You can leave a company with two weeks’ notice. You can leave a club or association by giving notice. But leaving Christianity often brings consequences.
What does your departure say to your fellow parishioners, and how will they respond?
For example, Rich Lyons (from the Living After Faith podcast) left his 20-year career as a Pentecostal minister. His departure cost him everything: respect in the community, house, job, career, marriage. He needed five years to get over his PTSD. And his experience is not uncommon for those leaving some denominations.
Why should it be this way? When you leave a company, they give you a going-away party. You can still hang out with your old workmates. Why isn’t it the same when you leave a Christian community? Why instead are apostates often cut off from their friends within the church and even their families?
I got some insight into this from an anecdote by Stephen King. In his book On Writing, he talks about a different kind of outcast. In small-town Maine in the early sixties, life wasn’t easy for a socially-awkward girl he calls Dodie.
For the first year and a half of high school, Dodie wore a white blouse, long black skirt, and knee socks to school every day. The same blouse, skirt, and socks. Every day. The blouse gradually became thinner and yellowed, the skirt frayed and patched.
The other girls kept her in her social place, first with concealed taunts, then with overt teasing. If you can’t earn a spot above someone else, you can push that person beneath you, and the other girls made sure that Dodie stayed in her place at the bottom.
But something happened during Christmas break sophomore year. Whether because of money she’d saved up or a Christmas windfall, Dodie returned to school changed. She wore stockings over newly shaved legs, her hair was permed, and her clothes were new—a fashionably short skirt and a soft wool sweater. She even had a confident new attitude to match her appearance.
This change in the social order couldn’t stand. The other girls didn’t celebrate her accomplishment. They turned on her. Under the relentless teasing, her new smile and the light in her eyes faded.
By the end of that first day, she was the same mouse at the lowest rung, scurrying the halls between classes, her books pressed to her chest and her eyes downcast.
As the semester progressed, Dodie wore the same clothes. Every day. They faded as their predecessors had, she kept to her previous place, and the teasing returned to normal. Someone had made a break for it and tried to escape, but they’d been brought back in line. The social structure was intact once again.
Christian apostates are different because they successfully leave, but some Christian churches take the next best option. Potential apostates within these communities know that they would leave behind more than just the customs and obligations of their sect. As Rich Lyons experienced, these communities use the stick of shunning, in which friends and even family must avoid all contact with apostates.
Thankfully, this draconian punishment is a threat for a small minority of Christians, but Church congregations are societies, just like high schools. High school hierarchies aren’t something you can just walk away from, like membership in a Rotary Club or art museum. High school societies can feel threatened and respond, and the same is true for churches.
Photo credit: Wikipedia
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Bible Reading in Schools: Illegal for 50 Years
Today is the 50th anniversary of the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case Abington v. Schempp, in which an eight-to-one majority declared that school-sponsored Bible reading was unconstitutional. Madalyn Murray O’Hair was the mother of a plaintiff in a similar case that was consolidated with Schempp. (O’Hair founded American Atheists, also in 1963. Above, see a photo of O’Hair, who Life magazine called “the most hated woman in America” a year later.)
But the battle continues
While it may be a day to celebrate a long-standing legal precedent, we can’t rest on our laurels. Consider the “Mississippi Student Religious Liberties Act of 2013” (SB2633), which became law three months ago. The title alone sounds pretty good—who would stand in the way of religious liberty?
The bill is full of equality language. Religious and secular viewpoints must be treated “in the same manner,” religious groups must be “given the same access,” a school district policy should be such that it “neither favors nor disfavors” religious groups, and so on. The governor’s press release said that the law “protects students from being discriminated against in a public school.” If you hate discrimination and you’re a fan of the First Amendment, what’s not to like?
Pandora’s box
But who decides what is religious? The law gives no test, so apparently the student decides. Religion is what each student tells you it is.
This puts a lot of power into unknown hands. Consider the 2011 case from Austria in which a self-described Pastafarian (member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) won the right to wear his spaghetti strainer—religious headgear, he claimed—for his driver’s license photo. Most of us can remember classmates who would delight in seeing how far they could push a rule like this. Remember that this law would apply to high school students. Might they wear a colander or a swastika (which actually is a religious symbol) or a necklace of an extended middle finger, justifying this as religious expression?
