Losing My Religion

I enrolled in Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary last fall and took a course called “Life of Jesus.” I thought it would be a slam-dunk because I had read the New Testament a few times. I have also taught from the Children’s Bible for years; there is not one Bible story I cannot tell you.

Two weeks into the course, I realized the school might have made a gross mistake in naming this course. It’s not the life of Jesus portrayed in Veggie Tales or Superbook! It’s about the HISTORICAL life of Jesus debated and scrutinized by scholars with names I struggled to pronounce and with thoughts and reasonings that were often over my head.

Four weeks into the course, I felt a disorienting quake that seemed to shake up the core of all that I have held onto as a Christian. I felt I had to dismiss all that I have ever known and learned about this faith. I felt I was about to lose my religion.

The Bombshell

I didn’t know the book of Mark and Luke are nearly identical as copies from a mysterious oral source. There were holes and inconsistencies in the dates & details of these historical accounts. From volumes of manuscripts, some men arbitrarily decided what to keep and what to toss. Who were these men? Why should we trust them to put together something that is deemed holy and infallible?

Sidebar: To those that think Jesus was a fairy or a myth, let me make it absolutely clear as a rising and aspiring scholar of the Bible and History: Jesus was a historically proven figure. He lived a short life and died a political prisoner. His charisma drew crowds from the surrounding villages, and his popularity was an instant phenomenon.

Could it be…Christianity is a cleverly crafted religion based on a faith healer & martyr named Jesus?

Could it be…his diehard fan base so much wanted to keep him on the pedestal that they concocted and invented a very believable, even attractive, school of thoughts…that people now call Christianity?

Could it be…I was lured into a perfect scheme to believe what others want me to believe and to think what others want me to think, and that I was led, or misled, to accept a god that is only a figment of my imagination? There is no magic in belief. We only see what we want to see. Our delirious religious experiences are simply chemical reactions of the brain. The world can carry on and has carried on, without giving a hoof about some ancient fables in the Bible.

Could it be…it was all a big, fat lie?

In the second lecture of the course, my head went into a tailspin as I met a long line of Bible critics and skeptics that wanted to separate the Jesus of history from Christ of faith. They wouldn’t argue that Jesus was not real; they would only surmise that Christ the Messiah was possibly an evolution of a religious process of myth-making.

“Jesus of Nazareth has been clothed by modern theology in a historical garb.” (Albert Schweitzer)

“I do indeed think that we can know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus, since early Christian sources show no interest in either, are moreover fragmentary and often legendary.” (Rudolph Bultmann)

Hence came an open season for the powerful to take full advantage of this religion and expand upon the ancient writings with their political ideals and self-serving interpretations. The abuse and misuse of the Scripture were rampant, and many had reduced parts of it to the likes of self-help books.

The part of the Bible that mystified and unsettled many is called eschatology – the part that addresses issues of death, judgment, and the afterlife. Jesus promised a kingdom that never came in his lifetime, not even within decades after his death. Believers were left hanging about the predicted Second Coming. Jesus is two thousand years late! And what is holding Jesus back?

Many ministers would conveniently add, “Jesus has not returned because you have not preached the Gospel to enough people. He’s still patiently waiting.” Statements like this send sincere Christians scram with their gospel tracts looking to evangelize so they may help speed up God’s timetable to end it all here for all of us.

Despite the well-intended efforts to spread Christianity, the sad truth is that churches in the western world are in a rapid decline. Countless boomers have stopped waiting for a Savior that is 2,000 years late, and their children have grown up to be more secular as most churches have an enormous gap in attendees that are 21 to 29 years old. They laughed at the Noah of our days and said, “This is ridiculous. We are moving on.”

The Doubts

Jesus did say some profound things as he appeared to be way ahead of his years. He saw so much injustice and oppression from his people, the Jews, and the foreign rulers, the Romans. As a young adult in his late 20s, he was fed up and fired up. He, too, wanted to leave his family’s “church.” But instead of walking away from the faith, He bravely walked towards it. He initiated a massive paradigm shift in his Jewish religion and culture. He went against the corrupted religious elites. Jesus was into something way over his head, way above his pay grade.

