Easter, April Fools Day and Bart Ehrman, part 1

Did you know that Easter has only fallen on April Fools Day something like six times in the modern era, including today? Pretty crazy.

Even though I'm no longer a believer, during this time of the year I think a lot about the Holy Week leading up to Easter. Perhaps part of it is because for many years, the week leading up to Easter was the busiest week for me. (On a side note, one thing that is rather ironic is that my daughter's Spring Break week always fell on the week before Easter, which meant I was so busy that I didn't really get to spend much time with her while she was off, but the last three years since I've been out of ministry, the school district has changed it to the week after Easter. Go figure.)

However, one of the main reasons I'm usually in a pensive mood during this time every year is because of how inconsistent the biblical accounts of the events leading up to the crucifixion, the crucifixion itself, and the resurrection are, and how some of it makes no sense whatsoever.

I don't remember when I started getting wind of the differences in the gospels concerning these events. I was trying to recall my years in bible college and if I was taught these inconsistencies or if they were explained away and since we were being taught, I just assumed that what they were saying was true.

Here is one of the reasons why this gets me these days: if you think about it, the most important event in Christianity is the resurrection, and to a little lesser extent, the death of Jesus. Paul, in 1 Corinthians, talks about this importance, because he even said that if the resurrection didn't happen, "our preaching is useless and so is your faith." So if this is the most important concept, the most important theological construct, the most important event in human history, why is it that none of the gospels actually agree with what actually happened? (a lot of this reasoning is from Bart Ehrman's book Jesus, Interrupted.)

For example, when did the cleansing of the temple happen? In Mark, it happened during the last week of Jesus. In John, it happened at the beginning of his ministry. What about Palm Sunday? Did Jesus ride one animal, or did he ride two as he did in the book of Matthew? (This is attributed to Matthew making sure that Jesus fulfilled every prophecy he could think of and rather than understanding that when it said that the Messiah would ride in on a donkey and a colt that it was poetic language, Matthew took it literally.) What happened during the trial before Pilate? In Mark, Jesus hardly talks. In John, they have a long discourse. In Luke, there is another trial before Herod. What about Judas? Why did he betray Jesus? In Mark, no reason is given. In Matthew, he did it for the money. In Luke, he did it because Satan entered into him. In John, Judas is actually called a devil, which meant he had an evil streak. Also, how did Judas die? In Matthew, it says that he hanged himself. In Acts, it says that he fell headlong and burst open in the middle and that his bowels gushed out.

And what about the actual crucifixion? What did Jesus say on the cross? In Mark, he's practically silent. In John, he's saying all kinds of things. When did the curtain that separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy place tear in half? According to Mark, after Jesus breathes his last, the curtain is torn in half. In Luke it happens while Jesus is still alive and hanging on the cross. And let's not even get started about how in Matthew, zombies came up from the graves when Jesus died.

There have been a lot of theological and mental gymnastics by biblical scholars to reconcile these differences in the death of Jesus. They will say that all of these things happened, it's just that different gospel writers wrote different parts of the story. Or that they were writing to different audiences and emphasized different things. I don't believe any of that is correct, but even if I was to cede that argument, here's the discrepancy about Jesus' death that is so significant and so irreconcilable that to me it destroys any credibility of these stories.

It's about the day when the crucifixion happened.

In Matthew, Mark and Luke, the crucifixion happens the day of Passover. In those gospels, the Last Supper (which is the meal for the preparation for the passover) happens and Jesus and the disciples eat the meal. Jesus is then arrested that night, the trial happens through the night into the morning, and Jesus dies the next day.

In John, the crucifixion happens a day earlier, on the Day of Preparation for the Passover. There is a final meal but there is no Last Supper where Jesus talks about the bread being his body or the wine his blood. Instead he washes his disciples' feet (which is not found in the other gospels).

Let me reiterate this: in Mark, Jesus eats the Passover meal and is crucified the following morning. In John, Jesus does not eat the Passover meal but is crucified on the day before the Passover meal was to be eaten.

