Converts or Disciples Part 4: The Theological Story is Shit

Part 4: The Theological Story is Shit

This is Part 3 of the series. Other parts (will be updated as I post them):

 

Converts or Disciples Part 1: A Musical Analogy

Converts or Disciples Part 2: The Problem With the Missionary Project

Converts or Disciples Part 3: Selling It

Converts or Disciples Part 5: The Fruit is Shit 

 

Let me tell you a story. It is not the only possible story, of course. But it is a story that I was told from birth, and continue to hear from my former religious tribe. 

 

I want to be clear about a few things at the outset:

 

(1) This is how the Evangelical narrative sounds to those outside the bubble.

(2) It is not the only story about God that Christianity more broadly has told historically, but a relatively modern viewpoint.

(3) It is internally contradictory.

(4) In my opinion, it is thoroughly unbiblical, ethically appalling, and leads to abuse of others.

 

The Evangelical Story:

 

Once upon a time, there was a supreme being - let’s call him “God,” who always existed and will always exist. He got lonely or bored, and decided to create a universe - and specifically, he decided to create sentient beings “in his image.” 

 

Exactly why he did this is disputed, of course. Maybe he wanted friends? (That’s the “nice” version.) 

 

Or maybe he was an insecure narcissist who wanted constant affirmation and worship and glory. (That’s pretty much the Calvinist version.) 

 

Well, anyway, things didn’t work out how God wanted it. Those humans turned out to be, well, human. 

 

They failed to be little robots, always obeying, always worshiping, always following the program. Instead, they were curious, tested boundaries, thought for themselves, and got into trouble. Again, they were humans. (Also: an omniscient being would have known that before creating humans, right? But he did it anyway…)

 

So, having somehow managed to completely fuck up at whatever he was trying to do, God threw a huge tantrum. 

 

He hated the humans he created - again, for being human - so much that he decided to torture humans for eternity. Infinite torture for finite (and human) faults. 

 

Well, somewhere along the line, he realized that this, um, made him look like a fucking psychopath, thus ruining his reputation. And also, weak. (For one moment like this, see Moses and the Israelites.) 

 

How to solve this problem?

 

Well, God couldn’t do the logical thing, and not eternally punish humans for not turning out right, because that would also make him look weak. (At least according to Honor Culture thinking…)

 

So instead, he came up with an elaborate scheme in which he would split himself into parts, and one part of him would brutally murder the other, thus allowing himself to only eternally torture some of the humans he created. 

 

He could also maintain control and power by insisting that in order to avoid eternal torture, you had to believe a complex set of doctrines and say a certain prayer. 

 

[Also, don’t forget, you have to be part of a certain organized religious system, adhere to a long list of cultural rules, many of which look deeply misogynist and racist if you actually look at them closely. And vote for the Republican Party.] 

 

Seriously, does this sound like GOOD NEWS in any possible way? “God hates you so much he will torture you forever if you don’t believe like we do and obey our rules.” Really? 

 

***

 

That’s the way the Evangelical “Gospel” sounds to those outside the bubble. 

 

And, that is the way it sounds to me now that I left the tribe. Although, honestly, I haven’t believed in hell since I was in Jr. High, and, looking back, I had grave misgivings about the whole business even as a small child. It just seemed that this version of God was truly psychopathic and narcissistic, a level of evil very few humans seem capable of. 

 

Think about how this would sound in a family situation:

 

“Kids, because you are normal children, and do not do everything I insist you do, even if developmentally inappropriate, and never make me frustrated with you, I have to beat you every moment of the day and night forever. 

 

“Except, well, I have decided to kill your mother so I don’t have to beat you. But you have to tell me how amazing I am for doing this - killing your mother is how you know I love you. And probably I will have to torture most of your siblings because they won’t kowtow.”

 

Any parent who did this would be - appropriately - viewed as a psychopath, and removed from society. 

 

***

 

Also, isn’t this internally contradictory? 

