Divinity of Doubt

But let’s set aside, as if it did not exist, this inconvenient reality and address ourselves to the question of whether Jesus died for our sins. Before we explore this issue, we should note that the very question presupposes that Jesus existed. Though not unanimous, particularly among some prominent German and Dutch theologians of the nineteenth century, the vast majority of theologians and religious scholars today believe he did. Moreover, the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth is arguably confirmed by non-Christian writers within a century of the time of Jesus.

The earliest and, it appears, the clearest non-Christian reference to Jesus (though its provenance has been seriously questioned—see endnote discussion) appears in the A.D. 93 work Antiquities of the Jews by the first-century Jewish general and historian Josephus. Born in A.D. 37, four years after Jesus died, Josephus wrote:

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ, and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

Josephus, of course, was writing only what he had heard about Jesus, most probably the oral history passed down by Jesus’ disciples. It obviously cannot be said that whatever disciples of a leader—up to and including today’s cult leaders and New Age gurus—say about him is true. Nonetheless, even the most far-out believers don’t normally rhapsodize about a leader who they know never even existed.²

In A.D. 115, a Roman historian, Tacitus, wrote in his history of Rome, The Annals, “He from whom the name Christianus was derived, Christus, was put to death by the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius.” And Suetonius, another Roman historian (A.D. 69–140), wrote around A.D. 120 in his book The Twelve Caesars that “because the Jews at Rome [a reference to disciples of Jesus who, after Jesus’ death, left Palestine to preach the gospel of Jesus to the people of the ancient world] caused continuous disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus” (obviously Christus, Christ in Greek; also, the word “instigation” would not be the best word to use to refer to Jesus since Jesus had already died), Roman emperor Tiberius Claudius (10 B.C.–A.D. 54) “expelled them from the city.” They returned and were executed under the new emperor, Nero, around A.D. 64.³

Historian Will Durant, in his The Story of Civilization, makes this perceptive observation: “That a few simple men [the disciples of Jesus] should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels.” Albert Einstein added an almost equally perceptive observation when he was asked by German poet George Sylvester Viereck whether he believed in the historical existence of Jesus. “Unquestionably ! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.”

MANY CHRISTIANS ACTUALLY BELIEVE the palpable irrationality that because, they say, all humans are the descendants of Adam, when he and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, Adam’s sin entered the human race.^o Thus, we are all born with a sinful nature,⁴ and this “original sin” is on our souls.

The incontestable implausibility of original sin forbids, in polite society, any serious consideration of the notion. But I do believe in the secular counterpart of original sin—that beneath the veneer and superficiality of everyday social intercourse, mankind is fatally flawed, most humans, when given the opportunity, being disposed to cruelty, avarice, and immorality.

I know that when many of you readers see these words, you will instinctively reject what I have said, believing in the essential goodness of human beings. This, in fact, is the generally accepted view of mankind, even of most philosophers. “Deep down,” one always hears, “most people are good.” But my view is that people are just fine; that is, until their own interest is involved. When that happens, watch out because most people do not have sufficient character to rise above their own self-interest. Not only do they become bad, but, and this is remarkable, many times perversely so.

I would offer much evidence in support of what I have just said if this book were the proper place for such a presentation, but it is not. But you might think about this little story. A while back when a young woman was remarking to me about the intrinsic goodness of people, I told her that in no more than fifteen seconds I could demonstrate to her not only that she was wrong but that she herself never truly believed what she was telling me. She found this virtually impossible to believe and challenged me to do so. I told her to imagine coming out of her home one morning and seeing her car, parked out on the street, having been dented on the driver’s side by a passing car, presumably during the night. On the windshield is a note from the driver with his name and phone number on it, asking her to call him so that he could take care of the damages. “Would you be surprised?” I asked her. After a thoughtful pause, she smiled knowingly to me and said in resignation, “Yes.” I didn’t have to ask her the obvious question: If most people, as she said, are good, why would she be surprised?

