The Christians

I watched this play yesterday at the Ngee Ann Kongsi theater. I was a bit apprehensive after Harish’s rather negative comments from his visit last week. He wasn’t impressed and found it depressing.

Fortunately after watching it, I did not have a negative view about the play. It was just right in terms of length. Lasted an hour and a half without any intermission. The acting was well above average and the acoustics were good. I could catch all the dialogue without the need for glancing at the close captioning.

The entire premise of the play is about a pastor who suddenly comes to the realisation that the logical conclusion of what Christians believe, ie that anyone who doesn’t believe in Jesus must go to hell and that all who believe will go to heaven is flawed. He concludes that there cannot be a hell because there are people who never would have had the opportunity to even hear about Jesus but are nevertheless good people. Surely, he decides, they cannot be condemned to hell And he therefore takes the position from certain passages in the Bible that everyone will go to heaven. This leads to a clash with the junior pastor who takes the view that only those who believe in Jesus will be saved and go to heaven and the rest will go to hell. Because of this new position taken on by the pastor, his congregation is fractured and leaves and eventually his own wife leaves him.

The play doesn’t attempt to answer these differing opinions and doesn’t attempt to answer them.

Anyway the realization that the pastor reaches is the fundamental problem that I have always had with Christianity. It condemns all good people who don’t believe in Jesus.

The other problem is that Christians think that if they believe in Jesus , for that reason alone, they will be in heaven for eternity. That has always struck me as wrong. Many Christians are not even good people. Why should they be in heaven just because they have said they believe in Jesus even though they were horrible on Earth?

But if you accept the proposition that whether you have a good afterlife or not depends purely on your deeds whilst you are living, then believing in Jesus becomes irrelevant. Good deeds is the only clincher.

I suspect that is the problem. To sell a religion one must promise something to the preached so that they believe and continue to practise the religion. Selling a good afterlife is the safest bet.