The Parable Paradox - Jesus Deliberately Misdirects

 

Maybe my first parable should be about your planning ahead next time...

        After reading the bible or hearing a sermon about Jesus, have you ever wondered why he spoke in so many parables rather than just speaking directly about matters that affected something as serious as an immortal soul and the life to come? You’d think he’d want to be as precise, unambiguous, and crystal clear on this issue as he could be. So why all the puffery, misdirection, and charades in the parables when it could have been so simple with a direct message?  

The Bible offers few clues as to why Jesus couldn’t plainly say what needed to be said. For starters, the bible is not exactly a good source for anything given its own dubious history. (Don’t bother asking Christians what it says in the very first, original bible. There isn’t one. The earliest complete bible dates only from the 600s and is reputedly in a vault beneath the Vatican. How do the faithful know what the first bible said?)  

So, are the stories in the bible recording times when Jesus was trying to entertain those who were listening, or did he have some other darker purpose in mind with his parable ploy?  

According to Mark:4 verses 11-12 “He (Jesus) said to them, unto you is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of God, but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables. That seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear, and not understand lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them.” 

That sounds like the function of Jesus’ parables was to confuse. He was speaking to his disciples, telling them THEY are given to know what God wants. If others listen in and try to divine the message, well, screw them. They may see and hear it, but they won’t perceive or understand it. Jesus wants them kept ignorant. They can’t be converted and forgiven their sins by direct message. They must filter it out through a multi-layered parable that was MEANT to confuse and ultimately damn them. And it’s THEIR fault if they fail. 

Apparently, Jesus didn’t want a large group of Christians gathered in Heaven when it was all over. He wanted to baffle the audience via the parable so most of them would end up in hell. The parable was Jesus’ misdirect into the everlasting fire, and he KNEW it was. Why would anyone worship such a monster? 

John 3:16 Corrected

       Jesus spoke in code or in riddles as sort of a “this is a wheat separated from chaff test” for his followers - to see if any could decipher them. If they couldn’t, well, Jesus literally didn’t give a damn if they failed. That was the whole point of the parables. They were an early manifestation of what satirist George Elliott wrote in his piece about Calvinists who claimed to be “the elect”: “We’re the Lord’s elected few, let all the rest be damned. There’s room enough in Hell for you. We don’t want Heaven crammed!”  

Would you have learned spelling, math or a foreign language if it was taught to you only via parable and it was up to you to discern the reality of those subjects? Would you have known where to turn for an answer? Would being given ambiguous information repeatedly have motivated you to seek greater answers?  

This is what the Bible teaches about Jesus and his reliance on parables. It is useless information. No one needs to follow such a deranged and bizarre cult as Christianity. 

Parables are fairy tales. They are stories meant to entertain little children. They have no place being presented as truth and the perfect repository of knowledge, information, and instruction. 

Philippines President Duterte’s “God” Challenge

It’s hard to imagine someone less appealing on so many levels than the current president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte. He is a singularly unpleasant gargoyle-ish man who brags about murdering people himself, ridicules other world leaders, insults anyone for just about any reason, and shows no regard for the rule of law. But last week, he made a comment that finally got me cheering for him if only a little bit.

          He stated that God was stupid.

 

Referencing the nonsensical Book of Genesis, Duterte said “This son of a bitch is…really stupid.” What Rodrigo claimed is that god was stupid based on what is recorded in the Bible. If that god knows all and sees all, how did it not know what was going to happen, especially in the Garden of Eden? It’s proof that that being is stupid. For example, why would god punish Adam and Eve for not knowing right from wrong when he created them that way? And if that supposedly supreme being did know - and yet let it happen with over 99.9999999…% of all humans who would live on this planet being condemned to Hell after death…it is stupid to a degree unimaginable. Who wants to worship a god that stupid? 

 

 Then, Duterte followed that comment a few days later with a challenge - if anyone could prove to him that god existed, he’d step down from the presidency immediately.

Talk about a win-win.

If no one can prove that god exists, just as no one can prove the Easter Bunny exists, it is solid evidence that belief in a supreme being is without merit and should be abandoned for the good of the world. But if god’s existence is proven, we get rid of Duterte. (Although even if some being did introduce itself, Rodrigo would probably claim that wasn’t good enough or he’d say he didn’t really mean he’d leave office.) But I can agree with his basic premise - prove to all of us that god...any god...exists! 

So many people around the world swear that god exists; they just can’t seem to agree on which one. They can’t all be right. But as many non-believers have repeatedly pointed out, they CAN all be wrong. All we are asking is provide the evidence that a god exists. Real evidence, not words in a book that cannot be verified as anything more than the ramblings of half-educated men trying to make sense out of a world they didn’t understand. Don’t point at the trees, the mountains, or the sunset and claim “see, that’s god’s handiwork.” Setting aside the immediate problem of identifying which god created it, you can’t find god’s fingerprints, signature, or DNA samples on any of it so stop the ridiculous nodding at nature and giving it supernatural qualities it doesn’t have.

