Why Christians are Wrong about Judgement

Christians love talking about judgment day.  It seems to justify everything they do.  If you stay on one side of the line, then you’re okay, but if you stray on the other side, then you are tortured for all eternity.  What is this line?  Some Christians talk about belonging to one group or another, but in the end the word they all use is “faith”.  If you believe the right thing—like God and Jesus and the resurrection and stuff—then you get to go to a good place.  If you believe the wrong thing—anything other than God and Jesus and the resurrection—then you are tortured for all eternity. 

Christians say it’s a pretty easy deal.  There’s nothing to do, just believe the right thing.  There are a couple obvious problems with this system, though.  First, not everyone has heard about Jesus, and if they have it’s easy to think of Jesus as a good story and nothing else.  None of us believes in things that aren’t given to us as fact.  Also, belief isn’t always something we can control.  You could tell me that Thor and his hammer rule the world, and no matter how much you try to convince me, I can’t really believe it.  Even if I wanted to, I just couldn’t make myself do it.  So why would I be punished for eternity because I couldn’t believe in Thor?  And how different is the story of Jesus?

But that’s not why Christians are wrong.  They are wrong because there is one phrase throughout the Bible that describes how people will be judged on the last day: “Everyone will be judged according to what they have done.”  There isn’t a single verse in the Bible that says that God will choose the Christians to inhabit the good place and the bad place to be for the non-Christians.  Rather it is all based on how people live—whether they lived good lives or bad ones.

So what makes a good life as opposed to a bad one?  Does it mean a life of sexual purity and singing praise to God?  Does it mean attending the right church?  Actually, Jesus talks about it quite plainly.  Those who exhibit mercy and love in their lives are the ones who get the thumbs up, and those who are apathetic and uncaring get the thumbs down on judgment day.  Specifically, Jesus says that those who spend their time feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing the homeless, helping immigrants, healing the sick and being kind to people in prison are those who get to hang out with God.  Which only makes sense, because God is love and it’s only reasonable that he’d want to hang with kind people for eternity.  And those who don’t do kind deeds are separated from God, which also makes sense because why would God want to hang out with self-righteous, stingy people?

But what Jesus says about these guys is even more surprising.  That the people who got in, didn’t know they were getting in, and those on the outs didn’t know they were being thrown out.  When they saw Jesus dividing the people between good and bad, they thought they’d be on the other side.   Why is this?  Probably because they’ve been told all their lives that being on the right side has to do with what you believe and which religious group there is.  But in the end, there will be Buddhists and Muslims and atheists and pagans who get to hang out with God and plenty of Christians and Jews who don’t.  Why?  Because anyone who acts out the generosity and kindness and love of God are the kind of people God wants to hang out with.  And self-righteous prigs who think their intellectual capacity and the pious activities they do are enough to be with God never got it.  Judgement day is a party for those who show the love of God only. 

Judgment is based on what one does: Job 34: 11; Ecclesiasties 3:17; Ezekiel 33: 20; Matthew 16:27; Romans 2:6; I Corinthians 5:10; Revelation 20:13. 

Judgment is based on acts of kindness: Matthew 25:31-46

Why Christians are Wrong About Hell

Hell is a pretty much Christian concept.  In the Hebrew scriptures, it talks about punishment of the wicked, but it describes that punishment in strictly physical terms.  Christians point to Jesus and the book of Revelation who speak of the eternal fire and eternal punishment. 

The basic idea of hell is this: If you live before God, you are safe from judgement.  But if you screw up royally in your life, then you spend eternity being tortured for your screw ups.  This is the justice of God.

Many have pointed out some difficulties with this concept. Can this really be called justice?  Let’s take a pretty typical screw up: You sleep with your boyfriend before marriage.  Your body is filled with sexual desire, and it is a naturally human thing to want to have sex, but God says you need to wait for marriage, and so you screwed up.  Because of this error, even if you had no other error, you still screwed up, which  means that even if you never screwed up in any other way, you will still be tortured for eternity for this one mess up, no matter how natural it seemed at the time.  And Christians call this exchange of a single sin for an eternity of torture justice.

This crazy way of thinking isn’t why Christians are wrong.  It’s just a description of how they think.

The reason they are wrong is because they just don’t understand God.  The most common description of God in the Bible is this one: “Compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and full of merciful faithfulness, forgiving to thousands of generations.”  In summary, God is love.  He isn’t a judging God who punishes people because they look the wrong way.  Rather, he is a kind Father who leads people in the right way, and offering forgiveness for their sins.  Jesus said that he didn’t come to earth to punish people, but to show them how to love.

This doesn’t mean that the Bible doesn’t talk about God as judgmental.  He’s got plenty of room to judge people.  But it is interesting the kinds of people Jesus says will be condemned.  Those who judge others.  Those who live out lives separated from love. Those who take innocent people, who don’t know much better, and condemn them to such a degree that they will fall away from love.   God is love and God relates to people who show mercy, and those who condemn and don’t forgive and hate are the people who God will judge.

