One of the things that I've learned in this life is how a strong belief in something (a business, an ideology, a person, God) can narrow one's understanding of it and blind you to the difficult bits. When we commit to something or someone we tend to avoid issues or questions about our 'beloved' that are difficult, unpleasant or just perplexing. That's what happened to me with the Christian God (and my ex-wife, my business and my ability to clear water hazards with my driver from 200 yards out). For almost all my life I've been a stalwart Evangelical Christian, Southern Baptist division and then, after I got my education, switching to the Evangelical Presbyterian division (a little insider Presbo humor). Sunday school teacher, tither, retreater, BSFer (bible study), mission tripper, the full Yahweh.
But as I aged and failed and divorced I came to question whether I was really on God's team, what the Baptists call 'saved' and the Presbos call 'elect'. And once I began to entertain those doubts I shifted to what I would call a 'Rawlsian' analytical position. John Rawls was a generally irritating establishment mouthpiece of a philosopher from Harvard but he articulated the common sense notion of the 'original position'. The original position was the idea that we should not evaluate the truth, desirability or goodness of any regime or proposition from the standpoint of a 'winner' in that system. Instead we should reason without knowing whether we win or lose. Doing so allows one to look in places that the true believer might overlook. Now please note: I come at this from an orthodox (no not Archbishop Makarios with the funky hat and man dress, that's Orthodox) Christian perspective - there is no Jesus Project or Madelyn Murray O'hare hysteria in this. Just Sunday school semi-literacy.
And since I've dispensed with the assumption that 'of course' I'm on Team Yahweh, I've come up with a whole bunch of conundrums, paradoxes or just oddities about Christianity that never occurred to me or at least never rose to the level of conscious concern before. I still am a believer, but I no longer pretend that I understand Him or that I know that He will 'save' me. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I (and everyone else IMHO) know a lot less about the Creator than we think. The following are a list of 'conundrums' and 'paradoxes' that have occurred to me for your reading pleasure. Or not.
Sin Free in '33?
It is Church doctrine that Jesus was fully man and fully God and unique among men lived a sin free life. Yet it is a trivial task to find
examples of Jesus doing things that would get any one of us into serious trouble with the law or at least our moms. And this contradiction is in his marketing brochure, so to speak, so He's not even trying to hide it. What's His point? Damned if I know.
A lover that loves to punish.
The Church presents Jesus as the sin qua non of love and compassion - the Lamb of God. Yet go back to the Gospels and right there in broad daylight is Jesus talking with apparent relish (certainly not sorrow) about all of the Pharisees and Scribes and their converts who he says will get what's coming to them good and hard. So which is it? Ghandi? or Himmler? Both?
Immortal death?
Another puzzler is the rather odd way that the Church represents Jesus' death and resurrection. As the old hymn goes: "Oh how He loves you and me, He gave his life, what more could He give?". This is nonsense: Jesus is part of the Godhead, he is immortal and infinite. He doesn't do dying. What died couldn't be anything more than the 'meat puppet' or if you hate that image, the 'earthly form' that He roamed around Palestine in. Saying He 'died' because it died, would be like saying that God the father 'died' because the burning bush got chopped down.
Is Jesus really my friend?
And while we're on the topic of sappy songs about Jesus what's up with 'you've got a friend in Jesus'? Or for that matter 'What would Jesus Do'? I may be a little pedantically negative here but Jesus is only your friend if he
saves you. And you won't know that until your number comes up, no matter how tight you think you are with the Triune God. If God damns you I think it only reasonable to sing 'You have an enemy in Jesus' or even 'Whatever Jesus Would Do (to me) You Should Do the Opposite or WJWD(tm)YSDtO. Okay, so it's not catchy, sue me.
Why is Hell Hell for Jesus?
And Jesus having a hellish experience descending into hell? Really? As I understand it God is the creator of everything, Hell is part of his property portfolio so to speak. And once again, He's infinite and most importantly, omnipresent while Satan and his cast of demons are created creatures consigned to God's custom built dungeon. Having Jesus go to Hell for a few days seems to me to be more like General Burkhalter visiting Stalag 13 and already knowing about Hogan's tunnel, still, radio and affair with Klink's secretary because he's been there all along - it's the Colonel Klinks of hell who should be filled with terror, not Jesus.
The agony of our sins.
A key tenet of the faith is that Jesus took on the sins of the world and that this was the most horrible, painful experience ever undertaken by a sinless God (see above). Let's apply some arithmetic to that claim, shall we? The problem with the Universe (as Douglas Adams pointed out) is that all the numbers are terrible. Our universe has (conservatively) 100 billion galaxies each with 100 billion stars and most with some planets. It's existed as best we can tell for 14 billion years. So there are roughly 3.5E+28 4,000 year civilizational period/star combinations in the 14 billion years of our universe. That's 3.5 with 28 zeros after it for the Theologians in the audience.
And Jesus is part of the core team that
makes these things.
