Jesus Isn't a Nice Guy

Evangelicals have far more in common than a set of shared beliefs. They form an entire subculture, complete with its own books, music and celebrities. The best way to understand them is to make a trip to your local Christian bookstore.

There you’ll find an extensive variety of items, ranging from Bibles in dozens of different versions to things known as “Jesus junk.” These are mugs, bracelets, posters, etc. that have been made holy by pasting Scripture verses or hokey sayings across them. One of my all time favorites
was the tee shirt that sported a logo similar to that used by Gold’s Gym. The graphic artist cleverly removed the “l” from “Gold’s” so that it read “God’s Gym.” The slogan was later changed to “The Lord’s Gym” due to copyright infringement issues.

More striking than these words, however, was the illustration underneath them. It showed a very muscular Jesus struggling to lift a mammoth cross, with the words “the sins of the world” written across it. Below this it said “bench press this!” It’s sights like this that make me want to laugh and cry at the same time.

You’ll find other classy items at the Christian bookstore. Among them are knick knacks with sayings meant to inspire the owner. A very popular choice is the plaque with this verse from Jeremiah: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” – Jeremiah 29:11.

Let me share a little bit about the book of Jeremiah. It’s the gloomiest piece of literature you’ll ever read. It’s filled with woeful statements directed against Israel for abandoning God. It’s so depressing that it’s coined a term. The word “jeremiad” refers to a person who dwells on the negative and
spreads bad news further than Johnny Appleseed scattered – well, apple seeds.

The above mentioned verse is the singular bright spot in the entire text. It’s basically the Lord’s assurance to His people that after He’s dragging them through the mud and slapping them around He’ll do something nice for them. Yahweh’s methods in the Old Testament was often akin to the way R. Lee Ermey might deal with a group of green recruits.

If you don’t know who that is then I suggest googling his name. He’s a prolific actor as well as a colorful character, a heck of a guy. In particular I urge you to watch the film “Full Metal Jacket” in which he portrays a Marine drill instructor during the Vietnam War.

Anyway, my point is that the Jeremiah verse shouldn’t be understood to mean God has a wonderful plan for your life. Interpreting it that way is ridiculous. That doesn’t prevent millions of people from doing so, however. For many Christians, understanding the Bible’s real message is less important than getting a buzz from it.

Books are big sellers at the Christian bookstore. In fact I’ll say this for Evangelicals: on average they read far more than the typical American. While many of the volumes found on the shelves are well worth having there are others that are pure crap. Falling into this category is a wildly popular one entitled "Jesus Calling: Enjoying Peace in His Presence."

The woman who wrote it is an interesting character. She has a Master’s degree in Philosophy and other impressive credentials. She’s also a fan of recovered memory “therapy,” a pseudo-psychological school of thought popular in the 1980s. Back then it was commonly believed that thousands of Americans had been abused by Devil worshipers during childhood, and the resulting trauma caused them to repress any memories of it.

A legion of therapists arose who said they had the ability to help them recall what happened, by using guided imagery and hypnosis. In reality they were using the suggestibility of their patients to plant recollections of thing that never occurred.

The results of this nonsense were tragic. Innocent people across the nation were accused of horrific crimes, often by their own kids. Some of them were sentenced to prison, though their convictions were eventually overturned. A series of lawsuits and investigative reports ultimately discredited the quacks that were peddling this garbage, but not before many families and lives were ruined forever.
None of this has deterred the author of Jesus Calling from continuing to believe in it, however.

In the introduction she claims that one day she put pen in hand, cleared her mind and Christ took over from there, using her body as a conduit to write personal messages to her. From reading them I’ve found that the Jesus is quite a sentimentalist. Over and over he tells her how much he loves her, how he wants good things for her and wishes she would just fall into his arms and trust him completely.
Strangely absent from these love letters are the sort of things he’s noted for saying in the Gospels. He never tells her “you faithless and perverse generation, how long do I have to put up with you?” Personally I would have been happy if once, just once, he told her something like this: “put down that stupid pen and go out and do something useful. My words in the Gospels were good enough for every other follower of mine. They’ll have to be good enough for you too.” He disappointed me by not tossing that into the mix.

Of course my sarcasm is evident. Jesus didn’t inspire the syrupy platitudes that infest this tome. The author invented them herself, and, in a case of reverse plagiarism, she gave God the credit. I believe she kept the royalty checks, however.
What strikes me is how easily most of the book’s fans, and there are millions of them, have accepted it as a genuine message from Christ. This would put it on a par with the Bible. That fact should throw up a red flag in the mind of every Evangelical who reads it.

Apparently this occurred to the author. In the introduction she says that these writings “were not inspired as Scripture is.” This begs the question “what does that mean?” If both books contain God’s words then they are equally inspired. Churches worldwide should read from Jesus Calling every Sunday. The Gideons should put copies in hotel rooms. The Pope should proclaim to the world that new Scriptures have been written.

What’s behind the mass enthusiasm for his book? A number of things are. First and foremost is the fact that the world is filled with sad, lonely, hurting people who are less comfortless by those around them. So starved are they for any hope that they read things like Jesus Calling out of desperation. It makes them feel better. Unfortunately it also leaves them vulnerable to being manipulated. Nonetheless I feel nothing but compassion for them.

I have a far less charitable attitude towards people who misuse Bible verses like the one in Jeremiah. One of the most despicable religious movements in the world today is known as the Prosperity Gospel. It can be summed up in one sentence: God wants you to be rich and healthy, and if you’re not it’s your own fault. Televangelists love to preach this nonsense, as it’s a perfect setup to bilk money out of people. They challenge their viewers to “step out in faith” by sending in a donation, so that the Lord can return their investment with interest.

Most “ministries” that peddle this nonsense don’t show their financial statements to the public. There’s an unfortunate loophole in IRS regulations that makes that optional for non-profit organizations, although all legitimate ones release theirs anyway. Because of this the preacher running the scam can spend virtually all of the incoming funds on his lavish lifestyle, and then throw whatever is left at a soup kitchen or orphanage. That way he can report that the money received is helping to feed the hungry and house the homeless.