Before we move on, let me just pick one real-life example among hundreds of others I could give you. What about multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical companies like Guidant, Eli Lilly, Bayer, etc. continuing to sell medicines and products that were big moneymakers for them after their own internal studies connected them to consequences like strokes, heart attacks, and deaths, not releasing this information to consumers or prescribing doctors until the Food and Drug Administration, after its own studies, forced them to do so? This is so common that the New York Times recently reported it was “routinely” done by the companies.

I know, I know. You’re saying it’s too hard to believe. The only problem is that it’s true. A few among many captions of front-page articles in the past several years: “Drug Makers Sought to Keep Regular Cold Remedies on Store Shelves After Their Own Study Linked Them to Strokes”; “Guidant Corporation Admits That It Hid Problems of Artery Tool” that caused deaths. After an October 27, 2010, New York Times headline that “GlaxoSmithKline, the British drug giant, has agreed to pay $750 million to settle criminal and civil complaints that the company for years knowingly sold contaminated baby ointment,” a January 18, 2011, Times update on Glaxo reported that the company was setting aside $3.4 billion to defend itself from investigations and lawsuits resulting from over 50,000 heart attacks caused by the use of its big-selling diabetes medicine, Avandia. A study revealed that Glaxo’s “own research” showed the drug was hazardous, but Glaxo did not warn “physicians or patients.”

Corporate executives, drowning in literally tens of millions of dollars from salaries, bonuses, and stock options, find it’s just not quite enough. They want that fifth Monet, second yacht, third vacation home. Let me leave the subject with this April 12, 2006, New York Times article captioned “Jurors Add Nine Million Dollars in Damages.” The article said that “A jury in Atlantic City yesterday found that Merck had misled the Food and Drug Administration about the dangers of its painkiller Vioxx and acted with wanton disregard for patients taking the drug. Epidemiologists estimate that Vioxx may have caused 100,000 heart attacks.”

I believe that although there are millions upon millions of very wonderful people in the world who do have sufficient character to rise above their own self-interest, they are in the distinct minority. And I say this not because of my intimate exposure to the darkest side of humanity in my years as a criminal prosecutor, but by being an observer of the human condition.

If you think this assessment of mine is too harsh, for those of you who believe that the bible is the word of God, in Genesis 8:20 God says, “People’s thoughts and actions are bent toward evil from childhood.” Worse yet, Ephesians 2:3 says, “All of us are born with an evil nature.” Although, as indicated, I don’t agree with the all-inclusive nature of that statement, if the bible is correct, and if, as Christianity believes, God created all of us humans, what type of monstrous maleficence would cause him to give every human an evil nature?

In any event, getting back to original sin, Christianity believes that we start our life not being in God’s grace, having original sin on our soul, and because of this, he cannot accept us into his home in heaven to spend eternity with him. But God wanted to find a way to get us back into his good graces. The only way he could figure out how to do this—listen to this—was to have a virgin (Mary) conceive his son (God had a son? Really?) through the power of the Holy Ghost (God, but only one of the three persons of the holy trinity), without impregnation,⁵ and then, out of his infinite love for man, have his son die for our sins. Why would his son, Jesus, have to die for our sins? Because of God’s sense of justice, meaning that we have to pay for the sinful nature we inherited from Adam, a sinful nature that God decided we had to inherit. But knowing that the debt of Adam’s sin, which was now mankind’s, was so great and the offense to God of Adam’s eating the apple was so prodigious that mankind could never find a way to pay for it, instead of our trying to pay for our sinful nature, God took upon himself the debt we owed him by sacrificing his son on the cross as payment for our sins (Romans 5:12–21). Jesus, per Christianity, redeemed us in God’s eyes by giving his life “as a ransom” for our salvation (Matthew 20:28, 1 Peter 18–19).

