April 18, 2011
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Is it easy to be saved?
Intro:
The Bible does not portray salvation as trite and as easy as modern pop-culture Christianity would like us to believe. Many Christians are of course under no illusions that their afterlife plan entails "a difficult life," but they don't seem to recognize the implications of that when juxtaposed to what is at stake according to their own doctrine.
This post is a supplemental post for my argument map on the injustice of the Christian doctrine of hell (which is forthcoming in a few days).
I've always complained I've never met any "real" Christians since none of them have all the cool magic powers the early Church had. But even those "obvious" Christians can't be too confident:
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'
Let's not forget the religious moderates among us:
So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
You guys should definitely stop being so not-Westboro-Baptist on us.
And if you think this god will judge you fairly based on your own standards (I do mean you, Richard Carrier), consider:
"Consider carefully what you hear," he continued. "With the measure you use, it will be measured to you—and even more. [emphasis mine]
Wow...that seems a bit unnecessarily dishonest, but whatever. Who are we to talk back to the Christian god? Moving on...
And if you think this god is necessarily intimately cultivating your soul..chew on this:
"Then the man who had received the one talent came. 'Master,' he said, 'I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed.
The "Master" is clearly meant to represent the Christian god in this salvation parable and that seems quite a haphazard "whatever happens happens" methodology. That makes me feel extremely secure.
And for you believing slackers out there:
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.
No wonder it says:
Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling,
That sounds pretty tough. This planet doesn't seem very geared towards generating the maximum number of saints any more than it seems set up to generate the maximum number of professional basketball players. In case you thought only Hitler will end up in hell:
But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. [emphasis mine]
The body count of hell has to come from somewhere, folks. So it seems almost certain that many more Christians than not who will be reading this should have a great deal less confidence in their salvation, "realistically" speaking.
I quote all this in order to make the Christians who say, "it's so easy, just believe" a little antsy. Not quite feeling like an Olympic saint today? Not so keen on 9 out of 10 people you know being royally screwed over for all eternity (or having to watch)? Wondering why you have to play such a dangerous game without your consent that you didn't start? Second guessing how meaningful it is to have this god's grace "on your team" when it's still pretty much dependent on you? Thinking maybe that this god isn't such a great guy after all? If you think everything is okay here...you seem quite mistaken to say the least. You can quote verses that more uplifting things and yet they will not magically cancel out anything said here.
Scripture seems keen on painting a very grim picture and when apologists and evangelists would like to spin that in a way that is not really representative of the contents of their holy book, non-believers such as myself wonder where the intellectual honesty of the defenders of Christianity wandered off to. Because this is what I see:
It's like apologists manage to see "Buddy Jesus" despite the obvious "Jigsaw Jesus" architecture of the situation. In the Saw horror movies, Jigsaw defends himself as not a murderer, because apparently even though his victims were put in some overtly panic inducing environment...they could have immediately seen Jigsaw's perspective, followed all the rules and saved themselves. This is the moral equivalent of saying, "I'm not a hit man...there was a 10% chance my sniper bullet could have been blown off course by the wind." Similarly, it seems the Christian god might try to say, "I'm not an evil god...there was a ten percent chance you could have been saved given the convoluted circumstances I let you be born in." Jesus did seem to call the final score there in case you thought all of this might turn out all right in the end.
You decide.
Outro:
The next supplementary post to my forthcoming argument map will be, "Does the Bible teach eternal suffering for the unsaved?" since there are apparently many Christians in denial of that in some form.
Ben
