Gospel Doctrine for the Godless

An ex-Mormon take on LDS Sunday School lessons

Category: Jesus being kind of a jerk (page 2 of 2)

NT Lesson 10 (The Yoke)

15 March 2015 / / 2 Comments

“Take My Yoke upon You, and Learn of Me”

Matthew 11:28–30; 12:1–13; Luke 7:36–50; 13:10–17

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To instill readers with a sense of gratitude that they no longer have to engage in time-wasting and self-destructive shenanigans, such as those offered by the church.

Reading

In this lesson, Jesus is still in the Galilean phase of his ministry. He’s cruising around, doing miracles, and picking fights with rival religionists. He seems to have outgrown his discipleship with John the Baptist, realising that he’s quite popular in his own right. And when John gets thrown into prison, Jesus realises it’s time for him to step up and take over John’s racket.

John’s not too sure about this. From prison, he sends two of his disciples to Jesus to check him out.

Matthew 11:2 Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples,
11:3 And said unto him, Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?

It’s a bit odd that John seems uncertain about Jesus. He was supposedly present for the baptism and the dove and the voice from heaven, so you think he’d have made his mind up somehow… oops, unless those things were later insertions like so much of the New Testament.

Not much else to say about John, except that Jesus says some nice things about him.

Matthew 11:11 Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

You think Jesus / Jehovah mellowed out and got nice after getting a body? Nope. Here, Jesus condemns several cities, Old-Testament style, because they didn’t believe in him enough:

Matthew 11:20 Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not:
11:21 Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
11:22 But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you.
11:23 And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.
11:24 But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee.

Main ideas for this lesson

The Sabbath

Then there’s some pointless wrangling about the Sabbath.

I would indeed be ungrateful if I did not take of a moment and say that not obeying the Sabbath is teh best. It’s fantastic not taking up your time with tedious meetings or sitting in Sunday School. You get an entire extra day! It’s like doubling your weekend.

And somehow, even though the consequences of Sabbath-breaking are supposed to be so dire, they ultimately fail to eventuate.

And what was I doing last Sunday? I’m glad you asked. I was helping to break the world record for biggest skinny dip! Nearly 800 people here in Perth smashed the record, and I talked about it on the radio.

Listen on RTRFM

Going to the beach, meeting up with great people, and going swimming in the buff was so much better than going to church. It was infinity times better. There’s no comparison. Being an ex-Mormon opens up a new world of possibilities.

The yoke of Mormonism

Jesus, by contrast, invites us to put on one of these things.

Matthew 11:29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
11:30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Looks fun, doesn’t it? Usually, yokes are for beasts of burden, but Jesus says you can wear one, too. It looks entirely necessary, and not like something intended to suck the enjoyment out of your life. And Jesus even says how easy it is, so how does that not sound great.

Object lesson for class: Bring a yoke to class. Ask for a pair of volunteers to stick their necks in it.

Ask: If someone suggested that you wear a farm implement like this so you could do his work for him, what would you say? (Invite responses.)

I know, I know: members will say, “The world claims to offer us fun that is ultimately unfulfilling. Taking on the yoke of Christ may seem like a bad deal, but discipleship is much better.”

Having done both, I can tell you it’s just the opposite. The church wants to absorb your life in a series of time-wasting activities that serve only to advance its own aims at your expense. Being able to direct your own life without superstition is not the same as amoral hedonism. Many people, once they take the yoke off their backs, learn to make better decisions with better information, and as a result live better and more fulfilling lives. (And a few people are total disasters. But frightening people into obedience does not give you a better person.)

Ask: What kinds of responsibilities do church members routinely accept?
Possible answers: Church meetings, leadership positions, missions, callings, home and visiting teaching, temple attendance, zzzzzzz…

And now there’s cleaning the church buildings. After I left the church, I was astounded to hear that they’d laid off their professional janitors and custodians, and were inducing members to clean the buildings! This accomplishes three goals simultaneously:

  • establishes dominance over members,
  • cashes in on free labour, and
  • gets ward meetinghouses to smell faintly of wee.

Watch this inspiring video about how great it is to clean the toilets of a church that you’re already paying 10% toward.

