Santa Christ

I’ll hazard that many Christians, if not most, “inherited” Christianity from family, took a number of turns that were deemed wrong in The Faith, followed by a helping of guilt followed by a helping of psychological disorders (e.g. depression) prevalent during early adulthood. That’s pretty much how it happened to me. The progression ran like this: choir boy, wayward son, depression, salvation, regular churchgoer. But then I started to question, which is anathema to Christendom. Proverbs 3:5-6 extolls, “Lean not to your own understanding,” a core biblical directive urging individuals to trust completely in God's wisdom rather than relying on limited human perspective, logic, or emotions. I guess that pretty much leaves mold for a brain. Faith is belief without evidence, and the answer to all unbelievable events, according to Christians, is “God works in mysterious ways” or “God doesn’t give us any direction on that” or “God can do anything?” But, hey, don’t take my word for it, give it a try. Ask your pastor/parson/preacher/pope, “How is it possible for a man to have lived inside a big fish for three days?” You’ll either get one of three answers listed above–or one of the apologists’ answers, most notably “God wasn’t speaking literally, he was speaking metaphorically.” And then ask your pastor/parson/preacher/pope to show you where it says that in the Bible. He/she can’t because it doesn’t. In fact, Christianity rests on the idea that the Bible is God’s inerrant and literal word, which I might add, is loaded with all manner of warning and punishment for those who change it in any way: Revelation 22:18–19: “If anyone adds to these words God will add to them the plagues. If anyone takes away God will take away their share in the tree of life.” Deuteronomy 4:2: “Do not add to or take away from what I command you.” Proverbs 30:6: “Do not add to his words, or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar.” And if you’re going to take the well-used backdoor, “Oh, but that’s the Old Testament that Jesus has freed me from” then make sure you tell your pastor/parson/preacher/pope not to ever use the Old Testament again in their message–and see how they’ll react. When you signed on to Christianity you signed on to the entire Bible–lock, stock, and burning bush that gave you the Ten Commandments. 

Once an event in The Bible is interpreted as metaphorical then the door is open for all events to be interpreted the same way as they have been in all ancient religious texts such as The Iliad, The Epic of Gilgamesh, and The Egyptian Book of the Dead when at one time they, too, were taken literally before they became myth. The ancient Greeks absolutely believed their gods were real. Not in a vague or symbolic way, but as active beings involved in the world and human life. They treated their gods as real forces, not metaphors. Figures like Zeus, Athena, and Apollo were believed to control natural events (storms, harvests, disease), influence wars and politics, and interact directly with humans.

If a Christian apologist tells me that Jonah and the Fish and the Noah’s Ark scheme are metaphors then why wouldn’t Christ’s miracles and The Resurrection also be metaphors? How do you decide? Or rather, Why do you decide? Is it because a spark of Reason had you question the veracity of the Bible’s supernatural events but you as quickly snuffed it like you did when you first heard that Santa Clause was actually your mother and father and you had a momentary sense of dread–that required immediate snuffing? When you had a question, did someone in or of the church refer to you as a “Doubting Thomas?” Did they tell you Satan was speaking to you? Is that a metaphor? 

Christianity can’t have it both ways. Either The Bible, The Iliad, The Epic of Gilgamesh, and the Egyptian Book of the Dead are literal or they’re not. And they can’t be part literal and part metaphorical or changed in any way without the express consent of the authors–which were the gods. And then, of course, there are the Christian apologists who try the square peg round hole approach but never quite get there. Many Christians believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old, which is patently ludicrous and many Christians agree but they have to square that with the Bible. Enter Old Earth creationists, such as astrophysicist Hugh Ross, who see each of the six days of creation as being a long, but finite period of time, based on the multiple meanings of the Hebrew word yom (day light hours/24 hours/age of time) and other Biblical creation passages. But that’s an outright fabrication: The Hebrew word yom is used 2,301 times in the Old Testament. Outside of Genesis 1, yom plus a number (used 410 times) almost always indicates an ordinary day of 24 hours. So, where did Hugh and Friends' multiple meanings come from? They came from Hugh and Friends who “interpret” yom in one passage in Daniel to mean a long day, but no matter how hard they try, they just can’t quite get to 4.5 billion years, the age of the Earth, or 13.5 billion years, the age of the Universe. 

And why would an omniscient, omnipotent god make his/her/its word so cryptic? Shouldn’t teachers “clarify?” Apparently not in the Bible. Jesus often spoke in parables and says he does so partly so only those who are receptive will understand. So who are the others? Were they the Pharisees and Sadducees who opposed Jesus? Perhaps, according to Jesus, they were anyone who wasn’t a Jew: In Matthew 15:24 Jesus states, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel,” but then Paul comes along about thirty years after Jesus’s death via the Damascus Road Vision (Is that a metaphor, too?) and subverts Jesus’s message and invites the gentiles–when, of course, Jesus wasn’t around.

Or were they people who had critical thinking skills? 

But why oh why do you Christians believe any of it? Talking snakes, talking donkeys, virgin birth, parting seas on command, global flood, pairs of millions of terrestrial species (birds, bugs, animals, dinosaurs, and many saltwater fish species that couldn’t survive in a mix of saltwater and freshwater) plus all their food on a boat, the dead coming out of their graves, a talking burning bush, water into wine, five loaves and two fish feeding five thousand people, spirits and angels and demons aplenty, fantastical visions, one man and one woman giving birth to all humanity which would obviously involve incest/inbreeding until humanity died out in just a few generations. Oh, there’s more. Much more. How can people possibly believe these stories? Perhaps it’s because they took hold in their minds, like Santa Clause, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny did when they were most vulnerable to believing fantasy and they just never left. Question is, why did Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny leave and not all the biblical tripe, especially when you just entered the age of Reason? Because Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny didn’t hold you hostage to life, death, and morality and make you afraid. “Oh, come on, I’m not afraid,” says the Christian. Of course not, not right now–nor are you afraid of a gun at this very moment, not until one is pointed at your head. 