So the accumulated sins of one sentient species on one planet in one 4,000 year period divided by this number is tiny, to put it mildly. But let me give you a little more human scale perspective: Each of us has about 100 trillion cells in our bodies. All the humans alive today have a grand total of 7E+23 cells in all our bodies (or 100 Tril times 7 Bil). So there are more 'addressable civilizational star timescale pairs' in the universe than there are cells in all the human beings alive today - as a matter of fact 50,000 times more. So if a human is to humankind's cells the way that God is to the universe then the laboring and travailing of humanity would be experienced by you as one skin cell sluffing off out of one of the 7 billion humans' bodies once every 50,000 years. By comparison you'll sluff about 40,000 off today, more if you pick your nose. And of course the 'sins of the cellular world' would be more akin to a cell's list of particulars for why the ribosomes were so mad at the golgi apparatus for locking them in a vacuole. Human tempest: here's your universe scale teapot.
Besides, if Jesus had undergone the type of spiritual and psychological trauma that the pastorate attributes to Him in their more fevered Jeremiads, where are the traces? He shows up three days later with his meat puppet needing some body work but otherwise all boomps-a-daisy, no psych trauma, no nightmares, nothing. It's all "Jesus! The Resurrection Tour". And this is the profile of someone who has just survived the worst emotional, psychological and spiritual trauma ever experienced in the history of the world?# But then you'll argue "He's God, he's infinite and powerful so he wouldn't get damaged". Which is my point exactly.##
So you're friends with Jesus, so what?
The evangelical world emphasizes having a 'personal relationship with God" Yet theologians that I trust (except when we're playing for money) tell me that Jesus' key role at the end of time is to judge the 'quick and the dead'. And crucially, in the Great Salvation Sweepstakes, Jesus will not consider any detail about any of us, our goodness, badness, or for that matter, badassness, instead he'll be 'going with his gut' so to speak, "lest any man should boast" (well except for those Pharisees and scribes he railed on in Matthew, He seems to already have it in for them). Bottom line: you can have a kick ass relationship with Jesus but it won't amount to a hill of beans on Judgement day. That you've been His faithful pal for 80 years will not be a selection criteria because Jesus picks his own friends.
Where's the rest of me?
And precisely who is Jesus saving anyway? He makes His choice without reference to our deeds (and I assume without reference to our good looks, singing voice or penchant for smart assery - Oh God I hope so). If that's the case, is He really choosing to save 'me' or am I just part of the 'quota' and any old soul will do? Now there's a thought to make you feel small.
The Bible? Well you see, it's just this book.
Last but not least, the Holy Bible: the Judeo Christian 'ethical tradition' is a true wonder of the world - the best, most sophisticated expression of how we should live. This body of wisdom was handed down to us from God. And on the final day when the greatest decision that will be made for any of us will be decided, Jesus will reach down and chuck it out the window to be replaced with the holy 'coin flip' that will seal our fates. Nothing that he teaches (aside from his own sovereignty) will be applied in the 'sorting'. It's almost like He built this entire body of law and wisdom and then decided it was not going to work and went with plan B. A lot like Judaism, in fact.*
So: a sin free savior that sins, the great humanitarian with a sideline in concentration camps, the immortal God who somehow contrived to get himself 'killed', a God that loves you unless He doesn't , the creator and ruler of hell who is intimidated by it, an infinite being who agonizes over infinitesimal events, a personal relationship with God that is irrelevant to God's final opinion of you, and finally a God so detached from the ethical foundation of his own faith that at the crucial point (for us) he replaces it with a simple binary decision heuristic.
So what does it all mean Basil? First of all, I'm assuming I'm not the first person to notice this stuff and therefore there may be perfectly rational explanations rising above the level of 'because'. After all, I'm no theogenius: I spent 52 years on God's team without ever getting to call a play. But I suspect that part of what is going on is the natural tendency of humans to 'anthropomorphize' (you owe me a dollar for that word) anything we come in contact with: we imbue everything with human attributes because it makes a strange and brutal world more comprehensible. We also demand answers even when there aren't any. And when you take those two human behaviors and mix them with a immense concept like an infinite God and toss them into the marketplace of ideas where real money changes hands, you're apt to get quite a bit of cognitive distortion even before you get to the average knucklehead on the street. And all of that distortion will come in the direction of making God simpler, more like us and possibly 'nicer' which seems to be the case in some of the 'paradoxes' mentioned above.
But as I said before: I don't call plays, I don't even start, I'm more like a blocking dummy on the practice squad. But I consider it fortunate that God is less comprehensible and less like us than we think. Because a God built in
our image would be the horror of the age.
*Now you may say, "wait a minute, the purpose of the law is to condemn man and show that he needs Grace". So what you're saying is the whole damned book is just God screaming that we suck in a thousand different always erudite and literary ways? Hokay, you guys are the experts.
#Actually it's more like Jesus experienced all the emotional, spiritual and psychological agony ever perpetrated in the world but it's still small beer to the infinite
## I can think of one other way that this could be explained: If Jesus on earth was temporarily not infinite, Omnipotent, etc. and didn't have full awareness or memory of his Godhead status then His achievement would become proportionately greater. Sort of 'God in recovery mode' or less charitably, 'Retard God'.