The law also permits religious speech from students at athletic events and in announcements made at the beginning of the school day. This is not allowed for school staff because, as government employees, their speech would be sanctioned by the government. But why imagine that putting it in the mouth of a student avoids this problem? Every student listening is obliged by law to be at school. They’re captive to all religious messages in the morning announcements.
And remember the Colander Problem: “religion” is in the eyes of student. Aside from vulgar language and time limits, the student has the talking stick. The same public forum that allows a Christian to talk about why Jesus is his savior allows the class jester to explain how Druidism or Satanism changed his life. Students can talk to their captive audience about the worldview of Mormonism or Wicca or Islam or (gasp!) atheism. Can the Christian parent want their child to be forced to sit through these daily messages?
The place for “Mormons and Catholics and atheists will broil in hell at 425° Fahrenheit” is in church, not the public school.
Perhaps the biggest failing in this kind of “religious liberty” is the bad light it shines on Christianity. Christian churches are already permitted and subsidized by tax-free status. Christians can already preach in the public square and hand out leaflets on street corners. But apparently that’s not enough. According to the government of Mississippi, Christianity is too weak to compete in the marketplace of ideas and needs a little boost. Home and church aren’t sufficient, and public schools need to be enlisted to fight the good fight. Is it just me who sees this as kinda pathetic?
How this will play out
Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Let’s review what we’ve seen in recent years. In 2007, Seattle-Tacoma airport was decorated for Christmas in a religion-free way after fights the previous year over what religious worldviews would be on display.
Don’t forget the city of Santa Monica, which used a lottery to apportion permission to set up religious displays on public property. When 18 of 21 spots went to atheist and freethought groups for Christmas 2011, Christians belatedly realized that a “let a thousand flowers bloom” policy doesn’t always work out so great. (I explored the “War on Christmas” more here.)
I suspect that we’re seeing in Mississippi the pendulum pushed to such an extreme that this law will swing back to smack the legislature. Once news stories of energetic displays of non-Christian religious freedom bring enough ridicule, I’m guessing that this law will be reconsidered.
Bottom line
You might object that we still have the First Amendment, so we already have a backstop for any excess that gets past this law. But then why have it? Where this law duplicates the First Amendment, it’s redundant, and where it expands religious freedom, it’s illegal. It’s a solution looking for a problem.
But many of you will have already seen the actual purpose of this law. In these days where Christianity is hijacked for the benefit of politicians, the value of this bill is simply posturing. Politicians, who passed the bill almost unanimously, have thumbed their noses at those pencil-necks in Washington and can now brag to voters about their brave support for Jesus.
I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people
which declared that their legislature should “make no law
respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,”
thus building a wall of separation between church and State.
— Thomas Jefferson (letter to Danbury Baptist Assoc., 1802)
Photo credit: Wikipedia
Bible Contradictions to the Trinity
Let’s remember the key traits of the Trinity. According to the Athanasian Creed,
The Father unlimited; the Son unlimited; and the Holy Ghost unlimited. …
So likewise the Father is Almighty; the Son Almighty; and the Holy Ghost Almighty. And yet they are not three Almighties; but one Almighty. So the Father is God; the Son is God; and the Holy Ghost is God. …
And in this Trinity none is before, or after another; none is greater, or less than another. …
About Jesus, it says:
Perfect God; and perfect Man …
Who although he is God and Man; yet he is not two, but one Christ.
Okay, okay, I get it. Three persons, all equal. None greater than another. Jesus is unlimited, almighty, and perfect.
But does the Bible agree? Remember that, unlike the clear definition of monotheism in the Koran, the doctrine of the Trinity is not clear. It took almost four centuries to congeal.
Consider some Bible verses that challenge the Trinitarian concept as defined in the creed above. First, verses that portray Jesus as an ordinary person who didn’t know everything, who wasn’t 100% with the program, and who spoke to God as you or I would.
When Jesus heard this, he was amazed (Matt. 8:10)
[Jesus] turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” (Mark 5:30)
[Jesus prayed,] “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matt. 26:39)
Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34)
Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. (Luke 5:16)
You are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. (John 8:40)
[Jesus said,] “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” (John 20:17)
Verses that state that only God has certain traits or abilities.