It certainly does put a new spin on an old slogan:

Ask: What could possibly make someone accept such a wide and unnecessary set of burdens and constraints?
One possible answer is the investment fallacy, as discussed in this lesson. People born in the church become used to spending a great deal of time supporting it — see these commitment cards aimed at kids, as one rank example —  and converts are treated to an ever-escalating set of commitments. When someone spends a great deal of time on a system, it becomes harder and harder to unplug from it, since doing so would be an admission that they’re wasted their time, and no one likes to admit that they’ve wasted their time.

Philosopher Daniel Dennett gave a TED talk called “Dangerous Memes” that explains this.

Watch the video describing a bizarre behaviour that ants engage in when their brains are infected by a virus.

Partial transcript:

So you’re out in the woods, or you’re out in the pasture, and you see this ant crawling up this blade of grass. It climbs up to the top, and it falls, and it climbs, and it falls, and it climbs — trying to stay at the very top of the blade of grass. What is this ant doing? What is this in aid of? What goals is this ant trying to achieve by climbing this blade of grass? What’s in it for the ant? And the answer is: nothing. There’s nothing in it for the ant. Well then, why is it doing this? Is it just a fluke? Yeah, it’s just a fluke. It’s a lancet fluke. It’s a little brain worm. It’s a parasitic brain worm that has to get into the stomach of a sheep or a cow in order to continue its life cycle. Salmon swim upstream to get to their spawning grounds, and lancet flukes commandeer a passing ant, crawl into its brain, and drive it up a blade of grass like an all-terrain vehicle. So there’s nothing in it for the ant. The ant’s brain has been hijacked by a parasite that infects the brain, inducing suicidal behavior. Pretty scary.
Well, does anything like that happen with human beings? This is all on behalf of a cause other than one’s own genetic fitness, of course. Well, it may already have occurred to you that Islam means “surrender,” or “submission of self-interest to the will of Allah.” Well, it’s ideas — not worms — that hijack our brains.
…
Hosts work hard to spread these ideas to others.

Ask: Why do these ants work so hard in a behaviour that is of no benefit to them, but of immense benefit to the brain virus that has infected them?

Ask: If one such ant could talk, and you asked it why it was climbing that blade of grass, what explanation do you think it might offer for its behaviour?
Possible answer: It might say that it was doing so of its own free will.

Ask: What behaviours do you see Latter-day Saints engaging in that serve to benefit the church, and not themselves?
Possible answers: Missionary work, apologetics, offering their time, talents, and all that they have to the “building up of Zion”.

In addition to these burdens, the church offers some artificial ones. We yoke ourselves with artificial guilt, even when we do normal things or have normal desires.

A lot of the friction between my parents and me was caused by me not doing or saying or thinking the things they thought I should, in order to be a good Latter-day Saint. My enjoyment of popular music worried them horribly, and it shouldn’t have. They worried about what I read, who I knew, what I watched. The church caused a lot of unnecessary conflict in our relationship.

For me now, I can help my sons by appealing to rational reasons to avoid real trouble (drugs, crime, and so on), while realising that there are many ways to live, and I don’t have all the answers. Rather than imagining that they’ll do well if they follow in my footsteps, I can encourage them to grow in ways I didn’t predict — to find things out about our world and our society, and then come back and tell me about them.

And then there’s a post-deconversion aspect: The artificial concept of the afterlife means that our family members are concerned for our “eternal souls”. I have to tell you: I ain’t got one. None of us do. I’m sure that my dear sister is overly anxious for me to return to the church so I don’t suffer an eternity of isolation, inflicted on me by a cruel and sadistic god. Sadly, she’s spending time in her limited life fretting about my non-existent soul, as we both hurry to the grave. This is unnecessary suffering caused directly by her religious beliefs.

As a missionary, one of the toughest audiences I had was a trio of LDS girls who were sisters. We were giving the family a member presentation about the blessings of church involvement, and it was clear that these girls were fucking done. They’d had a lifetime of it, and they tried to explain that the “blessings” were few and the constraints were many. As a fellow lifelong constrainee, I tried to drum up some enthusiasm, but they weren’t having it. Their answers were monosyllabic and flat.

I wonder what happened to those girls. I hope they managed to escape and be happy, instead of spending a lifetime in the empty church, waiting for a better life to begin. We all have the opportunity to throw off the yoke, and begin a new secular life without gods. Our individual circumstances differ. Some of us feel the need to go along with the church to make peace in our personal relationships, but this freedom is still possible, if not in our behaviour, in our minds.

