Christian Inconsistencies on the Treatment of Death

This is something that has caught me off guard a few times. Even though I've recognized these inconsistencies a number of years ago, it is something I tend to forget in discussions with Christians.

For a good example, one of the big advertising points of Christianity is that their god is awesome and loving because he (in this case, Jesus) sacrificed his life for us. I have written about this before, but I made a mistake in that post and I've made the mistake in online discussions with Christians. First, here's some of the text in question:

If Jesus were just a man, then sure, that would be quite a noble deed to give up your life and pay for our sins so that others can benefit...

...However, when we go back to Christian theology*, Jesus is more than just human. If Jesus is really God (or a part of God), then what is death to something that is part of the creator of death? It should be no big deal.

The mistake is in that first sentence. I was looking at death from the perspective that there is no afterlife. Christians, however, supposedly do believe in an afterlife.* So never mind the part about how death should be no big deal to an eternal god; death should be no big deal for humans!

Yet, Christians treat death as a big deal. Really, this pitch about Jesus making this supposedly great sacrifice relies on death being a big deal. If some event or action is not a big deal, then it can't really count as a sacrifice. This should be quite obvious, but I feel the need for a quick example anyway. If I donate $5 to charity, that's not a big deal. $5 isn't very much. If I were to give $5,000 to charity, however, that's a much bigger deal for someone with my income! It's a bigger deal and is thus a bigger sacrifice. So if death is just an event along the way to an afterlife that is supposedly better than this life, then it isn't really a sacrifice.

But I don't find that Christians fully believe in an afterlife like they claim. It was about 4 years ago now that I had brought this up to some Christians on Facebook. There was a story in the news I had found interesting. Best I can remember, it was about a man who was essentially dying from cancer. The cancer had already caused a bunch of throat damage to where he could no longer talk and had to eat through a tube. He had found some group, apparently without the approval of his wife, to assist him with suicide. In the news article, his Christian widow was very upset that this group was "playing God." It prompted me to ask why Christians make such a big deal out of death if it's just a stop along the way?

Well, I don't recall getting any good answers. I may have gotten a couple responses criticizing me for asking the question in the first place (but I really need to dig through my Facebook archives to verify this). The one answer I'm pretty sure I do remember was one that was not at all helpful. It unfortunately left me too dumbfounded at the time to respond. The answer was essentially that Christians view life as precious. There are two problems with that; the first being that I had already reached that conclusion, though it is perhaps my mistake for not being more explicit. The second problem is that it didn't even address the question. OK, so Christians find this life precious. So what? As far as I can tell, they also claim the afterlife to be essentially precious. Was this Christian suggesting the afterlife is not actually that great of a thing? Because if this life is precious and the afterlife is also precious, then there's not really any stark contrast here and we're right back to the idea that death is just a stop along the way. Worse, the impression I get is that the afterlife is more precious than this life. It does not make sense, then, to cling to this precious life when there is an even more precious afterlife waiting.

Again, I find the real answer to be that Christians don't actually believe in it as they claim. They want to believe it, but there is a lack of evidence for the afterlife that they have to deal with. Seriously, what is the evidence for an afterlife other than an old book claiming that it does? (Which isn't very good evidence.) Maybe some so-called "psychics" here and there claiming to talk to the dead? Maybe a few people here and there claiming to see the ghosts of their dead relatives? I'm not convinced that these really count for much, either. I suspect a lot of people claim to believe in these stories because, again, they want to believe. It's the old canard of "actions speak louder than words." If people really believe this stuff, then why all the hardship around death?

This is something I would like to see a good answer for. I don't expect there is one, so surprise me! Why do Christians make such a big deal out of death?


* One potential catch Christians would perhaps call me out on is that people may not have been going to an afterlife until Jesus's sacrifice. This, though, does not at all negate the inconsistent attitude Christians have toward death today.

More on judgements

In an earlier post, I griped about the way the verb "to judge" is abused by Christians. But I wasn't fully done, yet. This time, it's not so much about the definition as opposed to what they say we should do.

Which is basically that we should not judge. I assume that they again mean the word in the sense of "to condemn" and are not including positive judgements. Even then, this is a huge problem. Should we let all criminals out of prison, then? And abolish the court system? You know what we call the person who sits at the head of a courtroom? We call them a judge. You know why we call them that? Because they hand out judgements!

This idea is just simply insane. Since I don't think most Christians are actually insane, I am led to conclude that they are just parroting an idea that they think sounds nice without actually thinking about what it means. (That is, after all, essentially what "to parrot" means.) But if there are any Christians who have given this at least some thought, I am rather curious as to how they might rationalize this belief.

I encountered a Christian not too long ago that was more precise and said, "by any measure this world has chosen to judge." I wonder, then, if an excuse would be to claim that courts are divinely appointed, as claimed in Romans 13:1. That judge is then doing God's work, so that's OK?

On that, I do have some questions for Christians who make claims that we are not to judge:

• What do you really mean when you say that? Do you really mean everyone, or is it OK to judge against those who are suspected of committing crimes?
• I hear this a lot lately in regards to gay rights. For those Christians who (a) support gay rights and (b) do think it is OK to judge against those who are suspected of committing crimes, how would you respond if being gay were considered a crime? Might the claim be that the law is unjust? On what basis do you make that claim?

I would probably have other questions, but those are at least my starter questions to help me wrap my head around things.

