I guess I'm effectively an ex-Christian now. It's something that doesn't make me happy to contemplate. I would really like to believe. I spent I don't know how many years teaching the Bible, faithful to the Fundamentalist/Evangelical view. If I may boast a bit, I was one of those who always got asked, "How did you learn so much about the Bible?" Well, I was raised that way. I couldn't help but know. I also immersed myself in the subject. I was an "expert." In fact, I was the very one people came to when they ran up against the perplexing questions that seemed to fly in the face of biblical teaching. I could usually come up with some sort of answer. I kind-of have a way with words, so I was able to make it sound better than it was.

All the while, though, deep down, I found my own answers and those proposed by other apologists unsatisfying. Nevertheless, I continued to preach a straight party line. I reasoned that I didn't know everything and that the people I respected most were as Christian as Christian could get. If I must risk error, I wanted to err on the side of caution. After all, souls had been entrusted to my care! I can't do that anymore. If Christianity is supposed to be about the Truth, we do it no favor by distorting facts and overlooking obvious and insoluble problems in its defense.

To be frank, I still suspect there's something to the Faith--something buried very deep. Something disguised as much by the Bible itself as by those things that militate against it. I deplore the attitude of many ex-Christian and skeptical persons to demonize Christians. I insist--and will continue to insist--that among Christians are the finest people I've ever know, bar none.

Nevertheless, what follows is a sampling of issues that finally turned my mind against this belief system. It's a little long, I'm afraid, and not arranged in any logical sequence. You should be able to make some sense of it, though.

Problems With the Faith

1. Despite captious skeptics sometimes overstating the case, there are places where the Bible is either internally inconsistent or doesn't square with known facts. You wouldn't expect this in the work of an all-knowing God.

2. Champions of the Bible emphasize its doctrinal consistency; whereas, in fact, it's well known that those who had the say-so over what finally went into the canon did their best to disallow anything that seemed inconsistent. This is the work of man, not God.

3. Even so, the Bible isn't as doctrinally consistent as some want to think. Powerful interpretative measures must be employed to bring contrary passages into line. These efforts are not always successful upon impartial examination.

4. The preponderance of even the most fervent apologists will admit there are errors in the texts that have come down to us. (There's really no way around it if you want to be taken seriously.) However, damage control has become a concern overriding good sense very often. They'll admit the problems only so far as these won't challenge their fundamental assumptions about the Faith. A slight word alteration means little since it doesn't really change the meaning of the passage. The point's still the same. If the last few verses of Mark don't actually belong, for instance, no harm is done. All important truths embodied there are to be found elsewhere anyway. What these apologists refuse to do is entertain the idea that these relatively insignificant considerations might have more profound implications.
   
   You notice a single termite on your window sill one day and tell yourself that surely the problem is minor. The basic structure is still sound. An exterminator comes around later, though, and after a more thorough inspection announces that your house is all but eaten up. If spurious additions to Mark were made relatively recently, why is it so farfetched that significant and critical portions of the older Job and Daniel are also later interpolations? How about the first few chapters of Genesis? Worse, maybe whole books don't belong. Where does it end? One of the questions often tossed out by Christians is that if any of the Bible can be shown untrue, how do we know any of it is? That's good sense. Perhaps it would be wise for them to delve into it more honestly themselves.

5. To assert that the Bible was plenarily inspired “in the original” is not only insupportable, it's effectively meaningless, even if true. We don't have the originals. If we're to base our lives on it and trust our souls to it, at issue is its reliability now. Indeed, the very assertion itself is an admission that the text we have today is of dubious trustworthiness.

6. “God said it; I believe it; and that settles it.” Dogmatic, for sure; but I'm willing enough to to believe something that God has undeniably said. Ultimately, though, the word of man is the only foundation upon which the assertion that the Bible is the Word of God rests. What apologists actually do is ask us to believe their words about the Bible. It certainly can't be proven historically or scientifically. (It's not necessary to say it's been disproved to make my point; only that it can't be supported in any way that would insist we accept the extraordinary claims made about it.) Even given that it's just what they say it is, why would anyone feel compelled to take their word for it? Why would a God who will supposedly try men's souls based upon their adherence to it not leave us better evidence of its truth than that?