Additional teaching ideas

Sin against the Holy Ghost

What are the worst sins in the world? In the Book of Mormon, having sex is called the sin next to murder, so sex and murder are likely up the top of the list.

But Jesus teaches that even worse than murder (for which, after all, there may be forgiveness under certain circumstances) is the sin against the Holy Ghost.

Matthew 12:31 Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.
12:32 And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.

Here’s the entry for “unpardonable sin” in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism:

The gravest of all sins is blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. One may speak even against Jesus Christ in ignorance and, upon repentance, be forgiven, but knowingly to sin against the Holy Ghost by denying its influence after having received it is unpardonable (Matt. 12:31-32; Jacob 7:19; Alma 39:6), and the consequences are inescapable. Such denial dooms the perpetrator to the hell of the second spiritual death (TPJS, p. 361). This extreme judgment comes because the person sins knowingly against the light, thereby severing himself from the redeeming grace of Christ. He is numbered with the sons of perdition (D&C 76:43).

It may seem strange — to a normal person — that a crime of unbelief would be more serious than murdering someone, but in a religious context, this makes perfect sense. Unbelief is what kills gods, and so it’s natural for a robust and healthy god-meme to develop an immune system to protect itself. Otherwise, deicide is on the menu.

What’s even stranger is that, as dangerous as this sin would appear to be, there’s very little specificity on just what constitutes the commission of it. I recall a belief in the church that it was well-nigh impossible to commit for a garden-variety member. Aside from that, opinions seem to vary widely on what you have to say or do to merit Outer Darkness. What do you have to do? Trash-talk the Spirit? Kill an innocent person? Find Jesus and crucify him again? It’s not clear. And — what can I say — this resembles what happens when a despotic system levies severe punishments for crimes, but doesn’t make public what the crimes are.

So let me take the opportunity to do the worst thing EVAR. Most of my LDS sources say that you have to know the HG before you can deny it. Well, I’ve felt what I once thought to be the influence of Holy the Ghost, but which I now think was a psychological effect that is easily reproducible across world religions. So let me say this:

I deny the Holy Ghost. 

I deny that I was ever under the influence of any such ghost, as ghosts are non-existent figments of human imagination and wonky pattern recognition. Any such influence can be more easily explained as a desire to believe, and as social pressure to uphold the norms and beliefs of a group.

I say essentially the same thing in a recent promo for my language podcast. Listen:

Your browser does not support this audio

Also, I approve of this cartoon showing a Godhead threesome. Suck it, ghost.

Some Mormons might say that in writing and saying the above, I haven’t actually denied the Holy Ghost or committed the Great Unpardonable. Perhaps they’d say I don’t have the requisite knowledge, or the Unpardonable Sin requires me to murder someone, or crucify Jesus again, or some such nonsense. My response would be that I’ve denied the Holy Ghost as much as I can, and if anyone has any ideas for how I can deny the Holy Ghost more completely, please send them in and I can do them, perhaps in a YouTube video.

But not if they involve killing anyone. I don’t want to kill anyone because I’m actually a good person, and it’s the rules of Christianity and Mormonism that are twisted.

NT Lesson 6 (Calling the Twelve Apostles)

7 February 2015 / / 1 Comment

“They Straightway Left Their Nets”

Luke 4:14–32; 5; 6:12–16; Matthew 10

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To remind readers that Christianity, and Mormonism in particular, drives a wedge between family members by design, and sets itself up as a substitute family.

Reading

This lesson covers the following stories:

  • Jesus calls his disciples

Translation, Picard, translation. But more later.

  • Jesus heals people and casts out unclean spirits

Main ideas for this lesson

Religion over family

In this reading, Jesus gives some of the more evil scriptures, involving how members should react to opposition.

Luke 6:22 Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake.
6:23 Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.

When I was in the mission field, a mimeograph went around about how to install a meme in an investigator’s head. It was called “The Opposition Dialogue”. (Does anyone else remember something like this?) It had these basic elements:

  • In the time leading up to your baptism, it may be that people you know will try to prevent you from joining the church.
  • This opposition comes from Satan. Satan doesn’t want you to join the church.
  • You need to join the church in spite of any opposition you get.