No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. (Matt. 24:36)
[Jesus said,] “The most important [commandment is:] The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” (Mark 12:29)
God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light (1 Tim. 6:15–16)
Verses that portray Jesus as inferior to God.
“Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good.” (Matt. 19:17)
[Jesus said,] “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28)
The head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. (1 Cor. 11:3)
The Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28)
You have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. (Col. 3:1, see also 1 Peter 3:22)
There is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5)
Ever-nimble Christian apologists have had 2000 years to find responses to many of these. Perhaps they’ll argue that we’re seeing the limited Man side of Jesus here, not the God side. Or that other verses can be brought in to bolster the Christian position. Nevertheless, the simplest explanation is that the Bible is a collection of books from authors (many unknown) who had similar but not identical religious beliefs, which has been modified in unknown ways over the centuries, and which has no more accuracy in its depiction of the supernatural than the Iliad.
See also: “The Long, Strange Story of the Trinity.”
It ain’t supposed to make sense; it’s faith.
Faith is something that you believe
that nobody in his right mind would believe.
— Archie Bunker
Photo credit: Samuel Livingston
God Has Many Names, But Do We Need One More?
Can’t Christianity think of a better name for its god than “God”? While modern Jewish authors sometimes refer to him as “G-d” so that they don’t violate the fourth commandment, there is no such fear of blasphemy among Christians. A god named “God” is like a cat named “Cat.”
The fourth name of God
While we’re talking about names, if Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the persons, what do you call the union of these into one god? Ice, water, and steam are three states of H2O. Shell, white, and yolk form an egg. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit form who?
You need a fourth name. Do you call it “God”? But the Bible tells us that “God” is the one who created everything, and that’s supposed to be the Father. The Father can’t be both the first person of the Trinity and the overall god at the same time.
Calling this union the Trinity commits the heresy of Partialism, the claim that the three persons of God are three separate parts. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit don’t form a what, they must form a single, unified who. Another problem with “the Trinity” is that’s an odd name for a monotheistic god. It’s a label, not a name. Call the three persons “a council of three” if you want, but that doesn’t make clear the unity like a proper name would.
That the Old Testament uses one name for God (okay, it uses lots of names—Yahweh, Jehovah, Elohim—but that’s a different issue) makes clear that they saw no distinction between God the Father and this Trinity. Without this distinction, it’s clear that there is no Trinity in the Old Testament.
Let’s see this another way. Consider this passage from Isaiah 45:5–6:
I will gird you, though you have not known Me; that men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that there is no one besides Me. I am Jehovah, and there is no other.
There are two interpretations of this passage.
- If Jehovah is a synonym for “the Father,” this means that he reigns alone (since “there is no other”) and we must discard the Trinity.
- If Jehovah is a synonym for “the Trinity,” then it makes nonsense of the singular pronouns (Me and I) in these verses and confuses passages such as “Then Jehovah spoke to Moses” (Ex. 40:1) or “After Jehovah had spoken these things to Job” (Job 42:7).
The problem, of course, is demanding a Christian interpretation of a Jewish text. There’s nothing confusing here from a Jewish viewpoint, which was the intended audience. There is no Trinity, and the only god that exists is Jehovah.
Well, at least the only god at this time in the evolution of Judaism. It’s a little more complicated because Old Testament Jews didn’t begin as monotheists. The Old Testament documents their evolution from a kind of polytheism (that’s an aside that I explore more here).
Admittedly, one handy trait of the Trinity is that it gives Christians a way to salvage some embarrassing passages from the Old Testament.
Let us make mankind in our image (Gen. 1:26)
The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil (Gen. 3:22)
Let us go down [to Babel] and confuse their language so they will not understand each other (Gen. 11:7)
These are no problem if “us” refers to the three persons of the Trinity. But if God were a trinity, it’s hard to imagine him not making this clear from the beginning. Judaism’s evolution from polytheism explains this nicely. The concept of the Trinity confuses, it doesn’t clarify.
See also “The Long, Strange Story of the Trinity.”
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used
against unintelligible propositions.
— Thomas Jefferson
(Some of this post was originally published 11/11/11.)
The Long, Strange Story of the Trinity
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity claims one God in three persons. The Catholic Encyclopedia defines it: “In the unity of the Godhead there are Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, these Three Persons being truly distinct one from another.”
Unity but also distinct? Three but also one? That makes no sense, so let’s go to the source and read about it in the Bible.
And the Bible says …
Though the Trinity is one of the most fundamental doctrines of Christianity, the Bible says nothing about it directly. Did Paul and the apostles define God in a trinitarian fashion? If the Trinity is essential to a proper understanding of Christianity as the modern church claims, the ancients’ silence on the matter suggests that it is a later invention.
That’s not to say that one can’t use the Bible to form arguments in favor of various relationships between God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Several interpretations competed in the early centuries of the church.
- Was Jesus merely a good man, adopted by God (Adoptionism)?
- Are Father, Son, and Holy Spirit just labels for the different roles of one being (Sabellianism or Modalism)?
- Was Jesus created by God and subordinate to him (Arianism)?
These are all plausible interpretations, justifiable with Bible passages, but they are heresies today. It took about two centuries for the doctrine of the Trinity to enter the debate (through Tertullian), and it took almost two more centuries of haggling for the doctrine to mature into its present form and sweep away its competitors at the First Council of Constantinople (381).
While still a cardinal, the man who would become Pope Benedict XVI was asked if he was bothered by many Catholics ignoring papal dictates. He said that he was not, because “truth is not determined by a majority vote.” But a majority vote is exactly how doctrines like the Trinity came into being.
Comma Johanneum
You know how I said that the Bible says nothing directly about the Trinity? For completeness, we should address this:
For there are three that testify in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. (1 John 5:7)
The part in italics is called the Comma Johanneum (a “comma” is a short clause). The oldest and most reliable manuscripts do not show the Comma. It appears first in a few 7th-century Latin manuscripts and only centuries later in Greek manuscripts. Unlike much of the rest of the New Testament, it doesn’t appear in the letters of early church fathers, many of whom would’ve delighted in supporting their position with such a quote.
It is agreed by scholars to be an addition to the original.
What is the Trinity?
Lots of analogies have been proposed for the Trinity. Maybe it’s like water, which has the three states of solid, liquid, and gas. Or like a person who can be spouse, parent, and employer. But this is modalism—God acts in different modes at different times.
Okay, then maybe it’s like an egg, which has shell, white, and yolk. Or like time, which has past, present, and future. Or like the Borromean rings in the picture above that only compose a linked whole when all three rings are present. But this is Partialism, the claim that the three persons of God are three separate parts.
Given the clear history of conflict on this question and the many discarded explanations, you’d think that heretical analogies wouldn’t be offered.
Most Christians simply say that it’s a mystery and admit that we can’t understand it. Contrast that with the monotheism celebrated by Islam. The shahadah, the basic creed of Islam, says, “There are no deities but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet”—simple and unambiguous.
A few questions raised by the Trinity doctrine
Instead of the convoluted and unintelligible Trinity, why not simply embrace the polytheism? My guess is that first-century Christians so valued Jewish monotheism that this tenet couldn’t be dropped. As the stature of Jesus increased over time, from a good man adopted as messiah by God (as told in Mark) to a being who was there at the beginning (John 1:1), they were stuck with fitting the square peg of the divinity of Jesus into the round hole of monotheism.
Why not then have a duality, Yahweh + Jesus? The problem is that two is the number for male and female, which was not the symbolism they were going for. Perhaps the Holy Spirit, initially just a bit player or merely a synonym for God, was elevated into the Trinity. And even this is flexible. While the idea of Mary as Co-redemptrix is not Catholic doctrine, it has threatened to become so at various periods in the church’s history.
And now let us close …
The typical Christian response to a contradiction is to find a way to make both claims true. This is never clearer than with the Trinity. The Bible says that there is one god, but it also says that Jesus existed since the beginning of time. So they must both be true! But what first-century Christian would rationalize this with the doctrine of the Trinity?
Or, take this from the other direction. Explain the Trinity to first-century Christians and ask if they buy it. If you imagine that they do, you have a new problem: why the vitally important doctrine of the Trinity wasn’t explained in the New Testament.
The Trinity is a Christian mystery—something that can’t be explained by reason alone. A supernatural explanation is necessary. (This raises the question: If it doesn’t make sense, why accept it? But let’s set that aside.) Apologists often admit that they will just have to ask God about it when they get to heaven.