I feel sorry for the people who fall for this BS. Many of them are partially to blame for it, however. Most scams rely on the victim’s greed to help hook them. After all, we enjoy our greed. Very few of us follow Paul’s advice in 1st Timothy 6:6-10:

But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.

Jesus never said that he’s concerned about our earthly success. He never intended for us to see him as a cheerleader or business coach to inspire us to get a better job or a bigger house. He came to turn the world upside down, to make a mockery of its value system and confront us with the nasty things about ourselves we refuse to face. He brought comfort to the comfortless; that is true. But to those who were already comfortable he brought great discomfort. Much of what he said was coarse, provocative and unlikely to build rapport between him and others. Consider the following:

How terrible it will be for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs that look beautiful on the outside but inside are full of dead people's bones and every kind of impurity.

If people come to me and are not ready to abandon their fathers, mothers, wives, children, brothers, and sisters, as well as their own lives, they cannot be my disciples.

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (How closed-minded!).

A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, ‘Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession.’ Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, ‘Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.’ He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.’ The woman came and knelt before him. ‘Lord, help me!’ she said. He replied, ‘It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.’ “ (Yes, he did go on to help the woman’s child, but not before first trying to provoke her by insulting her ethnic heritage).

Not exactly meek and mild, was he? Face it, you wouldn’t want Jesus at your next party. Corporate CEO's wouldn’t welcome him into their boardrooms. Politicians might want their picture taken with him, but they would ban him from their strategy meetings.

So far in this post I’ve picked on Evangelicals. It’s time to take a swipe at the other end of the spectrum. I’m currently reading a book entitled “The Historical Jesus: Five Views.” The first essay in it is written by a liberal professor named Dominick Crossan. In it he transforms Jesus into a first century political liberal, a non-violent activist concerned with social justice for the marginalized.

As another scholar points out in his response, Crossan’s view is based less on evidence than it is on the all too human tendency to form God in our own image. The more books I read by revisionist biblical scholars the more convinced I become that they’re not interested in finding the historical person behind the gospel stories. Their real agenda is to make Christ politically correct, the sort of guy who would fit in well at an anti-Wal-Mart protest or a PBS fundraiser. “You’re so right, Jesus. Obama is much too conservative. Would you like a glass of wine, or maybe some organic fruit?”

These efforts are as doomed to failure as the Religious Right’s crusade to make Christ into a ball cap-wearing, Pledge of Allegiance reciting, homophobic clone of themselves. He won’t play along with our efforts to make him safe, friendly or comfortable.

Let me say here that I don’t believe Jesus’ intention was to insult and degrade people for its own sake. He wasn’t a sadist. But he did speak plainly, even rudely to people when he felt it would force them to confront themselves and acknowledge their own character flaws and hypocrisy.

With this in mind, I’d like to suggest some things Jesus might actually say if we were to have a conversation with him:


“You didn’t need to get those shoes. You’ve already got fifty pairs. Why are you obsessed with looking like people on television? Underneath their designer clothes and silicone breasts they’re as lonely and insecure as you. Why not look at Mother Teresa as someone to emulate, or that cleaning woman who works evenings at your office? She has more character and class than anyone in Hollywood, which you’d find out if you took the time to speak with her for a change.”

“Smoking a cigarette, I see. I don’t know what bugs me more, your willingness to pour carbon monoxide into your lungs or your support for an evil corporation that peddles poison to teenagers. And don’t get me started on that garbage you eat.”


“Boy, you really sounded self-righteous at that rally this morning, condemning people who look at pornography. You achieved your goal; everyone thinks you’d make a great Senator. Just make sure they don’t find out about those websites you visit late at night. What? How did I know about that? I know everything!”


“You get a bonus at work and what do you do with it? You waste the money on that camper. You know as well as I do that you didn’t get it for family trips. You just wanted your neighbors to see it parked in front of your house. You are one sick, superficial piece of crap, you know that? How long will I have to wait before you grow up a little?”


“Yes, I heard that singer say he doesn’t believe in me. I also heard you say he was going to Hell for it. You’re an asshole. That poor guy was beaten half to death by his dad when he was eight years old. The only people who ever showed him any acceptance were the drug addicts at school. He’s clinically depressed and angry at the world. Maybe you should have taken the time to find out a little about him before pronouncing judgment. It’s always easier for you to point a finger than to look in the mirror, isn’t it, you Hell-bound hypocrite?”



“I’ve heard your prayers to me for your cancer to be healed. It’s not going to happen. We all have crosses to bear in this world and this is yours. Yes, I have reasons for letting this occur and I’ll gladly share them with you on the Other Side. In the meantime you’ll have to take life one day at a time and relish each moment, because time is running out for you.”


“You can ask me till your dying day why I let your child get killed in that car wreck, but you won’t get an answer this side of the grave. Cursing my name won’t change my mind about that. If you want to make her death mean something then I suggest donating money or doing volunteer work for Mothers Against Drunk Driving or some other worthy cause in her name. I’ll suffer with you in your grief. But I won’t take it away.”


Imagine the Son of God calling us to tell us these things. Would we pick up the phone?

Jesus isn’t a nice guy, in the sense of being agreeable and avoiding conflict. He’s not interested in winning friends and being the life of the party. He’s often coarse and unsettling. Yet for all of this he’s the most genuine person who ever lived. Following him doesn’t mean drifting along on a cloud of bliss from one spiritual high to the next. Being his disciple may bring more sadness and loss into your life than if you ignored him totally. That’s not a very comforting thought, but it’s the truth. He loves you too much to tell you anything else.

Atheists are Fundamentalists Too

Warning: this post is going to be a bit different in tone than my previous ones.