When a Law is not a Law

   OK, so last month I was discussing the argument about the laws in the OT not applying. I pointed out that there are passages in Matthew that contradict this idea. I said then that there could very well be other verses in the NT that contradict Matthew. I should have known there would be. I was reminded of this when reading a blog post on Paul. I was reminded of how he was trying to convert the Gentiles who didn't want to have to get circumcised (which is part of the OT law). Paul, it would seem, came up with the idea that, since Jesus died for a people's sin, people could now sin as much as they want! It's not quite the same idea as this argument of the law not applying. It has the advantage of being more consistent with theology, but the end result really isn't different — either way, there is no law that Christians are required to follow.

   One question, though, is why would Christians go with this argument of the law not applying when they have an argument that's ready-made in the Bible? I think the answer to this is that the ready-made argument makes the consequences of not having a law to follow obvious. This leads me to a point I had not bothered making the last time: though OT law has a lot of absurdities, there are a few things that are good — most notably "don't steal" and "don't murder." Christians don't have to follow these laws, either, if they think the laws don't apply. With no law, there is nothing Christians can't do! Now, if you use the argument, "We don't have to obey the law" as opposed to "The law no longer applies," I think these consequences are more obvious as the former is an admittance to being a law breaker.

Dumb Christian Arguments that Cause My Head to Explode: "Old Testament Laws No Longer Apply"

   This — and variations thereof — is one that I hear a lot. Often I hear it from more liberal Christians, but even the more conservative Christians use this when they are out to defend their religion from parts so despicable that even they have to admit as much. (Personally, the last time I encountered this was with a woman**** working for the Obama campaign and she was using this as a reason conservatives are wrong to fight against equality for homosexuals.) The main problems, as I see them, are twofold:

1. This is not clearly* supported in scripture as far as I am aware. In fact, I know scripture says just the opposite in Matthew 5:18 — "For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished." Oh, and if you teach people that even the least (however that is determined) of the laws are not important, you risk your spot in heaven.
   
   Side note: This reminds me that the visitation pastor speaking at my niece's baptism told the parishioners that those laws weren't important to know. Boy did I want to just about scream at that moment! (Which was further instigated by her and the associate(?) pastor discussing whether the number of laws was closer to 600 or 620, to which I really wanted to shout, "There are 613!!!") It's bad enough when churches teach things as fact that contradict scientific knowledge (that particular day it was that "the wind blows wherever it pleases" — in reality, wind blows from cold air masses toward warm air masses); it's a whole nother story when they can't even get their own scripture right!


2. Now, you may be able to find contradictions in the Bible (there's a big surprise!), in which case the bigger issue is that the core of the Christian theology of the major denominations in the USA does not support this idea. From the first point, the prior verse (Matthew 5:17) has Jesus claiming he came to fulfill the law. As per Christian theology (including that of the church mentioned in the side note above), Jesus was supposedly a person free of sin who died to serve as punishment for all of us sinning humans. Well, what is "sin"? Basically, a person sins when they violate one of those laws. (If you look at Wikipedia, "sin is the act of violating God's will." But note that the link for "God's will" goes to the article for "Divine law.") So if you claim that the law no longer applies, then a person can no longer sin. Yet, Christian theology teaches that we do still sin. Therefore, the laws must still be in effect.

UPDATE: I was reminded of where the contradictions in the Bible are. I've addressed this in a short post here.

   If this argument is so bad, why do Christians use it? I think the answer is twofold. One, people generally don't examine arguments for logical flaws, which allows bad arguments to work. This leads to two, which is that the goal is to find an argument that successfully defends the faith, not one that is logically sound. And the faith requires a defense because many of those laws are absurd (can't eat shellfish is the common example), no longer followed, or it is now recommended that one does the opposite of the law. (Here's one I violated just last week by having my dog neutered: "Not to castrate the male of any species; neither a man, nor a domestic or wild beast, nor a fowl.") Christians know having such laws in the books (see what I did there?) makes their religion look bad. My suspicion would be that Christians have used other excuses to defend the OT laws in the past, but they were less successful than this commonly used excuse that the laws no longer apply and therefore are no longer used.

   And what happens when the religious have their logical flaws pointed out to them? Well, they also have handy defense mechanisms against atheists like myself. Typically, ad hominems are unleashed. We are just these bitter atheists who hate their god and are just out to destroy religion (maybe we are even doing the work of Satan), so any argument we make can be ignored,*** logical though it may be. And then they return to their echo chamber of fellow Christians who reinforce their belief that they are not irrational.


* There are likely verses in the New Testament where Jesus is claimed to have said something that contradicts one of those OT laws. I can't think of any specific examples. "Turn the other check" instead of "an eye for an eye" apparently isn't one of them (because "an eye for an eye" is not law). But if there are such verses, I would count them as the contradictions they are and not as evidence that Jesus was doing away with the laws.

** This reminds me that I need to add to my first asterisked note above. I think there are verses in the NT that have Jesus violating OT law. Again, I can't think of any specific examples. But, yet again, these should be counted as the contradictions they are and not as evidence that Jesus was doing away with the laws.

*** The one thing I am actually bitter about, if you could not tell, is being ignored simply for being an atheist.

**** I kind of wish I would have engaged with her on that. But, at the time, I was not intending to have such a conversation (she is the one who brought it up). In hindsight, she is exactly the type of person I need to have such conversations with, because she might not have been able to easily dismiss my argument considering that we had shared political goals (common ground takes the edge off of ad hominems).