Final Thoughts on Paul

Paul is the founder of the Christian religion. Jesus inspired Christianity and was the life force behind it, but Paul developed the ideas and successfully sold those ideas to the world. Much of what he created is a thing of beauty. The religion of Paul is all about love and living love. There are some underlying assumptions to Paul’s ideas that I find troubling, however.

The first problem is with the idea of Jesus dying for our sins, the concept of the atonement. It is a silly idea. Jesus dies to pay the penalty for the sins of all of humanity. In creating this idea, Paul links the death of Jesus to the original sin of Adam. Because of one man’s sin, humans are alienated from God. Because of one man’s obedience, humans become reconciled with God. (Romans 5:12-21)

If that was God’s purpose for Jesus, why doesn’t Jesus talk about it? You would think that the atonement idea would be a central theme of the gospels, but it is not. The idea is not even mentioned in Mark, Matthew, or Luke.

In addition, the idea of atonement does not explain Jesus’ death. Jesus was crucified, a Roman punishment. The Romans would not have been concerned with a man who came to pay the penalty for human sin. The Romans cared a lot about a perceived threat to the established order. Judas most likely informed the authorities that Jesus was bent on establishing a new kingdom. It is because of this perceived threat that Jesus was crucified.

The Adam part of the equation is equally silly. First of all, Adam and Eve were not historical people. Secondly, Adam’s act of disobedience, as described by Paul, has cosmic significance. It is the act that brought sin into the world. Because of its significance, you would think that Adam’s act would be discussed throughout the Old Testament. It is not. In fact, the story of Adam and Eve is not mentioned again in the Jewish scriptures. Finally, as I pointed out in my book on Evangelical Christianity, the Adam and Eve story is not really about sin, but rather the idea that God and humans are essentially different.

Finally, the atonement theory says something rather silly about God. A God who requires human sacrifice as a condition for restoring the divine/human relationship seems rather petty to me.

The second problem I have with the religion of Paul is that it is based on the need for a profound experience of love. This experience is life changing. It makes the recipient into a new creation. The problem is that few people have such experiences.

There is evidence in the psychological literature that people under great stress may have such experiences. Paul is probably a good example of this type of person. The literature on near death experiences presents many cases of people who have had profound experiences of love that are life changing. If you add together the cases of people under great stress and people who have had near death experiences, you come up with a tiny fraction of the general population.

You also read about profound experiences of love in the mystical literature. Again, the experience is transforming. The problem is that mystics are like extreme athletes. Their experience of love comes after many years of engaging in spiritual practices. Some of these extreme athletes never get there. I, for one, have failed in these efforts.

There are many Christians who claim to have had such experiences. They have been “born again.” The problem is that there is little evidence that the experience they describe leads to inner transformation. They feel good about themselves, but they do not seem to behave in new ways. In my book on Evangelical Christianity, I cite statistical studies that support this conclusion. People who have had born again experiences do not behave differently on ethical matters from the general population.

So Paul’s religion, while genuine, is misleading and not very helpful. As I confessed in my blog dealing with the Sermon on the Mount, I prayed for years asking Christ to come into my life and to make me into a new creation. Nothing happened. Maybe God has hardened my heart.

Third, as I indicated in discussing the rapture (1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18), I do not understand how the final end of Paul’s religion works. To resummarize, at the trumpet of God, Jesus will come down from heaven. The elect who have died will rise first, and then those who are still alive will rise to join them. They will meet Jesus in the air. Where is this heaven? Where are the dead saints being stored? Most of them have been left in this storage facility for a long time. What happens to their bodies? Paul claims, again and again, that this final solution is imminent. Why has it been 2,000 years, and these events have yet to unfold?

Finally, despite Paul’s passionate arguments to the contrary, I find that the religion of Jesus works. As I argued in the blog dealing with the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was a Jew. He believed that humans could save themselves by obeying religious law. The point of Jewish law is summarized in the commandment to love your neighbor. If you are honest about it, such love does not come easily. To succeed, I have had to learn to reduce the control of ego over my awareness. As this happens, I create space for divine love to enter. My awareness becomes filled with love which in turn allows me to love my neighbor. It’s hard work, but it is possible. The message of Jesus encourages me to persist. When I succeed, my life is filled with purpose and meaning. I find that this spiritual end of meaning and purpose makes more sense than the rapture.