Christ, the Con Man

They say, “If it don’t make sense, it prob’ly ain’t true”. Not only does this “Jesus” story not make sense to us, we can call it utterly impossible!

Only three options: Christ was (1) a madman, (2) a consummate con-man, or (3) the “real deal”.  Scratch the first one, of course. Nobody with more than a 2-digit IQ, not even among his greatest detractors, calls him nuts!  Every utterance credited to him was eminently sane. His wit and wisdom under fire, the positive ways he affected those around him and much, much more….

BUT, a FAKE, a con-man! There we go! Let’s just take a look at how impossible all this stuff was (and is).  AND, to really bring this home, let’s put you in Jesus’ shoes! Ready? Take a dee-eep breath, and off we go!FIRST, your goal: (Right off the bat it’s almost laughable).  Whatever you say and do has to affect billions of lives down the centuries, make them do things like build huge, magnificent cathedrals, found universities and even whole new societies, give up their lives and fortunes just for believing in what you say!So, we start your scam: You’re born poor as dirt. None of the Jews around you are even remotely interested in a “Messiah” who isn’t coming in some sort of triumph to free them from the Romans and fix their world.  You work with common folk, fishermen, etc.  You have no bankers, no major CEO’s, no television. You just walk around talking to folks.  Starting to look a little ridiculous, this whole bit?NOW: (remember, you’re “Jesus” and a con-man!): Here are the rules: You can offer them nothing of what this world values…wealth, power, etc.  Instead, you have to ask them to “Give up their lives” for something after they die!  You also have to walk everywhere in this hot, arid, dusty land without home or possessions.  You tell a rich fellow, “Sell what you have and give to the poor”…you say how hard it is to follow your teachings, and how narrow the road to paradise is, AND, (and here’s the kicker!) By the way… you’re GOD!

(Now, I don’t know about you, but I think that’s heavy! TRY telling your wife, your best friend, your boss, that you’re God! I’m not even going to dare you. You’d likely be looking at a straight-jacket and a rubber room by sundown.  Of course, remember, you’re “Jesus”, and you have to tell this to folks who’d as soon stone you as look at you for this kind of blasphemy).

SO, you walk, just talking to simple folk. No books written by you, not even a pamphlet…and the absurdity continues. You’re supposed to have been born of a virgin, no less (It’s like her husband, Joseph said, “Don’t worry about gossip, Mary, I’ve got a plan”)…You tell folks to replace beloved OLD laws with NEW ideas: “Turn the other cheek” and “forgive and pray for your enemies”. 

(As “Jesus”, how do you think the plan’s going so far?) Well, you stumble on, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, just as your mother, the “virgin” rode into Bethlehem, heading for that dirty, old manger…you now, of course get arrested, and you completely disappoint your faithful followers by not even defending yourself!  The ‘SON of GOD” does NOTHING to save his own skin!

And, what do you tell them NOW? “It’s alright, folks. I’ve got my big scheme here! They can torture and kill me, but I’m coming back! I’m going off to this wonderful place, and, by the way, most of you-all can suffer and be killed too, just for believing this stuff. But we’ll join up later in this ‘Parasdise’ I mentioned”. 

SO, here we are, “Jesus”. You’ve gained nothing from your con. No wealth, no power. You’re dead. You’ve been horribly crucified and stuck into a tomb. Many, if not most, of your followers are scattering like bugs.  Some scam, right?

You might say, “Well, look what you gave me to work with! It’s nuts!”  Precisely!

We started out talking about logic. Clearly, this Christian business is impossible. You couldn’t turn this scam around into something positive, nor could I nor anyone else! Impossible! There’s just one little catch: It’s here! It’s been here for 2,000 years!