Anyone who has visited this blog should have figured out by now that I have problems with narrow-minded people. But not all such persons are equally to blame for their short-sightedness. Many, especially religious fundamentalists, are simply the products of factors outside their control. These include the brains they were born with, the homes they were raised in and their opportunities, or lack thereof, for education and intellectual enrichment.

An individual with limited mental faculties, who was reared in a home with few or no books in it and who was never encouraged to pursue academics has quite frankly been handed a raw deal. Such unfortunate persons are, on the whole, unlikely to ever be counted among the world's academic giants. This is no fault of theirs, and I hold no animosity whatsoever against them.

However, not everyone who is unlearned fits this stereotype. There are millions who were born with excellent cognitive abilities. They have supportive families and access to outstanding educational facilities. Yet despite these advantages they have chosen willful ignorance about subjects which they hold strong opinions of.

What's worse, some of them pretend to speak authoritatively on these topics. When called on their errors they ignore their critics and continue to spread nonsense. Worst of all they do this while declaring themselves to be champions of science and Reason.

The Economist magazine's website recently held a debate on the question "is religion a force for good or evil?" Representing the latter position was a rather uptight gentleman named Sam Harris. He is known in atheist circles as one of the "four horsemen," popular writers who attack religious faith. Other members of this fraternity include Richard Dawkins, author of "The God Delusion," Christopher Hitchens, who penned "God is not Great," and Daniel Dennett, most famous for his tome "Darwin's Dangerous Idea."

Personally I feel that comparing these fellows to the apocalyptic images in Revelation is a bit of a stretch. I refer to them as "The Four Stooges." (Yes, I know what you're saying: there were only three stooges. But that's only if you don't count Shemp).

Anyway, the following were some of Harris' salvos in what proved to be a rather heated exchange:


"The truth claims of the world's major religions are not merely strange, they are patently ludicrous. The paradise promised to devout Muslims in the Koran is a garden complete with rivers of milk and honey, and enough silk brocade, almonds and virgins to go around. This vision of sublimity is so time-bound and provincial as to leave no doubt as to its origin. It is analogous to a modern cult organised around the promise of an afterlife in which every soul gets to drive a new Lexus."

"There is no question that people can transform their lives for the better, and many of these experiences are generally considered "spiritual", in that they can seem to confirm some of the core doctrines of the world's religions. Of course, they do nothing of the sort—because, as has already been conceded, the world's religions are mutually incompatible. The fact that Christian and Hindu contemplatives can both experience devotion, ecstasy, compassion, rapture, self-transcendence and other remarkable mental states proves, beyond any doubt, that such phenomena do not depend on the truth of any religious doctrine."

"Given the antiquity of the world's religions, their mutual incompatibility and the frequent barbarism enshrined as wisdom in their canons, there is no chance whatsoever that any one of them is the best possible description of this range of human experience. Whatever is true about us in "spiritual" terms can be discovered in the present and understood in the context of a maturing science of the human mind."


"When we doubt that science (and reason generally) can apply to questions of morality, meaning and spiritual concern, we are essentially saying there are truths that resist honest observation and clear reasoning, but which yield their wonders to minds that have been sufficiently prepared by lies (re: religious teachings)."

The above quotes are typical of remarks made by the Four Stooges. Some observations about them:

1.) They display a dismal lack of knowledge about the subject they criticize. For example,
consider the egregious errors Harris commits in this portion:

"The world's religions are mutually incompatible. The fact that Christian and Hindu contemplatives can both experience devotion, ecstasy, compassion, rapture, self-transcendence and other remarkable mental states proves, beyond any doubt, that such phenomena do not depend on the truth of any religious doctrine."

This statement conveniently ignores the many areas of agreement between the major world faiths. Hinduism and Christianity differ in many respects to be sure. Yet there are also numerous points on which they concur. Each affirms that the physical world is transcended and supported by a greater Reality which is eternal and spiritual in nature. Both religions tell us that the Universe is governed by benevolent deities.

Yes, Hindus do believe in a pantheon of gods. However, the majority of them acknowledge one God who is supreme above all, usually referred to as Vishnu, who, like the Christian Trinity, manifests Himself as three different persons.

They also have roughly equivalent moral codes. They acknowledge wrongdoing causes suffering and they teach that through faith, self-denial and practical compassion, humans may be united in sweetest fellowship with God, the source of all good.

These commonalities are shared by Muslims, Jews, Zoroastrians and practitioners of lesser known faiths. Even Buddhism, which does not address the idea of God directly, proclaims the reality of the spiritual world. It also urges its adherents to practice charity, self-control and detachment from materialism and sensual desires.

An honest look at the major world faiths shows that Harris' charges of incompatibility are vastly overblown. To the contrary, they display remarkable agreement in many areas. This has lead many reasonable persons, including myself, to believe that they are akin to thirsty pilgrims, each of whom has found sustenance by drinking from the same well of divine truth.

Because of this, Christian and Hindu mystics are united with the same transcendent Reality in their metaphysical quests. They both experience the ineffable joy of touching the One who is ultimately beyond the power of language to describe. This affirms rather than denies the truth of their respective faith traditions. Harris' dismissal of these things is not only wrong-headed, it's pathetic.

2.) They reveal themselves as not only ignorant but also obscenely arrogant, judging the past by 21st century standards and making no attempt to understand or appreciate the rich subtleties and symbolism in sacred literature.

For example, Harris writes:

"The truth claims of the world's major religions are not merely strange, they are patently ludicrous. The paradise promised to devout Muslims in the Koran is a garden complete with rivers of milk and honey, and enough silk brocade, almonds and virgins to go around. This vision of sublimity is so time-bound and provincial as to leave no doubt as to its origin."

To rebut this claim one need only realize that to the ancients symbols such as rivers flowing with milk and honey were never meant to be taken literally. They are poetic devices intended to convey truths too profound for words to fully express.

To those interested in learning more about this subject I heartily recommend Karen Armstrong's outstanding book "The Case for God." In it she demolishes Harris' objections.

