Christianity or Bust

Whenever I go to church, I usually assume that everyone I speak to is a Christian. However, I’ve started to realise that is not the case. Maybe it’s just that at my last church, those people seeking to know God kept their thoughts quiet. Maybe there isn’t enough of an opportunity for them to ask questions and have them resolved.

At my current church, there is a gentleman who described himself as a Christian / Buddhist / Hindu / Atheist philosopher. I wasn’t sure how that could be! From my limited discussions with him, he takes the philosophies that he likes because philosophy is the main thing he is interested in. (However, part of me thinks that perhaps, he is seeking to satisfy his social needs by coming to a church.)

I guess, I’m curious how a person can go to a church for over six years and still not be persuaded to believe in a deity.

In our limited discussion, I found out that he does believe that Jesus was a real person but didn’t believe that Jesus was the Son of God. That started making me think about the ramifications of what it would mean to me if Jesus wasn’t actually God. I’m sure this is the sort of thing that we really ought to think about so we can answer people with different beliefs (if I recall correctly, Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Jesus was just a human and not also God). Yet really we ought to have the basics fully understood.

If Jesus was not God:

• Jesus would be just human and still be a sinful human - in the Gospel of Luke, we know that John the Baptist was born with the Holy Spirit yet we know that like all humans other than Jesus, he was still sinful (see Romans 3:23)
  • Thus, Jesus would not be a perfect sacrifice of God and thus mankind’s sins would not be atoned
• Jesus would be a liar in saying that he is one with the Father
  • Thus, what Jesus said and his promises would be unreliable.
    • Thus, Christians would be wasting our lives following a liar and believing in the promise of Salvation.
• Jesus would not be able to speak with the fully authority of God

Ah, you get the picture, right? When something fundamental is disbelieved, the whole orthodox Christian beliefs collapse in an ugly heap that includes millions of people dying for it.

Yet, I suspect my disbelieving acquaintance is a “cherry picker”.

Anyway, just in case you are wondering, I am not having a crisis of faith just because I’m pondering these things.

Well, I finished reading the Book of Leviticus on Saturday.

My initial impressions were that it’s pretty tedious. The bulk of the book is God setting laws for the Israelites so they are set apart from the pagans and the pagans that live around them so the Israelites can be God’s chosen people. Many of the laws seem very repetitive.

My other early impression was how lucky we are that Jesus was a perfect high priest and that we no longer need to follow all those laws, particularly animal sacrifices.

After pondering how these laws related to the times and life of Jesus’ incarnation, I found reading this book particularly interesting and rewarding. For example, it increased my understanding of how devastating leprosy and unclean bleeding could devastate a person from the separation from their family and community. I also thought of that time when Jesus becomes angry at the people in the Temple, particularly those selling clean animals for sacrifice at extremely inflated rates.

There was also the impression that Jesus was a great revolutionary. Particularly how he enters the home of the dead girl and touches her hand (Mark 5:21 - 43) - two things that were considered extremely unclean.

Last of all, I find the concepts of Jubilee years (Biblical) and Sabbath years to be very interesting. In this modern day and age where everyone feels busy, you couldn’t imagine people stopping farming for a year. Also, people are so obsessed about money these days that you couldn’t imagine debts being relieved.

James Cameron, director of some of my favourite films, is involved in a documentary where achaelogists claim to have found a tomb (see Talpiot Tomb) containing the bodies of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Mary and Joseph. (see article).

Now the cynic in me says that James Cameron hasn’t done anything good since True Lies. (Yes, I refuse to see Titanic.) However, that’d be superficial of me to simply dismiss that.

For me, the killer quote is this:
‘”To a layman’s eye it seems pretty darn compelling,” executive producer James Cameron, the Canadian director of the movie Titanic, said at a press conference in New York. Wikipedia doesn’t report that Cameron has an archaelogical degree or ancient language skills.’

That particular article offers a rebuttal saying that the names of Jesus, Mary and Joseph were common around the time of Jesus and that it’s a mere coincidence. However, the wikipedia article on Talpiot Tomb has other reasons:
“However, the identification of these names with the New Testament figures is heavily disputed. The Joseph ossuary declares him a “brother of Jesus” rather than the biblical father of Jesus. Likewise, the Matthew ossuary declares him a “brother of Jesus” unlike Matthew the Evangelist. Jesus’ family hailed from Bethleham, making it unlikely that they would have purchased a family tomb in Jerusalem. The names cognate with Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and Matthew in 1st century Palestine were commonplace.”