The Evil of Saint Paul

The Evil of Saint Paul

Recently, somebody (a kind and gentle person) asked me about Saint Paul and, to be honest, I am not sure what they were more frightened of: that the Resurrection was true or that it was a lie. What makes things even worse, they felt too frightened to even look for themselves.

By any sane measure, a spiritual teaching, which motivates people through fear, cannot be called anything but an abomination and the twin abominations of ‘Original Sin and Vicarious Sacrifice’ were born in the tortured mind of Saint Paul.

In order to explain what I mean, we must ask a question, “Why does a liar lie?”

All lies are told in order to manipulate and the lies of Saint Paul were designed to create fear in you. It was Saint Paul who taught the concept of original sin – the idea that we all damned at birth – in order to justify the next big lie: the idea that belief in a specific human sacrifice could save us from original sin. The motivation for the lie is obvious, if you take the time to read Paul’s letters in their entirety, you will see for yourself his preoccupation with financial donations. His motivation is also obvious: financial gain. The whole Christ cult was a donation scam, no different than Black Lives Matter.

Saint Paul wrote his letters sometime before 62 CE and it is his first letter to his Pauline converts in the Greek city of Corinth that seems to most concern my young friend. Here is the offending passage:

1 Moreover, I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you have stood.

2 through which also you are saved, if you hold fast with what word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.

3 For I delivered to you, among the first things, that which I also received; that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures;

4 and that he was buried; and that he rose from the dead on the third day, according to the Scriptures;

5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

6 After that he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain till now, but some have also fallen asleep.

7 After that he appeared to James, after that to all the apostles.

8 But, last of all, as to the one born out of due time, he appeared to me also.

1 Corinthians 15

Ultimately, it really doesn’t matter what I say about Christian belief. Why? Because 99.9% of Christians are incapable of hearing any  idea they don’t already have and they are more than comfortable believing two ideas, at the same time, that contradict each other. However, in the hope that truth and reason might bring someone out there to a love of God, I will try one last time to be an advocate for the teachings of the Jesus of History.

Before I deal with the Resurrection we must first investigate the reliability of the main witness: Saint Paul.

All of the Letters of Saint Paul tell, more or less, the same lies:

1. All children are born into original sin.
2. That God demands human sacrifice.
3. That the Torah predicts that the Meshiach (Messiah) will die and be resurrected on the third day.
4. That sin is dependent on the flesh.
5. That belief in the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus will absolve you of the consequences of your evil actions and original sin.

I challenge any of you to find justification for these concepts in the Torah. These five ideas are the exact opposite of Hebrew spiritual belief and the exact opposite of the teachings of the Jesus of History. They are not in the Torah.

The Jesus of History said:

“God makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends his rain on the just and the unjust.”

Matthew 5:45

Obviously, Jesus is not giving a weather report, he is echoing the vital ideas from Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes) where the preacher teaches us that God does not condemn us.

Unfortunately, most Christians have a problem understanding the teachings of the Jesus of History because they are not linear – in fact, they are experiential.

Teachings like “The Kingdom of God is within you” is an experiential spiritual teaching that is almost infinitely nuanced, like an onion, with meanings within meanings.

“Become then merciful as your father is also merciful. Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not convict and you will not be convicted.”

Luke 6:36

This logia explains that it is our cognitions, our inner life, that determines our suffering. When the Jesus of History said, “Every man who turns toward a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery” (Matthew 5:28), this teaching further explains that ‘Sin’ is first created in the mind and heart. The body is only the agent of its fulfillment. It is not the body that is sinful (as it were) rather it is our decisions that give rise to suffering. Therefore, it is awareness of and the control of our minds that the Jesus of History suggests we must achieve.

It is obvious, therefore, that the teachings of the Jesus of History are the opposite of the lies of Saint Paul and without the concept of original sin, vicarious sacrifice is pointless.

Having established that ‘according to the Scriptures’ is a lie, let’s now look at the Resurrection.

The Resurrection:

Paul plays with the idea of the Resurrection, like a car salesman testing the stupidity of his client, so it is hard to pin him down, but in this passage he asserts that over 500 people saw Paul’s version of the risen Christ.

Here’s the problem. For an event so incredible, we have no contemporary record of this claim.

The Romans would have been somewhat disappointed that someone they publicly killed came back to life; they would have, at the very least, made a note of it. Jewish history does not mention it, nor do the Nabataeans, nor do the Egyptians make any mention of a Hebrew Rabbi coming back from the dead as a firsthand account. And you must remember that the first century southern Levant is possibly the most written about period in ancient history.

In fact, the Gospels themselves, are very careful what they say about the Resurrection. The Gospel of Mark, the first to be written, originally ended at verse 8 with Mary Magdalene and the Mother of Jesus finding an empty tomb and then saying nothing to anyone.

As the years go by, Mathew gets a little braver and he has an Angel say “go to Galilee and you will see Jesus there.” Somewhat suspiciously a line is added at the end “Suddenly, Jesus met them and he tells them to go to Galilee.”

Luke is a little more judicious, and just has an empty tomb and two men telling the disciples to go to Galilee.

John’s Gospel is almost an exact copy of the Gospel of Marcion and now all bets are off. In this Gospel the gardener tells Mary that he is Jesus. After this touching scene, Jesus appears all over Judea and people get to poke his wounds with their fingers, which must have been fun.

I would suggest that John’s Gospel was not written until after the Bar Kochba revolt (136 CE) and the destruction of Jerusalem. After this cataclysmic event, the family of the Jesus of History couldn’t really object to anything the Greco-Romans said about their family. Most of them would have been dead.

If a resurrected Jesus had actually appeared to 500 people, one would be forgiven for expecting the Gospels to at least agree on that point.  We would also expect the first Gospel to have included this little bit of information. Obviously, some later Christian scholar felt the need to spice up Mark’s Gospel and helpfully added several more verses at the end. The fact that they felt empowered to do so demonstrates that the early Church did not take history too seriously.

Please don’t take my word for any of this. Ultimately, you have to do the work for yourself. I only mention this to give hope to those of you who may have been emotionally and spiritually abused by the lies of this sick man, Saint Paul, the creator of Christianity.

As a last word of hope for any of you, out there, who feel the need to gain some control of your life – to do something about the disconnect between the world you live in and your inner life. The Jesus of History said, “Why call me master and not do what I say? Everyone who hears my words and does them builds a house on solid rock.” I  can confirm that what he said is true. If you DO what he said. If you repeat his experiment, you will find the Kingdom of God.