7. After a second glance, Jesus himself seems less a champion of the Scriptures than some would make him out to be. There are times in the Sermon on the Mount where he directly and intentionally contradicts the Law. In Matthew 5: 31-39, for instance, he cites Scripture and then tells how what's written just isn't so. The Law said a man could divorce his wife. Jesusforbade it. The Law said you must swear by God. Jesus said you dare not. The Law insisted on “an eye for an eye, and atooth for a tooth,” but Jesus said we must treat our enemies the way we ourselves want to be treated.
   
   As to the subject of divorce, in Matthew 19 (verse 8, specifically) Christ was even more critical of Scripture. There, hemakes the obvious point that the provision for divorce found its way into the Law because Moses wanted it there, not becauseGod did. In the curious case of John 5:39, Jesus seems to be lambasting the religious professors of his time for theirover-reliance on Scripture and for missing the point entirely thereby.
   
   Even Matthew 5:18 isn't as ironclad as some suppose. In the first place, Jesus was only talking about the Law (which,ironically, he then proceeds to correct to some degree), not the whole of the Old Testament. Then the word "fulfilled" isproblematic. Very little of the Law (Genesis through Deuteronomy) is prophetic. What, exactly, is to be fulfilled? Was hesuggesting that the prophetic portions were inspired and that the (much larger) historical parts were less so? Finally,averring that the Law won't pass away is hardly the same as saying God inspired it all. (Although, admittedly, it's not anunreasonable inference.)
   
   I also find it interesting that we have no record of Jesus referring to Adam and Eve directly. His closest allusion is in, again, Matthew 19 (verses 5 & 6) and the parallel passages in the synoptics. While emphasizing the points that God made Man male and female and that the two were to be as one flesh in marriage, the omission of any confirmation of the historicity of the creation accounts that house these truths in Genesis seems glaring to me. Is it possible that he was consciously avoiding endorsing these as literal history? (The fundamentalist mindset won't permit the entry of the notion that one part of a text could be true while its immediate neighbor is not. There is no good reason to deny the possibility, though.)

8. Arguing that reason must give way to revelation is both a truism and yet won't wash as an excuse for dismissing the obvious. It's only by reason that we can discern revelation. When biblical apologists try to work out the Bible's apparent (and, I think, sometimes real) inconsistencies, they do it by reason. We have no way to tell truth from falsehood except by reason. If God himself were to appear in the clouds and and begin speaking to the world, the very validity of the event with respect to reality would have to be processed through our reason.
   
   All we can know about all that is, then, whether in the physical or spiritual world, must be filtered though our reason if we're to make any sense of it. To chip at reason is to undermine our God-given capacity to discern truth from falsehood.

9. The idea of eternal punishment bothers me, and not for the obvious reason. I wonder about the judicial propriety of rendering infinite punishment for finite crimes. I respect the opinion of Charles Finney (brilliant man!) and others that the magnitude of a crime should be gauged according to the personage against whom it's perpetrated. Shooting the president incurs a greater penalty than shooting an ordinary citizen, and for good reason. It not only kills a man, but harms the nation in irreparable ways. Among other things, the country is deprived of leadership and its psyche is damaged by the realization that it can't reliably protect even the most valuable of its citizens.
   
   An offense against God, then, would be infinite and deserving of relentless retribution.
   
   The problem is that this principle only pertains because of the damage done to the victim. Offending God damages him in no way whatsoever, unless he is made out to be much less than what we say he is. While the sin of one can certainly be detrimental to the race as a whole, the argumentative value of the supposed victimhood of God, upon which the asserted justice of eternal punishment must rest, is lost if God cannot be a victim. Even if we argue that an offense against God has deleterious ancillary effects on the whole of mankind and the cosmos, we've only expanded the magnitude of the crime within the temporal realm. We have not made it an infinite offense worthy of unending punishment.

10. What purpose would eternal punishment serve? We punish people for one of four reasons. One is to reform. Eternal punishment could not possibly be reformative or it would not be eternal. There would be a release once the offended is reformed. (What's the purpose of reformation if not the hope that the criminal might one day be reintegrated into society?)
    
    Another is to insulate (or eliminate) those who offend from the potentially offended. But if the future life as presented in the Bible is at all accurate, the redeemed will be incorruptible and beyond harm.
    