As humorist Will Rogers once said in a different context, “That’s the most unheard of thing I ever heard of.” If anyone actually believes this incredible fairy tale after actually thinking about it, my view is that there is something seriously defective about his or her mental faculties—namely, a very severe intellectual hernia.⁶

Before I get further into the inherent nonsensicality of it, let me see if I have this right. Adam and Eve disobey God and eat the apple (I would think God could care less), and God gets so teed-off that he decides to punish billions of people throughout the rest of time for it by giving them a sinful nature. (Talk about Italians having long memories.) And then he has his son die on the cross as atonement for our sins and for the sinful nature he, yes he, gave us. My, my. If, as Sophocles said, a lie never lives to be old, this cannot be said of a false belief.

In addressing ourselves to Romans 5:12—“When Adam sinned, sin entered the entire human race, for everyone sinned”—we must ask, If God is all-just, how can he possibly punish you and me for what Adam did? No court in the land, no court of public opinion, would ever impute to a man the sins of his father, and we’re talking about his immediate father, not Adam, his alleged ancestor of, per the bible, thousands of years before he was even born. I mean, there are verses in the bible itself that speak out against this. Ezekiel 18:20 explicitly says, “The one who sins is the one who dies. The child will not be punished for the parent’s sins.” (See also Deuteronomy 24:16 and 2 Chronicles 25:4.)

So how can God do something like this? Apparently because, if we’re to believe holy scripture, this perverse, wrongful, topsy-turvy, repugnant type of injustice, where the completely innocent are punished for the sins and crimes of the guilty, is God’s MO. For example, in Exodus 20:5, he tells the Israelites, “I punish the children for the sins of their parents to the third and fourth generations.” In 2 Samuel 24:1–15, because David, the king of the Jews, took a census of the people of Israel and Judea, God sent a pestilence on the people of Israel for three days, killing 70,000 people in anger over David’s sin (the implication was that because all the people belonged to the Lord, only he should know their exact number). And, of course, he punished thousands of the poor innocent people of Egypt, including their newborn male babies, because he didn’t like the obstinacy of their pharaoh. And Christianity believes that God is all-just? What figure in history has had a more warped and twisted sense of justice than the Christian and Jewish God?

But ah, born-agains would say if you tell them that we shouldn’t be punished for Adam’s sin, “You don’t understand. Adam represented mankind.” But I didn’t choose him to be my representative. God did. To punish mankind forevermore for the sins of the first man on this planet is, on its face, grotesquely unjust. If God not only created a defective human in Adam, as Christians insist he did, but also decided to make him representative of mankind, isn’t it very clear that God was doing everything here (creating Adam and also deciding to make him represent mankind)? As such, how can he make us responsible for things only he, not us, had anything to do with?

It must be noted that if Jesus died for our sins, we know he achieved absolutely nothing by his sacrifice. Why do we know this? As indicated, Romans 8:3 says that God “destroyed sin’s control over us” by giving his son as a sacrifice for our sins. Yet we know that his death on the cross didn’t stop humans from sinning at all. A thousand trillion sins, many extremely grievous, have been committed by mankind since Jesus died on the cross. So isn’t Christianity forced to concede that Jesus’ mission was a terrible failure? And if Jesus was God, how could he fail to achieve what he intended? Isn’t this a question that deserves an answer?

Additionally, we also know by the New Testament’s own language that no one is saved by the mere act of Jesus dying for our sins. Per Evangelical Protestantism, this can only be done if we are “born again”—confessing our sins, believing that Jesus is our savior, and turning our lives over to him. And per Catholicism, if we don’t have faith in Christ plus good works (James 2:20), or we die with a mortal sin on our soul, we’re going to hell.

Also, we have to be baptized to be saved. (By the way, why was Jesus baptized? [Mark 1:9]) Jesus himself said, “No one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water” (John 3:5; see also Acts 2:38). Jesus also said, “Anyone who believes and is baptized will be saved” (Mark 16:16). “If anyone shall say that baptism is optional; that is, not necessary for salvation, let him be anathema” (Council of Trent, 1547; Denzinger-Schonmetzer, 1618).