The Opposition Dialogue had an important purpose. In a normal situation, opposition from family members could derail an investigator’s plan to join the church. And why wouldn’t it — people listen to family members, since they’re usually people who care about them and have an interest in them. There’s a shared history.

But the purpose of the Opposition Dialogue was to make that opposition an expected thing, and to turn it to our advantage. Without the OD, the investigator might think: “My family is concerned, and they have information that says I shouldn’t continue.” But with the OD, that same investigator might think, “This is the reaction the elders said I’d get! I should ignore it.”

Though I didn’t realise it at the time, the OD was a not-so-subtle way of getting investigators to ignore input from family members, and only accept information from the missionaries — as well as start looking for Satan around every corner. It was a way of starting people on the process of turning against their families. I never used the OD in discussions, but I’m sure that I encouraged people to ignore information from anywhere but the church, even if that meant cutting themselves off from family. It was a cult tactic, pure and simple.

And, like many evil ideas, it comes straight from Jesus, a end-of-the-world cult leader who insisted on his religion over family. Here it is later on in this reading.

Matthew 10:35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
10:36 And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.
10:37 He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

We need to recognise that, despite its family-friendly façade, the LDS Church does not promote family. It subverts the family, and sets the religion up as a kind of substitute family. It even borrows kinship terms: Brother and Sister So-and-So; the bishop is the father of the ward, and so on. One need only go so far as the Exmormon subreddit to find heart-rending stories about how one spouse stops believing, and then is treated like an unworthy wretch by the believing spouse. Or children who very sensibly question the truth claims of the church, only to find themselves kicked out of home, or coerced back into activity. There are the happy stories, where people are eventually joined in unbelief by their partner or family. I’m lucky; I still have a good relationship with my good-hearted TBM sister, though I’m aware that she at times feels a great deal of worry over my non-existent soul. But her concern — and all the broken families and all the fractiousness and all the ostracism — is completely unnecessary. It only exists because there is a religion that has codified belief in itself and support of itself over one’s own family as a foundational meme.

I don’t know what it takes to make a person choose a religion over their spouse or their own child, but whatever it takes, Christianity has done it. Every time I see it happen, I think: That is some powerful juju right there. And it’s all approved by Jesus himself. It went to work early on in Christianity. Separation from family is a feature, not a bug.

The Golden Rule

As far as moral codes go, the teaching which has become known as the Golden Rule is a pretty good one.

Luke 6:31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.

We could quibble about the phrasing. I can think of maybe two variations that might improve it a bit.

  • Don’t do something to others if you wouldn’t want them to do that to you — which has become known as the Silver Rule
  • Do unto others as they would like you to do unto them — which I think of as George’s Platinum Rule

Still, the Golden Rule as it stands is a good way to go. When people make lists of secular commandments — as they sometimes do — this one consistently comes up at the top.

But here’s the thing: the Golden Rule predates Jesus, and is not particularly unique among the world’s religions. Here are some formulations in other religions.

Native American Spirituality: “Do not wrong or hate your neighbor. For it is not he who you wrong, but yourself.” Pima proverb.
Taoism: “Regard your neighbor’s gain as your gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.” Tai Shang Kan Yin P’ien
Shinto: “The heart of the person before you is a mirror. See there your own form” Munetada Kurozumi
Zoroastrianism: “That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself”. Dadistan-i-dinik 94:5
Confucianism: “Do not do to others what you would not like yourself. Then there will be no resentment against you, either in the family or in the state.” Analects 12:2
Buddhism: “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.” Udana-Varga 5,1

And many others. It also comes up in the writings of non-religious people:

Plato: “May I do to others as I would that they should do unto me.” (Greece; 4th century BCE)
Socrates: “Do not do to others that which would anger you if others did it to you.” (Greece; 5th century BCE)
Epictetus: “What you would avoid suffering yourself, seek not to impose on others.” (circa 100 CE)

It was also a strong contender in the recent 10 Atheist Commandments, crowdsourced from ordinary people.

7. Treat others as you would want them to treat you, and can reasonably expect them to want to be treated. Think about their perspective.

Sounds good to me.

Additional lesson ideas

Taking apart the roof

There’s kind of a funny story here: Jesus is teaching in a house, and some men are trying to bring a sick man so Jesus can heal him. But there are too many people listening to Jesus for them to get through the door. So what do they do? Easy! Haul the guy up onto the roof, and start dismantling the roof tiles! These guys know how to get stuff done, and I appreciate that.