There is one other group that Jesus says will be especially judged.  That is hypocrites.  A hypocrite, according to Jesus, isn’t just someone who says one thing and does another.  A hypocrite is specifically a person who talks about God and God’s mercy, but lives out hate and condemnation.  It seems that Jesus, when he talks about hell, is really talking about a place for Christians.  Maybe not all Christians, but specifically the kind of Christians who talk about a God of love, but condemn people for not being like them. 

Seems like the people who talk the most about hell are people whom hell is being prepared for. 

Bible verses about God:
Exodus 34:6; Psalm 86:15; Psalm 103: 8,9; Psalm 145:9; Eze 18; Isaiah 30:18; Isaiah 54:8; Matthew 5:43-47; I John 4:7-8

Jesus talking about who will be judged: Matthew 13:31-42; Mark 9:41-42.

Why Christians are Wrong about Creation

My name is Steve and I am a Christian.  Join me in my recovery as I share why Christians are wrong and how they could be right.

Today’s topic: Creation.

It was calculated by Archbishop James Ussher that the world was created on October 23, 4004 Before Christ.  This seems excessively particular, and Ussher was more specific as he determined the world was created at 6pm.  James Lightfoot did his own specific calculations and determined that Ussher was wrong—it was actually 3929BC.  Sir Isaac Newton, yes the scientist that helped build our modern world, calculated that creation occurred in the very even year of 4000BC. Many conservative Christians, although debating the precise date, agree that the earth is young and goes to the Bible to prove this.

This calculation is determined through careful reading of the genealogies of Genesis 5, which gives the length of ancestor’s lives and the time of the birth of each later ancestor.  One can follow closely the Bible timeline and come with an early date of the Genesis 1 creation.  In fact, some, like the Bible students at Answers in Genesis, insist upon it. 

When I was in Bible school, I had a professor who said, “I don’t have enough knowledge to object to Creationists’ science, but I wish they were better Bible scholars.”  I have to agree.

First of all, we have to look carefully at Genesis 1 to see the chronology there.  We all know that creation happens in six days in that chapter.  So when does the six days start?  Let’s read the first few verses:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  (Some think of this as a summary of all that comes after, and some say that heavens and earth happened before.)

 2 The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.  (This is clearly a description of the world before God started creating, for all was chaos, and God’s spirit or breath is just hanging out)

 3 Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

Now the beginning of God’s creation.  Before this, all was darkness, and God made light happen.

 4 God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.

 5 God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

So we have “Day One”.  What did God make on “Day One”?  He made light and divided light from darkness.  That’s it.  He didn’t make the sun, because that happens on day three.  Well, still, that’s a good day’s work.

Coulda gone sailing before the first day.  But no sunset.

But what DIDN’T God create on the first day?  He didn’t create the earth or the water.  They were already there, according to verse 2.  Before He started his six day creation there was already earth and already water.    We know that God created the earth, because it says so in verse 1.  But the word “creation” can mean either a initial creation, or a remodel.  Erasing the blackboard and starting over.  Since we already have an earth and water here, actually God isn’t creating the earth in these six days from scratch.  Rather, the place is a mess and he is remodeling the place. 

So when was the earth created?  We don’t know.  The Bible just doesn’t say.  The earth could be hundreds or thousands or millions or billions of years older than the six day creation according to a literal reading of the text, because it simply doesn’t say.  And there might have already been animals and plants and all kinds of things on the earth before it was covered with water and darkness.  We don’t know, because we have few clues as to what happened before Genesis 1.  One thing we do know: if anyone says that the Bible says that everything begins at the six day creation needs to go back and read their Bibles.

It is interesting that some great ancient Bible scholars like Augustine didn’t think that Genesis one was meant to be taken literally, but metaphorically.  In fact, if John Calvin and John Wesley could have a discussion, they might argue about many things, but they would agree that Genesis 1 is allegorical.  And they have good reason to think this. 

The book of Genesis is a collection of many different ancient documents or oral sources, put together into a single book.  The separation between texts are usually divided by a phrase, “This is the generations of”, which we can see in chapter 5, chapter 6, chapter 10 and so on. 

The same phrase is used in Genesis 2:4, “This is the account of the heavens and the earth” which separates one text from another in the book, offering two separate but related creation accounts.  Genesis 1 has the organized six day account, while after 2:4, there is more of a narrative account.  We could put many details together, if we want, but there are a couple details that simply don’t match.  For instance, in Genesis 1, plants are created before humanity (day three and day six, respectively), while in Genesis 2, the human being was created before the plants. 

Many Christians and Jews believe that Moses edited the book of Genesis.  So Moses, out of all the creation stories he could have chosen, and he could have re-written, he chose two that differed in one particular matter—the chronology.  It seems that if there was one thing that didn’t matter about the creation story is WHEN things happened. 

What was the point of the creation stories that Moses chose?  He chose a couple that were based on ancient myths of the time, that showed God’s power and authority over all the other gods of his time.  That’s the main point of the stories of creation, not precisely when or how things happened.  The six day creation is poetic and supposed to be understood as mythic.  Not untrue, just fitting a literary standard of the time.

What’s the point?  If you believe in a young earth, then you are not reading the Bible literally, but putting your guesswork into a text that you didn’t really understand.

If you want to read more about Genesis 1 and creation, I highly recommend the JPS Torah Commentary on Genesis.