The Gospel Rejected by Believers

I am a secular Buddhist. I don’t meditate daily and I hardly even read scriptures. The Buddha isn’t a god and Buddhist scriptures aren’t (and don’t claim to be) divinely inspired, so I don’t feel compelled to worry about it too much. However, I know about the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the Three Refuges, and the Five Precepts; and, theoretically, I know how to live right and practice mindfulness. To me, that’s all that really matters. That is my “religion” or path in life. But I used to be a Christian, which is, perhaps, really at the core of why I am so critical of Christianity.

I always thought the “red letters” were the most important part of the Bible. The words of Christ himself should be the doctrinal and pragmatic basis of Christianity. For the vast majority of Christians (probably upwards of 98% of them), this is completely untrue. The essence of the gospel message has nothing to do with the crucifixion, death, or resurrection. The essence of Christ’s message is encapsulated in the Sermon on the Mount, the Christian equivalent of the Bhagavad-Gita. It’s in the words of Christ, both there and in the parables, where we are told how we ought to live. Yet Christians tend to entirely ignore Christ the man and his teachings in favor of St. Paul — or, rather, in favor of a warped anti-Christ interpretation of St. Paul.

“Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.”(Romans 3:28)

St. Paul was preaching the same gospel as Christ but nearly all of Christianity has misunderstood him. What Paul meant by “a man is justified by faith [alone] and not by works of the law” is essentially just that a man’s standing in the eyes of God and the community aren’t — and ought not to be — determined by race or ethnicity. In Judaism, only a Jew can be “righteous.” To be “made righteous” (justified) in the eyes of the Israelites was to be made into a Jew. Righteousness entailed getting circumcised and obeying the minutiae of the Hebrew law. Of course, this meant that a non-Jew, being unfamiliar with the Torah and the Hebrew language, could not possibly be righteous. The “righteous Jew” stood in contrast to the “gentile sinner.” (Cf. Galatians 2:15) In proclaiming that a man is justified by faith alone and not by works of the law, Paul was not saying that what you do doesn’t matter as long as you believe — he was saying that race and ethnicity do not affect your standing before Christ and the community of believers. The doctrine of justification by faith alone has to do with covenantal status. By embracing the Christian faith, one becomes a spiritual descendent of Abraham.

“Therefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise.”(Galatians 3:24–29)

Paul is very clear about the meaning of justification by faith but Christians do not read his lines about justification by faith in context! St. Paul says that through faith you receive Jesus as your lord and master, becoming a servant or slave to Christ. As slaves, we are called to be obedient servants of our lord. We are also called, symbolically, to die with him and be reborn in Christ. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.”(2 Corinthians 5:17) Through rebirth or regeneration, one is born again as Christ in whom “dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.”(Colossians 2:9) As a regenerated Christian, you are then “strengthened with might by His [Holy] Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith…that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.”(Ephesians 3:16–19) Paul says that “God was manifest in the flesh” in the person of Jesus Christ and that through faith and baptism (symbolizing regeneration) we are born again into the “body of Christ.” The reborn are now “in Christ” and are called to walk “according to the Spirit.” (Cf. 1 Timothy 3:16, Romans 12:5, Romans 8:1) The Christian, then, being born again, is supposed to be Jesus Christ: “Ye are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High.”(Psalm 82:6, cf. John 10:34) The regenerated man is now himself Christ, and like Christ, ought to be a perfect replica or reflection of God. The human soul is like a mirror and baptism cleans off the dust so that it can reflect the perfect image of God. Christ gives his followers the command: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father who is in Heaven is perfect.”(Matthew 5:48)

“As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith as ye have been taught…. Ye are buried with Him in baptism, wherein ye also are risen with Him through the faith wrought by the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead. And you, being dead in your sins…hath He quickened [i.e. made alive] together with Him…. If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience, in which ye also once walked, when ye lived in them. But now ye also put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Do not lie one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all. Therefore, holy and beloved, as the elect of God, put on hearts of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering, forbearing one another and forgiving one another if any man have a quarrel against another: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things put on charity [love], which is the bond of perfectness…. And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not unto men, knowing that from the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance, for ye serve the Lord Christ. But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done, and there is no respect of persons.”(Colossians 2:6–3:25)

And this whole Pauline way of thinking is certainly in line with the teachings of Christ himself. Through faith, one is incorporated into the body of Christ, becoming born again in the likeness of God (Perfection Personified!) and commanded to henceforth be righteous, perfect, and morally upright. And this Pauline message aligns with Martin Luther King’s dictum that people “should not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” That is the gospel message!

But Paul gives more of a philosophical framework for thinking about things, whereas Christ himself focused very little on this and much more on ethics. Jesus tells us not so much what to believe as how to behave. The bulk of Jesus’ teachings are teachings about ethics. And this is why most Christians really hate Christ, ignore his teachings, and embrace an anti-Christ mindset. Jesus is a bit like Peter Singer with his seemingly impossible-to-meet code of ethics. That’s why Christians re-interpreted Paul as saying it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you believe in Jesus. They needed some excuse to ignore Christ’s commandments. They needed some excuse to justify their failure to live up to Christ’s teachings. The problem isn’t that they fail to be perfect, which no one could fault them for, but that they don’t even try. They don’t even try to live like the Christ commands. When was the last time a Christian took a punch and didn’t return the favor in kind? (Matthew 5:39) When was the last time a Christian you know sold their treasured possessions to give the money to the poor? (Luke 18:22) When was the last time one of them stood up to their fellow Christians for a queer or a prostitute, shouting “you without sin, pick up that stone!”? (John 8:7) When was the last time they recognized that, according to Christ, watching porn or masturbating is no different than openly committing adultery or prostitution? (Matthew 5:27–30) or that calling someone a “faggot” (raca) is among the worst offenses imaginable!? (Matthew 5:22) When was the last time a Christian renounced their patriotic nationalism because of what Paul says about Jews, Greeks, Scythians, and barbarians? (Colossians 3:11) When was the last time a Christian declared it to be incompatible with his faith to be a cop or a soldier because of Christ's demand for radical non-violence? (Matthew 5:39 & 26:52) As G. K. Chesterton once put it, “The [true] Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”(What’s Wrong With the World)

The problem with Christians is that people who take the dogma seriously don’t take the gospel seriously. The people that take the gospel seriously don’t take the dogma seriously, and, consequently, tend not to identify as “Christian.” There’s a divide between the heart and the head and the Christians can’t quite figure out how to put the head in the heart. The end result is that the average Christian is the most anti-Christ fellow you will ever meet. When Christ returns, it will be the Christians who crucify him again. It will be the queers, the atheists, and the bums who stand by Jesus’ side. The Christian cop will be the one beating Jesus with a baton, while the non-believing Black Lives Matter activists will be shielding his body with their own.