This story appears in both Mark and Luke — with one crucial difference. The author of Mark tells the story fairly straightforwardly. The author of Luke tells the same story, but he forgets to mention that the story is taking place in a house. The men are pulling off tiles for a house that hasn’t been mentioned in the story yet. Compare:

Mark Luke
Mark 2:1 And again he entered into Capernaum after some days; and it was noised that he was in the house.
2:2 And straightway many were gathered together, insomuch that there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door: and he preached the word unto them.		 Luke 5:17 And it came to pass on a certain day, as he was teaching, that there were Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting by, which were come out of every town of Galilee, and Judaea, and Jerusalem: and the power of the Lord was present to heal them.
2:3 And they come unto him, bringing one sick of the palsy, which was borne of four. 5:18 And, behold, men brought in a bed a man which was taken with a palsy: and they sought means to bring him in, and to lay him before him.
2:4 And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay. 5:19 And when they could not find by what way they might bring him in because of the multitude, they went upon the housetop, and let him down through the tiling with his couch into the midst before Jesus.

This is what we’d expect if Luke’s version were copied a bit haphazardly from an earlier source, and the author lost track of where in the story he was copying from.

How did Jakob become James?

In the Greek text, the apostle James is Ἰάκωβος, or to put it more Anglishly, Jakob. How did he turn into James? Was someone trying to brown-nose King James?

Not exactly. This rundown is as good as any, but the short version is that Greek Iacobus turned to Latin Iacomus. It’s easy for a /b/ to change to an /m/; just that one’s oral and the other is nasal. From there it was a short hop to Old French Jammes, and thence to James.

Oh, and Santiago in Spanish? That’s just the way they said Sanctu Iacobu, or Saint James.

UPDATE: I missed this one, but Redditor apostatereligion mentioned it, and it was too good not to pass on.

Joseph Smith seemed unaware that Jacobus and Jacomus referred to the same people. In his King Follett discourse, he mischaracterised the sound change as a translation error.

I am going to show you an error. I have an old book of the New Testament in the Hebrew, Latin, German, and Greek. I have been reading the German and find it to be the most [nearly] correct, and to correspond nearest to the revelations I have given for the last fourteen years. It tells about Jachobod the son of Zebedee. It means Jacob. In the English New Testament it is translated James. Now if Jacob had the keys, you might talk about James through all eternity and never get the keys. In the 21st verse of the fourth chapter of Matthew, the German edition gives the word Jacob instead of James. How can we escape the damnation of hell except God reveal to us? Men bind us with chains. Latin says Jachobod means Jacob; Hebrew says it means Jacob; Greek says Jacob; German says Jacob.

Yeah, you wouldn’t want to be getting any keys from James and not Jacob, even though they’re… the… same person. As apostatereligion drily notes: “Some prophet.”

But then Joseph Smith had a little trouble keeping his transliterated Bible characters straight. Elias, anyone? (But more on that soon enough.)

NT Lesson 4 (Jesus: Early ministry)

25 January 2015 / / 2 Comments

“Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord”

Matthew 3–4; John 1:35–51

LDS manual: here

Reading

For this reading, Jesus is getting started on his ministry. He’s about 30 years old, which means that for the last 18 years, he’s been doing things that Christians have tried hard to hush up. (Mormons aren’t the only ones who can sanitise a history, you know.)

This lesson covers the following:

  • Baptism of Jesus
  • The temptation of Jesus
  • The marriage at Cana
  • Driving the money-changers from the tample

Main ideas for this lesson

John the Baptist

John the Baptist is a prophet from the Old Testament tradition. Those guys were great. They’d get naked and prophesy, they’d cook bread on a fire made from their own dung. John would have fit right in; he wears hairy clothes, and eats locusts and honey.

So John baptises Jesus, and then God speaks from heaven, and the Holy Ghost comes down in Bird Mode.

Matt. 3:16 And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him:
3:17 And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

But Jesus is not unique in that regard. The same thing happened to Robert Plant. God was a huge Zep fan back in the day.

Little known fact: Space Moose was also there.

(Disclaimer: No one should read Space Moose comics. They are terribly offensive and weird.)