Finally, the atheist and the agnostic have, themselves, a question to answer here: How? Why have billions upon billions staked their very lives on the divinity of Christ? Why the multitudes of martyrs? Why do we number our very years from the time of His birth? Why indeed, am I writing this, and you’re reading it after two millennia? I’d love to see some explanations. For me, there is only one answer: God, alone, can make IMPOSSIBLE things POSSIBLE! The third alternative is the only logical answer! Christ IS the “real deal”! He has to have risen, to have rallied his followers, given them the way to change the world forever. Nothing else makes sense!… AND: BEFORE YOU RISK YOUR ETERNITY ON THE IDEA THAT CHRISTIANITY IS SOME SORT OF “FAIRY TALE”, I SUGGEST YOU COME UP WITH SOME BETTER EXPLANATION FOR THESE PAST 2,000 YEARS! THAT ETERNITY YOU’RE WAGERING IS SUCH A LONG, LONG TIME…    (FOUR MORE ESSAYS FOLLOW ON THIS SITE):

“AN UN-LOSEABLE WAGER”
…from a letter to an agnostic friend

…”I’m heartened to hear you’re becoming bit more interested in spiritual matters. I’ve always considered agnosticism to be a pretty honest position. I think the word means ‘without knowledge’.  One simply says, ‘I just don’t know!’  You were interested in my journey, and it is interesting how it all came about…I think I discovered that it’s not only the MIND that comes to conclusions in spiritual things but also very much the HEART.  The only way I can describe what happened to me is by comparing it to the ‘gut’ feeling you might have regarding, say, someone beating a child….you know it’s wrong, just as you know goodness, compassion, etc. are right!  I think, if it ever does come to you, it will be that sort of knowledge, if this makes sense to you. Certainly, I had the intellectual hurdles any thinking person would have (even a ‘low-rent, no-frills’ one like me) but in the final analysis, it just came to be there, as though somehow ‘planted’ in me!  I had finally come to believe in a Higher Power, but JESUS was the ’sticking point’. I prayed for years, simply for finding the truth of it.  C. S. Lewis ‘popped the intellectual bubble’, and prayer seems to have done the rest, for I just woke up one morning BELIEVING!  And, as far as logic is concerned:I can really understand and empathize with unbelievers, having been one for so many years. Those who look at Christianity, explore it, and find it a load of poop, I can understand. Those who don’t look and explore I think are foolish. We spend such a short time in this rather mad scramble here on earth. Fears of terrorism, nuclear annihilation, the ravages of old age, even if we survive the rest…STILL, all of it just a fly-speck on the great page of time…then someone comes along and says, ‘You know, there just may be a whole congenial eternity available, one of incomparable joy, unceasing , beyond any earthly imaginings’. Why not check it out?” So many folks say, in effect, ‘No, I’m not interested, at least not right now, and maybe I think Lewis put it very well in one of his books, “God in the Dock, Man or Rabbit”:

“Here is a door, behind which, according to some people, the secret of the universe is waiting for you. Either that’s true, or it isn’t. And if it isn’t, then what the door really conceals is simply the greatest fraud, the most colossal ’sell’ on record. Isn’t it obviously the job of every man (that is a man, and not a rabbit) to try to find out which, and then to devote his full energies to serving this tremendous secret or to exposing and destroying this gigantic humbug?”

So, if God exists and loves His creation, might he not look more kindly on one who really explored, searched his or her heart and soul, and found Christianity (or, for that matter, belief in GOD, HIMSELF) wanting, than on one who just dismissed it all out of hand? I guess that’s my real hope: that you’ll really explore it. Your books on comparative religions will likely treat all the prophets and ‘founders’ of the various faiths fairly and equally with many comparisons and similarities. The one difference they may ignore is that the centerpiece of only one of the major religions claimed to be the Son of God! THAT’S the touchstone, I guess you’d say…the very heart and guts of the faith. Either He is or He isn’t. Nothing in-between. No ‘good man’, no ‘wise prophet’, none of that. The real deal or a nut (or a con-man of the first and worst order). Lewis explores these three possibilities in the book, “Mere Christianity” I gave you, and I have with my own humble skills presumed to elaborate on these options in a piece called “Christ, the Con Man”. I’m putting it out as a “blog” on the internet. If you’re interested, I’m sure K. Will let you know how to call, e-mail me, or whatever, and I’ll Mail you a copy, since you no longer have internet. FINALLY, A ‘WAGER’:

There’s something called ‘Pascal’s Wager’ (Pascal was a French Christian philosopher-apologist from a few centuries back, who in his less-esoteric moments seemed to reduce the whole thing to rather mundane, even coldly logical propositions, etc.). I can’t find his book right now, and I can only barely paraphrase some of it, but I’ll try. We, all the time, are making “bets” in life…we buy life insurance hoping to live, but “betting” (putting our money down) that we’re going to die.  Our judgements and decisions are much like bets…we take a trip ‘betting’ that we’ll reach our destination, despite obvious risks of mechanical failure, drunk drivers, etc.  SO…Let us say, if you, as an un-believer, and I, as a Christian, were to make a wager concerning Christianity, eternity, etc., I have ‘all the cards’, so to speak.  I didn’t become a Christian because of a ‘bet’ per se…never thought of it…but I NOW can’t LOSE this wager!  If I’m wrong in betting my future on belief in God and Christianity I’ll suffer no loss…since there’s nothing after death, I wouldn’t even know I was wrong!  YOU were RIGHT, but of course gain nothing. You won’t even be aware you’ve won a pyrrhic, useless victory. We won’t exist.        Score: even.  If I’M right and YOU are wrong, well, I have a blissful eternity ahead of me. You have at best the unhappy realization that you’ve given up that eternity, and at worst…well, who knows what ‘hell’ might be, really? I don’t imagine it’s a ton of chuckles.  Score: me, plus one… you, a BIG minus-one!  I can’t really lose anything, and you can’t really win anything. How bleak!  If you win, you (as my dad, sadly, used to say) will just ‘die and lay there like an old horse’…there will be nothing.  If you lose, you’ve given up paradise for some sort of eternal damnation.  NOW: before you make any snap conclusion that this is reducing faith to a mere wager…not so.  It’s merely an apologist’s attempt to encourage someone to do what he considers the obvious: EXPLORE the possibility that there’s something there!  Eternity is far too important a consideration!  I can’t say what you’ll find in your searching.  I only hope and pray you WILL search!  I personally believe that if someone TRULY seeks the answers, they will, in time, reveal themselves.  (I didn’t know when I started this I’d be doing a “War and Peace” on you….sorry.)  JEPS: I purposely left your name out of the salutation as well as any really personal references so I can perhaps use this or excerpts on my blog site…there are thoughts that might just apply to some thinking, seeking folks…I can at least hope so.

I Found one comment-response to my “Un-loseable Wager” posting quite interesting.  The fellow, quite obviously coming from an atheistic point of view, blithely stated, “I’ll go with non-existent.”  I thought, “Yes, and I think you’d best hope that’s what you get!”. The alternative, if he’s wrong in his non-belief, is hardly congenial! “I’ll go with non-existent”…short and to the point, but how odd, on reflection!  Here’s a guy seemingly HAPPY, making a rather glib comment about his own prospects of extinction!

I’ve been thinking on this, and praying, naturally, for an honest understanding. I would never presume to “argue” or debate with an atheist. I haven’t the knowledge, and, I’m sure, the wit requisite for the joust…my whole hope regarding my blog is simply to encourage a good hard look at Christianity. My core belief is that the mind, the heart, and the instincts of one who assiduously seeks truth will bear fruit. Certainly both the atheist and Christian must agree, no one has all the truth.  What puzzles me is that non-believers seem so content and even sometimes gleeful in their nihilism. I could never be so.                                                                                                          I think there’s something else with which the atheist could hardly disagree . I can envision a scenario: two hospital beds, side by side. I am in one, our atheist friend in the other. We are in our last moments of life here.  I would be a sad excuse for a Christian if I feared death. I fear the process…the pain, all the attendant mess of the body shutting down, etc….but death itself? NO! To me, this is the door to Paradise!  My real life is about to begin!  I believe that last instant, that last breath will see me smiling, with the name of Jesus on my lips. But I wonder what my roommate will be thinking in those final seconds as his organs begin their final failures and darkness starts to settle. Will there be a doubt, now?  Will the scoffing, the witty derision still mix with his final breath?  Might he then, in this extremis, think, “What if?…What if been wron                                       (I’ve heard it said ,“Everyone has doubts” I’ve heard more than one Christian admit to the occasional doubt. Do atheists have doubts about LACK of faith?  They seem so cocksure!) I know this:  I would love, if able, in those final seconds, to ask my roommate his thoughts as death settles on him. What does a man have to look forward to when his highest hope is NOTHINGNESS at the end of it all…when the alternative to that nothingness (should he be wrong in his non-belief) is a HORROR…alienation from his creator, the realization, at last, of the paradise he’s passed up, even a hell, whatever its exact nature?                                                                                                                                We can’t debate the greatest of all questions. He can’t prove a negative and I can’t give him the sort of empirical evidence he seems to need.  But how can he be happy?  THIS, I would like some of our glib and witty atheist readers to answer for me.  Forget, for the nonce, argument, pro and con, God, the nature of the universe, the truth of the resurrection…just tell me how you can so gleefully respond to the blog when your only “belief” is this bleak nihilism…this nothingness? If that’s all I had to look forward to, not only in this life, but at the end of it, I would be one sad puppy, I’ll tell you!                          I honestly want to understand just this little bit of it. I suppose we might have little chance at agreement on the larger issues…just give me your secret…how do you do it?