He needed people to believe that he was more than an average Joe; in fact, he often boasted of an intimate relationship with God. He even went as far as claiming he’s God himself. He lived and died a desperate hero.

Many questions left unanswered. No one to this day has uncovered any of Jesus’ remains. Even though there was no sophisticated forensic science back in the first century, we ought not to underestimate the resolve and the capabilities of the Jewish council. (Just like we ought not to underestimate the resolve and capabilities of Xi Jinping to monitor and restrict the Islamic people of Xinjiang). We can be sure the ruling party of Jesus’ day would leave no stones unturned until they found the body.

Yet, just because no one has found Jesus’ remains, it doesn’t mean we have to accept this man, Jesus, as…God, right?!

And guess what, I liked the version of myself when I don’t seem out of touch with the world with the “Jesus is the Lord” bumper stickers. I liked the version of myself when I don’t spiritualize everything, such as thinking my freezer is demon-possessed when it goes up to 15°F on our weekly ice cream night, or for thinking God must be judging me for every mishap I endured. I liked the version of myself when I can speak and sound like a reasonable intellectual, and not a simplistic, fanatic devotee who frequent the social media with holier-than-thou religious posts.

My Bold “Atheistic” Experiment

One day, I decided that I would live like an atheist. I wanted to know what would happen if I removed God from my thought life, and if I lived freely with my own sets of morals, my desires, and my wants. After all, I can do anything I put my mind to. I can control my destiny. I can determine the outcome of all my endeavors.

So, I carried on my day of schooling the children, exercising, cooking, and doing mundane chores. I was kind, loving, and sweet to my kids, just like any decent human being. I accomplished everything I set out to do. By the end of the day, no one died. There were no disasters or calamities. Even the ant problems we had seemed to have abated. I felt calm and happy. My isolated one-day experiment failed to show me I needed a religion.

There I was…heading towards a murky water; my faith was being sabotaged, and I might turn into a nonbeliever by the end of my first semester in seminary.

“Fortune Favors Fools”

Before I continue, let me admit this one thing about myself: I am docile.

I first came across the word DOCILE when I was cramming for the SAT as a new immigrant at age 16. A Jewish neighbor gave me a used copy of an SAT vocabulary workbook. The pages were faded and even brittle, and most answers were already filled in. But that was my ticket to an American college, and I studied it daily.

doc·ile /ˈdäsəl/

Adjective: ready to accept control or instruction; submissive.

This word described me perfectly. It is because of docility I accepted Christianity early in life from preachers that knew how to use their gifts and words to influence their hearers. Unreservedly, I adopted and taken in their interpretations of the Bible without any thoughts of my own. I would not challenge anyone that spoke through a microphone, and I certainly would not challenge anyone that put their ideas in printed words.

There is a Chinese idiom that says, “傻人有傻福.” It’s literally translated as fortune favors fools. My simple, compliant nature might have led me to a treasure trove of blessings. When it was preached to me that a believer ought to read the Bible each day as part of their daily quiet time, I listened. For decades, I read and studied the Bible every morning. Before the computer keyboard became prevalent as a writing tool, I had marked and color-coded the Bible passages based on their themes and topics. I was a flat-out nerd.

But even fools and nerds have epiphanies. You know, what they say when a light bulb goes on in your head. One day, I just so happened to ask myself an obvious question.

Why is it we all read from the same Bible, yet there are many expressions and applications of this faith?

Some would cherry-pick from the motivational stories and preach feel-good, warm and fuzzy, inspiring messages about hope and God’s promises. Some would draw attention to the texts that speak of spiritual authority and run a church like a boot camp. While young believers flock to weekly concerts of worship, the fundamental traditionists see electric guitars and drums as instruments of Satan. Some would overlook the angry God of the Old Testament and believe in a Jesus that is on the never-ending forgiveness tour. Some would plead to bring back the house churches of Acts 2 and denounce the megachurch movements. Some wonder about the disappearance of tongues and prophecies and seek to manufacture the same experiences in their meetings. Shall I talk about the powerful Vatican & the Roman Catholic Church? They thought the Bible needed extra handling to make it work for an institutionalized religion. New doctrines were added, and the faithful have responded to a well-run religious machine, for it provides solace through the rituals and faith through loyalty to the Pope, the Cardinals, and the like.

