Empirically Considered: The Body and Blood of Jesus VS the Body and Blood of Humans

The Blood of Jesus vs. Human Blood

According to the Gospel Tracts (as well as my training in Christian schools), it is the believer’s faith in Jesus Christ and His Vicarious Atonement of His shed blood on the cross that saves the confessed sinner from judgment before God. If one accepts this, then he or she is assured of eternal life with Christ.


So what would an old unsaved sinner (even more damning, a Secular Humanist and Atheist) like me have to offer the world in light of this fantastic Christian claim of Jesus?

How about reality!

For one: Every month I go to the Blood Connection here in Greenville where I spend from one to three hours giving at least two of the following: blood, plasma or platelets. While lying in the donor’s chair, I’m often informed how many lives my blood and its products will have saved (that’s right: SAVED…Amen?!).

Let’s say an old sinner (or saved Christian for that matter) is injured by doing something stupid (sinful) such as driving while intoxicated and wrecks his vehicle with a lot of blood loss. This individual is now facing the “judgment of death” unless he or she can get an infusion of my -or another donor’s - life saving blood. If, in the case they got my blood, then just like Jesus Christ my blood atoned for their sin by giving them life. But real life here and now and not some pie in the sky in the sweet by and by!

Lets go further and put Christ to the test again. Let’s take the example of a hemophiliac or a cancer patient who desperately needs my platelets in order to live. Now they could do nothing and have a total Biblical faith in Jesus and (via prayer) claim John 14:13-14 (“And whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.” Or they can depend totally on “sinful” and often “unsaved” people (such as my self) and be given life here and now (not just some religious Bull Shit)!

Still have doubts, well just look how many faithful believers in the sect of Christian Science (Mary Barker Eddy’s group) who trusted in FAITH ONLY as promised in the Bible, but have died while praying to Jesus Christ claiming his promises. Also, Jehovah Witnesses who consider honoring God and His Word (the Bible) by not getting blood transfusions.




The Body of Jesus vs. The Body of Humans

Christianity holds the body of Jesus as sinless, pure (that is, undefiled by sin), plus he was fathered by God Himself though a virgin as extra protection. But, empirically speaking, just what value is theology and the body of Jesus for the suffering of humanity in this present life?

In 1999, my fourteen year old daughter was taken to the hospital with chronic vomiting and weight loss. Her blood pressure was 184 over 123. After some lab tests, the staff doctor called in a Nephrologist to confirm the test: End Stage Renal Failure. He told my wife and me that we had three choices: My daughter could live the rest of her life on dialysis, better yet, hopefully one day get a kidney transplant, or we could take her home and let her die. However, we better act soon as she had about two weeks to live!

I remember sitting beside my daughter’s hospital bed and a seeing her now frail body with one tube for in her neck for hemodialysis, plus several more tubes in her arms for plasma and blood.

I also remember my daughter (who had been raised in Sunday School and Church all her life (I let my child attend with their mom and decide for themselves)) who, when she was told that all the churches were “praying for her”, ask me crying: “Daddy, I love my cat and dog and I take care of them. If Jesus loves me, why did he not take care of my kidneys?” I must admit, just how do you answer someone that young and in that much mental pain?

After she was on dialysis for four months and in a state of decline, the doctor told us that some people don’t tolerate it well and my daughter was one of the ones who did not. He told us that any long term life for her would have to be in the form of a kidney transplant.

As an Atheist and Secular Humanist, I came forward and was consider a match.
In short, in November 1999 I gave her one of my kidneys and she has been doing very well health wise since.

With that background said, I want to close with the second part of my thesis below.

Beginning in 2002, my daughter attended her first National Transplant Games. These games are composed of over 3,000 people from the United States who have had kidney, liver, heart, pancreas, lung, bone and bowel transplants given by either a living people or a non-living donors (donated by the family). Although, there is competition at the games, the games themselves are really about the celebration of life here and now.

What I found very interesting at both the opening and the closing ceremonies is that at NO TIME was there ever a prayer offered (even to some god in general), nor did I hear anyone make the statement; “It is only by the Grace of God that I’m here!” Moreover,
at the last two Transplant Games I attended with my daughter, I made it a point to try find out if there was any credit given to religion at all (Christian or otherwise). There was none! I am not saying these people are not religious, but credit was given where credit is due…to secular society and modern medicine.

In short, while Christian apologists sit behind a keyboard in fairly good heath and philosophically discuss the “proofs for God and Christian dogma”, these 3,000 plus transplant reciprocates have looked death in the face and are alive today simply because of secular technology and they know it! Apart from the games themselves, great heart felt thanks are given to modern medicine and the pharmacology that makes their life giving anti-rejection drugs possible…all from sinful man.

In the end, the reality of the body and blood of Jesus (along with Jesus’ fantastic Biblical promises) are, for the terminal chronically sick, left totally out of the reality of life’s reach. Being stored up in some mythical Heaven, they are only awarded after death to those who are deemed good and doctrinally obedient.

However, to try and tell the chronically ill person with end-stage organ failure or someone bleeding to death that somehow it “is God’s will” or that God’s Word requires you to just suffer (or that it was some ploy of Satan) is just plain apologetically trying to save theology at the expense of the dying; a tactic religion is well know for.