3.) While they speak incessantly of science and rationality, in the end they abuse both Reason and the scientific method for their own agendas.

Consider these words from Harris:

"When we doubt that science (and reason generally) can apply to questions of morality, meaning and spiritual concern, we are essentially saying there are truths that resist honest observation and clear reasoning, but which yield their wonders to minds that have been sufficiently prepared by lies (re: religious teachings)."

Implicit in this statement is the notion that honest observation and clear reasoning are beyond the capabilities of people with spiritual convictions. But history reveals just the opposite. Plato, Socrates, Augustine, Aquinas, Confucius, Jesus, Mohammad, the Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King - all of them, and countless others, were keen observers of the world and excellent thinkers. Each of them also believed in God or some other form of spiritual reality. To say that their minds were "prepared by lies" is not only puerile, it's silly and stupid.

Regarding science, it's benefits to humanity are obvious. It has done a marvelous job of explaining how the physical world works, by carefully observing physical processes, developing theories to explain their workings and then testing those claims through experimentation.

Yet like all disciplines it has its limits. For example, how one one test the truth of this statement: "it is morally wrong to murder elderly women for their pension checks?"

To begin with one would first have to observe a valid moral standard then compare the act against it. But where in Nature do we find moral standards, valid or otherwise? The very concept of morality is a result of intuitive notions that cannot be verified by observing the natural world. The same is true of our ideas of beauty, our appreciation of music and the insights we gain from reading great literature, or from simply watching a sunset. These things are beyond science's ability to address.

Nor can the scientific disciplines shed any light on questions such as whether people have rights, if there is an ultimate purpose for existence or if there is anything beyond the world of our senses. Like it or not, these issues are the province of artists, philosophers and theologians, and the answers they provide are at best well thought out leaps of faith. On these matters science is mute.

After spending much time reading their words and listening to their vitriolic diatribes, I've concluded that it isn't love of truth that drives the Four Stooges and their fans. It's something much more crass: a hatred of those with different opinions mixed with the urge to feel superior to those same people. To nurture these desires they have embarked on a campaign supported by a mountain of rhetoric, half-truths and outright lies.

They are as ignorant and intolerant as the most narrow-minded religious bigot. In their case, though, it's a willful ignorance, which they hold to in spite of their intellectual gifts and access to knowledge. Thus in the final analysis they are the worst fundamentalists of all.

The Anti-Christ is Among us Again

The 1990s was a time of intense speculation. The year 2000 was looming in the minds of virtually everyone. Cottage industries devoted to foretelling what the dawn of the new millennium would bring popped up everywhere. Anyone who remembers the Y2K hysteria knows just how much anxiety people were feeling about the events that lay just beyond December 31st, 1999, 11:59 pm.

This effect was not unfelt by those who insist on treating the Bible like a fortune teller’s crystal ball. Theologians amateur and pro were trying to line up the words of Daniel and Revelation with the headlines in the daily news. I had an extended dialogue for a while with a very sincere fellow in an AOL discussion group. He was convinced that he had identified the Anti-Christ as none other than then-Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. He had studied the career of the vicious dictator in depth and found in his biography unmistakable parallels with prophetic verses. He was convinced that by the year 2000 Hussein would reveal himself as the long awaited false messiah who would usher in the final seven year tribulation culminating in Jesus’ return to the planet Earth.

I recall trying to persuade this obviously nice and rather intelligent person that he was
most likely in error. When confronted with my posts, though, he had a pat answer: “just wait. You’ll see I was right soon enough.”

It’s now the year 2010, and, alas, Saddam Hussein failed to live up to expectations. The deposed despot was found cowering in a farmhouse on December 14th 2003 and executed in 2006, paying the ultimate penalty for his lengthy list of crimes against humanity. I thought about my old friend on that day and wondered how he was dealing with being shown the error in his thinking. I’ve long since lost contact with him, but I wish him well.

Not to worry, of course. Those who insist on reading the biblical text in a hyper-literal fashion have fresh new candidates for the position of Anti-Christ. The expansion of the Internet since the 1990s allows them to publicize their theories to a worldwide audience. As of the time of this writing the current favorite appears to be President Barack Obama. Trying to pin the label of Christ’s ultimate enemy on our first African-American chief executive is practically an obsession with many.

Googling (is that a word?) the words “Obama Anti-Christ” returns well over one million results. One that caught my eye is www.antichristidentity.com. The site’s owner claims to have examined over 4,000 pieces of documentation regarding Obama’s link to a conspiracy to establish a one-world government. In addition he and his “research staff” have listened to 5,000 hours of Obama’s speeches, combing through them for cryptic phrases and code
words that demonstrate the president’s connection to unnamed anti-Christian organizations.



The best part: he will gladly send you his full report for the low, low price of $19.97. Better hurry, though. As the site owner warns, his page may disappear from the Internet at any time if “they” have their way.

Dissent is the sign of a healthy democracy, and disagreement with a president’s polices is not only acceptable but vital to public discourse. The insanely irrational hatred many people feel for the current occupant of the White House goes far beyond this, however.
Many of those suffering from Obama Derangement Syndrome have openly declared that our 44th president is the Anti-Christ. Others, while not directly assigning him that label, say that there is a 90% or better probability that he fits the bill. Still others deny that he is the one the Bible calls “the man of sin” but believe that he is paving the way for the end of the world. I recommend Googling the words "Obama verichip" for a wild and amusing trip down conspiracy lane.

A hall of fame could be devoted to the persons in the 20th century alone that were accused of being the Anti-Christ. John F. Kennedy was suspected because he was wounded in the head, as Revelation says the Beast will be. Hitler was pegged as well, though not without ample justification in my view. Henry Kissinger was a suspect. Even Ronald Wilson Reagan didn’t escape suspicion. After all, he had three names, first, middle and last, each with six letters. As if more proof was necessary! But my favorite of all comes from the 1988 book “Gorbachev: Has the Real Anti-Christ Come?” If you’re interested in studying the writer’s case you can pick up a copy of his earth-shaking tome at Amazon.com for a penny.

Whence comes all of this nonsense? Personal prejudices and our all too human tendency to demonize those with whom we disagree surely play a role. But in my opinion blame must also be assigned to a way of interpreting the Bible which fails to respect its status as an ancient yet timeless masterpiece that conveys moral and spiritual truths to its readers. Modern fundamentalists, along with many evangelicals, have torn the scriptures out of their historical and literary context, in the process trying to turn them into a Christianized version of the daily horoscope or a psychic hotline.

Jesus’ first lengthy discourse in the New Testament is the Sermon on the Mount, recorded in Matthew chapters five and seven as well as in the other Synoptic Gospels. In it he declares the value system that his movement would be based upon. When viewed in their historical context
his statements are nothing short of radical:

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.’
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

The world in which Christ lived was ruled by the Roman Empire, which held itself together for 600 years through the swift and unmerciful use of force. The Romans never asked anyone's permission before conquering them. They simply marched in and claimed whatever territory caught their eye, slaughtering or enslaving any who opposed them.

Their response to dissent was as effective as it was simple: mass murder. They imported both humans and animals by the thousands into Rome itself, to be slaughtered in the Coliseum while thousands watched and cheered. There was nothing about the Romans that was merciful, peaceful or meek.

Jesus fought Rome in a way that was as brilliant as it was subtle. He didn’t attack its armies, its leaders or its wealth. He went after its values. This approach was identified correctly, albeit scornfully, by Nietzsche in his “Genealogy of Morals.”

After his Resurrection and Ascension Jesus’ followers continued his mission. In short order they caught the attention of their Roman oppressors, who disapproved of the troublesome new sect and its message of peace. The book of Acts chronicles key events in this struggle. Paul as well as other New Testament writers used the powers of faith and of the pen to undermine the glorification of cruelty and martial strength that the culture of their conquerors was based upon.

What does any of this have to do with our topic? Simply this: the prophetic writings of the New Testament were written within the context of this struggle initiated by Jesus against the dominant values system of the world. They should be understood within that context.

The literal Roman Empire fell fifteen hundred years ago. It will not return. But the worldview that underlay it is alive and well. It reappeared in the religious wars of medieval times, in the struggle for wealth and power between the Vatican and Europe’s secular rulers, and in the battle cries of despots like Napoleon and Hitler. It rears its ugly head today on every continent and in every nation and every community. Wherever one person or group seeks to exploit and control others, wherever those in authority abuse their powers for self-enrichment, wherever an adult torments a helpless child, wherever workers are denied a fair day’s pay, wherever corporate and political bosses conspire to cheat the public, wherever an animal is mistreated - there the spirit of the Empire rises once more.

So my old friend was right. Saddam Hussein was the Anti-Christ, in that he embraced the values and practices opposed by Jesus. In that sense so was Hitler,
and Idi Amin, and every major and minor tyrant in history. And where such evil tries to assert itself, God’s Spirit is present as well, moving within the human heart to resist and overcome the spirit of ancient pagan Rome, to lay its ghost to its long overdue rest.

This is the crucial message of all the New Testament: that God, through Jesus, has overcome the evils of the world, not through force, but by the sacrifice on the cross. The message of a man nailed to a tree has the power to overcome a billion swords. This struggle will continue until the time of the End, which, as Jesus himself said, is known to no one but God (Mark 13:32).

So then, who is the Anti-Christ? Simply put, whoever embraces the values of a world where power is the ultimate determinant and people are treated as the means to an end. This truth is at once liberating and troubling. For we may find that, rather than living in presidents or politicians, he dwells instead in the person in the mirror. God grant us the wisdom and courage to see ourselves as we truly are.

Evil: a Primer

I went to see "Paranormal Activity" this weekend. I love a good scary movie and this one didn't disappoint. It's a far cry from the usual, wretched gorefests that Hollywood produces en masse.
The scares were subtle, the monster virtually unseen, and the story not all that implausible in my opinion. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys being creeped out every now and then. Don't take the kids!

With Halloween just around the corner, my thoughts have turned to the dark side of spirituality:
namely evil, including its biblical personifications as Satan or the Devil. This is one topic that liberal theologians are guilty of glossing over, in my opinion. In fact, one of my misgivings with those further to the left than I am is that they don't seem to take evil seriously.

When people do bad things it's not uncommon for progressives to blame poverty or lack of education or mental illness. I suspect that's because it's difficult for a basically good person to think that anyone could willingly and gleefully indulge their propensities for malicious selfishness. That is what I believe underlies most of the truly horrific things we hear about on the news and read of in history books. Mix these two thoughts together: "all that matters is what I want" and "it might be fun to hurt someone else." The result is monsters worse than anything dreamed of by Edgar Allen Poe or Stephen King, because they're real. Think Charles Manson, Josef Stalin, or the man whose name comes up in any discussion of evil, Der Fuhrer.

The other side of the Christian spectrum has its own misconceptions about evil. They look for it behind bushes, peek in the shadows, and dream up wacky conspiracy theories. They read badly written novels about secret Illuminati - New Age cabals trying to outlaw the Bible and teach past life regression techniques to kids. They not only recognize evil's existence, they give it an arcane mystique and blame demons for such earthly woes as mental disease and financial misfortune.

Worst of all, they look for the Devil in all the wrong places. I recall with cynicism one particular All Hallows' Eve, when I was in Bible college, and a group of my fellow students drove to the top of a hillside after dark. There they prayed to "bind the wicked forces that were rampant that night," i.e. Satan and his henchmen, who were surely lurking in plastic masks, bags full of candy and drive-in slasher movie marathons.

It was all very melodramatic, and surely gave those who participated in it the feeling that they were accomplishing something. But when they came down from the hillside and retired to their safe, comfortable dormitory rooms, there was just as much real evil surrounding them as before their little excursion. The problem was they couldn't see it, despite, or because, it was right in front of them.

