Punctum Saliens

What does it take to get to Heaven? According to many Christians, all you have to do is believe:

1. Jesus was the Son of God
2. Jesus was born of a virgin
3. Jesus was crucified for our sins
4. Jesus rose from the dead
5. Jesus will come to earth a second time

Sounds simple enough. But the entire thing depends on believing certain facts about a certain historical person. You can’t get by on believing in a god — or even in The God — alone. You must believe in Jesus and you must believe the above five things about Him.

May still sound simple to those of you reading this, but project yourself back to the year 1000 in what is now called Florida. Or to anywhere in Australia before the first Europeans arrived in the 1700’s. Or to certain parts of Africa or Asia today that are not “on the beaten path.” How could you possibly come up with all those facts about a person who lived long before you in a place you probably never dreamed existed? But if you didn’t believe, you were doomed to Hell. At least you’d have lots and lots of company — just think about how many billions of people throughout history have lived outside the “circle of influence,” that is, outside the regions where news of Jesus had spread.

But, surely, there’s a way around this, right? Surely, all these people are not damned for all eternity simply because they were born in the wrong place and at the wrong time? Surely it must be possible to intuit Jesus as the Son of God, intuit His virgin birth and death and resurrection, and intuit His second coming, right? No one really needs to hear all this from somebody else, does one?

Well, it just so happens that it is possible to come up with Jesus without hearing about Jesus from someone who heard about Jesus from someone who heard about Jesus … The ancient Greeks did it. They called him Dionysus instead of Jesus but Dionysus was born of a virgin, was the son of a god, was killed, and rose from the dead. Not bad, huh?

But is belief in Dionysus the same as belief in Jesus? Will belief in Dionysus get me into Heaven? My bet is that just about any Christian you talk to will have one of two answers: “Dion who?” or “No!” Let’s even assume, hypothetically if you must, that Dionysus is going to “come again” so that we have all of the fab five. The answer would still be “No!” Why? Because Dionysus was a pagan god. He wasn’t really God’s Son. He wasn’t Jesus.

But what’s in a name? “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” would it not? Don’t Jesus’ origins and actions make him Jesus? Is there really a sixth criterion — “Thou shalt call His name Jesus?” that we forgot to mention?

Aside from the obvious (i.e. “You have to believe in my ‘Jesus’ and not your ‘Jesus’ because if you believe in your ‘Jesus’ I don’t have as much control over what you believe and, therefore, over you”) I think the reason is that the five facts about Jesus are not the whole story. The whole story is the surrounding drama and historical context. Jesus was Jesus for a lot more reasons than the five listed above. He was Jesus because He was born in Bethlehem, was of the house of David, rode on a donkey, was betrayed, was crucified, and so on and so forth. Jesus was Jesus because He was the Jesus that was predicted in the Old Testament. And only the Jesus predicted in the Old Testament could be the True Jesus. In other words, you can’t just believe in Jesus. You’ve got to believe in The Jesus of My Bible and therefore you have to believe in My Bible and all that entails.

So, what does the Christian do with all those poor souls who are ending up in Hell? How does the Christian sleep at night knowing that right now, this very instant, probably thousands of people are dying without even hearing the name “Jesus”?

In other words … If You’re Gonna Send Billions of People to Hell, You Gotta … stayed tuned for more …