    Is the threat of hell designed to discourage ungodliness? That makes little sense because the ungodly tend not even to believe in hell. (There's certainly no proof of its existence until death, at least.)
    
    We are left with no way to account for endless punishment but a spiteful desire for revenge on God's part; something that seems unworthy of One who enjoins us to think and act otherwise. If he is all-powerful, that's within his rights I suppose; but I also think one might be forgiven for suspecting it wouldn't be his motive.

11. If, as is strongly suggested in Scripture, it's the flesh that causes us to sin, why would the resurrection itself not be sufficient to eradicate sin in mankind?

12. If not, why would God want sinful men to persist in any form or in any place for all eternity? The annihilation preached by some seventh-day groups seems more reasonable than an eternal hell.

13. What, exactly, is the requirement for eternal punishment? I reject the notions of Federal Headship, Mediate Imputation, and allied doctrines out of hand. In the first place, I don't see that the Bible itself teaches such things. Then, I, like most, recoil at the notion of being consigned to eternal fire for the sin of another. It flies in the face of our intuitive—God-instilled?—sense of justice. I must conclude that we are sentenced for our own sins. But what of those who are beyond controlling what they do?
    
    One of the gravest problems I see in Biblical hamartiology is that there is absolutely no allowance for deeds we do for reasons beyond our control. Christians have all the sympathy in the world for the man who is disabled due to physical defects; but very little for the one who is mentally defective. The Bible has even less.
    
    Indeed, we're coming more and more to the realization that mental defects very often are physical defects. (Some would say all are.) They can be more disabling than a missing arm or leg because they affect the very thought processes. Where the brain doesn't work right, its owner isn't likely to act right. Yet no provision is made for this in Scripture. There, all sin is of a kind and equally deserving of punishment.
    
    Taken another step, who among us is completely in control of himself? One man sins for reasons he cannot help. Another, who perhaps is less afflicted, merely sins because he must struggle much more mightily than his neighbor to avoid it, perhaps blundering into yet other sins in the fight. In time, his patience and strength give out, and he succumbs. It's not enough to insist that God will provide a way for escape on the basis of an obscure text. It's ever so apparent that he does not always do that.

14. What about salvific faith? What is it? What element of the human psyche will be probed on Judgment Day to determine its presence or absence? Having taught and written on the subject, I understand the scriptural mechanics of it. Saving faith isn't a mere mental assent to a supposed truth (although that must be the foundation for it). It's a trust the God will spare the soul its deserved damnation because of the work of Christ.
    
    Still, the above questions pertain. I assert that it's impossible to be so thoroughly convinced of an abstract notion that no doubt is present. How much will be acceptable? What ratio of faith to doubt will earn one heaven? Is it quantifiable in the first place?
    
    Yes, I'm splitting hairs; but I'm doing it to expose a weakness in the philosophy. When something is split, a chasm results. A logic chain so riven becomes as weak and useless as any other chain. Spanning the gap requires what logicians call an intuitive leap; in other words, a logically insupportable assumption that one side somehow proceeds inevitably from the other. To aver that faith brings salvation, it's necessary to establish what the connection between the two might reasonably be. I don't see that we can do that. Merely quoting Hebrews 11:1 does not, in fact, lend any “substance” to faith. It remains a nebulous and abstract concept that one can define only by semantics.
    
    In the end, it turns out I haven't really split anything. I've merely exposed the disconnect that already existed.

15. Cosmology, while convincing me there must be a God, also seems to suggest he might be different from what we suppose. Christians point to what they deem the amazing clockwork-like running of the universe as evidence of his genius.
    
    On the other hand, it's hard to deny the considerable randomness and apparent capriciousness the cosmos manifests. Chance seems to reign as much as design. That the Earth is so situated and furnished to provide for life seems little short of miraculous. But what of the other eight planets in our system? What's their purpose? There are growing indications that planets are myriad throughout the galaxy. Few, even among the most optimistic evolutionists, suspect many have life. If mankind persists for another million years, we'll never even know of the existence of most of them. The heavens may declare the glory of God, but not to those who don't know they're there. They're clearly not for our benefit.
    