This experience seems to have made quite an impression on John,

John 1:36 And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God!

but later on when he’s in prison, he doesn’t seem so sure. He sends a couple of his disciples to ask Jesus if he really is the Lamb of God.

Matt. 11:2 Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples,
11:3 And said unto him, Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?

I’ve heard people explain this away by saying that John knew Jesus was the Messiah, but he wanted his disciples to meet Jesus in person. That’s a bit silly; lots of people met Jesus, and not everyone was into him. Actually, people went hot and cold on Jesus in amazingly short periods of time, depending on where in the story we are. But more on that later.

Temptation

There’s something interesting here: Satan, who hasn’t been seen since Job, is back, and he’s here to tempt Jesus three times, for a few minutes. This is in contrast to the rest of us, who Satan is apparently working on more or less full time.

There’s a contradiction in the two versions of this story. Notice the verse numbers. The two parts of the story are flipped.

Matthew 4:5–10 Luke 4:5–12
Satan takes Jesus to the top of the temple 4:5 Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,
4:6 And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
4:7 Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.		 4:9 And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence:
4:10 For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee:
4:11 And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
4:12 And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
Satan takes Jesus to the top of the mountain 4:8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;
4:9 And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
4:10 Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.		 4:5 And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
4:6 And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
4:7 If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.

The supposed existence of Satan in the world is a bit of a puzzle. What in the world is Satan doing roaming about? As parents, we try as hard as we can to reduce our children’s exposure to harm. God’s just the opposite; he’s like, “Go for it, Satan!”

Why is God allowing this? Apparently it’s so that we can have agency. He is truly a kind and wise creator.

Actually, Satan isn’t all bad. He was really just trying to help.

Turning water into wine

At a wedding in Cana — plot twist: apostle Orson Hyde taught that the wedding was Jesus’ own! — Jesus performs his first conjuring trick / miracle: turning water into wine. That’s kind of an old one. Dionysus was supposed to have done it, and devotees of Sai Baba say he once turned water into petrol. (One would suppose that with that power, it might be incumbent on one to solve problems related to the world energy supply, but I digress.)

Wine: Was it just grape juice?

With the Mormon prohibition on alcohol, members have a hard time accepting that Jesus drank wine. Some go so far as to insist that the ‘wine’ Jesus drank at various periods was nothing but non-alcoholic grape juice.

I remember this bit from a terrible book called Day of Defense (PDF), which was handed around my mission, and was my introduction to proof-texting and quote-mining. Such legalistic line-by-line cherry-picking — done not to find out what’s true, but solely to establish one’s own pre-conceived view — is the stock in trade for so much apologetics. It was this approach that helped me to see that religious reasoning was not an honest way of getting answers to questions, for which I’m very grateful.

Here’s what Day of Defense says about wine:

The wine used in the Lord’s Supper was nothing more than grape juice, or as the scriptures stated it “fruit of the vine”.

Womp womp. As discussed in this Reddit thread, grape juice starts to ferment almost immediately, and it wasn’t until 1869 that Thomas Welch figured out how to pasteurise grape juice to stop the fermentation. Unfermented grape juice wouldn’t have been possible in Jesus’ day.

Anyway, the Bible has people calling Jesus a ‘wine-bibber‘, which seems unlikely in the absence of wine.

Activity for readers stuck in a real Gospel Doctrine class: See if anyone tries the ‘grape juice gambit’. Do they resist the facts when you point them out? Put your experiences in comments!

Flipping tables in the temple

I always liked the story of Jesus driving out the money-changers.

John 2:13 And the Jews’ passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
2:14 And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting:
2:15 And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables;
2:16 And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise.

It puts a new spin on an old acronym. Who would Jesus lash?

On the other hand, it doesn’t make him much of a “job creator“.

Additional lesson ideas

40 days and 40 nights = Hebrew idiom for “a long time”?

There are a lot of examples of things happening for “40 days and 40 nights”, including the Flood and the starvation of Jesus. The repeated appearance of this number, combined with the fact that it’s not really possible to survive 40 days without water, has made people suppose that “40 days and 40 nights” is some kind of idiom for “a long time”. I haven’t found anything conclusive, although some writers agree.

At a late stage in my deconversion, I was talking to one of the counsellors in the Stake Presidency — a good guy, BTW — and he told me that he thought it was just an idiom. I must have assumed that everyone was as literal-minded about the scriptures as I was, because this came as kind of a surprise to me.