Then I heard about ministers that sought to profit personally from a church, my docile, innocent brain blew up in utter disbelief and shock. I just could not wrap my mind around it.

Even more subtly, when a church leans more heavily on one set of doctrines and develops a culture of conformity, and when there seem to be behavioral patterns that have to be followed to avoid criticism or ostracization, be careful. You might have inadvertently entered into a darknet of spiritual confusion. The knowledge of the Bible in the hands of an egotistic, charismatic personality can be used to manipulate the unsuspected for selfish gains and domination.

Unfortunately, most average Christians don’t have a good grasp of the whole Bible to discern the truth and to think correctly.

Who was Jesus?

We will go back to the part when I said I was heading towards the murky water of potential apostasy. Taking this “Life of Jesus” course, on the other hand, was like sitting on a front-row seat to see up close this man called Jesus of Nazareth.

At the height of the Roman Empire around the turn of the century, there was no shortage of rebels amongst the oppressed Jews who came against the Roman authority. The notorious criminal Barabbas was an insurrectionist, a leader of a small militia. He was a prisoner favored by the rioting crowd to be released by Pontius Pilate (while Jesus-in-chain looked on in quiet despair.) Others that promoted similar messages as Jesus were arrested. Their names all died with them, except the name of one rebel: Jesus, who is called Christ.

You cannot help but wonder about this man. He appeared to be incredibly wise and immensely influential. He was known for performing all sorts of miracles that had no records of disputes. No one, even those that opposed him, questioned whether these miracles happened. They saw what they saw, and they heard what they heard. They could only challenge Jesus about the source of his power. Jesus’ miracles were often a free show with thousands in the audience, and that translated to a significant number of eyewitnesses.

So I was intrigued. I wanted to hear and analyze what this Jesus supposedly had said. I wanted to have more than just a glimpse of this man’s life. I almost had to abandon all that I had known about him based on a system of beliefs to form a personal understanding of why he would matter…to me.

I once heard a one-minute motivational talk on a popular Christian radio station. In that short, energized talk, the speaker mentioned not once the name of Jesus Christ. It’s possible to run a “church” without ever mentioning the name of Jesus. The word “God” is used and referenced casually. In a way, it is a subtle and unintentional denial of who God of the Bible is. In my opinion, the word “g-o-d” as a proper noun is too general and too broad to depict a man whose extraordinary short life has had such an unprecedented impact on human history.

Immersed in the murky water of doubts and confusion, I resurfaced as a wiser fool that has found her religion.

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Epilogue: My Final Exam on the Course that Destroyed My Religion

On the last day of my first semester, I had three hours to write an essay to explain who Jesus is to a curious seatmate on a plane in a hypothetical situation. My assignment and approach were to draw on historical resources and accounts to paint a picture of Jesus as realistically as possible. It was a closed-book exam so the following is an unedited version as submitted, a draft that I do not plan to change.

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“Well, before I let you know about the main aspects of Jesus’s life, let me begin by talking about the sources available that tell us about his life. I have just completed a course study on the life of Jesus from a historical perspective. Most people see the Bible as a religious book. The fact is that the Bible, especially the four books of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, was written with the level of scholarship and rigor as any accepted and known historical records. The writers of the Gospels positioned themselves as historians as they recorded in writing to preserve what they had been told through the many eyewitnesses. There were also non-Biblical documents that validated what took place historically at the time of Jesus. For example, Josephus was a Jewish historian in the first century.

His writing was widely accepted as valid because of his neutral position towards Jesus. In the 1950s, there was a stunning discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the caves of Qumran. These scrolls unearthed the original manuscripts dating back to the 1st century.

