Answering Some Questions About Religion
Busy day for me today. So, rather than sit down and write out what I had planned on writing, I decided that since some of you enjoy when I write about religion, I would give you a little Q and A. Since writing my book I have been participating in spaces where people work through some of the mental/emotional damage that often accompanies or is caused by bad Christianity. I have found that when people see just how much modern American evangelicalism has actually changed from the bible and the initial teachings of Jesus and his earliest followers, it helps with their difficulty and anxiety over religion and over leaving their church.
In that capacity someone asked a series of questions that I answered. I am pasting a lightly edited Q and A down below in case you find it useful or interesting. The general theme to all of these questions is that modern Christianity has built up a belief in tradition rather than in anything biblical. These traditions are only possible to believe if we assume two things are correct. First. the whole bible, Old Testament included, was written as a prophecy and/or scripted play that points everyone and all of history to Jesus. Second, the Bible is never incorrect about anything.
Both of these are false...like, “the sky is red” false. If the first thing were true, all Jews would be evangelicals right now—but they aren't. Why? Because the Old Testament that exists in the Bible has been thoroughly Christianized. The manuscript copiers/editors from 150ish AD to 1400ish AD made subtle changes to the Old Testament texts such that the stories pretty much read the same, but now he main point of the stories is to allude to God, Jesus, and Satan. This is not what the Hebrew Bible actually does. Rather, this idea is a theological invention of early Christianity.
Early Christians needed this invention because in Rome a religion had to be ancient. In its infancy Christianity wasn't respected in Rome. Our earliest roman records call it a superstition rather than a religion. Christians wanted to have some of the same privileges and exemptions Rome gave to Judaism, so they took the Old Testament and basically said, "No, we're not a new superstition around one guy who got crucified. We're really the correct form of Judaism. See, all the Old Testament stuff is a direct line from Adam to us. We are an ancient religion, not a new superstition, and we deserve the same legal respect Jews get."
Q: God demands perfection in order to go to heaven, but he knows we're not capable of it, so we're doomed to hell. Why?
A: This is not necessarily biblical. This idea relies on an atonement theology called penal substitution. Basically, everyone broke a divine law, and now we are criminals, and in order to not be sentenced to Hell, Jesus had to die for all of us to pay the debt owed to the law. This theology didn't really exist before Martin Luther (he was training to be a lawyer in his life, so it's no surprise this is what he saw). There are much earlier atonement theories that don't rely on this doomed theology. I won't try to explain them all, but you can search up on them fairly easily. This is a good place to start.
Q: If God is all knowing, why did he create the serpent? Why did he create evil if he knew all that would happen?
A: The Old Testament is not a monotheist document. There are many other Gods in the Old Testament, and one of the most commonly used names in the Old Testament—Elohim—implies a plurality of Gods to begin with. The Old Testament is often characterized as Jehovah's fight to be the supreme God, or to insist the his people banish other Gods.
There is nothing in Genesis that insists God created the serpent. In English the translation makes it sound like God created everything out of nothing. In Hebrew this is clearly not the case—things already existed and God was just using the materials to be the cosmic builder, if you will. If you want this better explained, the creation out of nothing concept is called “ex nihilo”, and there is a lot of good scholarship about this issue.
The serpent is, in Hebrew, the "nachesh", which is sometimes translated as snake, but also means "shining thing". As best as I have been explained (I don't know Hebrew) shiny is also a reference to deceit, like calling someone a "slimy" person would be in english. We are never told what the Nachesh is, perhaps it is some kind of supernatural being, but it was not necessarily created by God.
Q: Why didn't God just choose to forgive us? Why require sacrifice? If he's God he makes the rules, why not change the rules? When my son is being naughty I don't curse or condemn him.
A: Ah! You've caught onto the biggest weakness in penal substitution. The Old Testament god is often forgiving (when he isn't being violent), and Jesus forgives sins long before his death. In Mark 2, when he heals the man with palsy, Mark's version of the story is Jesus being somewhat sarcastic to the Pharisees and saying of course some people can forgive sins because God wants to forgive sins. (This gets into the definition of Son of Man, which is another long explanation, but it does not necessarily mean Jesus). So, God can and has just chosen to forgive many times.
Note, the parable of the prodigal son. The father did not see his wandering son far off, then go and beat the obedient older brother to death so he could forgive the wandering son. This idea is again really only invented through Martin Luther.
Q: f our only choices are serve God or hell, how is that free will? I didn't ask to he born, but here I am. And if I don't devote my life to God, I go to hell.
A: Man, it sounds like Penal Substitution really did a number on you. That’s normal, and not your fault. There is so much mental health damage and spiritual trauma that comes from being told that you are useless, worthless, and broken, and only God can make you worth something. Good news is, this isn't what the Bible says!
Hell itself doesn't even exist in the Bible. What we think of as hell wasn't constructed as a firm concept until 400ish AD or later. Elaine Pagels book The Origin of Satan is a good place to go for more information here. She's a brilliant scholar of ancient religions and goes really deep into the details. Short of it is, Satan doesn't always (in fact most of the time it doesn't) refer to an evil demigod out to destroy us when he is mentioned in the bible. Also, Hell isn't a real place. This is again an alteration made by manuscript copiers/editors.