“Doesn’t this weaken the claims of the Bible for you?” I asked.

“The Holy Ghost tells me what to believe,” he replied.

Partial credit to him, I guess, for moderating the amount of nonsense he was willing to swallow, but it seemed to me — both then and now — that if one is willing to take this view, it makes the job of understanding the scriptures well-nigh impossible. Everyone can have their own view because every every every detail can be understood multiple ways. God is the author of confusion.

Jesus abuses his mum

Jesus has this bad habit of giving his mother some sass. Here he is at the wedding of Cana.

John 2:3 And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine.
2:4 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.

Joseph Smith tries to save the situation, unconvincingly.

“What wilt thou have me do for thee? that will I do” (Joseph Smith Translation, John 2:4)

The LDS manual has this under the heading: “Jesus shows respect and love for his mother”. Way to turn it around, chaps. But no, Jesus is being kind of a dick again.

NT Lesson 3 (Jesus: The Early Years)

18 January 2015 / / 1 Comment

“Unto You Is Born … a Saviour”

Luke 2; Matthew 2

LDS manual: here

Purpose

To show continuity problems and historical errors in the New Testament text, and to highlight the importance of extra-biblical corroboration.

Reading

This lesson is about the birth of Jesus, which is a bit of a shame, because Christmas was like three and a half weeks ago, and now here we are again. I guess adjusting the LDS lesson schedule back about a month would be unworkable, but still.

Anyway, last week we saw how Mark was the first gospel written, and the writers of Matthew and Luke were sourcing (read: copying) it for their version. That’s why they agree with each other when they’re copying him, and they don’t when they’re not. Well, for this lesson, Mark is silent on all this stuff, so Matthew and Luke are basically free-styling. What wacky hijinx will they get up to this week?

We all know the story: Jesus is born — do I have time for one more Mary joke?

shepherds are visited by angels

and wise men from the East give Jesus gifts.

Here’s a table for the events in this reading. Notice the lack of overlap.

The census and tax, Jesus is born Luke 2:1–7
Shepherds see angels Luke 2:8–20
Jesus presented at the temple Luke 2:21–38
Visit of the wise men Matthew 2:1–12
Flight into Egypt, Herod kills male children Matthew 2:13–23
Jesus’ life up to age 12
Jesus teaching in the temple Luke 2:39–52

Let’s take some of these in detail.

Main ideas for this lesson

In preparing this lesson, I drew from an article I read many years ago in Sunstone magazine. It was “Away in a Manger” by Stephen E. Thompson (PDF). It’s this week’s required reading.

Sunstone? Yes, I was one of those people who liked to — according to Neal Maxwell — “cast off on intellectual and behavioral bungee cords in search of new sensations”. Hey, what’s the problem? It’s not like anything I find is going to prove the gospel wrong, right? Well, in this article, good old TBM me found some surprising facts about the story of the nativity, along with some great ways to tell if a historical document is telling it like it is.

Was there ever a census?

Luke says that Joseph and Mary had to get to Bethlehem because of taxation, a census, or what have you.

Luke 2:1 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.
2:2 (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)
2:3 And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.

Did such a census take place? Wikipedia says it’s a bit of a problem.

This passage has long been considered problematic by Biblical scholars, since it places the birth of Jesus around the time of the census in 6/7, whereas both this Gospel and the Gospel of Matthew, which makes no mention of the census, indicate a birth in the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BCE, at least ten years earlier.

In other words, Jesus would have had to have been born twice — before 4 BCE for Herod, and again after 6 CE to catch the census — for the story to fit. The versions don’t line up.

Thompson flatly states:

This is not possible. There is no recorded empire-wide census of all the inhabitants of the Roman Empire under Augustus. There were three censuses under Augustus, but of Roman citizens only. Further, Quirinius became legate of Syria in 6 C.E., but Herod died in 4 B.C.E., years before Quirinius assumed office. Also, a Roman census did not require people to register in their ancestral cities, and it seems unlikely that a very pregnant Mary would have voluntarily chosen to make the trip.

Did Herod kill babies?

The story about Herod (alive again — perhaps Zombie Herod) ordering all the male children to be killed is a very sad story.

Matthew 2:16 Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men.

Even though it did give rise to the Coventry Carol, one of my favourite Christmas songs.

