11/8/2023
I have no use for the pseudo-science of Apologetics. "Apologetics" is the use of "logic" to "justify" what appear to be "contradictions" between "doctrine" and "scripture". It is a favorite tool of theologians to paper over what are glaring inconsistencies to anyone with a set of eyes and the mental capacity of a first grader.
There are scores of examples throughout the pile of "holy" writings that make up the New Testament. This New Testament is then invariably linked to the God of the Old Testament, who seems remarkably quite detached from the "loving" God that Jesus taught. How did we get in this state of disassociation with the rational when applied to the spiritual?
Is reason alien to the formation of doctrine? If so, then why did God gift us with the intellect and thought processes yet expect us to not use them? Let's look at that.
The quoted passage is from Proverbs, a book widely recognized in the Jewish and Christian traditions. It is Old Testament, and therefore, if you want to follow standard Christian belief, the instructions of God.
I have posited many times that the Old Testament is not a necessary part of the Christian experience. Jesus made a point of both quoting & teaching from the Jewish scripture because that is what his initial audience was familiar with. Jesus was forever looking for common ground with those he engaged with & taught. People are generally more open to discuss ideas when approached in a manner that they know. In using the quotations he illustrated where the Jewish people got it right, and sometimes when they got it wrong.
But, as has also been discussed here, the image of God that Jesus taught, conflicts mightily with the image of the war god of the Old Testament (as your average Christian understands the God of the OT). I had for many years held to the idea that Jesus was trying to improve our understanding of God's truer nature - the loving father over the fierce, demanding tyrant.
A large part of my "deconstruction" focused on addressing the contradictions, and rather than explaining the problems away, deal honestly with them.
What are we to do with this verse from Proverbs? What should we do with the instruction from the OT God who self-describes as "jealous" and "vengeful", according to our teacher, Jesus?
Jesus never tells us to not use our brains. He does say that the nature of God and his kingdom are in actuality beyond our understanding, but he likens God to the loving father with room for all. He asks us to trust, but on the basis of the nature of God being loving - not that we need to never question what's going on. Paul (who also brings a world of problems) also speaks of the mysteries of the divine realm, but asks us to pray for understanding - not to abandon it.
This provides us with the dilemma of your average seminary student in your average Christian based university. Do we just blindly follow the literal words in the Bible, or should we use our "discernment" (a listed spiritual gift, Paul mentions it in letters to at least 3 of his mission churches (1Cor., Eph., and Romans).
We've discussed in other articles the history of how we got the bible. There were a multitude of stories and texts about. Even prior to Constantine's demand, the Canon of the Bible was slowly being pulled into existence. The mission of the people choosing "scripture" was to tell the story of Jesus in a way that best magnifies his importance, and make his case as the Messiah. So they grabbed anything that would do that, and worried about consistency later. After all, the vast majority of the world was functionally illiterate - the holy scrolls would never be directly handled by the "common folk", so the theologians could say just about anything, and not be questioned.
That worked grandly for a long time - then King James came along. Oh, and Gutenberg. And suddenly problems arose. People started asking questions. Some louder than others - like an obscure priest in Germany - Martin Luther. Soon the Reformation was in full swing (the first "deconstruction).
Before too long people (mostly scholars) were checking the "scriptures" - for both relevance, and accuracy. Many of these names are familiar today - Aquinas, Francis of Assisi, Locke, Wesley, Calvin, Hobbes (I need to do the "Calvin & Hobbes article soon). Over time, people found that some of the arcane texts used to bolster Jesus' street cred, had a lot of conflicting instructions and stories in them. Thus was born the pseudo-science of "Apologetics" - explaining away the inconvenient - instead of just addressing the problem of having randomly selected a bunch of texts and designating them "sacred" because they were 1% useful.
Since then, as we have examined elsewhere, these random texts provided some arcane practices that the discoverers decided must be important, or the "Lord" would have returned by now (thank King James for that particular "title"). Soon sects and denominations formed on everything from the method of baptism, to the importance of handling snakes. Seriously. All of this because a bunch of "scripture" was chosen from a random pile for truly questionable reasons.
Rather than fix the problems by explaining it away, My task was to eliminate the problem from the root. My method was direct. Firstly, over a lot of prayer, backed by the education of what went wrong, I sought what the unifying core of Christianity was, according to Jesus.
This is where I landed. Jesus quoting a part of Deuteronomy to sum up what he was teaching his followers. In a cosmic coincidence, this idea is common to virtually all religions on planet earth. That in itself would provide a consistent basis for a consistent God. It is the stuff that people added on to this concept - the methodology of how to do it - that causes divisions.
The easy part was unlinking from the Old Testament - while valuable in the stories it tells, without the education you get with being a member of the Jewish faith, the average Christian will use it as we are witnessing every day - as a weapon. It is not supposed to be a weapon. I do not use it from the pulpit, though I teach it as I have learned it - from a boyhood friend who grew up to be a rabbi.