 

                Two clowns holding hands

The baffling part of Duterte’s recent statements is that he claims to believe in a god…he just doesn’t believe in religion. So if he believes, why does he want someone else to provide proof of the existence of god? You don't need evidence if you already accept there must be a god. It seems as though Duterte is simply chasing and chewing off his own tail in a search for an imaginary being, or he wants confirmation that his delusion is valid. Duterte uses "God" just like many U.S. politicians and other Americans do: convince the gullible he’s just like them and then exploit those people. Duterte and politicians like Trump use it as a tool to attain power, not as a standard of morality, honesty, or humility.

Bizarre as it seems, such a thing as a god could quickly put an end to the debate about his existence once and for all…by providing unmistakable proof he exists. The fact that he doesn’t can only lead to one of two conclusions - that he doesn’t want to be found…or doesn’t exist. Which makes more sense?

Atheists 9/11 cross lawsuit dismissed

A federal court has dismissed a lawsuit brought by the American Atheists that could have affected the 9/11 remembrance display. They had hoped to ban the steel beam cross taken from the rubble of the World Trade Center on September 13, 2001 from being put in the museum as part of the memorial to the 9/11 victims.

Christians assume it is a victory for their beliefs at the federal level, but it is not. The decision does not mean Christian symbols need to be afforded special consideration, that Christianity trumps all other religions, or that whatever Christians want should be deferred to. It’s because allowing the cross in the museum is a devastating indictment of their god. Without any evidence, Christians have decided that the cross was god’s way of showing how much he loves us even in moments of trial and tribulation, and they are desperate for acknowledgement of their religious beliefs. That is why they want the cross in the 9/11 memorial, not realizing that it shows that god, A) Didn’t know what was going to happen, B) Didn’t care what happened, or C) Doesn’t exist. (If they existed, what creator would be that ignorant, capricious or malevolent?) Some could argue that 9/11 shows the believers of Allah triumphed over the believers in Jehovah since it was Muslim extremists who successfully brought the Towers down. And what did Jehovah do? According to the Christians, he sought to console us with basically a scavenger hunt in the debris. So inclusion of the cross at the memorial symbolizes: ‘Nothing protected the people who died here. A vivid imagination doesn’t change what transpired. Only the gullible worshipers of a made up supreme being find this metal crossbar meaningful.’

As a side note, how hard is it to find crossed steel beams in high rise structures? If the building didn’t contain any crossed members and the fallen debris fused and formed a cross, that might be more interesting, but it wouldn’t prove anything. Christians so want god and Jesus to be real, anything, even a human-constructed cross beam, gives their beliefs validity.

Atheists pursued the lawsuit, correctly perceiving that Christians would assume god was giving them a sign that in the middle of tragedy, all would be okay, that death was not final, that the cross' presence in the ruins shows we’re a Christian nation, and that all need to come to Christ through the cross. See, if you're from outside of the Christian faith; you're out of luck...god only favors Christians.

If their god was real, Christians have to concede he watched over the destruction of the World Trade Centers, the strike on the Pentagon, and the deaths of around 3000 people, did nothing to prevent any of it, and then showed his love - after the fact - by arranging one of the thousands of steel crossbeams in the mountains of WTC rubble to be discovered looking vaguely like the cross Jesus was reputedly killed on. That way, all would be inspired by its presence and know god loves us. Does this strike anyone else as absolute madness?

And yet the atheists are the ones who are considered crazy and need to explain their irrational belief.

A 'righteous' response that is just wrong

            City Magazine, a local Central Florida publication, recently printed a letter from Dr.Terry Pooler who is the Lead Pastor of the Sabbath Grace Fellowship Church in Apopka, Fl. in response to a CNN iReport’s article Why I Raise My Children without God by Deborah Mitchell. Her article was a mother’s response to the way religion, particularly Christianity, justified certain actions and was used to shape people’s thinking in a manner that she realized was wrong.

            I sensed before reading it that Dr. Pooler probably had a vested interest in ‘debunking” Deborah Mitchell’s story as it could have a long term effect on any possible growth at his church, and bottom-line, his paycheck. So he had to find ways to dissect and disembowel her article in a way that makes it appeared she just didn’t truly understand the living god and that’s why she was raising her children free of religion.(How he knows…actually knows...the living god, and by what means he confirms this is never addressed.) But he makes the same errors that all other theists make when they try to defend their version of Christianity. They fall back on the Bible and what God and Jesus supposedly said (actually, what Dr. Pooler interprets as he reads the Bible)…by cherry-picking the verses they believe will bolster their view. That is not a wise direction in which to go because, as any ‘True Christian’ will tell you, you have to take the whole Bible into consideration, not just the parts you like.