A few weeks ago I took a drive in the Tennessee mountains, which are especially beautiful this time of year. But marring the lovely colors of Fall and the rustic cabins and farms was the ugly sight of tobacco drying in barns owned by major agricultural producers as well as part-time farmers. This picturesque land, in which the best apples on earth are grown, is used to produce a toxic weed that gets shipped to the giant cigarette factories in eastern North Carolina. There it's turned into a deadly, addictive product that's sold in almost every retail outlet across the USA as well as the rest of the globe.

Go a little further east in the great state of NC and you'll encounter corporate owned pig farms, where swine are crowded together for the entirety of their short lives, pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, and then slaughtered to feed our ravenous appetite for things that kill us. These unfortunate creatures do leave their mark on the land, though. They produce countless tons of
feces and urine, which agribusiness tries to control by pouring into massive artificial lagoons. But toxins from these giant lakes of crap leech into the water table, poisoning the impoverished residents of the area, who rely on wells for their water supply. To make things worse the overfilled ponds occasionally burst, releasing rivers of raw sewage that flow through yards and fields where children play. Sometimes they even make it to the ocean, where it turns the waters foul and kills thousands of fish.

Saturated fat and tobacco kill millions of Americans every year, and their production isn't only allowed but encouraged by the government. Last year I watched my father-in-law, who smoked most of his life, die a slow, agonizing death as lung cancer ate his body from the inside. People I care about have seemed healthy one day only to collapse the next, dead from arteries clogged by sausage biscuits and bacon eaten in indiscriminate amounts for decades.

Journey back to the mountains I was speaking of earlier. Go just a little south of the part of Tennessee I was in. You'll find yourself in Cherokee, NC, home of a monster casino that was supposed to lift the American Indians who live in the area from poverty yet for some reason never did. I visited it recently, not to gamble but just out of curiosity. I was only able to stay for a few minutes though, because the air was filled with second hand smoke; NC doesn't yet ban smoking in public buildings. In fact the endless rows of electronic slot machines were equipped with ash trays, so that the patrons could destroy their bodies even as they handed their rent and grocery money to a megabucks corporation that offered them nothing in return but false hopes.

The saddest thing about the visit was seeing the throngs of people that were there. Not only was the vast parking lot almost completely full but more vehicles poured in through the entryway by the second. Judging from their dress and language I could discern that most of them weren't the stereotypical well-heeled seniors spending their kid's inheritance. They were people who hold jobs that could provide them and their families with a reasonable standard of living, but for the fact that they were willingly throwing their modest wages away. Maybe their children will learn to eat the Chinese-made ribbons that every patron was given on their way out, so that they would feel like a "winner" no matter how empty their pockets were.

The point of this depressing tour isn't to bash Dixie, the land that I love and that has nurtured me all my life. What I'm trying point out is this: there's no need to look for the Devil in haunted houses, spooky movies or Harry Potter books. Wherever you are, just look around.
You'll see things just as wicked, just as abominable and despicable as the spectacles I've described here. They won't be hiding behind the bushes, they'll be right in your face.

As much as I admire Augustine, he was wrong about evil. It's not merely the absence of good. It's a powerful, active force that corrupts whatever it touches and struggles constantly against God's efforts to redeem His creation. We can no longer afford to pretend it doesn't exist. Nor can we waste time looking for it in the wrong places. If the mission Jesus gave us is to be fulfilled, evil must be recognized, it must be pointed out, and it must be fought. May we be given both the wisdom and courage to do just that. Peace.

Why I Don't Believe in (that) God

I thought that title would grab your attention!

Ever since Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" came out in 2006, I've had numerous dialogues with atheists on the subject of the Almighty's existence. I have noticed a consistent theme in their thinking. They are prone to a fallacy known as "all or none thinking."

This is how it works. They raise legitimate questions about the coherence of the traditional Christian understanding of God's nature. They may wonder how it is possible for anyone to have free will if the Lord knows everything we will ever do. They might also question what sort of God would punish His Son for the sins of others, and through that miscarriage of justice find a basis for forgiving humans of their shortcomings. When the fail to find satisfactory answers to these concerns then they triumphantly proclaim "aha! There is no God!" And off they go on their merry way.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it contains a faulty assumption: that there is only one possible conception of God.

In earlier posts I've discussed how the God of our Lord Jesus Christ has been badly maligned by well meaning theologians in the pre-modern era. It's easy to see how clear thinking, mentally healthy persons would have trouble believing in the God of John Calvin, for instance. Likewise, the deity proclaimed from many (though by no means all) evangelical and fundamentalist pulpits is far from the sort of Heavenly Father I would care to worship.

Any Being that would cast people into everlasting torment for not believing in a gospel they never heard should be relegated to the ash heap of history. The same is likewise true of a God who worries about people of homosexual orientation forming loving, lasting relationships, while ignoring far weightier matters of economic and social justice. These ideas about the nature of the Ultimate say more about the psychological maladies of their inventors than they do about spiritual truth.

If we dispense with these distorted caricatures, however, who or what do we put in their place? This very topic has been the subject of my thoughts, prayers, studies and reflections for the last several years.

I don't pretend to have found Buddha-like enlightenment in any of these matters. But I have reached some conclusions about what I think the true God of the Universe is like, and I want to share them in point by point fashion:

1.) God is in some way intimately related to the Universe, far more so than Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians have long believed. The image of a Cosmic Sovereign sitting high above and well beyond His creation is fraught with philosophical shortcomings. In its place we must develop a conception of a loving Parent, Guide and Friend who is our fellow traveler through time and space.

This God "feels our pain," to borrow a somewhat trite phrase. He rejoices with us in our moments of ecstasy and suffers with us in our times of pain and grief. He either cannot fully control our actions or, as I suspect, could do so but chooses not to.