Satan is a hebrew word that just means something similar to what we would call a prosecuting attorney—someone who is employed by God to try our faith. Also, Jesus never mentions hell. When he says that people will be thrown into hell and there will be weeping and wailing and teeth gnashing he doesn't actually say hell—it's a translation error, or a religiously motivated purposeful mistranslation done to help make the case for hell. Instead, Jesus says people will be thrown into Gehenna, which is an Aramaic word meaning "the valley of Hinnom". This is the valley where certain Israelite elites performed child sacrifices in the Old Testament. So, what Jesus is saying when he uses this phrase is that these people will displease God as much as those who sacrificed children. It is merely a hyperbolic argument to say "stop doing this, it's really, really bad".
Q: In Egypt, God hardened Pharaoh's heart, and innocent children died. Doesn't that mean that God took away Pharaoh's free will? Why didn't he soften Pharaoh's heart instead?
A: I'm not gonna be able to give a good answer here. I do a lot more Greek and New Testament stuff. Someone who does Hebrew and Old Testament would be able to give a better answer than me. But, this is purely a theological question because the Exodus did not happen as described in the Bible. Many archeologists think it is a complete fiction, like more of a foundational myth than history (like Americans would think of George Washington and the cherry tree).
The strangest thing about this is that Canaan was part of Egypt at the time of the exodus, so it would literally be like saying "I'm really mad at the governor of Ohio and I want to be free, so I'm gonna leave Cleveland and go to Cincinnati so I'm not a slave anymore!" It doesn't really make sense. Some archeologists cite the Merneptah Stele, which details circa 1210ish BC an Egyptian Pharaoh conquering a small tribe called Israel. They say that a sort-of exodus could have taken place where just a select few elites or soldiers who were captured in this battle are released if they promise to be a protective barrier between Egypt and the Hittites, whom Egypt fought with on and off for decades.
Either way, the story in the Old Testament is best thought of as a foundational myth. If it is at all historical, it is only loosely tied to reality—like the pilgrims and the first thanksgiving.
Q: Christians say that when something happens, it was God's will. Ok, if it's God's will then that means I don't have free will to make my own choices. If things happen in God's time, doesn't that mean I don't get to choose my own time?
A: This is the preordination/determinism vs free agency debate. I'm not sure it has a good answer. If we are preordained, that means God created some people just for the purpose of sending them to Hell. That sounds irrational, and doesn't really fit in the Bible. If we are totally free, then God can't control anything and is powerless, so what's the point of worship? I think these are the two extreme ends of the spectrum, and people's personal beliefs can lie anywhere in the middle. It isn't a black and white, it's a mix of greys.
Q: How many times did God destroy a city, and he flooded the earth, all BECAUSE of evil. So why didn't he just destroy the evil so innocent people didn't have to die?
A: I think we're back to foundational myths here. It might be most helpful to think about it this way: Historians are pretty sure that the Hebrew Bible itself wasn't written until 600BC or even later—maybe after the return from Babylonian exile. Small parts of the Hebrew Bible clearly are written before that, but they aren't a coherent book resembling anything like what we have now as scripture. This being the case, the purpose of the Hebrew Bible is to justify or explain why this particular tribe and religion of people are the dominant power in the small region of Canaan (Israel and Judah are never the dominant power in the fertile crescent, they are always smaller and weaker than other true empires like the Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians).
So, basically, ancient Israelites and Judahites tell these foundational myths about how their God chose them, and how he was more powerful than the other Canaanite Gods, and these myths are proof of it.
An argument that a king of Judah might make would sound like this. “It makes sense for us (Israel/Judah) to be in charge and special and you (the Canaanites) should just be part of our kingdom and religion. It is inevitable that our God will crush yours, as he has done to many people many times, so buckle up if you want to resist.”
These foundational myths also serve to warn Israelites that if they aren't so obedient to Jehovah, maybe he won't work as hard against other gods, and they might lose battles to Canaanites and be less secure. Archeologists find very little evidence of mass destruction of cities the way the Old Testament describes after the Exodus. Some cities have been found that were said to be destroyed, and there is no evidence of any destruction within hundreds of years of the time the Hebrew Bible said it happened.
So, just to sum up, best to think of these as foundation myths loosely based on history, and sometimes completely fabricated. The best types of American examples are people like Paul Bunyan and Johnny Appleseed (foundation myths that were completely fabricated) or Davy Crockett and any number of western cowboy legends (foundation myth that was based on people/events, but are not particularly accurate). A good non American example is King Arthur.
Are these stories factual? No, the events never happened as the stories describe. Are they true? Yes, because they say something about America as a concept and about the people and attitudes within. This decoupling of factual accuracy and truth seems odd to modern humans because of the rigorous efforts of modern historians, but this decoupling of fact and truth was simply the way of life before the enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries.
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