            In the second sentence of his article, Dr. Pooler starts by stating that Mitchell ‘brushed aside a grieving parent’s plea that taking God out of our public schools was partially to blame.’ As if, up until the removal of all things Christian, our schools were models of Christian morality, thought, and conscience. Sorry Doctor Pooler, but you have to be able to prove God was actually there to begin with. You can’t just say ‘because I believe so’, or ‘because the bible says it is written’. You wouldn’t give that latitude to Muslims or Hindus and their ‘holy’ books. You have to provide evidence. And you can’t. So don’t take her to task because she dismisses a grieving parent who falls back on an emotional plea about the supposed presence, or lack of presence, of a god as an explanation for why a mass murder occurred. Does that grieving parent really believe that, if only the Ten Commandments were placed in the school, if only teacher-led Christian prayers were allowed, and if only every child had a bible on their desk, that somehow, that would have thwarted the gunman from entering the school and killing twenty students and six teachers? It didn’t stop Charles Roberts in Lancaster Pennsylvania on October 2, 2006 from killing five little Amish girls in the West Nickel Mines School. Oh, but they didn’t practice the right kind of Christianity, did they? When the God Dr. Pooler believes in has fixed the child abuse that routinely occurs in His churches, eliminates starvation that occurs all over the world, stops creating “natural” disasters that kill and maim and leave children orphaned, and ceases creating agonizing diseases that disfigure and kill, then He, or those who claim to speak for him, can come back and ask us about schools.

            Dr. Pooler then comes up with a strange non-sequitur. Mrs. Mitchell states she is not campaigning for the elimination of religion, but wants it kept at home like a toothbrush or a pair of shoes. From that statement, Dr. Pooler indicates that what she meant, without any explanation, was, religion ‘should be quarantined.’ Last time I checked, no one’s toothbrush or shoes were quarantined from the public. How do you go from something taught at home (and is practiced in numerous churches and religious institutions that vastly outnumber schools across the country) to, it is being quarantined? Dr. Pooler simply uses outrageous and disingenuous hyperbole to cast Mitchell’s intent in as negative a light as possible.

            He goes on to claim she is a victim of erroneous indoctrination, missing the irony of making such a claim himself. He chastises her for writing that ‘a child should make moral choices for the right reasons’, and not feel as though he or she is being watched over by a heavenly policeman who is much like Santa Claus looking to see who’s naughty or nice. But that is exactly how the bible portrays God. Believe He is watching you, and you’d better believe in him and return that love. Because he loves you SO MUCH, that he created a special place called Hell to send you to if you don’t love him back. I found it quite amazing that Dr. Pooler would use the imaginary Santa character as a contrast to convince readers of the legitimacy of the god character. There is not a shred of evidence that either one exists. Why should we believe in one and not the other? Doctor?

            The God’s Desire versus the God’s Plan comparison argument he makes is a mountain of nonsense piled on an even bigger mountain of nonsense. How do you know God’s Desire OR God’s plan, Doctor? If you draw it from the Bible, how do you know it is accurate? If you claim God talks with you, how do you know it is the Christian God, or any god supposedly responding to you? How do you assess that you are not just making up the conversation in your mind and reading into it?

The rest of his article is filled with one a priori assumption after another. All fall back on ‘God is’, ‘it is from the Bible’, ‘God’s plan’, God’s desire’, ‘eternal God’, yet he offers no proof or evidence that ANY of those are accurate or reliable. He simply believes them because, most likely, he was taught as a young child to believe them. In his later adult years, he sought out and studied books and texts which adhered with what he was taught as a child. If I wrote ‘Allah says’,’ the Koran is explicit’, ‘Vishnu is eternal’, ‘the book of Mormon states’, Zeus is all-knowing’, would Dr. Pooler give them the same weight and credence as he does in his world view seen solely through the prism of Christianity?

                                        
    He ends his article with a paragraph that begins with, “I wonder if the number of school shootings and child abusers will dramatically decrease if the next generation, flushed with the belief that they are insignificant parts of a big machine, can successfully squelch the current religious fever in our country that promotes God’s moral values…” If Dr. Pooler recalls his bible reading, God requires that unruly children be stoned to death. The same sentence is also mandatory for homosexuality, witches, and even picking up sticks on Sunday. Or how about when a woman is raped; the rapist has to marry that woman and pay her father fifty pieces of silver? Does that sound fair? Are those the moral values he is referring to? They are all God’s; it says so right in the Bible. Read it yourself and see if it is correct. How many slaves does Dr. Pooler own? Because neither God nor Jesus condemn slavery. If a tree doesn’t produce fruit, even when it is not in season, would Dr. Pooler demand it be cut down? Jesus condemned a fig tree for the same reason, and it follows that Jesus was only reflecting God’s values and morals.

                           According to the Bible, that fig tree has only a few moments left to live

Dr. Pooler has a right to express his views about Mrs. Mitchell’s article. What concerns me is his attitude that she is wrong because the God he believes in says it is wrong. But he offers nothing at all to prove his belief is correct, accurate, or true. He simply believes it because he wants it to be true. As I stated earlier, would Dr. Pooler give that same latitude to someone of a different faith, or even a different denomination within Christianity? If they stated they believed it because they want it to be true, would that make it true? If Deborah Mitchell rejects it, does that make her belief or lack of belief false? As Stephen Roberts once wrote: “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” Dr. Pooler, I dismiss yours.