Time Traveling Missionaries or Why Christianity Needs Depravity

Imagine if a Jew and a Christian took off in the TARDIS to the year 2023 BCE to preach their faiths. As there is no such thing as Judaism or Christianity at this time, our Jew and Christian would have an identical pitch to any person they met. There is one God, who created the world. You need to get rid of all of your idols and worship just him. In addition, you should commit yourself to an ethical way of life, which you can learn more about by finding the appropriate pre-Abrahamic sage who is alive in this generation. 

Admittedly, our Jew and Christian would have to acknowledge that their pitch has a limitation that has no solution at this time. For the Christian, the problem is that our 2023 BCE person is not yet in a position to accept Jesus as their savior as Jesus has not yet come to Earth to die for their sins. At best, our person can hope for some sort of pre-faith in Jesus so that Jesus will take him out of Hell when he descends there after the Crucifixion. For the Jew, the problem is far more minor. However sincerely our person comes to believe in the one true God intellectually, it is going to be very difficult to pass this belief system onto their children. This is going to trap us into a situation where individual ethical monotheists are going to have to constantly reinvent the wheel all by themselves, figuring out that God exists and that their parents were wrong to worship idols. An example of this is the midrashic Abram, coming to believe in God and then smashing the idols that his father, Terah, sold in his store. That being said, preaching ethical monotheism is still a worthwhile endeavor as all the good monotheists you create will be right with God.  

Step forward in time to 23 BCE and the basic pitch remains the same even as there is now a solution to the Jew's problem but not the Christian's. Obviously, as there are now Jews, Jews need to believe in the Jewish God and practice Judaism. Our non-Jewish person still needs to get rid of their idols and worship what one we might now call the Jewish God, but who has always been the God of the entire world. That being said, there is a way to radically increase the odds for our non-Jewish ethical monotheist that their children will also be ethical monotheists. Our person can convert to Judaism and take on the full array of Jewish practices such as observing the Sabbath, kosher, and circumcision. Even if they do not convert to Judaism, there is still a benefit to becoming a God-Fearer, a non-Jewish supporter of the ideals that Jews are supposed to stand for. The fact that their children will now know that Judaism exists and have interacted with Jews will increase the odds that they will become ethical monotheists as well. Obviously, our non-Jewish monotheist does not have to actually convert to Judaism as there were people who were perfectly fine when there was no Judaism to convert to. 

Our Christian is in a bit of a bind as he agrees with the Jew in 2023 and 23 BCE. It is only when we come home to 2023 CE that there is meaningful disagreement. The Christian has agreed with the Jew all along but believes that the Jew's picture of reality is incomplete in that it leaves out Jesus. The burden of proof is on the Christian here to make the case that Jesus adds something that Judaism cannot account for otherwise Christianity becomes an added complexity that can be rejected on the grounds of Occam's Razor.  

The Christian response to this needs to be depravity. Specifically that humans are not capable of getting right with God without Jesus. This is presumably because Original Sin has tainted the human will so that we can never properly fulfill God's commandments or that it has even tainted human reason so that we could never form proper beliefs about God on our own. If humans could never choose to follow God when taught about him or even when given commandments to be passed down to one's children and made to serve as the basis for a people, then perhaps what is needed is for God to come down in human form and die to fix whatever is keeping people from God.   

In Romans 4, Paul attempts to use the example of Abraham against Judaism, arguing that Abraham had faith even before works. Obviously, Abraham was righteous in God's eyes before he was circumcised. In truth, Abraham is a far bigger problem for Christians as they have to explain how Abraham could have faith nearly two thousand years before Jesus. What did Abraham have faith in besides for the one God who created the world? The fact that Abraham was righteous before his circumcision is not a problem for Judaism as Judaism does not believe that one needs to be Jewish. Abraham did not need to be circumcised and was free to eat pork to his heart's content much like it was ok for Judah to sleep with someone he thought was a prostitute. Judaism with its commandments is not an end in itself; it exists as a means to pass on the belief in ethical monotheism to one's children by being part of the sanctified body of Israel. 

Ground Rules for a Discourse With Me

 

In an earlier post, I explored why I felt I had an easier time reading conservative Christians than woke leftists. The practical implication of this is that I recognize that I struggle to engage people on the left. I am open to the possibility that this is a failure on my part that I need to rectify. Readers should feel free to offer book recommendations or to attempt to engage me in dialogue. For a fruitful conversation to happen, I suspect that there are going to need to be ground rules. 

1. People on the mainstream right today are not responsible for racism: 

We can still acknowledge that there are real problems today facing various minority communities and, recognizing the historical sources of these problems as well as a need for Americans to come together, there may be a need for government solutions; this may even include direct reparation payments. That being said, the very act of reaching out to conservatives to help in solving the problem means that you are not blaming them for racism. This would apply even if we are mainly asking conservatives to write a check. Even asking conservatives for money is distinct from trying to punish conservatives by making them pay. With punishment, there is no dialogue, just a demand and a threat of what might happen if that demand is not met. 

2. There will be no tearing down of present-day systems: 

We may acknowledge that the political and social systems we have inherited contain deeply problematic elements that need to be reformed. Furthermore, an important aspect of how we teach history should be an open and honest exploration of the skeletons in our collective closet. That being said, it should be acknowledged that any attempt to completely tear these systems down is likely to bring about extreme bloodshed and what is likely to arise will be more authoritarian than anything we have today. It may still be possible to argue that those people unfairly victimized by the system should be compensated in order that they do not harm the rest of society by turning toward revolution.  

3. As a general principle, capitalism/free markets should be acknowledged superior to government action on both moral and practical grounds: 

There can still be room for government action under specific circumstances such as providing public goods or compensating people for past iniquities. That being said, there is going to be no unwritten constitution where the government is deemed as "people coming together" and markets as mere greed. Government must be acknowledged as a literal act of physical violence, leaving us with the question only of how much can we minimize its use without causing the collapse of civilization.   

4. There must be red lines on the left:

Historically, as Jordan Peterson has argued, the mainstream right has understood that there were lines, mainly Nazism/racism, that should not be crossed. This has not been the case with the left. Consider the example of Che Guevera. It is not socially acceptable, within polite society, to wear a Himmler t-shirt; how is it ok to wear a Che Guevara shirt? Underlying such social rules is a double standard regarding Communism. Communists get a pass for their ideals and are not held responsible for the millions of deaths they have caused. The fact that Nazis also were idealists gets ignored. We can talk about where to draw these lines to the left, just as we can talk about where the right needs to draw its lines, but such lines must still exist.    

For a meaningful dialogue to happen, I need to believe that you are not planning to kill me. As such, I need to feel confident that you are not going to demand something that I must refuse even at the risk of my life. The reality is that there are going to be people (such as Nazis and Communists) that I am unlikely to be able to live with and having me live in the same country as them is likely to lead to Hobbesian Civil War. I do wish to be able to live with others, even those I disagree with, and to do so I am willing to make compromises but compromise needs to be a two-way street.