Parsing Truth, Logic, Apologetics and Spiritual Teachings
Christian Apologetics owes us an apology!
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3 verses you won’t hear in church - John 10:34, John 14:12, Luke 17:21
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How do we find Truth? What’s the right way to interpret the Bible?
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Transcript: Christian Apologetics owes us an apology!
Apologetics is an interesting aspect of institutional Christianity, which tries to use evidence to prove the tenets of the faith. They claim to have evidence that everybody was born a wretched sinner, even a one-minute-old baby, and that such a person deserves to be in hell. Interpretations vary between denominations, but by and large, the mainstream teaching is that hell is a physical, torturous experience that goes on forever. Some soften it to the idea of being totally absent from God, like solitary confinement. Either way, the claim is that they can prove this.
They say that believing means confessing certain truths—acknowledging that Jesus died for your sins, that you are a sinner, and that anyone who doesn’t accept this is destined for hell forever. Those who do believe, on the other hand, are destined for an eternal experience of bliss. Both concepts, eternal torment and eternal joy, are difficult to conceptualize. How can anything be torturous or blissful for infinity? It’s incomprehensible.
Apologists claim to prove these things either in the sense of legal evidence that could win in court or through a supposedly scientific or scholarly approach to truth. My perspective is that most people involved are in Christianity for emotional reasons, and apologetics serve more as a rationalization. I can say that for myself—I was a Christian for emotional reasons. Apologetics played an important role for me, like a lever my terrified self used to pull me back from the edge whenever I doubted. When my faith felt gone, apologetics would inch me back into the thought patterns that kept me Christian.
But apologetics often operate like the “so you’re saying there’s a chance” line from Dumb and Dumber. If something could possibly be true, then the case is considered won. They only needed a one-in-a-million chance. Yet this standard of evidence wasn’t applied elsewhere in life. There’s “evidence” the moon is made of cheese—it resembles certain cheese surfaces under a lens—but that’s flimsy. Apologetic evidence is in the same category.
When I began deconstructing, it was helpful to see that other religions had their own celebrity apologists with the same kinds of arguments. Muslims, for example, also claim their book is inerrant, that their prophecies are fulfilled, and that their teachings self-validate. Their arguments mirror Christian apologetics, and the weaknesses are obvious. Each apologetic argument has clear rebuttals—ones Christians themselves would give if those same arguments were used in favor of Islam.
Apologetics are useful for someone who desperately needs to believe. But if you don’t need to, their evidence is flimsy. I’ve had long discussions about this with Christians. In the end, many admitted they don’t actually believe because of evidence, but because of something deeper. The apologetics were more a tool for evangelism or a way to pull themselves back during doubt.
For me, I only really examined apologetics once other parts of me had already let go. The first domino was the concept of hell. I had always been horrified by it—told that beloved family and even my best friend, a Jehovah’s Witness, would burn forever, while God still “loved” them. Adults reassured me it would make sense as my faith deepened, but it never did. How could a loving God create people only for two-thirds of them to be tortured forever? Even Bible college staff gave me the same canned answer. Eventually, I realized I couldn’t worship a God who would eternally torture billions. If that was the choice, I’d rather go with the “tortured” group.
That realization unraveled apologetics quickly. Once I stopped wanting to believe, the arguments seemed absurd. I couldn’t believe I had once taken them so seriously. And then there was Pascal’s Wager—another staple of apologetics. Blaise Pascal argued that the reward of believing (eternity in heaven) infinitely outweighed the cost of a short human life. So, he said, you might as well believe.
But that’s not true. If this human life is our only conscious experience of this kind, then it could be the most precious opportunity in the universe. The wager assumes eternity works like human time, but in non-dual reality without space, time, or relationships, memory and experience won’t function the same way. A human life could be unfathomably rare and valuable, and Pascal’s calculation of probabilities is deeply flawed.
Transcript: 3 verses you won’t hear in church - John 10:34, John 14:12, Luke 17:21
So, a lot of people, when they encounter some of the things I'm saying, claim that I've never read the Bible. And this is actually a Bible I purchased when I was 17. It was probably my seventh or eighth Bible. I bought it at the bookstore at the Southwest Bible Church in Beaverton, Oregon—Scott Gilchrist’s church. Here, I even have my very first phone number that I got when I was 16, followed by the next number after that, and then the number after that. I bought this Bible used. I have read this Bible cover to cover. Many aspects of this Bible I have read many times. Certain books I've read over a hundred times. And you can tell that I was really a true Christian because this is a NASBY translation, two-column. And only true believers use NASBY translation two columns. That's a joke, of course. But anyway, those who get it will get it.
