The Roots are Bad
Learning to think like Jesus, means retraining your mind to think true thoughts about God.
“Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to My voice.” Jesus
“What is truth?” Pilate
As we’ve seen in previous blogs, it’s problematic for Christians to declare that their ultimate aim in life is to become like Jesus. What makes this even more problematic is that nobody seems to agree about what exactly that means.
One christians blogger we’ve discovered says that becoming like Jesus means living like the historic Jesus of the four gospels. Last week we explored the writings of a christian blogger named Scott, who neglected to make any mention to the historic Jesus and based his whole “Wanna Be Like Jesus” blog on one verse from Romans. This week we’ll explore the second part of Scott’s blog entitled “How Do I Start Thinking Like Jesus?”
A Little Background
I just finished reading a book entitled “Deceived” about a “devious polygamous cult” in Ogden Utah. In the past year I’ve watched several Hulu series, one called Under the Banner of Heaven, and the other called “Escaping Polygamy”. It didn’t surprise me that, yet another polygamous cult had sprung up in Utah. What makes Utah such a fertile environment for destructive polygamous cults? It occurred to me that perhaps the roots of Mormonism are what causes these polygamous cults to keep springing up like weeds.
Although modern day LDS faithful have tried very hard to sanitize and whitewash the history of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, both were polygamists. Joseph Smith, who is still revered as The True Prophet, is believed to have had 49 wives, some of them while they were still married to their legal husband. Brigham Young, who has a university named after him, had 56 wives. The fact is, that modern day LDS faithful still revere Smith and Young as godly prophets. As a result, it’s not all that surprising when polygamous cults spring up like bind weed in Utah. The roots of Mormonism are bad. I repeated that phrase to myself all morning. The roots are bad… the roots are bad.
However, this is not a blog about Mormonism. Enough has already been written about the LDS and FLDS communities. This is a blog about mainstream christianity and how its roots might also be bad.
I sat down to work on this week’s blog with the “roots are bad” thought in my head. In our previous blog we were exploring the writings of a christian blogger named Scott on a website called “prepared to answer.org”. As I started reading part 2 of his blog about becoming like Jesus, I read these words.
“I have a chronic dandelion problem in my yard. I pull them up, I spray them and run them over with the lawn mower again and again and again, and yet they keep coming back. But that’s for one very simple reason: I haven’t pulled up the roots. It’s the same problem with our old sinful life. We can try “weeding out” the thoughts, desires, and actions that appear on the surface in our day-to-day living, but if we don’t get at the root, those same patterns of sin will reappear over and over again.”
Roots? This seems more than coincidental. This could get interesting.
Scott continues,
“Getting at the root So where do we look for that root of sin that needs to be torn up? We find it in Romans 1:18-32. Right in the middle of his brilliant analysis of mankind’s sinful estate, Paul traces the root of sin to a decisive moment where humanity embraced an exchange of ideas:”
(For the record: I’m not so enamored with Paul’s “brilliant analysis” of mankind. But that’s a topic for another blog.)
The “root of sin” that Scott is just about to reference is the infamous “original sin” of Adam and Eve. According to christian dogma, all humans have bad roots. It’s inescapable. We’ve inherited our sinful nature from the first two humans. Simply being born comes with the curse of Adam and Eve’s sin. Every church mission statement I have ever read, mentions original sin in its list of beliefs. Let’s see if Scott has anything new to add to this topic. Remember, his blog is supposed to be about learning to “think like Jesus”. Let’s see how he makes that jump from original sin to thinking like Jesus.
Scott continues,
“They exchanged the truth about God for [the] lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen”. (Romans 1:25)
“Paul is talking about all of us, but he specifically has in mind that moment in the garden of Eden where the first man and woman embraced Satan’s lie that eating the fruit would make them “like God”.
First off, who are “they”? Even by reading the verses surrounding verse 25, it is not quite clear who “they” are. Paul never specifically says, but in verse 18 he mentions some unspecified “ungodly and unrighteous men”. Scott, however, confidently concludes that “they” is referring to Adam and Eve. In addition, he says that Paul was specifically referring to that moment in the mythical garden of Eden when Adam and Eve supposedly ate the fruit of knowledge. A careful reading of Romans 1:25 (which Scott obviously didn’t do) reveals that there is no mention (not even a hint) of the Garden of Eden, nor of Adam and Eve. How Scott got from some unspecified ungodly men to a “specific” reference about Adam and Eve is anyone’s guess and speaks more to Scott’s creativity than his biblical scholarship.
What’s more, the phrase from verse 25, “they… worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” absolutely could not have been referring to the mythical Adam and Eve. So how, and more importantly, why, did Scott make that jump? Obviously, he knew where he wanted his blog to go, so he simply made the verse say what he wanted it to say, whether it did or not. Unfortunately, this kind of deceptive misrepresentation of scripture is not uncommon among christian writers.
For the sake of argument, if Paul actually was referring to Adam and Eve in verse 25, then he still must have had them in mind in verse 26-27 as well, where (if you follow Scott’s reasoning) he “specifically” claims that Eve “exchanged” Adam for Adamah, and Adam began his infamous relationship with Steve.
Second, how is it even remotely possible that Scott knows what Paul “specifically” had in mind when he wrote his letter to the christian church in Roman? (A church, by the way, which he neither founded, nor even visited.) Let me guess, the Holy Spirit (a major player in Scott’s blogs) told Scott what Paul was thinking in the mid-first century.
It’s obvious that Scott, is creating a false narrative when he says that Paul was talking about “all of us” and that he specifically had the garden of Eden in mind.