 

If we believe in a Supreme Being who is omnipotent and the very embodiment of love and goodness, we cannot believe in either eternal torture or in penal substitutionary atonement. 

 

Why do I say that?

 

Well, if God is truly all-powerful, and can do whatever they want, and are not bound by anything greater than them, well, there is absolutely no reason that God couldn’t simply pardon humans. No need for a brutal human sacrifice. No need for a magic prayer. 

 

If God can do anything, surely they could do this without any restriction whatsoever. If God cannot simply pardon, then God is not omnipotent. 

 

So, if God could pardon without a brutal human sacrifice, then the issue must be that he refuses to. 

 

Then we come to the second part. A Supreme Being who chooses to eternally torture most of the sentient beings he creates despite being able to do so. What might we call that? A psychopath? Evil? 

 

And what about a God who fully intends to eternally torture creation, but, to save face, creates a complicated mechanism wherein they vent their spleen on an innocent, so that the select few who are either chosen or who pick the right religious beliefs get spared? 

 

I’m sorry, there is no “good news” in any of this. 

 

But what there IS is this: A really damn good psychological control mechanism for organized religion. Promise an afterlife where you will either have eternal joy, or eternal suffering – and which one you get depends on whether you believe US.

 

***

 

My thoughts on Penal Substitutionary Atonement:

 

Perhaps the most dangerous thing that my parents - and Evangelicalism generally - ever did was encourage me to read the Bible for myself. If you want to look for the source of my deconstruction from Evangelical doctrine, it is right there in black, white, and red: 

 

The Bible itself is the biggest reason I have rejected Evangelicalism. 

 

Having read it cover to cover several times, and other parts of it far more than that, I came to the blindingly obvious conclusion that most of Evangelical doctrine is grossly unbiblical. 

 

I mean, if you actually read it without holding in your mind the predetermined doctrinal superstructure, it doesn’t say what Evangelicals say it says. 

 

Evangelicals mostly made a bunch of shit up and expect the rest of us to believe it because they say it is so.

 

In some cases, the Bible is just straight-up weird and incomprehensible. In others, it is clearly speaking from a particular cultural place in ways that do not transfer directly to our own culture without a lot of context we simply do not have. In still other cases, the text assumes certain cultural and political realities and works within them. In all cases, the text simply is of its time - modern science, medicine, political organizations, economic systems, technology were unknown, and thus never addressed. 

 

Furthermore, the Bible isn’t a unified work of systematic theology. It contains a plethora of contradictions - not just in terms of historical and mythological stories - but in theological viewpoints. It is much more of an ongoing argument and discussion. 

 

What it certainly is NOT is God’s Little Instruction Book™.

 

White Evangelicals take the worst possible hermeneutical approach to the text, honestly. It combines literalism (when it serves their purposes, but not when it doesn’t), proof texting, picking and choosing, disregard of historical and grammatical and theological context, and a lot of squinting to force the text to support their predetermined conclusions. 

 

And also, a general approach that compares the culture of today with the culture of the Bronze Age or 1st Century CE, and then decides that the culture of the past was the message of the text - particularly when it supports social hierarchies in their favor. 

 

Hence three of the core litmus tests in our time: Ancient Near Eastern creation myths trump modern science; the message of the Gospel regarding gender is subjugation of women by men; and the ancient belief that sexual penetration was an act of dominance and even violence meant that consensual homosexual acts are the worst sin ever. 

 

And those are just the ones that actually have some link to the text itself.

 

But there are a lot more cases of Evangelical doctrine just making shit up.

 

One of the most egregious is the lie that women are more easily deceived and thus incapable of leadership or even independent thought. That is nowhere in the Bible, and is specifically contradicted in both testaments - women are called by God to be political, military, and church leaders - even apostles - but it is in Patriarchy 101. 

 

But the other one that is clearly a bunch of made-up bullshit is Penal Substitutionary Atonement. 

 

First of all, this seems to have magically appeared during the Protestant Reformation - it wasn’t really a mainstream viewpoint before that. So, I already have my suspicions about it. At minimum, if it were the only true interpretation, it would have been apparent to everyone from the start, not “discovered” 1500 years after Christ. 

