Are the devout in love with Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians?
When enthusiastic Christians decide they’d better read the Bible cover-to-cover—although it seems not to be a popular hobby—they must surely find themselves stumped: “Why am I doing this?” Maybe this first occurs when they come across the story of Lot in Genesis 19. Lot is a stranger in Sodom, and an angry mob is banging on his door—curious about other strangers he has welcomed to his dwelling—and he tries to calm them down by offering his two daughters for them to molest. At the end of the story, these daughters get Lot drunk on two successive nights and seduce him—and become pregnant. There is no hint here whatever that god was displeased or angry. Why is such a story included in the supposedly Holy Bible?
Leviticus must also prove to a tough slog. So many ancient laws that make no sense. Hey, but keep on going: in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, Jesus-script includes a blunt declaration that not one single law in the Old Testament can be dismissed. Yet the gospels must be a relief after making it through all that precedes the New Testament. However, I have yet to meet religious folks who prefer reading one of the gospels straight through, rather than watching a good movie. The tough slog resumes when they tackle the letters of the apostle Paul. His letter to the Thessalonians is thought by many New Testament scholars to be the first document written that ended up in Christian scripture, and they suspect that II Thessalonians is a forgery.
But if I were to ask churchgoers how Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians has enhanced their understanding of god, how many would have ready answers? How many of them would even recall reading this letter? In recent years I have seen surveys that show a decline in Bible reading among churchgoers, and that appears to have accelerated during the Covid pandemic. But even in the best of times, Paul’s letters probably don’t have a lot of fans.
For a long time I have suggested that the apostle Paul deserves to be labeled a delusional cult fanatic.
Delusional. Like thousands of other religious leaders throughout the centuries, Paul claimed to have inside knowledge about the divine realm—and that’s why gullible people in thousands of religions have fallen for their claims. Paul bragged that he had learned nothing about Jesus from “human sources” (see Galatians 1:11-12)—all that he proclaimed about Jesus came from revelations directly from Jesus in heaven. Why believe Paul’s delusions but dismiss those of so many other religious leaders?
Cult. The early Jesus-movement was a breakaway sect that distanced itself from the Jewish parent. In I Thessalonians, chapters 1 and 2 especially, we read Paul’s babbling about how his followers had accepted the cult:
“We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word, which is also at work in you believers.” (I Thessalonians 2:13)
He flatters the cult members as well:
“For they [believers in Macedonia and in Achaia] report about us what kind of welcome we had among you and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.” (I Thessalonians 1:9-10) No surprise at all that Paul boasts about serving his true god who has a son that can save his followers from divine wrath. Total cult propaganda!
Fanatic: One of Paul’s biggest mistakes was his deep certainty—apparently derived from his hallucinations—that Jesus would very soon descend from heaven to bring his kingdom. This weird belief has poisoned Christian theology for centuries. It has been so hard for so many of the devout to accept that Paul was just plain wrong, and thus countless times Christians of various brands have set the date for the arrival of Jesus. They’ve all been wrong. This delusion, this fanaticism, he states explicitly in I Thessalonians 4:
“For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever.” (vv.16-17)
That is, Paul is sure that this will happen when he is still alive, and all devout believers—dead and alive—will join Jesus in the clouds and be with him forever. Even god’s trumpet will provide the musical accompaniment! This has to be one of the most disastrous texts in the New Testament. How can Paul not have been totally off his rocker? Well, by the standards of the ancient world—with so many unevidenced goofy religious ideas in circulation—Paul wasn’t so unusual. But by our standards today, that is, we would like to see religious ideas grounded in evidence, he does qualify as off his rocker. That is, he was a delusional cult fanatic.
Preachers love to quote the occasional feel-good texts that we find in his letters, e.g.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (I Corinthians 13:4-7)
But this attitude was totally absent when Paul wrote in Romans 1 that gossips, haughty and boastful people, and rebellious children deserve to die. (Romans 1:28-32)
Today we would say he needed therapy. He wrote these tortured words in his letter to the Romans:
“For do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me. For I know that the good does not dwell within me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do the good lies close at hand, but not the ability. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me.” (Romans 7:15-20)
Devout Christians should also be alarmed by the shocking anti-Semitism found in I Thessalonians 2:14-16. Paul tells his Thessalonian flock that they…
“…became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out; they displease God and oppose everyone by hindering us from speaking to the gentiles so that they may be saved. Thus they have constantly been filling up the measure of their sins, but wrath has overtaken them at last.”
There has been considerable debate among scholars about this text, many arguing that it was a later interpolation. Paul seldom mentions Jesus events and episodes that we find in the gospels—remember that he bragged about not learning anything about Jesus from “human sources.” So why would he here suggest that wrath has overtaken the Jews at last? This text, and others in the New Testament, have fueled the virulent anti-Semitism that has caused so much horrible suffering for centuries.
Modern believers who read I Thessalonians critically and thoughtfully might rightly conclude that it got into the New Testament by mistake.
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.
0 comments:
Post a Comment