Today, I want to look at three verses that you won't hear in church. And I encourage you to look these up in your Bible, just so you know that they really are in the very Bible that you read.
So John 10:34—people are coming to Jesus and saying, “Please just admit it. You're saying that you're God. You're saying that you're Yahweh, the one God who's out there on a throne judging everybody and who needs to be appeased. Please just admit it.” And Jesus says in John 10:34, “Has it not been written in your law, I said you are gods?” This is where, in the Psalms, David is talking about how God says, “You are gods. You contain my image. You were made in my image. You were made of me. You're a part of me. You have my image inside of you.” And that's what Jesus is saying.
We can turn to Psalm 82:6. It says, “Deliver them out of the hand of the wicked. They do not know, nor do they understand. They walk about in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaken.” Classic David Psalms. Then it says, “I said you are gods, and all of you are sons of the Most High.” Just like Jesus is saying, “I am the son of man,” he is saying this is the sense in which I agree with you when you say that I am God. I am agreeing that that is true in the same sense of when David is saying you are all sons of the Most High. He’s explaining that we do have the essence of God within us, and that when we connect to it, we do the will of God. That’s what he’s explaining in these verses.
Another verse you won’t hear in church: John 14:12. “Truly, truly I say to you, he who believes in me…” And when he says “believes in me,” he means believes in my message, my teaching, the essence of what I have transmitted to you. “He who believes in me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do, because I go to the Father.” Again, Jesus is validating that we all contain the same deity that he contained. And when our small selves step aside and allow God to run our lives, greater things—even than what Jesus did—we shall do.
All right, another verse you will never hear in church: Luke 17:21. “Nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is,’ or, ‘There it is,’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst.” And my NASBY has a little footnote. If I go down to 21, it says, “Or within you.” The kingdom of heaven is within you. Jesus also said the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The kingdom of heaven is within us. There is a divine spark right in the center of our hearts that we can connect to anytime. And when we go to heaven, we are resonating with that spark. Heaven is not a separate, physical, out-there future Disneyland that we go to. Heaven is something that we create within and then without, right here on earth.
And so there you have it. I do read the Bible. I’m incredibly well-read in the Bible, and I’ve damn near worn this Bible out since I was 17.
Transcript: How do we find Truth? What’s the right way to interpret the Bible?
If you follow Jesus, I advocate reading the Gospels exclusively. I’m not suggesting that there’s no spiritual truth in the rest of the Bible, but if you are saying you’re a follower of Jesus and that he is your only guide, then focus on his words. Furthermore, I happen to know that you’re never going to exhaust those red letters. You’re not going to run out of material. So there’s simply no reason to work with the rest of the Bible—unless Jesus’ teachings would benefit from some loopholes and ways to adjust the message. In that case, you can bring in other texts.
As you read the Gospels, you have to keep in mind that these are legendary texts. They are not direct, word-for-word historical accounts. Everyone around Jesus spoke Aramaic, but the stories were first passed down orally, then translated into Greek, and much later into English. The first Gospel was written about 70 years after Jesus’ death. So, for decades, it was only an oral tradition. The Gospels are not inerrant. For example, they disagree on the day Jesus was crucified, and other stories contain different details. The book of Mark even ends with a note that admits uncertainty about part of the story.
They also don’t always line up with recorded history. The census that Mary and Joseph were supposedly responding to is not found in secular records. If it had truly been a mass migration census, it would almost certainly have made it into history. Likewise, Herod’s slaughter of the infants is not recorded outside of the Bible. There are many such examples, but that’s not necessarily a problem. These are legends meant to invoke a spiritual response within you. They are not primarily about precise details.
This raises the question: how do you know what’s true? There are certainly passages in the Gospels that I’m quite sure were added or shaped through translation and copying. When you translate from one language to another—Aramaic to Greek to English, for example—you have to make judgment calls, since words don’t match up perfectly. Even without any intent to deceive, translators bring their own beliefs and assumptions, and that can dramatically shift the meaning of a text.
So, how do we find truth? Whether we’re listening to a guru, reading the letters of Peter, or working through a devotional, we must discern truth internally. We check whether the image of God within us resonates with what’s being said. As we interpret, we feel whether it aligns with that inner witness. That is how we discern truth.
This is what I do when I read Jesus’ words in the Gospels. I look for the interpretation that resonates as true in me. Each of us has to cultivate that sense of inner resonance. Truth does not feel like fear. It does not feel forced, required, or shaming. If what you’re hearing produces fear or shame, that is another part of you—not the voice of truth.