In 1990, as a senior in high school, I had an atheist friend ask me: “What, precisely, is it that Christians believe?” I will call her “Amy”, because that was her name. Amy had been raised as an atheist by two atheist parents and had never really known much about Christianity. I had been raised Protestant by two Christian parents, I had gone to Church and Sunday School every Sunday my whole life, I had gone to Christian youth group (Young Life, mostly) for years, and countless Christian summer camps. I felt like I had a pretty good understanding of late 20th-century Christian theology.
By that time, I was basically an apostate myself, so Amy’s question left me with an interesting exercise: how to simply and truthfully explain the essential Christian theology without proselytizing? I had spent a lot of time at that point literally soul-searching and questioning the truth of the Christian message, but until I explained it to an atheist friend without trying to convert her, I’d never reflected on the complete absurdity of it. This is roughly how that sounded:
First, you can’t really understand Christianity without understanding Judaism, or at least, what Christians think ancient Judaism was. Basically, Christians believe that because all humans are fundamentally flawed from birth (sinners), God has judged that the eternal essence of all humans (the soul) deserves to be tortured forever after the body dies. That said, God had a deal with a specific tribe of Bronze-age humans called the Israelites: if they gave him stuff, he would overlook the times they did something wrong, and then they wouldn’t have to burn in Hell forever. These offerings were called sacrifices. What kind of stuff? Mostly livestock, like a goat or something, although occasionally bread or wine were acceptable. The worse the sin, the more valuable the offering should be. And this works because, I dunno… God needs goats..?
This is the basic premise of ancient Judaism, as understood by Christians: if a you do something bad that God doesn’t like (i.e. a sin), then you have to make it up to him by giving him a burnt goat (actually, a male sheep; but substitutions permitted), and then he’ll forgive you, and it’ll all be okay. Otherwise, when you die, you will be tortured forever.
By the time the Iron Age rolled around, this system had gotten pretty unwieldy. Money had been invented, and specialization and such, and not everyone had a flock of goats or sheep to burn whenever they felt guilty. So eventually, God comes to Earth as some sort of spirit and deliberately impregnates a Jewish girl without her consent. (Snarky atheists refer to this as the “rape ghost”.) The child born from this union was a human, but was also the son of God, and furthermore was also God incarnate. (Which is confusing, but it doesn’t really need to make sense, because it’s “a mystery”.)
Because this child (Jesus) was actually a divine being, he was “perfect”, whatever that means. Since he was perfect, he was the most valuable offering that could ever be sacrificed. So the kid grows up and is a carpenter for a while, and then he spends a few years as a wandering Jewish preacher, until eventually God arranges for him to be executed by the Romans. And he dies.
Except not really: three days later, he come back to life, visits with some of his friends for a bit, and then flies off into the sky on a cloud.
So this is the crux: God created everything, including humans, and he will torture us forever if we ever do anything wrong, which we will always do because he made us broken. Except that this one time, God came down to Earth as a human, and then killed himself, in order to appease his own anger for every bad thing anyone ever did. Once that was done, he wouldn’t have to torture us (his beloved creations) forever, except that he didn’t really die, so it’s not clear how this was really a sacrifice. If you believe this story, then you get “credit” in God’s cosmic ledger, and after your body dies you get to live forever in some amazing other universe, instead of being tortured.
Amy, understandably, was, like, “WTF? That is weirder than I could have imagined.” I had newfound insight that Christian theology is fundamentally absurd.
It is totally insane. This narcissist ego freak in the sky creates children who he makes too curious. One of them eats a forbidden fruit and this god decides he hates his dumbass children. And, he hates them so much, they are such pieces of garbage to him that he is going to torture them for all eternity. He is a sadist kind of god.
Then he decides he will spare a few by means of …human sacrifice. Now, if you kiss this god’s ass and worship him you get a “get out of hell free” card. If you do not …you burn ….forever…and ever.
Now, this ego freak does not care how you act on earth or how you live your life. In fact, all your good deeds are “filthy rags’ to him. He only cares that you worship him.
So you can be a pedophile murderer of children but if you are real sorry and believe in Jesus you get the get out of hell free card. Likewise, you can be the most awesome human. You can feed the hungry, be honest, help all people, be kind. But, if you are a Buddhist, or a Hindu, or Muslim, or god forbid an agnostic… No matter how good you are you are going to burn baby burn. The sadist Christian god is going to throw you in a napalm pit and light you up and smell your burning flesh forever. Did you know the old testament says over twenty times the Bible god likes the aroma of burning flesh? Probaby why he created all these human logs for his hellish fire pit.
Nancy, I exhort you not to misdirect your frustration. There is no “narcissist ego freak in the sky”. Your comment reads as if you are mad at god for being an asshole. I agree that, as documented in the Bible, YHWH (or whatever) is an asshole many times over, but it’s kinda like being mad at Santa Claus for breaking and entering. Sure, Santa Claus is the world’s most notorious trespasser, but he’s not real. It’s just a story.
If you’re going to be angry, be angry at the humans who perpetuate the stupid myth. Personally I find it hard to be angry at most Christians because it’s pretty evident that they merely believe the things they’ve been taught. I used to joke: “You can’t disbelieve everything you read.” That said, there are plenty of people who are smart enough to know better, and I am sometimes frustrated with those people for what I perceive as lack of courage to challenge their own beliefs and culture. As I pointed out in this post, Christian theology is fundamentally absurd when you think about it… but most Christians have never thought about it.
The only Christians I really feel any anger towards are the people who hypocritically distort the teachings of their own doctrine for evil purpose, such as televangelists. I don’t think it’s evil to be wrong; I’m wrong all the time. I do think it’s evil to profit from a knowing deception that harms others.
Well said, that’s what Bible teaches which is absurd and hence false. But God is not visibly so. God is neutral to all His children – pagans, atheists, religionists are treated on par by God. Each human gets the results of his good or bad actions.
Evidence is US jail is full of many baptized Christians too.
The Christian God has not stopped police, judge or jailor in punishing the Christian offenders. On the other hand good citizens atheists are free outside jail.
So, God is equal to all His children and people reap what they sow is evidential. This idea of eternal hellfire is an unreality which is a bookish proclaimed truth in Bible. It does not exist in reality.
On the other hand God who has put us into a suitable parents family without our control, is likely put us into another mother’s womb after our death for the purpose which we are trying to fulfill in pursuing material pleasure. So that is Hindu concept of reincarnation. God will allow you to continue fulfilling your desires until you desire strongly to be back with Him and surrender to Him. If you have any material desires left, God will keep on allowing you birth after birth.
This is the reality.
There is no eternal hellfire, there is no blood and flesh thirsty God out there. Such an imaginary God, exists only on the pages of a so called Holy Book called Bible.
Try this
https://jesuswithoutbaggage.wordpress.com/
makes much more sense