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But What's Wrong With Jesus?

Reasons to reject Biblical spirituality. Not just for its truth claims, but because its moral teachings are bad

By Matt Arnold, written 2000 - 2002

“What could possibly ever be wrong with Jesus?” is one of the questions Christians typically ask me and other non-Christians. I understand that most run-of-the-mill Christians sitting in the pew every Sunday are basically good people with modernistic secular enlightenment values down deep in their hearts, who have never given much thought or investigation to how this contradicts their holy book. I don’t accuse you of a lack of character. On the contrary, I hope that after a responsible, adult, free-thinking consideration of what will be discussed here, your values will triumph over belief in the infallibity of biblical teachings.

Vicarious atonement

Consider the gospel message itself, in the doctrine of vicarious atonement. Two wrongs do not make a right. It is a morally illiterate concept to suppose that punishing an innocent third party can expiate the guilty. You need look no farther than the fact that no Christian would tolerate this happening in our courts. The gospels and the writings of Paul present us with the idea that justice-- for the heap of humanity’s crimes-- this justice is best served if god murders his son. The one person least deserving (according to the story) is wronged in the worst way that can be found, this crime is added to the heap of crimes, and it’s all better! The denizens of Alice in Wonderland didn’t speak so absurdly. The reason people are shocked when they see Mel Gibson’s recent film The Passion of the Christ, is that they are visually confronted with the awful truth: that their religion is comparable to that of the Aztecs. The most popular religion in our society is inseparable from the primitive atonement ethics of brutal human-sacrifice. Do you believe in a story in which god the father lusts to be sated with the suffering of others? He would even accept his son’s innocent blood to slake his vampiric blood-sucking thirst.

I recently read a book in which a man does prison time that he doesn’t deserve, to protect his wife who actually committed the crime. I had no respect for his wife for accepting his vicarious atonement. Also, if in that story the authorities had known (as god the father is purported in the bible story to have known) that the one being punished was innocent, and if knowing this they had still allowed it, what would have been served by his incarceration? Certainly not justice. Would you respect those judges? Would you accept the sentencing of the innocent? That’s why I say it takes character to reject Calvary.

Total self-sacrifice

Secondly, the model of complete and total self-sacrifice held up by Jesus’ example on the cross is not a healthy one. Yes, we should think of the benefit of others, but in Sunday School this is taken to extremes. “Jesus first, others second, you last,” we are tought. Everybody, except Jesus, is last. To avoid a world where everyone puts his or her self first, this oversteers into the ditch on the opposite side of the road. Do you want a world where everyone is the obsequious and craven victim of a petty despot? Whatever happened to egalitarian equality? The result is a life of inflicting victimization on ourselves, because Jesus teaches that if someeone hurts you, let him hurt you some more; a world where evil triumphs. Can we not recognize a tool of victimizers when we hear it?

Megalomania

People are conditioned not to say anything critical of Jesus. This is called a sacred cow. I’ll say this for him, he didn’t deserve to get crucified. No one has any way to know if the biblical record is a correct report about Jesus claiming to be god-- or if it was added in later centuries. But since there is no god (or if there is a god it’s the non-interventionist kind), then he is not god. If he really did say “I am the way the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father but by me,” then he is a megalomaniac.

Insecurity

The apostle Paul later describes the appropriate Christian as a slave to Christ. So did David Koresh and the Hale-Bopp leader and Jim Jones. They died exactly like Jesus did, and for the same motivation. A martyr desires to prove to others, and especially to prove to his own insecurities, that he really, really means it. After all the blood of heroes that was shed since the secular enlightenment to win freedom of conscience-- and to flatten the social structure so that our authorities must answer to us-- how can we not recognize the voice of a tin-pot would-be dictator and a lunatic charlatan? Jesus does not allow you to just say “love thy neighbor” and leave it at that, as if you got your depiction of Jesus from a painting of a long-haired bearded guy in a robe petting a sheep. George Orwell’s 1984 is in store for the faithful bible-literalist, unless you wish to subordinate scripture to your secular values as so many Christians do.

There is no allowance for the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States in the first of the Ten Commandments. The attitude of extremist fundamentalist Christians toward the separation of church and state-- in which the state’s laws are answerable to their religion, but the other major faiths are allowed to freely practice in the privacy of their churches-- is indistinguishable from that of modern Iran and the ancient Islamic nations. In fact, over the centuries Muslims have traditionally placed much more emphasis on practices than did the Christians, who emphasized belief in doctrine. As long as you were “rightly guided,” meaning public obedience to Sharia law, your private beliefs were often considered your own problem. So ironically, by the standard I’m hearing from Christian Supremacists, these nations qualified as having “religious freedom” before America did. Listen to talk radio in Alabama, the home of former Judge Ray Moore, and you’ll see that Islamic Supremacists in the Middle East and Christian Supremacists in America are cut from the same cloth.

