Tough question, since there are major disagreements about gospel Jesus
In the article I posted here on 27 March 2026, I commented on the book by Karl and Laura Forehand, Out Into the Desert: Thriving Outside Organized Religion. This devout, evangelical couple had been very active in the churches they served (Karl as pastor), but arrived at the conclusion that the church was wearing them out. So they made their exit, and this book was written to explain the reasons for doing so.
A few days ago, 8 April 2026, Jim Palmer published a long essay titled, Christianity Has a Jesus Problem. He begins the essay with this blunt observation:
“Christianity has a Jesus problem. Not because he is absent, but because he is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. His name is invoked constantly, his image embedded in doctrine, institutions, and identity, and yet the life he embodied often feels strangely out of reach of the system that claims to represent him. The issue is not belief. It is alignment. The gap between the figure at the center and the structure built around him has widened to the point where the comparison itself has become uncomfortable, even destabilizing. And once that gap is seen clearly, it becomes difficult to ignore the question that follows: what happens when the system carrying his name no longer resembles the life it claims to follow?”
Palmer then discusses the problem of Joel Osteen, the ostentatiously wealthy televangelist. Not too long ago there was a comment about him on Facebook: “Joel Osteen tests negatively for Christianity.” The same would seem to apply to a multitude of millionaire televangelists, such Kenneth Copeland, who owns private jets—“because god wants me to have them.”
The televangelists outperform the Catholic church when it comes to show business.
It's such a puzzle to me that the folks who flock after these performers can’t see through the blatant exploitation the priests and preachers are getting away with. Another example of which is illustrated by a cartoon (floating around on Facebook) depicting a preacher in the pulpit, discussing Jesus-script found in Matthew 19, addressed to a wealthy young man:
“‘If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.” (Matthew 19:21-22)
The preacher then says, “Now I’m going to explain why this doesn’t apply to any of us.” Everyone in the pews is so relieved, exclaiming, “Whew!”
Palmer admits that he left Christianity behind—but he found it hard to give up on Jesus. He offers this assessment:
“So the question isn’t just whether American Christianity is in trouble. That much is obvious. The more uncomfortable question is whether the modern church would even survive contact with Jesus as he actually was. If he walked into it, would he recognize it as his own, or would he respond to it the same way he responded to the religious systems of his time, with confrontation, disruption, and refusal to legitimize what had drifted from its original intent?
“That question matters because it shifts the focus away from defending or attacking the institution and toward something more fundamental: whether the structure that carries his name still bears any meaningful resemblance to what he actually stood for, or whether it has become something else entirely, something that can only sustain itself by avoiding that comparison.”
I have added bold and italics to a few of his words: Jesus as he actually was and what he actually stood for. But how can we possibly know that? Later in the essay, Palmer wrote:
“Writing about Jesus almost guarantees disagreement. The range of views is wide, from denying he existed at all to affirming him as divine in a way no one else is. What matters here is not settling that debate, but clarifying the figure being referenced. Because the entire argument depends on the comparison.”
How can we clarify the figure being referenced?
Jesus as he actually was is not something that can be known. There is now considerable skepticism that Jesus existed at all; a wide range of scholarly works make the case that from the get-go Jesus was a fictional, mythical figure. See the books written by Earl Doherty, Richard Carrier, David Fitzgerald, Raphael Lataster, Robert Price, R. G. Price, Adam Green.
This was published recently of Facebook by scholar Richard C. Miller—yes, it’s a long quote, but an important one:
“The Gospels Speak the Language of Gods—Not History
No ancient author in classical antiquity saturates a narrative with demigod tropes by accident.
Divine conception. Wonder displays. Mastery over nature. Postmortem appearances. Translation beyond death. These are not mere decorative elements. They are classification markers — the established signals that a figure belongs to the category of the divinized: the world of Herakles, Asclepius, Dionysus, and Romulus. Ancient readers knew this language and so did the authors.
“But this is the crucial point: these signals did not operate in the ancient domain of historiography. They did not invite verification, source comparison, or critical scrutiny. They operated in the domain of cultic meaning — where legend narratives were designed to produce belief, identity, and devotion.
“The Gospel writers were not naïve transmitters of memory. They were literate composers working inside that symbolic system. To imagine them unaware of what they were doing is to imagine them uniquely blind within a culture otherwise fluent in its own mythic grammar. They are not preserving a man. They are constructing one — in the only language that invokes cultic belief and confers cosmic significance.”
Adam Green, in his recent book, The Jesus Deception, explains very well how the New Testament authors created their figure of Jesus by scouring older scriptures for texts that seemed to apply.
Careful analysis and critique of the church by Jim Palmer and Karl & Laura Forehand are very much to be welcomed. But it’s vital as well that the problems presented by the gospels be studied critically, thoroughly: don’t take it for granted that the gospels are historical documents.
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.
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