That humility is laudable, but how about some of that in other areas? If you don’t trust yourself to make sense of the Trinity, why imagine that you correctly understand God’s position on polygamy, slavery, and genocide when the Old Testament gives clear support for them? Why imagine that your evaluation of abortion and gay marriage is correct when the Bible doesn’t address these topics directly?
If only the Trinity were a frequent reminder for Christians to be humble in their claims, it would be valuable for everyone.
See also: “God Has Many Names, But Do We Need One More?”
It is too late in the day for men of sincerity
to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticism
that three are one and one is three,
and yet, that the one is not three, and the three are not one.
— Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Adams, 1813)
Photo credit: Johansson
Magician Uri Geller Teaches Much About Bible Miracles
Remember Uri Geller? He was the psychic (or entertainer) who bent spoons and performed similar demonstrations in the 1970s and later. He claimed that extraterrestrials gave him paranormal powers, but wet blankets like stage magician James Randi stated that all of Geller’s claimed paranormal demonstrations were done with conventional stage magic. Randi showed this by publicly duplicating all of Geller’s tricks.
Geller responded: “Sure, there are magicians who can duplicate [my performances] through trickery.” In other words, just because others can do these things as tricks doesn’t mean that he’s not doing them using paranormal powers. But Randi observed that if Geller was actually doing what he claims, “He is doing it the hard way.”
Miraculous Bible claims
I was reminded of Geller when I recently read a defense of one of the Bible’s miracle claims. Maybe it was the Genesis flood story (which looks a lot like the prior Gilgamesh epic). Or the creation story (which looks a lot like the prior Sumerian creation story). Or the Jesus virgin birth story (which looks a lot like prior virgin birth claims of other great men). Or the Jesus resurrection story (which looks a lot like prior dying-and-rising stories of other gods from cultures in the eastern Mediterranean).
It doesn’t much matter which Bible story the apologist was trying to shore up—the defense is the same. It’s the Uri Geller defense. Geller would say that just because they did his stunts through tricks doesn’t mean that he’s not doing them for real. And the Bible apologist says that just because other cultures anticipated some of the Bible’s fundamental miracle claims long before a Bible story was written doesn’t mean that that Bible story isn’t for real.
Granted. But if Randi can duplicate Geller’s demonstrations as tricks, that makes the null hypothesis that Geller’s paranormal claims are fraudulent. Geller has the burden of proof to show that this simple and obvious natural explanation is wrong. And if we have precedents for many of the Bible’s miracle stories, that makes the null hypothesis that these are just ancient Jewish versions of well-known supernatural stories. The apologist has the burden of proof to show that, while the other stories are just myths and legends, the Bible miracles actually happened.
Yes, but those earlier stories don’t count!
Some apologists try to dismiss the earlier stories, but early church father Justin Martyr tried to spin the similarities between Jesus’s virgin birth claim and those of other gods to his advantage. Why should the Greeks dismiss this miracle claim of Jesus, Justin asked, when they make similar claims about their own gods?
About the Jesus resurrection story, Justin speculated that the similar Dionysus story was planted in history by the devil himself. (I give Justin’s arguments in more detail here.)
Another angle is to emphasize that each Bible story is different from its precedents. Of course it’s different—if the Jesus story were identical to that of Dionysus (say), we’d call him Dionysus instead of Jesus. The question is: how can we trust a Jewish or Christian story as history when it came out of a culture swimming with older (false) stories with the same supernatural claims?
How we deal with similar claims.
Psychics might really be talking to the dead. Though that’s not where the evidence points, desperate customers want the psychics’ story to be true.
Crop circles might really be made by extraterrestrials. Though that’s not where the evidence points (creators have documented how they do it), crop circle enthusiasts dismiss the mundane explanation.
Uri Geller might be for real, though that’s not where the evidence points. Similarly, the Bible miracle stories might be true, but similar miracle stories in nearby cultures make copying by Bible authors the best explanation.
We can’t prove that the Bible’s miracle claims aren’t for real, despite all the precedents, but that’s the way to bet. The plausible natural explanation makes the supernatural explanation unappealing and unnecessary. Only someone with a desire to support a preconception wouldn’t follow the evidence where it leads.
I don’t want to argue
with people who believe the world is flat.
— Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong
Photo credit: Wikimedia