He sees the evil and suffering which blight this world, and graciously invites us to partner with Him in redeeming it from the curses of sin and mortality. The death of His Son on the cross is an integral part of this plan, in ways that we humans cannot fully fathom. However, we can look upon the death and resurrection of Jesus (yes, I do believe that Christ rose from the dead) as demonstration of both Gods' love for us and the eventual triumph we will share with Him when evil and death have at last been purged from creation.

The question of why this evil exists at all leads into my second point:

2. ) God is not yet in full control of our world. I don't know why, but His ultimate desires for His children have not yet been realized. He struggles both with the forces of chaos and of moral evil on a moment by moment basis. As He possesses unlimited power and all possible knowledge, His final triumph is assured. However, like a boxer trading blows with an able but inferior opponent, he suffers setbacks and temporary defeats in His ages-long struggle.

These forces of chaos and of moral wrongdoing are personified in the entity known in the Bible as Satan, or the Devil. I believe that this archfiend is more than a simple personification, however. He or it is a conscious presence that pervades the Universe and actively resists God's redemptive efforts.

3.) God does not know exactly how the future will unfold, but nevertheless some things about it are certain. For one, it will bring the ultimate victory of the three Divine Persons known as Father, Son and Holy Spirit over the Evil One and his allies. This is the underlying and overarching message of the apocalyptic books of the Bible, including Revelation. The exact day and time of this event is not yet determined, and is partially affected by our actions, or conversely our inaction, as God's agents and co-workers in the redemptive process.

This victory will result in a physical transformation of the creation that will alter the laws of nature, resulting in a remaking of the world into a place of overwhelming peace and benevolence.

It will also entail the redemption of the vast majority of the people who have ever lived. If any are lost it will be a vanishingly small number who, while in full knowledge of their actions and in complete control of their wills, reject the offer of the Divine Persons to participate in this new epoch of unending harmony.

These poor souls are the ones whom Jude 1:13 describes as "raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever."
Their ultimate fate will not be endless torture, but rather a merciful snuffing out of their conscious existence in the Universe.

4.)As a Christian, I believe that God works primarily, but by no means exclusively, through the church to accomplish His redemptive goals. The compassionate Jew or Muslim, the kind Buddhist or Hindu, and all people of goodwill, even those of no particular faith - all of these are God's children and His partners in the redemptive program. They will share in the final victory and the blessedness of the world to come.

5.) This will perhaps be most shocking of all to my more conservative readers, but I say with full conviction that the God I have described in this post is also the Deity described in the Old and New Testaments, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the beloved Son and the eternal Spirit. I see no conflict in holding to both a high view of the Judeo-Christian scriptures and the views I have described in the preceding words.

To those interested in pursuing this last line of thought for themselves I recommend the following works by theologians, philosophers of religion and biblical scholars of widely varying church affiliations and educational backgrounds. For the reader's convenience I am listing these in hyperlink form. Clicking on them will lead to their listings at Amazon.com.


Searching for an Adequate God: A Dialogue between Process and Free Will Theists

Jesus, the Bible and Homosexuality

God of the Possible: an Introduction to the Open View of God

In God's Time: the Bible and the Future

God's Politics

The Openness of God: a Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God

A Wideness in God's Mercy

What does the Bible Really Say about Hell? Wrestling with the Traditional View

The Inescapable Love of God

I trust these resources will be of benefit to those who, like me, seek for the truth. As always, your own thoughts, expressed in a civil and thoughtful tone, are welcome here.

Family History

The following has nothing whatsoever to do with theology, philosophy or the price of eggs for that matter. But it has met with a strongly positive reception among my readers so I thought I'd post it here. Just a little background information about Yours Truly.

My mother grew up during the Great Depression. When she was in her teens he held a job as a janitor which paid 50 cents a week. Her mother would take half of it and buy basics like flour and cornmeal in big cloth sacks. When the sacks were empty she would sew them into dresses for my mother and her siblings.

The other 25 cents was my mother's to keep. On Saturdays she and my aunt (her younger sister) would walk into town. The quarter would buy them movie tickets and snacks to munch on during the shows. They would get news reels, a couple of cartoons, a short feature such as a Three Stooges bit, a chapter in a serial adventure like Flash Gordon and then the main feature. Afterwards they took what was left of the 25 cents and bought ice cream at the drug store.

They raised pigs, from which most of their meat came. They grew vegetables and canned them, so they always had food. Winters were cold and summers were hot, but they survived.

My father's family grew up in the mountains of northern Georgia. They survived by hunting, fishing and I believe a little moonshining. They knew better than to stray too far from the cabin because bobcats and mountain lions prowled the woods. Among their sources of cash were turnip and collard greens, which grew in abundance in the mountain climate. When the crop came in they loaded up the wagon with greens, hitched up the mule and rode into town square, where they sold their produce.

My father was a heathen and a Hell raiser all his 83 years (actually he cut back on the heavy drinking after he turned 75). When I became a teenager I couldn't rebel against him by getting involved with sex and alcohol, as he had long ago mastered those vices and I would never have been able to keep up with him. So I took the only route I could to defy him: I kept my nose clean and joined a church. That really set him off, but he finally came to peace with it when he got into his 70s and calmed down a little.

One of my most vivid memories is when he asked me to buy him a large print Bible; he was about 81 at the time and decided it was finally time to read the Good Book. I sent him a copy along with his usual Christmas gifts of cigars and peach brandy.

He finally passed away at age 83 of a kidney infection that he ignored for months until it shut his body down. When we went to clean up his home I found the Bible, with several well-turned pages in it. It sat next to a stack of pamphlets about Viagra. Apparently his spiritual life wasn't the only thing he sought to resurrect in his sunset years.

The Gospel According to Calvin

In the last post we looked at some of the antiquated, neurotic and downright silly ideas that people have had about the nature of God. In this offering I want to expand on that theme a bit. Here we go:


“God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation”
-John Calvin

I try to be tolerant. I long to be open-minded. I sincerely want to evaluate all opinions without bias or emotion.

