Honest Sermons on the Gospel of Mark: Chapter 10

Another mix of flimsy theology and cult propaganda

There are several different topics in this chapter, but the author’s agenda of cult promotion is transparent.
 
Condemning divorce 
 
At the outset (verses 2-12), Mark’s holy hero Jesus makes pronouncements about divorce, positioning his decree as superior to that of Moses. Pay careful attention to two Jesus-scripts in this section:
 
1.     “…from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh.Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” (vv. 6-9)
 
2.     “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” (vv. 11-12)

 
The Catholic church took this so seriously that it elevated marriage to a sacrament. But truly these texts qualify as flimsy theology. People who remarry after divorce are guilty of adultery? The ancient world view was that gods resided overhead, somewhere above the clouds, and were thus positioned to pay careful attention to all human behaviors—including marriage: what God has joined together. We now know that, if there is a master creator deity, it created billions of galaxies and trillions of planets. Why would he/she/it be paying close attention to our species on one tiny planet? —let alone tracking the behavior of all humans. It’s flimsy theology because it is based on a long-outdated concept of our planet’s place in the Cosmos. To justify this theology, we require reliable, verifiable, objective evidence that it is valid—especially the nonsense about remarriage after divorce being adultery.  
 
It is also worth noting that Matthew—when he copied this Jesus-script in Mark—felt that an additional qualifier was appropriate. Mark’s author had written, “whoever divorces his wife and marries another…” Matthew made this adjustment: “whoever divorces his wife except for unchastity and marries another… (Matthew 19:9)
 
It would be hard to calculate how much suffering and anguish this Jesus-script has caused. By one estimate, about 25 percent of evangelical Christians get divorced—with about the same rate for Catholics. And what about the many couples in these categories who don’t get divorced, but put up with a bad marriage? They perhaps realize that it was not God that joined them together—no matter what the church claims—because they were not in fact “made for each other” at all. People make mistakes, and it does no good whatever to insist that a god engineered the mistakes. How do devout evangelicals and Catholics navigate this text? 
 
Be like little children
 
In verses 13-16 we find the story of Jesus blessing children, which has been depicted so often in works of art. The disciples scolded people who brought children to Jesus, but he rebuked them, and we find this Jesus-script: 
 
“Let the children come to me; do not stop them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”
 
There’s the cult warning. You won’t enter the kingdom of our god unless you just believe what we tell you. Little children are not trained to think about what we preach. That’s the key to success. Just trust your religious leaders that they are guardians of truth. 
 
Forget about eternal life if you’re wealthy—and want to stay wealthy
 
In verses 17-27 we find the story of a rich man who asked Jesus what he could do to inherit eternal life. Jesus reminded him of the basic commandments to follow, and the fellow claimed that he’d kept them all since his youth. To which Jesus responded:
 
“‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”
 
The disciples were perplexed, hence we find this famous Jesus-script:
 
“‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!  It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’ They were greatly astounded and said to one another, ‘Then who can be saved?’ Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’”
 
Mark probably created this Jesus-script to reassure the cult followers: since they were genuine followers of their god, it would be possible for them to be saved, to be granted eternal life. 
 
How do millionaire televangelists navigate this text? How do they justify their extravagant lifestyles? Indeed, how do so many devout Christians, who have been taught to be enthusiastic consumers—who make a habit of accumulating many possessions—explain their lives with this Jesus-script in mind? 
 
If you abandon family and your house for Jesus, you’ll see a 100-fold reward
 
This has to be one of the craziest Jesus-scripts in the gospels, pure cult nonsense:
 
“Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of the good news who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” (vv. 29-31)
 
How in the world could people get families and houses back a hundred-fold in this age?
 
For my sake. This is similar to the ugly Jesus-script in Luke 14:26, namely, that hatred of family and life itself are required for being a disciple of Jesus. The holy-hero is the one who must be honored, followed, above all. 
 
Jesus predicts his death and resurrection—again 
 
In verses 32-34 we read that Jesus took his disciples aside—for the third time in this gospel—to tell them that he would be killed, yet rise from the dead. Yet as these events eventually play out, the disciples are clueless as to what is happening. 
 
James and John ask for special treatment
 
These two disciples took Jesus aside to ask a favor: “Appoint us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” (verse 37) Mark provides this Jesus-script in response:
 
“The cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized you will be baptized, but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to appoint, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” (verses 39-40) He adds this, after the other disciples got angry about this request for special treatment:
 
“…whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.” (verses 43-45)

Here too Mark’s author is pushing the cult agenda, that is, the cult’s holy hero has insider knowledge about heaven, eternal life, the nature of his glory. When we see Mark’s agenda in its context, we’re not surprised at all. For an excellent, detailed tutorial on this context, see Richard Carrier’s 2018 essay, Dying-and-Rising Gods: It’s Pagan Guys. Get Over It.
 
Jesus heals the blind Bartimaeus
 
In the final verses of his chapter, 46-52, we read that Jesus was approached by a blind man:
 
“…Jesus said to him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ The blind man said to him, ‘My teacher, let me see again.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go, your faith has made you well.’ Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.” (vv. 51-52)
 
This is a borrowing from magic folklore: Jesus pronounces what amounts to a magic spell, and the fellow tags along after Jesus, his sight restored. 
 
According to ancient superstitions, this is how the world worked. But we know better today: blindness is not cured by magic spells. But again, Mark’s author was obsessed with enhancing the cult hero’s reputation. The last thing on his mind was writing authentic history. For a full discussion of this reality, see Richard Carrier’s On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, the section titled, The Mythology of Mark, pp. 402-456. He drives home the point splendidly in his 2024 essay, All the Fantastical Things in the Gospel according to Mark. 
 
If Jesus and his god were capable of curing blindness so easily, why don’t they exercise this power in our own era, world-wide, all the time? 
 
It doesn’t take advanced critical thinking skills to figure out that Mark 10 cannot be considered history. Not one fragment of the Jesus-script, not a single event depicted in this chapter, can be verified by the methods historians use to write history accurately. There are too many flaws and too much flimsy theology. 
 
 
 
David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes:
·      Guessing About God (2023),
·   Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also available. 
·     Everything You Need to Know About Prayer But May Not Want to Admit (2025)
 
His YouTube channel is here. At the invitation of John Loftus, he has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.
 
The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.