What is Truth?
Later in his blog Scott writes that “ultimately all true knowledge has God as its starting point”. So, if his goal as a christian teacher is to impart “true knowledge”, why does his blog contain so many blatant and disingenuous misrepresentations? Where’s the truth in that? Perhaps, his theological roots are bad.
Scott continues,
“By eating it (the forbidden fruit), Adam and Eve demonstrated their desire and willingness to replace God’s Law (i.e. the Creator’s rule over his creation) with their own law (i.e. the creation’s rule of itself). Paul’s logic could not be clearer. Once the lie took root, humanity became incapable of knowing or desiring or doing the will of God precisely because we had willfully abandoned the starting point for every true thought.”
According to Scott, it’s not the system that has bad roots, it’s the entire human race, which has rejected the “will of God” to rule over them. Nothing is wrong with christianity (of course), it’s the decedents of Adam and Eve who claimed the right to control their own destiny. As a result, the entire human race has become incapable of knowing “every true thought”. Oh my! One might suppose that someone as enlightened as Scott would have a solution to this dire human dilemma, and indeed he does.
The Solution
“Something changes, however, when a person places their faith in Jesus Christ. God through his Holy Spirit enlightens their darkened mind so that they can see the truth about God in Christ. To put it simply… sinners are made to see the truth about “the lie” and the lie about “the truth”. In short, they’re made able to know the truth about God and “the truth sets them free”.
There you have it. Once someone joins the Jesus Club, the Holy Spirit will “enlighten” them so they can finally see the truth, which will then set them free. Let’s take a deeper dive into that thought.
The Truth About the Lie
One thing about Scott’s reasoning gives me cause for concern. Once someone joins the Jesus club and they receive the Holy Spirit, why doesn’t the Holy Spirit “enlighten their darkened minds” and open their eyes to see the “truth about the lie” of original sin”? It’s perplexing.
The Lie: (All of these come directly from church mission statements.) Adam and Eve sinned, and their sin then spread like a virus to all humans and consequently the entire human race experienced spiritual death. Therefore, every human is born with a sinful and depraved nature and are separated from God. Mankind is sinful, lost and deserves eternal punishment in the Lake of Fire.
The truth: The story about the original sin of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden is completely fictitious, made up, and never actually happened. (Which, by the way, is also true of almost everything written in the book of Genesis.) Sin does not “spread like a virus” from generation to generation and just being born does not automatically produce a depraved nature. What a silly and dangerous lie to teach children. (See end note 1)
The Lie About the Truth
The Lie: (From the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy) Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in (a literal six day) creation or about the events of world history (such the Flood and the Tower of Babel.) The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if divine inerrancy is in any way limited or disregarded, and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the Church.
The Truth: The inconvenient truth is that the Bible is neither inerrant, infallible, nor “verbally” God-given. Christians, who believe and defend that particular lie do so because questioning inerrancy can have serious social consequences to “both the individual and the church.” Believing the lie of inerrancy has more to do with group affiliation and acceptance than it does with the Holy Spirit. (See end note 2)
From where I stand
When I joined the Jesus club in my late teens, I was taught to accept these (and many other lies). It was required. Since I had a strong desired to be a good christian and accepted by my christian circle, I believed what I was told to believe. I didn’t know any better. What I personally discovered, years later, after letting go of christianity, is that the concept of original sin is a cruel deception. When I realized that truth, I was truly set free.
Now, back to Scott. Remember that his blog is supposed to be about living like Jesus. After a 660-word intro reminding his readers about our “sinful roots”, Scott abruptly, and clumsily segues to his original topic. His next sentence after “the truth sets them free” is this.
“Learning to think like Jesus, then, means willingly cooperating with the Holy Spirit to retrain your mind to think true thoughts about God, …(which) is not as easy as it sounds. That’s why Prepared to Answer exists: to teach you how to think like Jesus by presenting the truth about God revealed in the Bible clearly and in a way that makes sense.”
Looks like we are going to have to read part three of Scott’s series to actually find out how to “think like Jesus”. One could only hope that in the finale to his series he will finally be able to present the truth and not more misrepresentations, and that it will make more sense than the first two.
From where I stand, it’s clear that Scott’s theological roots are bad, resulting in a certain degree of deceptive proof-texting. (See end note 3). The die is cast, and I have little doubt it will change in part three. We shall see!
Coming next: Part 3 of Scott’s blog on how to Think Like Jesus.
Endnotes:
- Think about it. How could we possibly know what took place in the Garden of Eden? How do we know that there even was a Garden of Eden? If you unquestionably take for granted that the story of Adam and Eve is historically accurate, (like I did for years) then you have based your religion on stories that are simply meant to be moral lessons and metaphors. Confronting this idea (that there was no historical Adam and Eve) was the beginning point of renown atheist Dan Barker’s journey from evangelical preacher to atheism. That can happen when you seek the real truth.
- Don’t take my word for it. If you’re questioning what you’re being told by your religious leaders, do your homework. A good place to start is with renown New Testament scholar Dr. Bart Ehrman. Pick one of his books and read it.
- Proof texting. It is the practice of using isolated passages from a text, often the Bible, to support a specific point or argument without considering the original context or broader meaning of the text. It involves taking a verse or quote out of its original context and using it to support a predetermined conclusion, potentially distorting the original intent of the text. Over the three years I have been reading and critiquing christian writers, I have concluded that proof-texting is the rule rather than the exception.
From Where I Stand
Aug. 1, 2025
Dale Crum