In addition to authority over our decisions, the bible authors attempt to assert cult-like authority over our minds in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. It’s wrong to abandon our adult responsibility to think for ourselves. Just as we can’t learn to do arithmetic by always looking it up on a chart, and refusing to countenance the idea that the chart is wrong – so too we can’t practice ethical reasoning by looking it up in a so-called holy book. Therefore there is nothing so damaging in the holy books as the claim that we should unquestioningly get our rules for living from them. If moral rules are obtained from personal reason and observation, we would be open to admitting that we may be wrong. Any specific error in the bible could be corrected if it weren’t for the bible’s cultic attitude toward authority.

Appeals to authority and origins

This leads to the issue of whether or not to follow spiritual authorities at all. I grant you, it’s possible to offer some respect to Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha, if they were to live next door to you, as mostly decent although confused. One can even see some good things in their teachings because a stopped watch is right twice a day. However (and this is what I’m trying to stress) prophets and gurus are utterly unnecessary to you and me. Do you think Jesus is responsible for the self-improvement you have experienced? Even if millions have not given themselves the credit they deserved for improvements to their character and rather gave credit to gurus, this does not make Jesus, Mohammed and Buddha necessary to improve character. Such a reliance is a limiting handicap.

An observation in way of illustrating the point: People have a bizarre fetish with “returning to the fountainheads” which baffles me. I once debated a proponent of Creation Science who scoffed in amazement when he discovered that I, who support the theory of evolution, have never read Darwin’s Origin of Species. “What possible reason could someone interested in evolution have to read one of the oldest, and therefore most obsolete, texts on the topic?” I asked. “Darwin didn’t even know about DNA. If I want to find out about evolution, I’ll read someone who is at the most advanced cutting edge of the field today.” What do the origins have to do with it?

This is why I have no use for the prophets and gurus of old. Can we pretend that the cult of their personality which their followers have raised has not contaminated their legacy? The perpetuation of their glorified image eventually outweighed the primitive gains humanity received from their moral pioneering. So on balance, it’s become actively harmful to declare oneself their disciple and encourage others to do so, especially children. Only by ceasing to put them on a pedestal can we stem the tide of dependency and submission at the root of the world’s religious hazards.

But which Jesus do you have in mind?

There are certain principles modernized Christians cherish in their day-to-day lives, but distort the biblical Jesus to fit into. Two wrongs do not make a right. Authorities should be answerable to those who are governed. Egalitarian equality. Freedom of conscience. Except for the few fanatical bible-literalist zealots among them, Christians accept these principles. When they ignore that much of bible doctrine, what does that leave us with? What do we know about this narrative starring the character Jesus of Nazareth? It is probably safe to say the following:

  1. About two thousand years ago
  2. there was a man
  3. living in Palestine
  4. who went by the name of Jesus,
  5. who claimed to be the Jewish Messiah
  6. and was crucified for it.

You may not be aware that there were many such men matching the above description in all six points. Think about that. Dozens of men two thousand years ago in Palestine claimed to be the Jewish Messiah, routinely got crucified, and some of them were named Jesus. So at least one of them probably spoke at least some of the teachings depicted in the gospels. Especially when you consider that most of Jesus’ harmless teachings such as “love thy neighbor” were ripped off wholesale from contemporary Jewish traditions, so he was not even original. Neither was this ethical rocket science.

Which Jesus did you have in mind from this composite? That having been said-- a huge amount of the rest of the record is obviously legendary embroidery. Jesus son of Joseph could be real while still leaving Jesus son of God as a legend. For instance, Vlad the Impaler was a historical figure, but Count Dracula the vampire is the legendary version of Vlad. Supposedly there was a real person around whom the legends of King Arthur sprang up, but he’s lost to the mists of time. This is not to equate the level of historical evidence in either instance, but to illustrate the way we should see Jesus. The point is that none of these figures have to exist in order to “live on” in our imaginations and hearts. I could mention the article about “yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” I don’t want to give the impression that I’m equating believers in a literal Jesus Christ to believers in a literal Santa. These are worlds apart intellectually. (On the contrary, far from disparaging Jesus you might say I’m even attempting to show Santa in a good light with the comparison. Santa gets a bad rap when people mock that way. Let’s face it, it’s not for nothing that he’s admired and loved around the world.) I kind of admire Robin Hood and Sherlock Holmes, but that doesn’t make me claim they exist. If I reject the existence of Sherlock Holmes am I rejecting the principles of deduction? If I call Robin Hood a fictional character does that mean I am against feeding the poor? A personality who is enshrined in our minds doesn’t need to be real to inspire us with the principles in their stories.

In the case of Jesus, though, a lot of the principles are harmful.