In an eight-page cover story in Time magazine on April 12, 2004, on the question, Why Did Jesus Have To Die?, the six contributing writers, acknowledging that they didn’t have the answer, and looking for anything at all that made sense, even mentioned this theory advanced by some early theologians:

The payee [in Christ’s death] was not God but the devil, who some felt had a legitimate claim on humanity because of Adam’s fall. . . . The Crucifixion and Jesus’ subsequent descent into what they called Hades⁷ [was] a kind of divine bait-and-switch scheme whereby the devil thought he had claimed a particularly virtuous human victim [Jesus] only to discover he had allowed into his sanctum the power that would eventually wrest humanity back from his grasp. Saint Augustine likened the devil to a mouse, the Cross to a mousetrap, and Christ to the bait.

As outrageously unhinged as what you have just read is, it’s not too much more foolish and far-out than the more mainstream explanations for Jesus’ dying on the cross. Swirling, as we are, in a maelstrom of craziness, let’s examine further the seminal Christian tenet that God had Jesus die for our sins. Isn’t this a non sequitur of exquisite proportions? How would God having his son die on the cross expiate our sins? It makes no sense at all, and no Christian thinker has ever begun to adequately answer this question. As I’ve indicated, the Christian writer and thinker modern Christians respect the most, someone whom Billy Graham cites frequently, is the late C. S. Lewis, and no less than five copies of his best-selling book Mere Christianity were sent to me by readers of my Outrage piece on agnosticism, assuring me that the answer to all my questions would be found in his book. But I found that Lewis, in trying to defend things absurd on their face, was almost invariably very sappy himself. Lewis’ attempted answer to this question was to say, “It is a matter of common experience that when one person has gotten himself into a hole [here, mankind], the trouble of getting him out usually falls on a kind friend [here, God through Jesus].” Swell, but here, the kind friend who gets us out of the hole is the very same person, God, who put us in the hole in the first place by holding us to be guilty of Adam’s sin.⁸

Many Christian theologians argue that God’s sacrificing his son for our sins shows the great love that God has for man. But why did God feel the need to show us his love? Were people out on the road in ancient Palestine demonstrating with signs beseeching God to show them his love? In other words, other than Mel Gibson, who needed this? No one, apparently, but silly God.

Further, why would it be necessary for Jesus to die on the cross for our sins to be forgiven? You mean, Jesus’ dying on the cross allowed God to absolve man of his sins? He could only do it (I thought he was all-powerful) by having his son die on the cross? No other way? Pardon the expression, but for chrissake, the act of Jesus dying on the cross for our sins is so devoid of any sense that even Jesus himself, the one who supposedly died for our sins, had no idea what it was all about, crying out from the cross, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (Aramaic for “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” [Matthew 27:46]). I mean, if even Jesus Christ, the Son of God, never had a clue what this was all about, how can you and I be expected to?

And it is no defense to allege, as Christianity does, that this was the human side of Jesus talking. Even if we take this to be true, this human side, through the gospels, is the only side of Jesus the world has ever known. And two points cannot be disputed. Per the New Testament, this human side was a million times closer to God the heavenly father than any other human ever was or ever will be. And therefore, if Jesus didn’t know what the hell was going on, I repeat, how can we be expected to? So whether we emphasize the humanity or divinity of Jesus, there is no way to get around the profound implications of his cry from the cross on Golgotha.

Also, assuming for the sake of argument that God had his son die on the cross to pay for the sinful nature imputed to us by the sin of Adam, why did he see fit to give us this sinful nature? What did he hope to gain by this? Indeed, why did he create Adam and Eve with a sinful nature in the first place, knowing (remember, he’s all-knowing) that they would eat the fruit of the forbidden tree, that this fall of man in the Garden of Eden would require him to sacrifice his son to atone for it, and that even this atonement would not be sufficient to prevent billions of humans from suffering eternal damnation throughout time? Is this some type of treacherous game he is playing that makes him guilty of the worst villainy that can be imagined?

Christianity embraces beliefs and concepts that run completely counter to common sense. They can be defended only if we make assumptions and adopt rules of logic that are never used or even heard of in any other area of human thinking. I’d like to buy some of the things that Christianity preaches, but my intellect, as limited as it is, keeps getting in the way.

