Any reader of my blog has probably noticed by now that I never defend Christianity, in fact I often attack it. It is very seldom that I support anything that I say. No evidence, no explanations. Just believe it or don't. Now, I don't want to hide that this is partly because I am too lazy to form a sensible argument. I am too lazy to do any research to back up the things that I say. I prefer to pontificate extemporaneously and I am not trying to motivate anyone to any response. If I have a goal when I speak and write it is simply to cause others to think NEW thoughts, consider new possibilities, look at life and especially Christ in a way that they never have before. But there is more to my choice than laziness.
Christianity has nothing to do with reason. That the Messiah died, especially a Messiah who is in fact God Himself, especially the death of a criminal, is the absolute least likely idea anyone ever had. Peter was actually willing to rebuke the teacher he adored for suggesting such a thing. And that is probably as sensible a reaction as anyone has ever had to that news. And if He did die, if God lost, which is unmistakably the message of the Cross "God took a dive.", then it is only a very LOW view of God that would suggest something as ridiculously ad hoc as a do-over, a resurrection. To believe any of this is clearly a species of insanity. And any attempts to make such a thought reasonable, or likely, or probable are horribly misguided. Now, I believe that the message of the Cross is true, but my mental problems are a sufficiently likely explanation for that.
Descartes spoke what is as near an axiom, a self-evident truth, as anyone ever will when he said, "I think therefore I am." I think that we would capture his meaning almost completely if we inferred from our own thinking that we are in fact alive. All of my senses and all of my mental faculties concur with the utmost certainty. There is nothing more sure than that I am now alive. If I were to try and imagine something more unlikely than that Christ died, it would have to be that I am presently dead. Curiously these two things constitute the whole of Christianity. All Christian apologists, despite their no doubt great brilliance, wind up looking like idiots. Because they are trying to defend the indefensible.
Jesus never defended anything that He said. Rather He spoke with authority- expecting the things He said to be believed simply because they came from His mouth. His descriptions of God go against all religious views whatsoever. He describes God as an unjust judge who dispenses judgments not based on any consideration of the facts of the case but simply because He doesn't want to be bothered.(Luke 18:1-8) He describes God(this time probably the Son Himself rather than the Father), as letting all of the crooks go just to make friends.(Luke 16:1-13) Once anyone has gotten a good taste of the Gospel as preached by Christ, the immediate conclusion is that it is only "Good News" to the criminal class. That the judge should abandon justice, should be in cohoots with the crooks, is terrible news to the righteous, to the contributing members of society. But for the scum of the earth it is unfathomably Good News, which is probably why I like it so much.
But God, in a hilarious display of His good nature and desire to be reconciled to all men, has made us all members of the criminal class. Christians are Nazis convinced that we are better than everyone else and bent on our "Final Solution" to everyone who doesn't meet our standards. We are illegal immigrants with felony records, sneaked under the fence of the Law by a God who descended beneath it and the entire earth. We don't have a job and we are on God's welfare system, which is even funnier when you realize that most of us just keep having babies. Christians are zombies and the stink of our death is only made more offensive by our incredible stupidity in thinking we are still alive. We are such complete losers that we are in fact dead. Our "lives" are so pathetic that death is really the only word to describe them. Why is this Good News? Because it means that God isn't looking for a return on His investment in us. We are the punchline of the Gospel. He has already written us off as a complete loss. His whole plan is to judge us not on the basis of anything we have done or haven't done but based on the pity He feels for us, which is greater the more pathetic we are. He has judged us all as sinners, in other words as completely lost causes, utterly hopeless, so that there would be no question of giving us what we deserve but only of having mercy on all of us.
This is the death that Christ declares we live in. The death of a traitor, the death Rome and Jerusalem and all of the good people of the world gave Him. And the one ridiculous requirement of Christianity is to look at your life and believe it is death. To defy everything that seems true to the human mind, to cast Reason out and let Faith in. And that is why no one should ever defend Christianity, because it is indefensible. As Chesterton said of the sceptics, they mildly declare the improbability of a virgin giving birth or a dead man rising as if all of the Christians who proclaimed these things hadn't been saying for millenia that they are far too good to be believed.
Some Kind of Zombie
When Christianity came into the world, it did not need to call attention (even though it did so) to the fact that it was contrary to human nature and human understanding, for the world discovered that easily enough. But now that we are on intimate terms with Christianity, we must awaken the collision. The possibility of offense must again be preached to life. Only the possibility of offense (the antidote to the apologists’ sleeping potion) is able to waken those who have fallen asleep, is able to break the spell so that Christianity is itself again. Woe to him, therefore, who preaches Christianity without the possibility of offense. Woe to the person who smoothly, flirtatiously, commendingly, convincingly preaches some soft, sweet something which is supposed to be Christianity! Woe to the person who makes miracles reasonable. Woe to the person who betrays and breaks the mystery of faith, distorts it into public wisdom, because he takes away the possibility of offense! Woe to the person who speaks of the mystery of the Atonement without detecting in it anything of the possibility of offense. Woe again to him who thinks God and Christianity are something for study and discussion. Woe to every unfaithful steward who sits down and writes false proofs, winning friends for themselves and for Christianity by writing off the possibility of offense. Oh, the learning and acumen tragically wasted. Oh, the time wasted in this enormous work of making Christianity so reasonable, and in trying to make it so relevant! Only when Christianity rises up again, powerful in the possibility of offense, only then will it need no artful defenders. The more skillful, the more articulate, the more excellent the defense, however, the more Christianity is disfigured, abolished, exhausted like an emasculated man. Christianity ought not to be defended, at least not on the world’s terms. It is we who should see whether we can justify ourselves. It is we who must choose: either to be offended or to accept Christianity. Therefore, take away from Christianity the possibility of offense or take away from the forgiveness of sin the battle of an anguished conscience. Then lock the churches, the sooner the better, or turn them into places of amusement which stand open all day long! S. Kierkegaard
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