A Tiresome Blend of Cult Bragging and Bad Theology

An honest sermon about the gospel of Mark: Chapter 2

Mark 2:1-12 provides a good case study of several things that are wrong with the Bible, despite the fact that the event depicted here ranks as a favorite tale about Jesus. In fact, I fondly remember this story when I heard it as a kid in Sunday school. Jesus is teaching in a house packed with people—so crowded at the door that four fellows carrying a paralyzed man on a stretcher couldn’t get in. They had to make a hole in the roof, so that they could lower the guy in front to Jesus.
 
 
The best practice here—as with any Bible text—is to read these verses carefully, critically, and ask, “What was the author trying to accomplish in presenting this story as he does?” I will point out shortly why this cannot be taken seriously as history, but that’s no surprise. The author was focused on promoting the cult of his holy hero, Jesus. Thus he wants his readers to know that people flocked to hear him, hence the house was packed. When Jesus saw the paralyzed man, he was impressed with the “their faith,” and declared, “Child, your sins are forgiven.” A few religious authorities present were annoyed that Jesus would presume to forgive sins: “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” The cult-promoting author was ready with the answer: “…so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” Moreover, Jesus had the power to read minds, “At once Jesus perceived in his spirit” what they were thinking. This might be a reflection of the apostle Paul’s claim in Romans 2:16 that “…God through Christ Jesus judges the secret thoughts of all.” 
 
The status of Jesus is given another boost: when the paralyzed man got up and walked away (once his sins had been forgiven), the witnesses “…were all amazed and glorified God, saying, ‘We have never seen anything like this!’” At the beginning of chapter 1, as soon as Jesus had been baptized, the voice of god from the sky announced, “This is my beloved son.” Now the people express a similar sentiment. 
 
An honest sermon would acknowledge what the author was trying to do, and urge the devout to critically analyze his motives.
 
However, the biggest stumbling block this episode presents is bad theology. In the ancient world, with no understanding of microbes or genetic diseases, it was easy to assume that illness was punishment for sinning. And in this story, as soon as Jesus forgives the man’s sins, he gets up and walks away. When any one of us today goes to our doctor for treatment of an illness, he/she does not ask, “Well, what sins have you been committing?” Nor do pathologists, examining blood or urine samples, pose this question. We all know very well that illnesses can be traced to microbes that attack our bodies, introduced through breathing or injuries/wounds—or genetic diseases that have been lurking in our bodies since birth. Of course, when a smoker dies of lung cancer, the devout may assume that god got even with him/her because of this bad habit (here = sin), but most of us can detect that such vengeful theology is bad theology. The Bible does not do us any favors by embracing the idea that illnesses or injuries are caused by sin. 
 
Can Mark 2:1-12 be taken seriously as history? The first question historians would ask is: “What were Mark’s sources for writing this story?” Did anyone present in that house take notes, report the events in letters? Did those notes or letters end up in an archive that the author of Mark accessed more than forty years later? It would seem that the author of Matthew’s gospel didn’t believe the part about the man being lowered through the roof. He copied so much of Mark’s gospel, but in his version of the story (9:1-8), there is no mention of a house or a roof. Maybe he felt this part of the story was just too farfetched. 
 
Imagine the reaction of the person who owned the house. Bits and pieces of the ceiling/roof were dropping to the floor, and there would have been a lot of noise. The owner might have yelled, “What the hell is going on?” and rushed out to take a look. Richard Carrier, in his July 2024 essay, All the Fantastical Things in the Gospel According to Mark, commented:
 
“It also never occurs to anyone to just let the guy in or have him carried in by the audience. And it never occurs to Jesus to go out to him, or tell his audience to let him in. And no one is concerned about the damage to the roof. There are just a lot of weird things to explain away here.”
 
Devout Bible readers should also be concerned that, when Matthew and Luke copied Mark’s gospel, they changed the wording. Note the differences:
 
Mark 2:12: “…they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, ‘We never saw anything like this!”
 
Matthew 9:8: “When the crowds saw it, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men.”
 
Luke 5:26:  “And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, ‘We have seen strange things today.’”
 
In Mark 2:13-17 we find the story of Jesus calling Levi, son of Alphaeus, a tax collector, to be a disciple: “Follow me.” Again, Mark is stressing the cult ideal. Levi asks no questions, shows no interest in due diligence. “And he got up and followed him.” Cults do not like divided loyalties. Right after this, Jesus is at Levi’s house eating with other tax collectors and sinners. Somehow religious authorities are also present, and ask the disciples why Jesus is associating with these people. Jesus responds: “Those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick; I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.” 
 
By the way, an honest sermon might challenge the devout on this point: do they make a habit of associating with sinners—to win them over? 
 
In Mark 2:18-20 we read that Jesus was challenged by the Pharisees: Why don’t your disciples fast?  Jesus responded: “The wedding attendants cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.” 
 
In chapters to come, this author reports that Jesus predicted his death and resurrection three times. Inexplicably, the disciples remained oblivious to what was coming. But here in Chapter 2 the author says that “the bridegroom will be taken away from them”—then they can fast. 
 
Next, in Mark 2:21-22, we find this Jesus script:
 
“No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. Similarly, no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins, but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.”
 
This seems so out of place. Why did the author place it right after the statement about the bridegroom? It appears to be another example of cult bragging, if it’s meant to get across the idea that the old religion—of the Pharisees, for example—is damaged by the arrival of the new Jesus cult, the unshrunk cloth and the new wine. 
 
In the final section of Mark 2, we find vv. 23-28, about an incident on the Sabbath. Again, the Pharisees were alarmed, this time because Jesus’ disciples were plucking ears of grain. “That’s breaking Sabbath laws!” There is a bit of a debate about it, with this Jesus-script bringing the argument to a close: “The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath, so the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” This is yet another way of boasting about the high status of Mark’s holy hero. Historians would want to know if anyone there was taking notes, to be accessed decades later by the author of the gospel. But the author’s obsession was creating cult propaganda—out of his religion-fueled imagination. 
 
Secular historians gave up a long time ago trying to rescue real history from the gospels, precisely because contemporaneous documentation is missing. And because the gospels differ so much—Christians have split into thousands of brands arguing about the Bible—the faith is crippled. Bill Zuersher, in his book, Seeing Through Christianity: A Critique of Beliefs and Evidence, has stated the case well:
 
“Christian doctrine and practice were and continue to be marked by confusion. The lack of agreement among those wishing to follow him is strong evidence that Jesus was not a competent instructor, much less an all-powerful deity. An all-powerful deity could have documented his teachings in an unambiguous form, perpetually accessible in every existing and future language”  (p. 78 Kindle).
 
 

David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of two books, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes, the first of which is Guessing About God (2023) and Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also available. 
 
His YouTube channel is here. At the invitation of John Loftus, he has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.
 
The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.