A favorite atheist blog of mine is Bob Seidensticker’s Cross Examined: Clear Thinking about Christianity. This morning, I read his post, Is This a Powerful New Apologetic Argument?
The post pertains to the question of whether Jesus in the Gospels was
truly morally exemplary, as many Christians say he is. The post is
responding to a Christian blogger, Tom Gilson, who appears to be arguing that Jesus was too good to be merely a legend.
My favorite passage in Bob’s post compares Jesus with the mythological figure of Prometheus, who sacrificed himself for others:
“My choice for this category is Prometheus, the god who brought fire
to mankind. He was punished by being chained to a rock and having an
eagle eat his liver each day, only to have it regrow overnight for the
agonizing process to repeat. (And Christians think that Jesus
had it rough.)…Jesus gave us salvation, a solution to a problem he
invented, while Prometheus gave us fire, something that’s actually
objectively useful.”
Bob says later in the post that Jesus didn’t really do that much: “He
killed a fig tree. He cured some lepers. He raised Lazarus. Sure, Jesus
cured by magic,
and that’s pretty cool, but he did less good in his healing ministry
than a single modern doctor does. He didn’t eliminate smallpox, for
example—modern medicine did.”
Still later, Bob argues that Jesus failed to address crucial moral
issues: “Jesus didn’t stop slavery, didn’t reject polygamy, and didn’t
denounce God’s genocide in the Old Testament. Gilson acknowledges
without rebuttal that Jesus did nothing to addressing the issues that we
reject today.”
Moreover, Bob seems to imply that some of Jesus’ commands were
impractical: “Jesus demanded faith instead of planning for the future
(‘take no thought for the morrow’; ‘do not worry about your life, what
you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear’)”.
Here are some of my thoughts.
1. I agree with Bob that Christianity does not corner the market in
its praise for self-sacrifice. I tend to disagree with the Christian
apologetic argument that humans cannot invent someone so good, and thus
Christ must be real and sent from God. Let me be clear, though: I am not
a Christ-myther. I believe that there was a historical Jesus. But
there is the historical Jesus, and there is the religious interpretation
of Jesus’ significance that was held by early Christians, and maybe
even (on some level) by Jesus himself (depending on which scholar you
ask). My point is that, just because a religion has good things, that
does not prove its divine inspiration, or that it is right while other
religions are wrong. All sorts of religions and systems have good moral
principles or heroes.
2. At the same time, I think that there is a place for digging
deeper when it comes to the Gospels. I have to admit that I am not
always impressed by the story of Jesus when I read the Gospels: I am
curious as to how Christians can see so much depth in the story of
someone who goes around doing miracles. But I have to admit that
Christians can and do get deep, practical insights and applications from
their study of the Gospels. A seemingly boring story may yield more
wisdom than one might expect! Moreover, there are biblical scholars who
highlight that some of what Jesus said and did was revolutionary in
that time.
3. There have been times when I have seen the Jesus of the Gospels
as the best person who ever lived, and there have been times when I have
seen him as a wild-eyed religious fanatic, like a cult leader.
Nowadays, I appreciate some of the ideals that Jesus preached. He told
the rich young ruler, and even his disciples (Luke 12:33), to sell
everything and give alms. I do not plan to do this, for it appears very
idealistic to me, but I can appreciate the principle of not rooting
one’s identity in riches but choosing instead to give to others. Jesus
preached an ethic that was good, but it was above and beyond what many
of us will attain, including those Christians who reinterpret Jesus’
words to convince themselves that their suburban middle-class lifestyles
are acceptable to God.
4. Jesus himself may not have brought revolutionary change in his
lifetime, but his character in the Gospels inspired many others to
accomplish significant things that helped others. Of course,
Christianity has produced ill effects on the world, too.