    Why are they there? Why do stars explode? Why do galaxies collide? Why are we bombarded with devastating meteor impacts from time to time? God's judgment? The moon and Mars are afflicted far worse. What's their crime? If, as some suggest, this is all the consequence of man's sin (a very strained proposition), how did man suffer when Jupiter was blasted by a comet a few years ago? Very evidently, the universe is anything but a clockwork contraption. It's easy enough to suggest there might be a purpose for this beyond our kin—entirely too easy!
    
    No one seriously supposes we will ever understand everything; but it isn't haughtiness that leads us to trust our instincts and recognize arbitrariness for what it is. It isn't sacrilege either.

16. So much of New Testament theology is founded on a literal interpretation of the first three chapters of Genesis. In short, unless there was an actual Fall, there is little need for the saving work of Christ. On the contrary, if we're nothing more than super-advanced animals, God would have to applaud those occasions when we do well rather than condemn us when we don't. As much as I've fought for it in the past, though, I have come more and more to the conclusion that not only can I not take Genesis literally, there are parts I can't take at all.
    
    I'm not really qualified to judge, but as far as I can tell, the science behind evolution is sound. Granted, I think evolutionists go astray with some of their conclusions. They sometimes seem to be guided less by their science than by their naturalistic philosophy. The evidence must fit into their schemes at all costs. (Religionists are even more guilty. It's not even part of their credo to be otherwise!) Still, the universe unquestionably attests to its great age. Radiometric dating methods may suffer the slings and arrows of the Creationist's wrath, but no fair mind can doubt the soundness of the basic science.
    
    Such strange notions as that light might have slowed down over time don't really bear on the problem in any meaningful way. When light changes speed (hypothetically), time itself is affected. If a year from great antiquity might only have been a second within the calipers of our present perception of time, that doesn't mean it was any less than a year to those experiencing it. Genesis would have recorded time as then perceived. If we could somehow go back, the years then would seem a year long to us too. The Earth would still be 4.6 billion years old, no matter how those years might stack up against our modern-day years. There would be no absolute standard against which to gauge time anyway, God himself being timeless.
    
    It's also clear now that mankind has not always been of a kind. Neanderthal and Homo erectus were evidently not modern man. It's impossible to account for them convincingly by the Bible. In fact, inferences that inevitably obtain from their existence militate against it.
    
    All of this leaves some of the foundational assumptions of the New Testament in doubt.

17. I have no philosophical problem with the idea of the miraculous. A God anything nearly how he's portrayed by Christians would not only have the power, but almost inevitably would perform supernormal feats from time to time. I see nothing to balk at in the Virgin Birth, deity of Christ, his literal death and resurrection, and so forth. But when some have to resort to interjecting miracles into history to smooth out certain irregularities in order to make the improbable or impossible believable, that's when I begin to wonder.
    
    I'm also suspicious of the notion that God did miracles regularly and ostentatiously in the long-ago, foggy past but not today. Christians have had to contrive such systems of sophistry as dispensationism to explain the away the problem. Jesus did certain supernatural works 2000 years ago to get the ball rolling, so to speak. No one would have believed otherwise. But why, then, did he so often insist that the beneficiaries of these miracle not tell a soul?
    
    Anyway, is unbelief less of a problem today? Does God really want us to believe? Others will say the “age of miracles” never ceased. God still does such things in our own era. I grew up in such a sect. I've seen many, many lines of sufferers standing the the church aisles waiting for healing. I don't recall ever having seen anyone healed.
    
    I'm convinced that the overwhelming majority of those who claim to believe in such things haven't either, although many would tell you they have. They're not lying. They just so desperately want to believe it. When questioned, you'll hear of such things as cured headaches. These have no real evidentiary value. A headache can vanish for any number of natural reasons.
    
    Occasionally, you'll hear a story of a cancer patient suddenly being found not to have the disease, or something like that. I don't dismiss these out of hand, but I can't give them that much credit either. There are too many variables that bear on the circumstance and could account for it without resort to the supernatural. Besides, miracles like these have been recorded throughout history and within sects very far removed from Christianity and Judaism.
    
    At last, there's nothing about the presence or absence of miracles that either substantiates or disproves the Christian religion. On the other hand, the Bible lays so much stress on the miraculous that the fair inquirer must be forgiven for wondering why miracles don't seem to happen.
    
    Why is it that a God who makes faith the very criterion that will decide the eternal fates of men and who has supposedly gone so far out of his way to ensure that faith will be rewarded not do more to show us reason to believe in the first place?

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