One day I woke up, and I was no longer a Christian.
That was strange. I had grown up believing there was a one true God, that there was an ultimate reward to being good, that there was heaven and hell. I boasted in my weaknesses, like Paul, because I knew that, eventually, God’s strength would be made perfect in my weakness.
But who was God? At first, I knew a few things about him; I knew he was everywhere, full of love for me, watching my every move, knowing everything that happened to me. I was a pretty good kid, son, brother, student … person, I thought. I tried to make peace when there was conflict, and I always put myself last as I cared for other people. This was how I was supposed to live. And I was happy about every day of it.
Yes, there were times when things went south. Times when I wondered why some things would happen to me. Once, someone I got into a fight with a Muslim for no reason at all. I didn’t fight back, didn’t even try. But when I went back to bed that day, I prayed a David prayer “God, how could you let a Muslim treat me like this, a person who bears your name!”
But such times were few and far between. For the most part, I took my burdens to Jesus, and honestly believed it would all work out. It had before, so why not?
I struggled, yes, but I always had a soft ground to fall on.
A couple of years ago, I started to wonder how true my beliefs were, and why I was a Christian anyway. Two things seemed to me as the only possible bases of belief: The infallible Word of God, and a personal encounter with Him.
On personal encounters, I immediately realized that I had come up short. I didn’t have many of those. I did have one that might qualify, but it didn’t tie exclusively to the Judeo-Christian God, any god would do. So the only basis I had left for my faith was the perfect, infallible word of God.
So I started to study it critically. Surprisingly soon, I found one thing that stood out to me like a sore thumb; the Olivet Discourse. When Jesus predicts the destruction of the temple in Matthew 24, Luke 10 and Mark … something, he says something very striking. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, this generation shall not pass away until all these things take place.”
Now this passage starts with the disciples marveling at how imposing the temple is. Jesus, unimpressed, chimes in, “You see these huge walls? A day will come when not one stone will be standing on another.”
“When will these things happen? And what will be the sign of the end of the age?” The disciples ask.
Now the question here is really two questions. They’d like to know about the destruction of the temple, and about the end of the age. They seem to think that these two events will happen at around the same time. And perhaps more strikingly, Jesus also seems to share the assumption, since his answer mushes the two answers together too.
“Kingdom will rise against kingdom, and nation against nation. Woe unto those who will be with child or breastfeeding in those days! If it happens when you’re outside the city, don’t come back to take your coat!” I’m paraphrasing here, but that’s pretty much the general emotion.
He continues, “The sky will turn dark. The sun will stop shining, and the moon will turn to blood.”
The first part seems to talk about the destruction of the temple, while the second seems to talk about the last day. Why did he not make a clear distinction? Well, maybe that’s because he didn’t think there was one. “”Verily, verily, I say unto you, this generation shall not pass away until all these things take place.”
Sure, he said he didn’t know when the Day would be, only the Father knew. But did he get this one wrong?
I looked for an answer. The best effort went something like, “By saying ‘this’ generation, he meant that all these things would happen in the space of one generation.” The best, yes, but it wasn’t nearly good enough.
As I continued looking, I came across yet another problematic quotation from one of the gospels. “Truly, I say to you, some of you standing here will not taste death until you see the Son of Man come in full glory,” or something like that, it went.
Maybe Jesus did believe the world would end 2000 years ago.
As I did more research, I came across a lot more problems in the text. The accounts of the birth of Jesus, for starters, were irreconcilable, unless we were bent on reconciling them. Was Jesus born in a house or in a manger? After being born, did he go back to Nazareth immediately after his rites, or did he flee immediately to Egypt to avoid being killed by Herod? Was his home in Bethlehem, or did he just go there because of a worldwide census? The only things they seemed to agree on were that he was born of a virgin, and that he was born in Bethlehem. This had to be, because that’s what the scripture had foretold.
I dug deeper. Such inconsistencies were not only in the gospels, but in many parts of the new Testament. For example, Paul in Galatians and Luke in Acts are completely at odds about Paul’s journeys. Did he immediately go to see the Twelve(Acts), or did he wait 10 years(Galatians)?
As I continued, I found that over half the epistles in the New Testament were probably never even written by Paul. They’re just there because people thought they were written by Paul. Same with Revelation, it was included because somebody thought the John that wrote it was John the apostle. Today, most scholars are convinced that this is not the case; so different are their writing styles.
I could talk about Revelation, about how the book of Daniel was probably not written at the time of the Babylonian rule over Israel, about how the Torah was most likely written by several authors over centuries, and none of them was Moses, as the Jews, including Jesus, seem to have thought.
In the end, I realized that the Bible was not inerrant after all. My faith was standing on one leg, and that leg had just disintegrated under me.
What next?
Chaos.
