But how to get it? New Testament authors didn’t agree
I recall how stunned I was, many years ago, when a devout Catholic women told me about sitting with her dying mother—who had drifted off to sleep, but was still breathing. The daughter was talking loudly to her, giving her messages to deliver to deceased relatives in heaven. I found this troubling on three levels: (1) Many devout people are sure that deceased relatives are “looking down on them”—monitoring their behavior. If so, why would they need messages from a new arrival? (2) Wasn’t this a breach of protocol? How would the god-in-charge feel about sneaking messages into heaven this way? (3) How could this pious daughter know for sure that deceased relatives had indeed made it to heaven? Isn’t that an unverifiable assumption? Was she totally unaware of the conflicting opinions in the New Testament about how to gain eternal life?
But, quite frankly, her mind had been locked into the certainty—as promised by her clergy—that eternal life is real. So her weird behavior was totally understandable. As was her unawareness of the different opinions about “how to get to heaven” expressed in the New Testament.
Let’s take a look at a few of these opinions.
Matthew 25
In Matthew 25 we find the famous Last Judgement scene, that is, Jesus-script describing how to gain favor with god. It’s a matter of being supremely caring and compassionate. That is, feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, being kind and welcoming to strangers, clothing the naked, visiting those who are sick or in prison—culminating in verse 40: “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even the least of them, you did it to me.” So, being in the presence of god/Jesus awaits as a reward. But there is a horrible fate awaiting those who ignored compassion, e.g., verse 41, “Depart from me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.” And vv. 45-46: “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
By this standard, could this devout Catholic woman be confident that her dead relatives had made it to heaven?
Please note the BAD theology here. Eternal fire, eternal punishment? When humans fail at being compassionate and caring, the god in charge will get even big time. What happened to his compassion? How can the devout pretend to worship a loving god? I suspect that some of the devout, if they ever wise up to this bad theology, will head for the exit.
Matthew 19
In Matthew 19 we find this episode: a man approaches Jesus with a crucial question: “Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may obtain eternal life?” Jesus tells him to keep the commandments, and when the fellow claims to have done that, Jesus responds: ‘If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.’ But when the young man heard this statement, he went away grieving; for he was one who owned much property.” (vv. 21-22)
How many Christians today could pass this test? We live in a consumer-drive culture, with the accumulation of nice things being a measure of success and prestige. Perhaps those super devout Christians who end up in monasteries and convents would qualify, but what about the majority of churchgoers who enjoy the many good things they’ve accumulated? I’ve not noticed any of them—let alone most or all—giving up their possessions to provide for the poor.
There is more irony here. Jesus wants the fellow to sell his stuff and give the proceeds to the poor, but then he adds another qualifier: “…and come, follow me.” This is more cult promotion: following the holy hero offers more assurance that you’re on the way to eternal life. But the author of Luke’s gospel had much more severe ideas about what following the holy hero meant. Divided loyalties were not allowed, hence we find the grotesque Jesus-script in Luke 14:26: “If anyone comes to me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Yes, the Greek word for hate is right there. It is ironic that devout folks assume that their Jesus taught only wonderful things. A careful reading of the gospels destroys this idea. Here is a list of 292 bad, mediocre, and alarming Jesus quotes from the gospels.
John 6:52-58
Here is more grotesque Jesus-script. Eternal life can be achieved by eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the holy hero; here are key verses in this text:
“He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living father sent me, and I live because of the father, so he who eats me, he also will live because of me. (John 6:54-57)
This is an idea derived from other ancient cults, but got nailed into Catholic dogma as transubstantiation at the Council of Trent in the mid-16th century. That is, during the Miracle of the Mass, the bread and wine become the real flesh and blood of the holy hero. When I was growing up in a Methodist church in rural Indiana, we had “communion Sunday” once every quarter, and considered the ritual symbolic. But at the Catholic church on the other side of town, the Mass was done frequently—and the congregants were assured that they were eating the real flesh of Jesus, and drinking his real blood. The Catholic church even created the First Communion ritual, during which kids are granted the right to eat Jesus for the first time. And, of course, the ceremonies and rituals, the excessively elaborate costuming of the priests, the grand churches, the sparkling plates and chalices—all help to divert attention from the pathetic superstition that transubstantiation actually is.
The devout Catholic woman who was giving messages for her dying mother to deliver to deceased relatives probably assumed that they must have ended up in heaven because they’d reaped the stunning benefit of transubstantiation for many years.
Please note that, in contrast to Matthew 25 and Matthew 19, John 6:52-58 has made a dramatic shift to magical thinking. The flesh and blood of Jesus function as magic potions: eat this, drink that, and you get to live forever.
John 3:16
This is probably the first Bible verse I learned by heart as a kid: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” After reading this in chapter 3, careful readers may wonder how the author of this gospel could then, in chapter 6—as we’ve just seen—proclaim the importance of eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking his blood to get eternal life. That is, what’s going on in your head, rather than what you’re eating and drinking, is important for convincing a god that you’re a person worthy of heaven.
Romans 10:8-9
But the apostle Paul was already there a very long time ago. Here is his magic spell:
“The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” (Romans 10:8-9, KJV)
Can anyone win eternal life if all five of the texts are not obeyed?
“Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool.” This is frequently attributed to Mark Twin, but I’ve not been able to verify that. Even so, it’s not really a fair claim. When people—a very long time ago—claimed knowledge of divine matters, they were not necessarily con men. And the folks who feared death, which is such a natural reaction, were not necessarily fools. Why not believe the escape from death promised by people who claimed to have inside knowledge of gods?
But it’s no surprise that eventually, after humans had learned a lot about the world and the cosmos, that serious thinkers grew suspicious of religious bragging about the ways to “get to heaven.” It’s no surprise that faith, blind belief, had to take a back seat. We ask religious experts to show us where we can find reliable, verifiable, objective evidence that there’s a human soul that survives the death of the brain. Once “heaven above” was disproved by astronomy and by advanced knowledge of Earth’s place in the cosmos, theologians changed tactics; they suggested that heaven was a state of being without any specific locale. Again, nice try, but show us the evidence.
When I was much younger, I met an old woman—probably in her 90s—who admitted that she was “ready to go.” She was tired, could no longer do many things she’d enjoyed doing for decades, and had to deal with aches and pains. Hence she welcomed the arrival of death. When you’re young, however, dying is too terrifying to contemplate. When I was in college, and even when I was finally in the ministry, I recall the total panic I felt when I realized that I would die some day. This panic has fueled religion’s promises about getting to live forever: “Just do and believe as we say.”
Mark Twain has been credited with this quote: “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” Researchers have suggested that he actually wrote this: “Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born—a hundred million years—and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life.”
This is a photo of my family taken in 1944. I am the toddler standing on the couch—I was born in 1942. Everyone else is the photo has died. I have no fantasy or delusion—based on ego, fear, and wishful thinking—that they all still exist in some other dimension. There is no reliable, verifiable, objective evidence whatever that this is how the cosmos works. But I have fond memories of our family life together, and I have this photo on my nightstand. I look at it every night before I turn out the light. They deserve to be remembered.
Religion will lose much of its grip on humans when we accept that dying is part of the natural process: stars and planets die, as do countries and tribes, plants and animals. We are not exempt because we have been convinced that there are magic tricks and formulas to escape the inevitable.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment