Matching Tracksuits

I’ve been working on my own “Why I Am Not a Christian” a la Bertrand Russell’s piece of the same name. There seem to be two logical problems Christianity encounters from the very beginning before taking anything else into account.

The two main issues I have with the Christian worldview are the problem of suffering and the nature of Christian salvation. The best way to highlight these problems is to reframe them in strictly human terms to see how much sense it would make for humans to do what the Christian god supposedly does.

The problem of suffering is simple: if there is a loving god who is omnipotent, it would want its creatures to live free of meaningless suffering. There is meaningless suffering in the world. Therefore, this god is either not loving, not omnipotent, or doesn’t exist. Christians will likely quibble over the definition of “meaningless suffering,” pointing out that that it is a value judgment and that we are in no way to determine if a given example of suffering is meaningless or not (that’s their god’s decision). Here it becomes useful to put it in concrete human terms: put simply, if I had the power to stop a child from being raped, I would. No questions, no hesitation: I would just stop it from happening if I could. If I had the power to stop a child from starving to death, I would. If I had the power to stop a child from being beaten, I would. The god of Christianity doesn’t stop these things from happening. In fact, the supposed representatives of this god are all too often the ones inflicting this suffering on children.

The common apologetic response here is to suggest that the Chrisitan god’s ways are not our ways, that we cannot know what good can come from this suffering. That might be so, but that supposed good that can somehow justify the evil and make it in fact a good — that is merely speculation. What is not speculation is the suffering itself.

In response to this, apologists in turn bring up free will. Their god gave us free will, and we can use it, or we can abuse it. Their god lets us do whichever we wish because to do otherwise would be to limit our free will.

Another example shows the absurdity of this thinking. Imagine you walk in on your twelve-year-old son beating your three-year-old daughter to death with a length of two-by-four. Would you stop it? Of course, you would. But imagine you decide that to do so would be to violate your twelve-year-old’s free will, so you let it happen. The authorities find out and charge you. At your trial, you make the defense that, because we all have free will, you are not ultimately responsible and that you were merely allowing your son to exercise his free will. Would the jury accept that defense? If the roles were reversed, and you were on that jury, would you accept that defense?

Thus, reframing the problem of suffering in strictly human terms leads to a strange outcome: we realize that we hold ourselves to a higher moral standard than we hold our idea of a god. We allow a god to get by with things we would find abhorrent in our own behavior by suggesting that we’re just not smart enough to see the good that raping a three-year-old can bring.

At this point, the Christian apologist will likely suggest that this is all a moot point anyway because all this is due to the Fall, and then suggest Jesus’s sacrifice solves this problem (i.e., the Fall). We might point out that the evil still exists but at least Christians have a way to explain where it comes from: we’re flawed in our very nature due to the Fall. Jesus solves all this, the apologists assure us.

What happens when we examine that solution in human terms? Imagine my wife and I have a rule in my home: no one is to spill food while at the dinner table. The penalty for spilling food is three cuts on the forearm with a sharp knife. One night, predictably, my young son spills food. I take his arm and tell him that because of the rules, I have to make three cuts on his arm. However, because I love him so much, I’m going to take that punishment for him. I hand the knife to my wife, and she makes three deep cuts in my forearm. I look at my son lovingly and say, with tears in my eyes, “Do you see, son, how much I love you? I took this punishment for you. This should fill you with an incredible love for me!”

You, as an outside observer, would think all of this is quite absurd. You might question why I had such a strict punishment for such a relatively insignificant “crime.” You would likely suggest that it was inevitable that my child would spill some food and ask why I had that rule in the first place. And finally, you would probably think the whole blood-letting for forgiveness was ridiculous: “Why not just forgive the kid if that rule has to be in place?” you’d ask before pointing out yet again that I was the one who created the law in the first place and that it was completely unnecessary to begin with. As for my suggesting that my son should love me all the more because I took his punishment, you’d likely think that it was a highly traumatizing event for my son.

Yet this is just what Christians think Jesus does for them: he takes a punishment that they deserve and in doing so, earns our undying love. However, Jesus is, according to the doctrine of the trinity, God, so this god set the rules himself as well as the punishment. He could have just forgiven us, but for some reason, he’s insistent on a blood sacrifice to make up for sins that we didn’t even necessarily commit, so Jesus steps in to fulfill that obligation.

At this point, Christians explain that their god would like to forgive us but because of his perfectly righteous nature, he can’t. This is some bizarre argument: the nature of this god apparently restricts this god.