It’s actually my favourite song about killing children, period, although this one is a close second.

But did it really happen? The great news is: probably not. And the reason we think this is that no other historian corroborates it. From Thompson:

Herod’s slaughter of the male children two years old and under (Matt 2:16) is an act of enormous cruelty, but it was apparently quickly forgotten. There is no mention of it in the work of the Jewish historian Josephus, even though he went to great lengths to describe Herod’s terrible acts. It is more likely that the evangelist created this event.

And that Matthew modeled it after the story of the king of Egypt trying to kill baby Moses. Oh, Matthew! Something tells me we haven’t seen the last of his crazy stories.

Lack of corroboration from non-biblical sources is a huge problem for the Bible, and one we’re going to return to again and again.

As for me, the idea that a biblical story could simply not have happened, and that this could be verified by history — well, it rocked my world. And this realisation made it possible for me to take the scriptures less and less seriously, until finally I could be free of them altogether.

Thompson’s conclusion is this:

The Infancy narratives may tell us little accurate historical information about Jesus, but they do tell us one very important thing about him: “he was such an extraordinary person that these kinds of stories were told about him.“

This may be true, but so what? People tell extraordinary stories about Paul Bunyan, who didn’t exist, or John Henry, who might have. Fiction is instructive and enjoyable, but if the story of Jesus isn’t literally true, it obliterates Christianity’s claims about the Resurrection and the destiny of humankind.

Furthermore, the church teaches Jesus’ story as literally true. Nowhere in the manual is there presented any doubt as to the veracity of the story. Missionaries don’t say “We have a wonderful fictional story to tell you.” So if the story doesn’t appear to be true — and it brings harm to people who believe it — then maybe it’s time to look for a better one.

An update: Redditor ‘byniumhart’ has informed me that the problems don’t stop here, and links to a great resource showing loads of problems with the Christianity myth. As if to put the whole thing to bed, there’s no evidence that Bethlehem was even inhabited during the range of time the whole ‘birth of Jesus’ thing was supposed to be going on. Could this story be any more implausible? Yes, and we’ll see how in future lessons.

Additional lesson ideas

Peace on earth, goodwill for whom?

We all know this saying from the angels:

Luke 2:14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Sounds very jolly and Christmassy, doesn’t it? Except that biblical scholar Richard Carrier gives a slightly different take on it. He points out that in older versions of this text, this scripture was written with an extra letter σ (sigma), which gives quite a different meaning: “peace on earth for men whom God pleases”.

He elaborates:

Scribal errors are also a problem little dealt-with by any church authority…. Perhaps one of my favorite examples, with which I will close, is the famous King James line “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2:14), which even still gets repeated in nativity plays, “peace on earth, and good will toward men,” and is treated as an example of the ultimate moral nobility of Christianity. But not until recent times was it discovered that a scribe long ago had failed to record a single letter (a sigma, “s”) at the end of this line. The Latin Vulgate Bible, translated late in the 4th century, copied from a correct edition and thus has also preserved the original meaning, which is now correctly reconstructed in more recent Bible translations: “peace on earth toward men of goodwill,” which is not as noble–since it does not wish peace on anyone else–and it is perhaps even less noble still, since the same phrase more likely means “peace on earth toward men [who enjoy God’s] goodwill,” in other words peace only for those whom God likes. All from a single mistake of one letter.

And that’s just one mistake that we know about.

How many wise men were there?

Many people have the idea that there were specifically three wise men, probably because of this film.

In fact, as clever people in real Gospel Doctrine classes never tire of pointing out, the Bible never specifies the number of wise men.

So how many wise men were there? None, the whole thing’s made up.

Presentation of Jesus at the temple

Besides The Life of Brian, this reading has one more great work of art based on it: Rachmaninov’s “Ныне отпущаеши” (“Lord now lettest Thou Thy servant depart”), which is a setting of the text of Simeon’s blessing. Turn it up, y’all.

Jesus, being kind of a dick

Luke 2 tells about how Puberty Jesus went missing for three days. His parents must have been frantic. They finally found him in the temple. His response to his parents is classically adolescent.

Luke 2:46 And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions.
2:47 And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. 2:48 And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.
2:49 And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?

This is the first recorded instance of the mortal Jesus being kind of a dick. But it won’t be the last. 
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