How can YOU actually be a Christian? (Part 1)
A question I ask myself and others occasionally ask me
Before proceeding, a warning. This essay contains my strongest objections to the Christian faith, but not my answers to them. As such I need your promise that you, the reader, will not look at this essay unless you have every intention of reading the next one when it’s published tomorrow or the day after. These are objections that you probably have in the back of your mind but are afraid to acknowledge — not the stupid, half-baked slanders and gotchas of Richard Dawkins, but serious, logical, and easily observable problems. See you soon — and if you're not coming back to see me soon, DO NOT READ THE REST OF THE ESSAY.
Dear H,
For a while now I’ve been worried about being a Christian skeptic. Why? First of all, because I don't know any Christian skeptics. The closest we ever got was Thomas, and that didn’t last more than a week. But aside from this, Christ said you have to be like a child to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and I’ve always associated skepticism with adulthood. The gist is, we get lied to so many times we learn to not trust people. It’s the teenager who hears his dad promise they'll go fishing someday and rolls his eyes — not the six year-old.
But have you ever heard a kid ask why? In my opinion, the questions go hand-in-hand with wonder — not a sign that you’re grown up, but that you’re still fresh-minded and growing and you’re looking for a good reason. The world hasn't become a giant “because I say so” yet and you’re willing to pester about it. And you still believe in the person giving the answers.
In fact kids still believe questioning things is okay — maybe the mark of childhood itself. We begin in wonder only to think we’ve got it all figured out only to find the universe is a riddle. The teenager — once again, the half-adult and eternal menace — thinks he knows everything. The 40 year-old knows he’s still learning about himself. At least if he isn’t stupid.
And if I learn something new about myself every year, why can’t I be surprised about God? Who’s silly enough to read the Bible and think he’s got God figured out? And who put these people in charge? I don’t mean to be rude, but thinking you know everything about women because you read Men are from Mars, Women are From Venus is a sign you’ve got a screw loose. There are general and nebulous rules, of course; but every woman is a changing enigma to be studied and theorized about and eternally unpackaged. And I don’t believe God is less complex than a woman.
As such I’ll be upfront with you: there are four core things I don’t understand — and in some cases even reject — about what we call "Christianity.” These are things all Christians claim to believe, and which they claim you have to believe, but which they don't understand, can't explain, and hold contradictory opinions about. Then they sweep the questions under the rug, and pretend nobody has any.
They are, in short:
That Christians have the Holy Spirit — and that they have a way of proving it.
That people can prove they’re saved.
That the whole Bible is the word of God.
That a real Christian “walks as Christ walked.”
To the fourth one here, I’ll just say have a look around you. And maybe have some humility. This belief that real Christians “resemble Christ” is so arrogant that it borders on the comical. There is no holy pontiff, no ascetic monk, no theological wonk who models the life of Christ even in caricature; and if anyone claims our lives should mirror Christ’s, the first thing to ask him is, does yours? If he answers no my point is proved. If he answers yes then run away*.
This point is so crazy that people in the fourth century refused to get baptized until they were on the verge of death. It actually was a major problem. They heard that once you got saved you had to act like it; and, taking Christ’s teachings more seriously than we do today, and at the same time knowing themselves better too, they decided they couldn’t do it — and proved they were also better lawyers than us. Whether delaying baptism shows more faith or less is the question; but at least it proves they were thinking. Much more than the average fundie today, at least.
The first point is more difficult. Who has the Holy Spirit? Christians claim to, of course, but if this is the case, why does it feel weird when some Karen says God told her something? And why do we feel uncomfortable saying it too? If God lives in us and speaks to us, then we should be prophesying or hearing prophecy all through the week. To not hear the voice of God is a tragedy. To hear it and not share it is a crime.
When does the Holy Spirit descend on a believer? Talk to most Christians and they can’t tell you. They have no believable signs for or against it, and, probably most depressingly, many say God only speaks through His word. In other words if you don’t read a book you can’t hear Him at all. A claim to God’s presence no sturdier than the Muslims’.
Going the other direction, the "charismatics” will tell you they do hear Him — and then say God wants you to marry them, or the end of the world is in two months (two months ago), or that God changed His mind about sodomy, or sham-shammala-sha-bambla. None of these is proof of the Holy Spirit — and, in my opinion, are better proofs against Him.
The second issue, whether people can prove they're saved, is derailed by the first about the Holy Spirit. And let’s not forget Christ’s own words: that even in church, until the end of the world, you can't separate God’s kids from the Devil's. Go ahead. Aside from “because you can’t really tell the difference between them,” try to explain why He said it. I dare you.
The third and final issue I’ll be addressing here is the divine inspiration of all Scripture — an issue the early Christians couldn't figure out either, and eventually had to fight about. The Book of Jude quotes apocryphal sources and the Council of Rome apparently scrapped them. Paul says He isn’t speaking for the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians 7 and the Presbyterian minister doesn't believe him. And did God write the Song of Songs — about a married man cheating with a prepubescent girl? We’d better damn well hope not. And what about the Book of Ecclesiastes, where he says he has no clue where the soul goes after you die? And is the earth 4,000 years old despite the fossil record and tree rings?
Conclusion:
You can believe the four points above if you want to, but to me, promoting them as they're commonly accepted, without raising questions, is either naive or dishonest — a hodge-podge of untested absurdities, which people say you have to blindly accept or God doesn’t love you. In fact, they say that if you don’t sweep these things under the rug, you can’t be a follower of Christ.
Well, I believe otherwise. I believe in God so much that I think honesty is a tenet of the Christian religion — that God not only loves us in spite of our sin, but in spite of our ignorance; and, directly correlated with this, in spite of our doubt. I believe He knows when we believe and when we don’t. I believe he knows when we’re lying and when we’re telling the truth. And I asked myself a question: does God want me to lie when I’m not sure so I can fit in? Or does God want me to live according to what I actually believe about Him?
On July 4th of 2014, because of these questions, I declared my independence from the Christian religion. I had no idea that the questions I was asking would lead me back to it — and to have a deeper, richer, happier life than I did when I accepted things dogmatically. I believe there are many people out there who wonder about these things but are afraid to ask them. Well, I’ve already put myself in the line of fire and got passed over at Communion. So allow me take the bullet for you.
I’m writing you tomorrow about this journey that’s taken me many years. And I’m asking you — begging you — to hear the answers that keep me not only inside the church, but loving it.
Yours,
-J
*The most remarkable thing about “living like Christ” is that nobody knows what He lived like. We know some of the highlights of His three-year ministry, but the vibe He had at the breakfast table, the manners with women, how fun He was around children, the gestures, the tastes, what He was like at work, the day-to-day opinions that hinted at broader dogmas, the way He played and joked and sang, whether He was more charming or authoritative haggling with the grocer — all of this is lost to us, and, I argue, just as important as His proclamations. At least if you want to act like Him.
What little we have left of Him, the wild and mysterious proclamations, the wily repartees, the sallies of insults and blessings, the miracles, the sleepless dedication, the midnight prayers and wanderings in the desert — all these form so lopsided and impossible a picture of Him that it would be better to just leave the issue alone. A “what would Jesus do” isn’t a question; it’s a statement — about the ignorance of the questioner. Christ has left His personality and His lifestyle a mystery — and we owe Him for it. We were left free by the God who saved us; and by leaving His life in an impenetrable fog, we were given permission to live.
To know Christ’s actual life, even as closely as a character in Tolstoy, would have strangled most of us in utero. His very disappearance from history was a gift; and I would argue an intentional one.