This cannot be reconciled. Believe me people have tried. Why is John different? Here's the main theory why. "John" (who was not the author) wrote his gospel twenty-five years later than Mark, and one of his main emphases is that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. In order for that theme to align all the way through, he has to change the day and the time of when Jesus is crucified to the day and time when the Passover lambs were being slaughtered all over Israel, to show that Jesus was the ultimate Passover Lamb sacrificed for the sins of the world.

If a gospel writer is willing to change a super important fact, one that is very pivotal to the story of Christ, then what else are they willing to change in order to suit their needs? And how much has been changed throughout history? I know we have some pieces of the Bible that go back a long ways, but not all the way to when it was written. So all of this could have changed from the time it happened to the time it was written down, as well as from the time it was written down to the oldest pieces we have.

Do you see how this undermines the Bible? Do you see how it should be hard to believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God?

And don't even get me started with the resurrection. The pivotal event. Well, don't get me started yet. That's part two. :)

My Two Year Journey

This is a post that I've written a thousand times in my mind.

Every time I came up a little bit short when it came to writing it out. There was always the sense of it being the wrong timing, the fear of the impact of what I had to say, the constant worrying of how it was going to affect my relationship with people I respect greatly. There's the possibility of being ostracized. Of people being angry and confused.

There's also the opposite affect. That I've done damage to my relationships in such a large way already that my "announcement" is met with one giant "Meh." Which I'm ok with, believe me. But I think that when we make a huge decision, or announce something in our lives that we think is a big deal, that there is some kind of response.

Let me go ahead and get it out right now. I'm not going to string you along or draw it out. I'm going to tell you what it is, and then I'm going to explain my journey. So here it is.

I no longer believe in God.
I am no longer a Christian.
I do not believe in the supernatural.
I believe that this is the only life we have.

Let me describe for you my journey to this point.

I have been out of ministry for two years now. I'm not going to get into all the details, but let's just say that it was a very tough departure. When I left the church I was at, I was kind of bitter at it all. There is definite blame on both sides, that I will not dispute, but the experience of leaving was one that left a huge mark on my heart. It took me about five months to find another job outside of ministry, but it still affects me and I still ache because of what happened. But let's go back to when I first had these feelings.

I have always felt like a square peg in a round hole. I became a Christian officially some time around third grade, being baptized in a murky pond up at church camp. But I really had no idea what I was doing.

I became more and more involved in church in my junior high and high school days, even excelling in a program called Bible Bowl. This is where I believe my life turned for the worst. You see, I was extremely interested in science. My school friends and I were nerds and we liked science stuff. But when I started doing well in Bible Bowl, I drew myself nearer to my church friends and further from my school friends. With my success came scholarships. I had full ride scholarships to any Christian college I wanted in the country. I chose one in southern California because some of my friends decided to go.

My senior year of high school, my mom died of cancer. I remember praying "I swear to you God, if I figure out that this whole heaven thing is a sham and that my mom will stay buried and dead for the rest of life here on earth, I'm going to give all this up." How prophetic.

So I went off to college. And although I enjoyed my years of college, I once again felt like I never really fit in. What people were concerned about I really wasn't, and what I was concerned about seemed nonexistent on campus.

I graduated - barely because I jumped off a roof into the school pool right before graduation - and went off to an internship in Arizona. Things went decent until (1) a new youth minister came in who felt compelled to undo every good thing we were doing with the students and (2) I got a brain tumor. I had headaches for months before the diagnosis, and the church leadership thought I was faking it because I didn't want to work. After two surgeries, I decided to go back to Colorado. And I became the youth minister at my home church.

Now I'm not going to completely tell the story, so let's just say my ministry years had a lot of highs and a lot of lows. I think I did some great things as a student minister in CO and in TX. I butted heads with elders and leaders over lots of different things. I believe I should never have left my home church. Who knows where I would be today, haha.

When I became a worship minister, I had to work more closely with senior ministers. I had a lot of conflict with several of them. It seemed like a lot of it revolved around new building programs. I felt that when that happened, the church leadership became only concerned about the ABC's: attendance, buildings, and cash.

