawning over Christians, fatuously pretending that the UK is a Christian country when it isn’t. Let’s hope too he understands that our values, whatever they are, do not derive from an ancient, expired superstition. The UK is not a Christian country in any sense. Let us rejoice in that fact.