Then I approached the New Testament. I used the Gospel of Mark as my base of operations. I am aware that Mark's Gospel has the same problems as very other Biblical text - no originals, no verified source, and some "out-of-character" stuff from Jesus. Among all of those standing problems with every NT text, my time in research has led me to be comfortable enough in the theory that in it's original form it was collection of reminisces by Peter about his time with Jesus. Mark makes several anonymous self-references in it, as he was present at some of the events. Others are not as comfortable with that as I am, but everyone's path to God is individual. What works for me does not have to work for you. You should find what works for you. If you can be a decent human being while living your life, then no matter how you base it in your life, God has no problem with you. Even if you don't believe.
Mark was where I found my touchstone. It is also the simplest, shortest, and least problematic of the Gospels. There is no birth narrative, there are no resurrection stories. It ends at an empty tomb. The evangelism commission at the end does not exist in any texts prior to 400CE. In the text of Mark, Jesus displays a full range of human emotion appropriate to the situation he is in. The entire text is a statement to the humanity of Jesus, and in the divine inspiration of the way of life that he taught. That is not to say there are no problems in Mark, just that it has the least.
The other Gospels are useful, as long as their purpose is kept in mind. Questions of authorship aside, the intention of Matthew was to argue that Jesus was the Messiah to the Jewish people. It is steeped in OT prophecies, Jesus genealogy, resurrection narratives and stories relatable to people raised in the Jewish faith. Luke's Gospel was intended to persuade Gentiles (the Romans and other pagan cultures) of the legitimacy of Jesus as the son of God in terms that they would relate to. John is a devotional dedicated to promoting the idea of the divinity of Jesus himself, which may be the first piece of apologetics ever.
From there, I went back to the rest of the NT, and stripped away what conflicted, and how I used it. Paul's writings I generally use only for church administration issues. Most of what he wrote was dealing with specific issues in specific mission churches, dealing with specific people. Many clergy use them as blanket policy for every aspect of Christian life which was never their intent. All would be better used as a separate volume specifically as a handbook for Pastors. Other problems in Paul are mistranslations and misapplication of theology in the texts, and Paul's change of emphasis from service to salvation.
I do use James. A lot. Over the years, as with Mark, I have found no information that is persuasive enough to convince me that the ideas in the text did not originate with James, who was Jesus' (half?) brother, left in charge of the Jerusalem church, and also disagreed with Paul a lot. James provided a much closer picture of what Jesus taught with regard to service being the visible part of salvation. He provided a clear picture of what a Christian life should look like, and it was far more based in living in the example that Jesus set than in doing mass rallies for conversions.
Of the rest, most of it is harmless filler that, in my opinion (as researched as it may be) is that it was chosen to offset the idea that what we were doing was Paulianity - they needed something, anything, not attributed to Paul, which on the surface agrees with Paul, but has anyone else's name on it - hence the epistles of Peter, John, Jude - all have their own little problems and quirks. While there aren't any major breaks from Jesus teachings in any of them Satan is a much bigger player than he is in the entirety of the Jewish religion. Fighting against the sin that has already been forgiven is the quirk that the Paulists were able to make use of.
They say every great book needs a bang-up ending, and so we have Revelation, connected to the Apostle John, quite possibly written by the same person who wrote John's Gospel. It is written in the same style as the old prophetic books of Judaism - Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, etc. The language is mystical and intense, and I've always wonder exactly what kind of mushroom may have been involved in writing it.
I teach Revelation on a regular basis, but only use it from the pulpit once per year - usually in a cautionary tale about running with it when reading the headlines. My opinion on preachers who obsess & fester over Revelation is that they are handing a loaded weapon to their congregants, with no real instruction, just hyperbole. It is the real life equivalent of Daffy Duck handing Elmer Fudd (the congregant) a rifle, pointing at Bugs Bunny (a sinner) and yelling "Shoot him now! Shoot him now!!!". Jesus preached that those who conduct themselves as he does have no worry about the afterlife. Revelation does the opposite, in many ways.
Jesus purpose was to give us assurance in this life, of our future, and that treating others with love is always the appropriate response, and God's ultimate desire for us.
God does not care about our methodology. God isn't gonna get angry. He makes this request of us because caring for others is the best way to promote a loving attitude among others. No one can help the whole world, but every individual helped becomes more likely to help others. Jesus always had the concept down. You change society one person at a time.
That message needs to be consistent - not a random jumble of loose verses pulled from texts that have no real relation to what Jesus was trying to do among us. There was very little thought given by the theologians of the first couple of centuries to consistency. It was all about conversions and compliance. We are seeing the end result of that now with Christians calling for war, and atheists calling for peace. Without resorting to apologetics for the situation, something is wrong, and it is not in desiring peace.
This is something that everyone who identifies as a Christian needs to ponder. If to serve Jesus is the way to serve God, and the way to serve God is, according to Jesus, by showing all love and respect, then as a Christian, am I doing what God wants, or what my Bible says is cool?
In Peace, Faith and Love,
Ecc. RL Brandner, New Ecclesiastes Ministries