The God Who Wasn't There

The God Who Wasn’t There

I’ve heard about this documentary for some time and had the chance to watch it the other day. It’s an interesting presentation, though it tends to wander. The basic idea is that Jesus is not a historical person but a mythological figure, cobbled together from the legends of other savior figures. The film’s creator, Brian Flemming, mixes this with general reflections that Christianity is a bad religion that worships an evil God, and with his own personal spiritual journey.

The part debunking Jesus is based on various theories of history which emerged in the 18-20th centuries, and which have recently been revived by Atheist writers like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. While these theories were popular in the late 19th and earlyt 20th centuries, they have fallen out of favor with professional historians.

FWIW, the idea that Jesus “wasn’t there” has been out of favor with most secular historians for several generations. While contemporary historians are skeptican about many of the events of Jesus’ life (miracles, meeting with Pilate, birth in Bethlehem, etc.) they generally agree on several things.

1) There was a historical first century Jewish wisdom teacher named Jesus of Nazareth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus.
2) He was a Galileean Jew who made at least one pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
3) He may have been a disciple of John the Baptist.
4) He taught using surprising and original parables, many of which spojke of the Kingdom of God.
5) He was crucified during the administration of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.
6) His followers eventually split with Rabbinic Judaism to form the religion that would become known as Christianity.

While there is a great deal of debate about just about everything beyond this, most historians say that we can trust the historical evidence for Jesus about as well as we can the historical evidence for the existence of Socrates.

Flemming isn’t a historian or biblical scholar himself, and that shows in his lack of basic awareness of what the Bible says, and of scholarly criticism of it. He seems to reject the historical Jesus mostly because he wants to. As Flemming relates his personal journey we learn that he was a bright, original thinker who grew up in a Fundamentalist Christian environment that strongly discouraged his questioning attitude and originality. He had the imagination to see the dark implications of what he was taught about God and came to the conclusion that the teachers at his Christian school, the preachers he heard, and the attitudes of the many (admittedly good and loving) Christians around him were twisted.

After a great deal of personal struggle, Flemming has decided that, if the things he was taught about God are true (EG, that God sends people to Hell for following any other religion), then God is a monster. He has also decided that he would find it immoral to find such a God. Finally, he has concluded that what he calls “moderate Christianity” makes no sense. He is certain that the Fundamentalists are right about the nature of God and that moderate Christians who believe that God is loving, have no problems with homosexuality, etc. are deluding themselves.

I had mixed feelings about the film. Flemming rejects many things that are worth rejecting, but he is far from being rational or objective about it. His confrontation with the principal of the Christian school he attended is hard to watch. I join him in disagreeing with the principal’s doctrinal views, but the way he ambushes a man who obviously likes and cares about him is painful.

I do agree with Mr. Flemming about many of the ideas he rejects, and think he has a lot of integrity for rejecting them. I have some problems with his approach though. In its own way it seems to me as narrow, judgmental, and legalistic as the Christianity he grew up with.

More on the places where I agree and disagree later. For now, I’ll just say that I found the film interesting but lacking in depth, and ultimately it made me sad.