But there is a belief system that sickens me to my core and derails my powers of objectivity almost completely. It is the classic form of Calvinism created by a sick man and held to by his equally sick followers over the last five centuries. To me it contains all that is wrong with the view of God that has dominated Christian theology for over fifteen hundred years.

Christian thinkers, even brilliant and devout ones, are influenced by the political realities of their day. The ancients were no exception to this rule. They saw that the power to do as one willed was the defining characteristic of earthly kings, and integrated this fact into their religious beliefs.

Augustine (354-430) was one of the greatest minds in the history of the church. His works are marked by their depth of thought and the love for Christ expressed in their words. They offer powerful insights into fields as disparate as physics, ethics, aesthetics and rhetoric. Their contributions to theology and philosophy are inestimable.

Like all of us, however, this illuminating thinker was a product of the times in which he lived. As a citizen of the late Roman empire, he modeled his ideas about God on the example set by the Caesars, who ruled with an iron fist. He saw God as a cosmic monarch who used His omnipotence to accomplish His will, including His desires for our salvation. Augustine declared that in His sovereignty God chooses some humans to be His children and rejects all others, consigning them to Hell.

Aquinas (1225-1274), building on this theme of divine fiat, taught that eternal punishment of sinners was perfectly just. After all, in the feudal society in which he lived it was a grave matter to offend the honor of a nobleman, and what greater example of royalty was there than God Himself? The Almighty possesses infinite honor, so an offense against Him merits eternal punishment.

These ideas influenced later writers and scholastics. Martin Luther (1483-1546) wrote volumes about the love and mercy of God, yet he also believed that the Lord arbitrarily chose some to go to Hell while only a lucky few would enjoy His mercy. It’s likely that these ideas were largely to blame for the malicious and vengeful tone of his later writings.

The notion of God as all-controlling hyper-sovereign found its fullest expression in the writings of John Calvin. He lived from 1509 to 1564 and much of that time dominating the lives of the citizens of Geneva.

Contemporary thinkers believe Calvin was deeply neurotic and likely suffered from major mental illnesses. Without a doubt he was rigid, dour and intolerant in the extreme. It’s not surprising that such a man would mold the God of love into his own hateful image. His theological ideas were marked by a belief in a cruel, arbitrary and despotic deity and an extremely low view of his fellow human beings.

The key to Calvin’s theology is an obsessive focus on the sovereignty of God.
Like Anselm and Augustine before him, he saw his Maker through the eyes of the monarchial society he lived in, imagining the Creator as the Ultimate King, with total and unshakeable control over the earth.

In Calvinist thinking the Almighty has predestined each of us to behave exactly as He wills. Thus God, through His pawn Satan, caused Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. He did this to glorify Himself, both by damning most of His children to Hell and by forcing a few of them to accept His Son’s blood sacrifice on the cross as payment for the evil deeds they were coerced into performing.

So, according to this great theologian, our Heavenly Father drives us to commit sins through no choice of our own, for which He then condemns us. But to show His merciful side He murdered His beloved son Jesus. This was done to appease His wrath against a few people that He arbitrarily chooses to spare from Hell

This sadistic and twisted plan was, in Calvin‘s mind, a beautiful example of divine mercy. He taught that the people in Heaven should praise God for His benevolence while those in Hell should praise Him for His justice. This guy really needed some Prozac and a good psychiatrist!

Needless to mention, there have been a number of free-thinking people who have objected to this nonsense over the centuries. John Wesley (1703-1791) issued a devastating critique of it in his classic sermon “On Free Grace." Consider his words, which follow:

However much I love the persons who teach it, I hate the doctrine of predestination. It is a doctrine which, if it were true or even possible, one could rightly say to our enemy the devil, "You fool, why do keep strutting around with your arrogance and malice? Your efforts to damn souls are as useless and meaningless as our attempts to save them. Have you not heard that God has taken your work out of your hands; and that he does it much more effectively than you ever could?”

“You, with all your kingdoms and powers, can only assault those humans who resist you; but God can irresistibly destroy both body and soul in hell! You can only entice; but His unchangeable command to leave thousands of souls in death forces them to keep sinning till they fall into everlasting torture. You can only tempt; He forces us to be damned; for we cannot resist his will. You fool, why do you prowl about, seeking whom you may devour? Have you not heard that God is the devouring lion, the destroyer of souls, the murderer of men?”

There are scores of lengthy volumes in print, written by scholars of prodigious intellect, that expose the biblical, philosophical and theological shortcomings of Calvinist thought. But none of them do a better job of pointing out its inherent absurdities than the two brief paragraphs above. In my mind Wesley’s remarks are brilliant. Their brevity and profundity are matched by only a handful of works throughout history.

As mentioned before, the concept of God as an oppressive dictator has its roots in ancient ideas about the proper role of government. It has been enormously influential throughout the history of the church. It is also directly contrary to the teachings of Jesus, who tells us that the role of the strong is to serve the weak (Matthew 20:20-28):

20Then the mother of Zebedee's sons came to Jesus with her sons and, kneeling down, asked a favor of him.

21"What is it you want?" he asked.
She said, "Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom."

22"You don't know what you are asking," Jesus said to them. "Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?"
"We can," they answered.

23Jesus said to them, "You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father."

24When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers. 25Jesus called them together and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 26Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— 28just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

With the coming of the Enlightenment the old notions about God’s nature centering on His power began to lose their grip on the church. In their place far more Christ-like conceptions emerged, centering around His love. We will explore these next time.

As a concluding thought, I should mention that in this post I have given only a very general treatment of the beliefs and history I have discussed. For those wanting to explore these issues in more depth I recommend the book "Perspectives on the Doctrine of God: Four Views," edited by Bruce Ware and available from online merchants such as Amazon. It contains articles by scholars who support Calvin’s views as well as others who are critical of them.

I’ve long believed in the importance in hearing all sides of an argument before deciding one’s own position. Of course this applies to my beliefs as well. For all you know I could be full of BS, so I urge you to put my writings to the test before you agree with them. Peace.