Hi, I’m Wayne Jones, and welcome to the re·Christian podcast. This is episode 5: “John 3:16.”
Apart from Genesis 1:1 where it all began, this citation of a verse in the Bible may be the most famous. It’s become a kind of cultural meme and, in practical terms for Christians, a way for them to declare the essence of the message of the New Testament:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
This verse also serves as an exhortation and reminder to non-believers and non-Christians: the way to obtain eternal life is to believe in God. The message is succinct and serious and I have seen it in places high and low, at protests being held up by zealous Christians, but perhaps most often in the seats of the end zone during a football stadium, where a person who is as dedicated to God as to the team holds up a sign with John 3:16 on it where it’s likely to be most seen—when the kicker kicks a field goal or a point-after through the goal posts, and the TV cameras capture the action.
The word gave is a euphemism in the verse of course, because if you didn’t know anything else about the story of the Bible you might think that God the Father simply made God the Son available on earth for a time in order to spread the message. But no. Gave also includes the killing by crucifixion of that son. It’s often referred to as a sacrifice as well, which is yet another of the many instances where the Bible betrays the fact that is was written by men about men. And these, let’s call them “writers,” were not creative enough to imagine the many things that a truly all-powerful God could do. They couldn’t think beyond the narrow confines of their feeble, impressionistic brains. That is: humans need to make sacrifices in order to prove something or commemorate something or to cause something to happen. But of course God, if there were such a thing, wouldn’t have to. He literally made the rules, as well as the universe itself. He doesn’t have to sacrifice his son to give eternal life to what they then called mankind. He could just issue the equivalent of an executive order from the highest level of government, and it would be so. These are the kind of continuity errors that crop up when you have a team of writers writing a book, and with no developmental or copy editor to be watchful of the world-building and the details.
This “giving” of his son, by the way, results in what is for me one of the most poignant and plaintive scenes in the entire Bible. Jesus is on the cross, just another person being crucified with a criminal on either side of him on their own crosses. He is mocked by people telling him that if he really is the son of God, why doesn’t he just come down from the cross? “He saved others … but he can’t save himself!” And it all reaches a true nadir when even the criminals beside him start mocking him as well. Jesus is on the cross for three hours. He’s a man, a human after all, and this is what he has been reduced to. Finally he shouts loudly, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt 27:42, 46). He is given vinegar to drink instead of water. He cries out again. And then he dies.
I’ve always found forsaken to be a harsh word here, a man suffering and dying in anguish while his father apparently looks on indifferently—he certainly doesn’t intervene—and the word has the force of abandonment but with the addition of intentionality. The son has known the plan all along, but when it has come to carrying it through, and being in pain and being made fun of for hours, the facts take over and the technicality of the agreement becomes moot. But Jesus remains on the cross until he’s dead because this is what God, this is what his father, wants. The contrast between the imperfect half-god/half-human Jesus and the perfect psychopath God couldn’t be set out in better detail.
And so, again, there’s the soft prettiness of the wording of John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Oh, and the lies in it too. If you have a look at almost any book of the Old Testament you’ll read ample evidence that seems to pretty violently contradict the statement that God “so loved the world.” He’s a serial killer and mass murderer. But perhaps “the world” is referring to the planet, the earth, itself, like a guy who likes his pimped-out Audi A4 more than he likes having his girlfriend in the passenger seat because she tends to put her feet on the dash.
The other lie here is the reference to Jesus being God’s only son. Biblical scholars have formed a strong consensus that the famous line from Darth Vader to Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, “I am your father,” is ultimately derived from the gospel of Luke in the New Testament, where God effectively admits that he will father another child other than Jesus and with a woman other than Mary but related to her.
The passage from Luke is:
26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.”
38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her. (Luke 1:26–38)
Let’s set aside the detail of the Holy Spirit “coming on” Mary, which I imagine is just an incredibly poor choice of English words in this context as translated from the original ancient Greek. But to describe God’s insemination of Mary as (I’m paraphrasing) “the power of God overshadowing her”—that kind of sets a new low standard for euphemism and meaninglessness in general, let alone just in the Bible. And this is in the relatively modern New International Version, published in 2011. Other of the multiple versions of the Bible generally use some variant of shadow or overshadow or cover. And perhaps the less said about the American Bible Society’s 1995 Contemporary English Version rendition of the line—“The Holy Spirit will come down to you, and God’s power will come over you”—the better.
And, finally, in true biblical fashion in expressing the truth, the vagueness and falsehood of the third part of John 3:16 completes the trifecta. “Whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” This is the promise of promises that God makes to Christians, and the churches can make use of its unverifiability in order to draw in the congregants and pile up the cash. It’s both simple and ingenious. You can be exhorted to have faith while you’re alive and be promised this pretty spectacular prize when you die. And we all do die. As Tyler Durden says in Fight Club, “On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” But of course when you die, well, you’re dead, and you can’t come back to tell Christians that the deal is real, and can’t convert hard-nosed atheists with your evidence. It’s not like this, for example:
“Listen, Larry, I saw you get run over by that dump truck with my own two eyes while on the way to Mass, but, praise the Lord, here you are now telling me that heaven is real.”
“Yes, Wayne, it’s real. And beautiful and glorious. But, sorry, I just dropped down for a bit to tell a few friends about it. I gotta get back now. The hot-oil massage tables fill up pretty quick up there.”