I started down this long road of not believing in God in 2008. I had moved back to Colorado to help plant a church. I believed that God would provide. I believed that the people who I gave so much to when I was a youth minister in CO would give back. I believed that my sacrificing my family (I went six months without them that year) on the altar of ministry would be worthwhile and everything would work out. Nothing worked out. My family moved back, I was finishing up my last days at the church plant, and I remember going into a Barnes and Noble and looking at some books about the existence of God. These books made sense to me. They described how I felt. They described the uneasiness I felt for years when it came to Christianity and the Bible. However, I tabled those thoughts because I got a new ministry position back in Ohio. We didn't have to leave our house, it was pretty close, and things started out great.

I have two brothers. One lives in Colorado, and one lived in New York. The one in New York, Aaron, was having some health problems due to some bad choices he made in his life and so we invited him to live with us. Eventually we found him a place to live on his own. For a couple of years we watched him fight with his demons.

I remember the Tuesday when we went over to his apartment. We hadn't heard from him in a couple of days and he had left a strange Facebook message. I went into his house, and tried to open the bathroom door. As I opened it up a little bit, my brother's body was blocking the door. He was gone forever.

My world was blown apart. The church response was uneven. There were some who were genuinely concerned for us. Other friends seemed to disappear, uncertain of what they should do. I took one Sunday off and then was pressured to get up on stage again the next Sunday. I had nothing to say. All the words to the songs didn't mean anything anymore. One of my favorite songs we used to do, "How He Loves," was a song I sang in a rage at that point. Because I didn't believe any of what I was singing. I had a woman tell me right before I went up on stage "So sorry to hear about your brother, because I mean, we don't even know where he is now, since...you know." That day I told my friend that he might have to come and sing for me because I was tempted to leave. Somehow I pulled myself together and made it through.

The year after that was a mess. When I got up on stage, I couldn't determine where the line was between showing your scars and bleeding all over the stage. I stopped giving any kind of prayer or thought and just played through. When I left to find other opportunities, my life was shattered.

That was two years ago. In the span of two years, I have done a lot of research, thinking, and wrestling. This decision is not an easy one or a flippant one. There are many reasons why I no longer believe what I used to, but let me quickly give you some of them:

1. My own story. See above.

2. Church history. Christians have been on the wrong side of history many times through history. You think it would be easy to follow the words of their leader. Apparently it isn't.

3. The Bible. If you want to stay a Christian, don't read about the Bible. How it has been changed throughout the years. Why certain books got in. How a small percentage of the books were authored by those who are claimed to author them. The discrepancies. The errors. Why is it that the four accounts of the resurrection story in the gospels are all different? You would think that the most singular important event in Christendom - the rising of the savior - would be something that would be consistent. It isn't. And once you start pulling off the springs of the Bible on your trampoline of faith, pretty soon you have nothing to jump on.

4. Church issues. This is a big one. Why does the church make such a big issue of the supposed sin of homosexuality and so little of sins that were talked about way more in the bible? Why is it ok for a man to have long hair but a woman to not be able to speak or teach men? Why are there seventeen different beliefs about baptism: who is supposed to be baptized, when are they supposed to be baptized, what does it do, is it completely necessary for salvation, do you have to be baptized once or twice? Is baptism by immersion or sprinkling? You would think it would be easy to follow an infallible book and all be on the same page.

5. This past year. I knew that Christianity was no longer my tribe when I saw how many Christians blindly support a president who is the antithesis of everything Christ taught and lived. How many Christians voted in Alabama for a pedophile over a Democrat. How many Christians now say that a president's private life can be separate from his public life. The hypocrisy is overwhelming and I want nothing to do with that.

I could go on and on about my reasons, but I'll stop there. (I'm thinking about writing a book about it honestly)

Now all of this might make you sad, but I hope you understand how happy I am. I am starting to fly. I have a group of fellow humanists that I have dinner with regularly who are some of the most genuine, loving people I have ever met. We are a group of different races and genders and sexual preferences and backgrounds and we genuinely care about each other and want to make a difference in the world. Not because some book demands it. Not because we are afraid of being punished if we don't or because we look forward to rewards if we do. No, we want to make a difference because that's what good people do.

There are a lot of opportunities that I'm grateful for in my life which I will share at a later time. Let me close with a quote from an author who I admire, Robert Ingersoll:

When I became convinced that the universe is natural, that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell. The dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts and bars and manacles became dust.

I agree, Robert. I agree.