 

But also, if you didn’t already know the teaching, there is no way you could read the New Testament and come to that conclusion. Just like there is no way you can look at the fossil record (without bringing a predetermined conclusion with you) and decide that it shows a 6000 year old earth and creation in six literal days. And by the way, those two are absolutely connected. Unless a story with a magic tree and a talking snake is literal history rather than an obvious mythological parable or metaphor, then the myth of Penal Substitutionary Atonement falls completely apart. 

 

But in order to “see” Penal Substitutionary Atonement in the Bible, you have to squint really, really hard. (And keep in mind at all times the theological superstructure - or you will find yourself seeing something very different.) And then take parts of this sentence here, and parts of that sentence in a different place and context by a different author, and then this one over here, and then….and pretty soon you have made a theological Frankenstein’s Monster, sewn together with pieces of the corpses of texts you dismembered. 

 

The thing is, the meaning of the Cross is a mystery. Even the first Apostles had no idea what to make of it, which is why you get Romans and its author (maybe St. Paul, but maybe not) going on a stream-of-consciousness musing trying to find its meaning. (Hint: whatever the author meant in his paragraph-long sentences; it certainly wasn’t PSA.) 

 

Although, if you stop trying to spiritualize it, stop trying to find a theological or cosmological meaning for it, the actual facts aren’t difficult to understand. 

 

A prophet arises, preaching a kingdom that opposes both the power of Empire and the power of hierarchical and rule-based religion, and those who benefited from and wielded that power murdered him. I mean, this is a pattern throughout human history. (And also: “you killed the prophets before me…”)

 

If you go with that, rather than trying to make a doctrine out of it, you can start to look at what Christ taught, and what he did, and go from there. I guarantee you it looks the polar opposite from Evangelical politics and religious practice. 

 

Which might be why early Christianity spread like wildfire among the outcasts of society - women, slaves, prostitutes, racial minorities, eunuchs. Because it was actually good news, not the psychopathic horseshit of a “gospel” that Evangelicals are selling. 

 

“The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.” 

 

If it isn’t good news to the poor…it isn’t good news at all, is it? 

 

On a VERY related note, having read the Gospels many times, I continue to be astounded that the teachings and example of Christ are, from start to finish, about how to live, not about what abstract theology to believe. They are ethical, not theological, and the transformation of an ethical instruction about how to live in the Kingdom of Heaven into mental assent to the truth of some cosmic transaction is just bizarre. 

 

I will look at that a little more closely in the next post.

 

In summary, the problem that Evangelicalism has isn’t a marketing problem: most people know what they are selling already. The problem is that the product is shit. No amount of fervor, no amount of manipulation, no amount of technique, can sell a product that people know is shit.

 

As I will discuss in the next installment, Thomas Paine was right:

 

“Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.”

 

***

 

I get that Penal Substitutionary Atonement is meaningful to a lot of people - particularly older generations. Many metaphors and attempts to understand the ineffable have come and gone - they work for a time and place, but do not resonate with later generations or those from a different culture. 

 

What is inarguable at this time and place, however, is the PSA is definitely NOT resonating with younger people, or indeed, much of anyone outside of the Evangelical bubble. 

It isn’t difficult to understand why, as I pointed out above. It seems illogical, and indeed morally appalling. 

 

This is why I believe that most Evangelicals do not truly believe in either Hell or in Penal Substitutionary Atonement. At the deepest level, any decent human being recoils from the idea that they could experience ultimate joy while knowing that people they love are undergoing ultimate torment.

 

But, at another level, white Evangelicals do believe in Hell and PSA when it comes to those they deem outside their tribe – God will certainly torment the people they hate.

 

That is why, of course, PSA goes hand in shitty glove with truly toxic, cruel, and anti-Christian politics right now, which raises the question of fruit. If PSA bears such toxic fruit, isn’t it likely that the doctrine itself is toxic?