I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (46 page)

“Be perfect . . . as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth
and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:19-21).

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Matt. 7:1-2).

All of these commands are difficult or impossible for human beings to keep and seem to go against the natural best interests of the men who wrote them down. They certainly are contrary to the desires of many today who want a religion of spirituality that has no moral demands. Consider the extremity and undesirable implications of these commands:

If thinking about a sin is sinful, then everyone—including the New Testament writers—is guilty.

To set such stringent standards for divorce and remarriage does not appear to be in the earthly best interests of the men who recorded this saying.

To not resist the insults of an evil person is to resist our basic human instincts; it also sets up an inconvenient standard of behavior for the apostles, who were undergoing persecution when this saying was written down.

To pray for our enemies goes well beyond any ethic ever uttered and commands kindness where enmity is natural.

To not accumulate financial wealth contradicts our deepest desires for temporal security.

To be perfect is an unattainable request for fallible human beings.

To not judge unless our own lives are in order counters our natural tendency to point out faults in others.

These commands clearly are not the commands that people would impose on themselves. Who can live up to such standards? Only a perfect person. Perhaps that’s exactly the point.

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Even though quotation marks did not exist in first-century Greek, the New Testament writers distinguished Jesus’ words very clearly. Most red letter editions of the Bibles are identical, illustrating how easy the New Testament writers made it to see what Jesus said and what he didn’t say.

Why do we cite this as evidence of their trustworthiness? Because it would have been very easy for the New Testament writers to solve first-century theological disputes by putting words into Jesus’ mouth. After all, if you were making up the “Christianity story” and trying to pass it off as the truth, wouldn’t you simply make up more quotes from Jesus to convince stubborn people to see things your way? Think how convenient it would have been for them to end all debate on controversial issues such as circumcision, obeying the Law of Moses, speaking in tongues, women in the church, and so forth by merely making up quotes from Jesus!

Despite unending frustration with some early believers, the New Testament writers never do that. Instead of pulling rank in this way, the New Testament writers seem to stay true to what Jesus said and didn’t say. Paul, the man who wrote nearly half of the New Testament books (at least 13 of the 27) and dealt with most of those controversial problems in the church, never pulls rank. He quotes Jesus just a few times. And on one of those occasions, he goes out of his way to explicitly distinguish his own words from those of Jesus (1 Cor. 7:10-12).