My guess is that most Christians are not actual “Believers” but rather Christians-in-name-only. Thirty-percent of Christians attend church on a regular basis, seventy-percent rarely. Roughly  fifty-percent of Americans carry life insurance. I’m one of them–but I rarely think about it. I’ve had it for a long time and the premiums aren’t much. But that’s in dollars. The premium for a “Believer” is willful suspension of The Laws of Nature and Reason based on the edicts from a pastor/parson/preacher/pope standing behind a podium who has also suspended the The Laws of Nature and Reason based on the edicts from a pastor/parson/preacher/pope standing behind a podium who has also . . . (You get the picture). Without a scintilla of verifiable evidence: No photos. No videos. No fossils (man inside fish). No biological evidence of a virgin birth. No geological evidence of a global flood. No penguins in Turkey. And the most surprising if not tragic missing evidence: No visual art–paintings, sculptures, mosaics–depicting biblical stories by biblical people at the time. You’re kidding, right? No one bothered to illustrate the stories that are the foundation of The Bible, the foundation of an entire belief system at the time. The Egyptians did, the Greeks did, the Mesopotamians did. True, ancient Hebrews were adamantly opposed to any representation of Yahweh as per the 2nd Commandment but why does that exclude the “stories” in both the Old and New Testaments where there’s no need to show Yahweh? Afterall, “art imitates life.” However, there didn’t seem to be a problem in “representing” Yahweh and the stories in writing when, in fact, Hebrew letters are highly “pictographic” and when combined according to rules creates a picture, kind of like a jigsaw puzzle.

So why am I yammering away at Christendom? I mean who really cares about what others believe? We all should. A look back at how destructive Christianity has been should be enough to convince most people that it hasn’t been a force for good, although Christians will cite all the missions that go to poor nations and feed and nurse the people–so long as they accept Jesus. That’s bribery. These people don’t want Jesus, they want to eat and they’ll do just about anything for a crust of bread.

The Crusades led to large-scale killing in the name of reclaiming holy land. The Spanish Inquisition targeted heretics, often using torture and execution. Christian Europe didn’t just argue theology—it slaughtered people over it. The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre saw thousands of Protestants butchered in the streets by fellow Christians. During the Thirty Years’ War, entire regions were devastated—look at the Sack of Magdeburg, where a Protestant city was wiped out and some 20,000 people killed. In Ireland, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland turned into mass killing of Catholics by Protestant forces. And in France, cycles of massacres between Catholics and Protestants went on for decades. This wasn’t fringe behavior—it was mainstream, state-backed, and justified in explicitly Christian terms. So when people say Christianity has only been a force for good, history says otherwise: It’s also been a powerful engine for division, persecution, and mass violence when tied to authority. All told, Christian wars have caused the deaths of some 170 million men, women, and children. And it didn’t stop there. In 1930s Germany, the majority of the population identified as Christian. When Adolf Hitler came to power, most Christians supported him and went along with his regime. In fact, the Catholic Church signed a treaty with Nazi Germany (the Reichskonkordat) in 1933 to protect its institutions, which critics say lent legitimacy to Hitler early on. “Oh, but I’m not Catholic, I’m Protestant” doesn’t excuse you. You’re all in the same boat, just on different decks, along with the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witness, The People’s Temple (of Jim Jones fame), and the Branch Davidians (of David Koresh fame). It’s easy to slough all this off on the excuse that you weren’t there, you didn’t have a hand in it, and that’s true. It’s not about you. It’s about a religion that has been defined in history by history. Remove the parts of history you don’t like (in your mind), splice in more favorable pieces, and you’re guilty of whitewashing, propagandizing, and, voilà, mythmaking. What you have is a grotesque montage that church leaders, academic theologians, apologists, and run-of-the-mill Christians have been frantically trying to cobble together for centuries and it still can’t escape contradictions, fictions, and outright lies–and the quicksand struggle only gets Christianity in deeper. 

Eighty-percent of Evangelical Christians voted for Trump, a man convicted on thirty-four felony counts, and at least twenty-eight women have publicly accused Donald Trump of various acts of sexual misconduct, including rape, sex with minors, sexual assault, physical abuse, kissing and groping without consent, looking under women's skirts, and walking in on naked pageant contestants. But don’t just take their words for it, here’s Trump in his own words on October 7, 2016, one month before the United States presidential election that year: "I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything." In 2023, a federal jury in New York found Trump liable for the sexual abuse and defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll, awarding her $5 million in damages. The presiding judge later clarified that the jury’s finding of sexual abuse met the common definition of rape. In a subsequent 2024 trial, Trump was ordered to pay Carroll an additional $83.3 million for further defamatory statements.

But, hey, as far as Christians are concerned they’re off the hook for any malfeasance–but “only” according to Paul who preached “not by works but by faith.” Jesus on the other hand was explicit about behavior being central to salvation: Matthew 7:21: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven," a warning from Jesus that mere verbal profession of faith is insufficient for salvation. True discipleship requires active obedience to God's will, not just religious activity like going to church, singing in the choir, attending potlucks, and occasionally witnessing. And again in Matthew 25: “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’” It’s likely, however, that your pastor/parson/preacher/pope will side with and preach Paul because just “faith” is attractive, easy, and fills the pews (and the plate). “That’s it? That’s all I have to do? I can vote for Trump and not be accountable?”

“Yep,” according to Paul.

“Cool.”