If God was willing to have his son die for our sins, why can’t he do the infinitely less serious thing of forgiving us weak mortals for our sins on earth and letting us spend life in heaven with him? I mean, the bible says it is God’s nature to be forgiving (Psalm 86:5, Colossians 3:23). Since he is also supposed to be all-merciful (James 5:11), forgiving us would have to be easier for him than having his own son crucified on the cross. And if the answer is that he is also all-just (Deuteronomy 32:4), I say his forgiving nature should trump his just nature, particularly when the justice he wants to bring about is against people he himself made, with all their defects, in his image, and it wasn’t even they who ate the forbidden fruit, but their long-ago ancestors.

In the very same vein, Jesus, on the cross, said, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). If Jesus could forgive those who murdered him, how can he not forgive those who commit the infinitely lesser sin of not believing he is the Son of God and their savior, instead condemning them to hell (Mark 16:16)?

Billy Graham gives us another reason that God had Jesus die on the cross. “He was not only dying for our sins but he was dying to destroy the power and the works of the devil.” (See also 1 John 3:8.) But Graham forgot to tell us how in the world Christ’s dying on the cross could destroy the devil. What’s the connection? It’s just another silly non sequitur in the long litany that litters the Christian landscape. Also, even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that Graham is correct, since God is all-powerful, why wouldn’t he just wave his hand and destroy the devil? Why would he permit his son to be nailed to the cross to do so? God is supposed to be all-intelligent, is he not? This sounds really stupid to me, Billy.

But let’s go on. Since Billy says that, God had Jesus die on the cross to destroy the devil, did it work? Billy acknowledges that “we don’t see that destruction yet.” Yet, Billy? This is 2,000 years later! Billy Graham doesn’t stop to realize that, as alluded to earlier, God failed here, and this means that he’s not all-perfect and all-powerful.

Graham says he believes that the miseries of life will finally end and peace on earth will finally come “when Jesus comes back as the Messiah,” but says he does not know when that will be. But whenever it is, Billy, it will be too late by then. Say he comes 1,000 years from now. Billy, we’ve already had 2,000 years of suffering and carnage. We’re going to have to endure another 1,000 years of wars and murder and pain before it all ends by Jesus’ second coming? Again, Billy, we need an end to all this horror now, not 1 or 2 or 3,000 years from now. It’s already 2,000 years too late. Jesus, after his resurrection, said to his followers about his second coming, “Behold, I am coming soon” (Revelation 22:12). Right.⁹

One further observation before we move on. Christian theology asserts not just that God had his son die on the cross to expunge the stain of Adam’s sin from man’s soul. No. Christianity goes way beyond this. It maintains that Jesus “died for our sins for all time” (1 Peter 3:18, Hebrews 10:12), that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross “obtained eternal redemption” for mankind (Hebrews 9:12). Billy Graham says, “Christ paid the penalty for our sins, past, present, and future. That is why he died on the cross.” Christian author Dave Hunt writes that Jesus “suffered the demands of his own justice in payment for every sin ever committed or that will ever be committed by any person.” So he died on the cross not just to eliminate the lone sin of original sin, which we inherited, but also to atone for all our “sins.” If we take these words to mean what they say, then why should billions upon billions of sinners have to pay for their sins by burning forevermore in hell? If we’re to believe the bible, haven’t their sins already been paid for by Jesus?

But, of course, no one believes that Jesus’ death on the cross accomplished this, not even Christianity, the religion that continues to trumpet the absurdity that Jesus died for our sins. So if Jesus’ death didn’t accomplish this, and God his father, being omniscient, already knew this, and also knew that man’s sins and horrendous crimes would continue, after Jesus died on the cross, to saturate the earth until the end of time, then why did Jesus have to die on the cross? There cannot be a valid answer to this question. And because there cannot, that tells all rational men that the fall and redemption of man, which is really the entire story of Christianity, is the biggest and deadliest myth in the history of man.