I wanted to write a follow up on my previous post, because I feel like there is more I could say about it.
In that post, the reason I brought up the contradictions in the gospel accounts of the New Testament was because that was the first question that I ever had. All my life, every question, every doubt, every seeming inconsistency had already been answered for me. Before I could even comprehend asking “Why does God allowing suffering?” I already knew the answer. When you grow up within Evangelical Christianity, you can already answer every question that has ever been tossed your way.
But the only answer I had ever heard to “Why do the gospel’s differ?” was, “They don’t.” It had been a misnomer, a “gotcha” question non-believers threw at us because they didn’t know anything about our Bible.
And I believed it, because our faith didn’t require us to read large swaths of the Bible all together. You didn’t read all the gospels on the same day, and very rarely did you even read more than a few verses at a time. So the first time I ever saw someone point out that there are subtle differences between gospel accounts, I didn’t know what to do. They weren’t supposed to be there.
So I asked my mother. And her answer to me was the first time I ever had an answer that didn’t suffice. “Well, the accounts are different because different people wrote them. And you know how different people have different perspectives.”
But I had been trained, first and foremost, to disregard the idea that perspective could be truth. That two people could see things two different ways and both be right was the argument of the liberal, evil, truth-denying postmodernism plaguing our God-hating society.
And now I was being told to accept that as a satisfactory answer.
This is a fairly common response, by the way. If I google “inconsistencies in the gospels,” that’s the argument I see. Some are a little more willing to stick to their Evangelical roots and claim that it was simply that all of it is all completely true, and it’s just that different people emphasized different things that all totally happened.
But I bring all of this up to ask this question: How do they know?
How do they know that the reason for these totally not inconsistencies is because different people have different perspectives that they put in scripture? Well, they don’t. They have no scriptural backup for that belief, no real proof that theirs is divinely given knowledge.
So how do they know? Because that’s what makes their beliefs make the most sense. If the Bible is 100% inspired and infallible, and if there are scriptures that on the surface look like they contradict themselves then they just…don’t. Then the first answer I ever got was the right one. “They don’t.” Because they can’t. Because the first axiom must be true, so everything else must follow. You can’t throw out the first axiom, you can never decide that there is overwhelming evidence that contradicts it. It’s truth, so everything else in the world must be made sense of in light of that truth.
How do they know that the problem of evil is easily answered with, “God allows evil because he doesn’t want to restrict our free will”? How do they know that God’s hands are tied in this one regard, that to intervene in every moment we might wish to do harm would turn us into mindless, God-serving puppets? Well, because it’s plainly obvious that God does not stop people from committing atrocities. And, because they believe that God is a loving God, then that must be the answer. Once again, the axiom’s are unquestionable, unchangeable, so whatever answer one gives must always lead to that conclusion.
But if you think about it, of course, they don’t know that. They don’t possess these answers as any kind of real knowledge. These are the guesses. These are the “maybes” and the “probablys” that get treated as though they are as binding as “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” and yet all they are are assumptions to make all their preconceived beliefs make sense when combined.
But I could do just the same thing as well. Maybe there are inconsistencies in the gospels to test your faith, to see if you’re trust God enough to still believe in the face of them. Maybe there are inconsistencies so that you won’t rely on your own interpretation of the Bible, but rely on God himself. Maybe God stays hidden because “blessed is he who has not seen yet still believed.” Maybe God allows evil to exist so that eventually they’ll be horrified by their sins and turn to him. Maybe he allows evil to exist because he gave Satan dominion over the earth as consequences for our sin. These are all different interpretations that I carefully chose because they do not contradict the notions of God and Christianity that I was raised in, and they are just as likely as any other belief I was taught was the truth.
(Also, to drive this point home, I would like to point out that I googled “God gave Satan dominion over this earth” because that is a phrase so drilled into my head I have always assumed it was a specifically quoted scripture. It isn’t. There are a lot of scriptures that are used to explain how this belief is evident, but “God gave Satan dominion” isn’t there.)
Because on the whole, much of Evangelical Christian beliefs have little, if anything, to do with “absolute truth” or plain scripture readings. It is a religion that has been built upon many beliefs of who God is and how the world works — beliefs that, because they can never be questioned, can only be justified no matter what evidence might contradict it. The clear, unchanging, unconfusing word of scripture is easily muddied, broken apart, quote-mined, and analyzed down to the semantics of a single word to justify a great number of beliefs that aren’t overtly stated.
I don’t particularly have a stake in what another person believes. But I do think, if you are a Christian, (or if you’re in the process of questioning your Christian beliefs), it’s always a good idea to approach everything you hear with the question, “How do you know?” What are they using to justify this belief? Is it is a scripture, or is it a “Well, maybe…”? Does the scripture they use actually mean that? Ask yourself why you believe what you believe. Ask yourself if the beliefs you hold are because you have genuinely sought and found meaningful answers, or if you have found justifications that help it all hold together.
Always question. Always wonder. If truth is valuable, then you should seek to find it, no matter whether that contradicts what your family believes, what your pastor believes, what Evangelical Christianity holds as infallible truths, what you have always assumed is the reality of the world because it’s been what you’ve always believed.
And I know it’s terrifying. Because in my experience, if you ask, “How do they know?” you might begin to realize how often the answer is, “they don’t.”
Speaking When the World Sleeps 