Most of them became the texts of the Jewish scripture.

In spite of these facts though, the quest to re-discover Jesus gained momentum after the period of Enlightenment around the 18th century when traditional ideas were often challenged.

It then led to much skepticism in the early 20th century as the interest for the historical Jesus took a backseat.

Culturally the first world was heading towards a rapidly developing, industrial era. From the 50s to the 70s, some scholars began to regard Christianity as a mere theology while the existentialism worldview was on the rise.

Existentialism is a philosophical theory which emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will. There was a divide between religion and the historical reliability of the Bible.

Moving on to the 80s till now, there has been a new surge of scholarly research about the historical Jesus with new methodologies and criteria.

It’s in the 80s I was first introduced to the God of the Bible, Jesus Christ, as a young teen.

Although I received the faith without much difficulty, one thing bothered me. Why is it that the Jews did not accept Jesus Christ as the Messiah?

How could it be that they are still waiting for the One?

It’d take some study of the historical backdrop before and around the 1st century for me to understand why. A few hundred years before Jesus’ birth, the Persian Empire dominated the Middle East and enslaved and oppressed the Jews. Alexander the Great came onto the scene in around 300 BC, and conquered the powerful Persia and beyond. The impact of his Greek culture led to the unifying of the language as the New Testament was written. His accomplishment became the ideal for the generations of leaders that came after him. Subsequent Roman kings idolized Alexander as the king of all kings. Military might and aggressive conquest of land were the marks of a true king.

Then around 4 B.C., in a quiet, sleepy town of Bethlehem, a Jewish child was born. It would make anyone scratch their heads as to why this infant would be such a threat to a king named Herod the Great. He ordered the execution of all the boys two years and younger around Judea. Interestingly, Jesus’ birth also led three distinguished men from Persia to find him and offered their expensive gifts.

Not much was then mentioned about the boyhood of Jesus, except for one account of him at age 12.

He was lost on the way back from their annual Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem. To his parents, Mary and Joseph, he was lost as a minor. But in Jesus’ mind, he was found by whom he called his heavenly Father, as he revealed his bright and keen mind in front of many religious teachers of his time.

Any religious systems that fell into the hands of the powerful could become dangerous and corrupt.

The legalistic, dogmatic, and oppressive handling of the Jewish laws was brewing widespread discontentment. At the height of the Roman empire, the ruling elites for the Jews were often eager cohorts and accomplices to please the Roman governors by mistreating their own people. It was a time for drastic reform and such a reform would be started by two young men. John the Baptist preached a message of repentance, and Jesus being his contemporary joined his movement and went even further to revamp their religion.

Yet, they did not do it through a militia and any guerilla tactics of warfare.

Jesus sought to renew Judaism through relationships. He first found twelve men to be his disciples who were told to leave their family and career behind and follow him everywhere he went. And he reached out to the deplorable of his time…the women, the slaves, the sinners, and the foreigners.

The Gospel writers recorded the many stories Jesus told, the stories known as the parables. In these parables, Jesus hinted at a future kingdom and it set him apart from a mere prophet and rabbi. It put him in the exclusive realm of the Chosen who would be known as the Messiah, the Son of Man, who had been prophesized in their scripture.

Now we are onto the last week of Jesus’ life, a short seven-day period that would completely alter the course of history.

Again, it was the time for the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. It would also be Jesus’ last trip there. He chose to ride on a donkey as he approached the gate of the city. He must have known about a verse in their scripture that predicted a king that shall ride on a colt. The Bible called it “Triumphal Entry” yet he was only greeted by a small crowd. Small because there was no arrest made, small because the Roman rulers and the Jewish High Priests left him and his followers alone.

But not for long.

Jesus had an uncharacteristic show of anger when he walked into the temple court and turned the tables of merchants and money changers. He then openly cursed the temple and predicted its destruction.

This is like someone that marches into the North Lawn of the White House, makes a huge mess, and threatens to bomb it.