OK…  A guy sees you on street, walks up to you and says he’s a millionaire and his hobby is giving money away.  He  offers you $50, no strings attached.   That 50 could easily be conterfeit.  You don’t know the fellow, BUT you could really use the 50 right now_  QUESTION:  Do you take the bill and check it out, or do you just dismiss it out of hand and walk away?                                                                  I’ll warrant you’d do what any sane person would do, especially in this day and age when even $50 could mean a lot if things get much worse.  You’d make darn sure that piece of paper was a dud before you tossed it.  With all I’ve written in the previous posts, I truly have just one appeal.  Atheist, agnostic, whatever.  I implore you to just treat the possibility of Christ’s being authentic the same way you’d treat that $50 bill.                                                                                                          If you read or hear possible evidence of the falsity of the Gospels or the non-existence of Jesus, be SURE of your source, your information, before you dump the whole business!  Just be sure!  Treat the possibility of eternal life with the same gravitas you’d give that little bit of money.  That’s all.    I know I can’t “convince”,  per se…I have no empirical evidence.                                                                    We’re in the deep water that has drowned many a prodigious intellect on both sides of the “Christ” issue, as far as getting  an opposing position to budge.  All I can say is, I have tried to imagine eternity, and, of all the horrors I can think of, never-ending suffering, or separation from all that is good tops any list. Whatever we suffer here on earth at least has an ending_  I just hope for YOU that when your “final breath” comes you won’t be recalling this communication and thinking “Woah…what if I’ve been wrong?…and that sucker even talked about this moment!”  You see, I don’t personally think (and I can’t speak for other Christians) that the loving God I believe in would likely punish someone who assiduously sought out the Truth their whole life and just couldn’t come to belief.                                                                        I can’t say that for someone who “looked a gift horse in the mouth”, and didn’t even go to the trouble of making as sure as possible that the whole business was phony before walking away from what was freely offered.  I think that man or woman is a fool.                                                                                                 How often in life are you offered a gift with eternal potential…costs nothing, and you have nothing to lose?   The only potential loss in this whole business would be in not accepting…  The saying came out of one of our wars: “There are no atheists in foxholes”.  You’d check out the 50 bucks…isn’t eternal life worth as much?

After reading the four posts, I imagine you’re in one of three categories:(A)  You are a pretty “died-in-the wool” atheist and would like to “debate”.  I have to say, the purpose of my site is merely to encourage folks to “take a look” at God, Christianity, etc. in light of, perhaps, some things they hadn’t thought about before.  It’s really my rather stumbling attempt at “witnessing” Christ in a rather “outside-the-box” way.  In the final analysis, we are all “agnostic” to one extent or another, if “agnostic” means, in essence, ”without knowledge”.                                                                                                   No one has all the truth.   To paraphrase myself, I’m not assuming I have either knowledge or wit requisite for the joust.                                                              (B)  You are, in common usage, an agnostic (a very honest condition, in my estimation) and might like to carry on a mutually respectful and hopefully beneficial give and take on what I’ve brought up in the posts.  I welcome this and offer my e-mail address for this purpose, and for any suggestions, etc. you might have.   theojack2@yahoo.com                   (C)  You are a Christian who perhaps found encouragement in your faith from reading the posts, or have found them useful to download and give to friends who’ve been “on the fence” re: God and Christianity, or are frustrated seekers of Truth.  I STRONGLY encourage you to refer the site to Facebook friends, etc. of any category…atheist, agnostic, Christian, whatever.  You will be, in effect, witnessing for our Lord, as He commanded!  Atheism is rife…all over the map…media, the Internet, evinced in politics and general morality in our country and, indeed, the entire world.  This is one way we can fight back.