Reflections on Christianity
By Kevin Si
“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6)
What is faith? For a Christian, it is the firm belief in something for which there is no tangible proof. Faith is an unrelenting and unquestioning belief in the existence and providence of the almighty creator, God. To millions in the world, this religious belief shapes their entire view of reality and life. They are alive from the will of God, live to do His bidding, and die at His discretion. The world around them revolves by the touch of this divine figure, and everything on it sprung from His work. To put Christianity’s absolute dominance over Western society into perspective, the scientifically-supported idea of heliocentrism has been around for nearly 2,400 years by Greek philosophers yet was only widely accepted against the Christian geocentrism ideology in the past 300 years, after Galelio’s execution.
Plato (375 B.C), originally coined the four cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude, which would later be adopted by the Catholic Church as “human virtues”. Additionally, Prudentius’s Psychomachia (405 AD) depicts a struggle between seven virtues and seven sins as the title suggests, for the human soul. The Catholic Church has used these various historical principles, from chastity to temperance to charity, to emphasize the purity of the soul as a pathway to enlightenment and perhaps, salvation.
Those who reach heaven are those who “practice[...] and teach[...] these commands” (these commands being the seven virtues) and thus “will be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:17-20). According to Apostle Matthew, the supposed author of The Gospel of Matthew, this is the only way to salvation. Doesn’t that seem a bit odd? Basically, the only way to receive the ultimate reward of eternal salvation is by doing exactly what the Bible tells you to do and believing in whoever the Bible tells you to believe. If the point of Christianity is to teach others how to be virtuous, why do they fixate on the afterlife? Shouldn’t the point of living a virtuous life be to improve the lives of others?
On the other hand, if Christians really believe in salvation after death, then their teachings are completely amiss. It instills, whether purposely or accidentally, the notion that being a virtuous person is only important in order to gain access to an exclusive utopia after death. No person can truly be virtuous for virtue (or heaven)’s sake. True moral virtue comes from the heart of a person and not their mind. Imagine that two students begin volunteering in their community. One of them is doing so because they have been personally impacted by this issue and wishes to help others, while the other is participating to add a line to their resume. We might expect the student who has genuinely been affected by this issue to create more significant change.
At the end of the day, however, this isn’t meant to be an attack on Christianity. It does have well-established benefits— see William James’ 1896 publication The Will to Believe. That reason alone is enough to warrant its existence in a society which consistently wages battles against a raging mental health epidemic. Philosophically, however, Christianity is much more flawed. A system of belief which doesn’t rely on a baseless promise for eternal salvation that also promotes a virtuous life for the sake of others should be the norm, and not a millennia-old and incredibly flawed religion.