It’s not surprising now that the powerful had their eyes on Jesus. It’s almost as if Jesus wanted to draw attention to himself so he may fulfill what He had said would happen to him – to die a martyr’s death.

It is a custom for the Jews to gather to eat together for the Passover. And so Jesus too had a big meal with his twelve disciples. The plot thickened as he talked about one of them that would betray him into the hands his enemy – the High Priests of the Jewish council.

After the Passover meal on that fateful night, Jesus had it all out with God in the Garden of Gethsemane.

He knew his time on earth had come to an end and it would not be pretty. He knew he would face not just scourging but a painful and slow death on the Roman cross. He knew he would be stripped to nakedness as the Roman soldiers pitched his broken body on the wooden stakes to flaunt their invincible power. In excruciating agony, he prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.” Cup? In their scripture, the cup often symbolizes God’s wrath, and this full wrath of God would mercilessly come upon one man. The first time God was found angry, the earth was destroyed by the flood. Jesus was not simply going to be executed for the crime of blasphemy. The death he intentionally brought upon himself was for the atonement of sins, all sins, for all people. The Bible says, “Without the shedding of blood, there can be no forgiveness of sins.” (Hebrews 9:22)

On the other hand, Jesus had hinted at his own resurrection. The disciples up to this point had been quite clueless as to exactly what was happening. They were still in denial that their charismatic teacher would die this soon and this young.

After that prayer at the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was arrested, flogged, and put on the cross just outside the city of Jerusalem. All the disciples fled in fear, except for a few women that remained, including his mother Mary. The women watched their beloved slowly slipping away on the cross, in utter disbelief, with unspeakable sorrows.”

At this point, I thought I should stop.

“How are you doing?” I looked into the eyes of my polite yet distracted listener, “You don’t look so well. May I ask the flight attendant for a drink for you?”

“No…no, please continue, I am just intrigued. Go on.”

“Okay…On the top of the beam where Jesus hung, the Roman soldiers posted a sign that said, “King of the Jews.” It’s evident that one of Jesus’ gravest offense was calling himself the King of his people. Allow me to digress a bit from Jesus’ story to point out that around the same time, there was another man named Joshua that was speaking against the same ruling elites. But he was only arrested for a time and later released. This man posed no threats to their governing body even though he took on a similar position as Jesus. Therefore, it is intriguing that Jesus faced a punishment that was not entirely consistent and even as a logical consequence of his actions. How do you justify executing an innocent?

So Jesus breathed his last and that a Roman guard speared his thigh to make sure he was indeed dead.

Typically, the deceased from the crucifixion would be buried in a mass grave, but at the request of one of his more esteemed followers, Joseph of Arimathea, his body was taken into his own tomb.

A large stone was rolled to seal the cave; Roman guards were posted to ensure no foul play. Then came the nightfall and the dawn, Jesus’ mother and Mary went to visit the tomb as in their custom. To their utter astonishment, the stone had been rolled away, exposing an empty tomb.

Conspiracy theories soon abounded as to why the tomb was empty. Naturally, the first suspicion was that his disciples stole the body. However, if we were to analyze the psychological frame of mind of Jesus’ disciples, it was very unlikely they would concoct a Jack Bauer-like mission to evade highly trained Roman guards for such stealth and covert operation.

And onto stranger things.

It was reported that Jesus appeared to around 500 men and women. Did they see an apparition? The number of eyewitnesses made such assumptions improbable. And if this bodily resurrection had been a hoax, there would have been evidence of much debate and controversy in the 1st century.

None was found. This new religion based on Jesus’ teaching spread like wildfire.

It was unstoppable, undefeated until the entire Roman world became a Christian nation.”

The voice of the captain then came through the PA system, “Fasten your seat belt and prepare for landing.”

I don’t know if I had made any difference in the mind and heart of this inquisitive “neighbor,” but as I heard myself retell the story of Jesus – not through the lens of a believer, but through the pages of history I bowed my heart and worshipped the King of all kings, the Lord of all lords until the plane touched down and I was home.”