Christians’ Lies

Preface

Christian theologians are contradicting each other about the meaning of many biblical passages and about the doctrines that sprout from differing biblical understandings. That fact has caused Christianity to break apart into hundreds of denominations. Each unshared belief is proof of one lie, at least. No maliciousness is being assigned to Christians who truly believe the lies that they tell to themselves and to their followers. The problem is ignorance.

If you believe that God can really influence men (through the Holy Spirit) then you cannot deny that Satan should be able to do as much. Better yet, those influenced by Satan are going to fight like the devil to claim that they are being used by the Holy Spirit and that they are God’s instruments. Furthermore, the zealot will often seek occasion for humiliating anyone who points him out. Following is a group of essays, (seven in total). These seven points are a small sample. There are more lies told by Christians than these seven, which supposedly are biblically supported. Well, the Bible does not shore-up any of these lies but those who believe these lies tend to think that their misinformed beliefs are well founded on the bible. Not true. The principal reason for choosing these seven points is that six of these seven lies are widespread throughout Christianity. There is one exception. Evolution (our lie #5) is a lie shared by an influential, albeit small, number of Christians. The late Pope John Paul II confessed to believing in evolution and it is probably safe to expect him not to be the only religious leader following such beliefs. Recently, Pope Benedict XVI has agreed with the previous Pope by also believing in evolution.

Inside the essay on evolution you will find three parts. I only wrote the middle part and that … with much help. The first part and the last part are quotes. If I tried to find who wrote something and after considerable effort I could not find the name of the source, I just wrote for you how the pieces got to me and began hoping (and pleading) for your mercy. Obviously, I learned the points being raised here somewhere, but not always can I recall who my teacher was.

Assuming a bias is (unbelievably) healthy. A personal bias is going to be that the Bible is truth. That is the same bias taken by the Christian liars. While facing them, I will dare assume their assumptions. This is not an easy assumption to make. But if we assumed otherwise, we would have to spend too much time explaining how each archeologically-and-biblically related find of the past has served to increase the trustworthiness of the biblical writ and to ridicule those great-thinkers and philosophers who scoffed at the biblical stories, histories, and claims. For example, before the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947-48, there were philosophical accusations against biblical scribes under the incorrect assumption that biblical scriveners would “cheat” or “modify” the writings being copied or that the writings were written far latter than claimed by the bible books. After all, Socrates’ writings were not the writings of Socrates at all, but his disciple Plato wrote them, while using Socrates’ name to ensure acceptance. ¿Why, the critics argued, should we expect anything different from the biblical writers? Today we know better; the biblical writers did NOT cheat. Often, Christian preachers remind us that there was a double guard watching Jesus’ tomb. The Roman guard was ordered by the governor, Pontius Pilate, and the temple guard was ordered by Caiaphas, the High Priest. Both guards observed that the body of Jesus was not stolen by His disciples, but that an angel rolled the door-stone and Jesus walked out of the tomb alive. Had the body been stolen, the thieves would have been followed and exposed. Furthermore, if the resurrection had been a false claim, the Apostles would have confessed and recanted at their moments of death. Nobody is willing to die for a lie. Only John died of old age. All the others died horrible deaths because they preached the resurrection of Jesus. All the evidence at hand seems to support that the bible is “true” including the resurrection story. Even very hard to swallow stories, like the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah, have been corroborated archeologically, long after centuries of disbelief. The disciples of Jesus and His Apostles could NOT afford to write Gospels with incorrect self-aggrandizing information because of the abundance of living eyewitnesses, during the first century AD. The large company of witnesses to the miracles of Jesus (some witnesses were mere children) between 27 AD and 31 AD, still living while the letters of the New Testament were being written, kept the Apostles humble and truthful. The smallest exaggeration or embellishment would have been met with hordes of truth-telling first-hand observers offering correction. However, the same group of witnesses would have caused Christianity to grow like a wildfire on dry straw if the Apostles kept to the truth. ¿Which event does history support? Christianity spread like savory food among hungry people. It is a wish that I could limit my words (and the words of those quoted here) to just demonstrating from the bible how Christians’ lies are pushing aside important “biblical truths.” Indeed, the biblical point of view which contradicts each lie will be advanced and supported by Scripture. But that is insufficient. Telling the history of the birth, growth, and expansion of a lie is necessary at times. Exposing the historical contortions that have taken place (to make some of these lies believable) aid us in at least two ways: we can see (if we choose to believe in evil) the evil influence of the people who made many Christians believe these lies and we can appreciate the fulfillment of prophecies (if we choose to believe in prophets) by seeing that the bible foretold the travesties. Yes, we were forewarned. Some of the blame for our deception falls on the shoulders of others, but we should accept our own lack of Christian discipline while bearing some of the blame. We Christians (and by assuming that the Bible is true I must include myself inside this group), as a whole, tend to suffer from insufficient prayer, disregard for daily bible study, and not treating our own bodies as holy temples (known as intemperance). Praise God for letting us depend on Jesus even for our own lack of submission to His Lordship! Nonetheless, let’s go forward abandoning our incorrect past. Happy Reading!