Answering Zealot by Reza Aslan (Author’s Note)

In part 1 of this blog series, I laid the groundwork for why I decided to read the book Zealot by Reza Aslan and to respond to it here. Check out that post for a synopsis of the book.

My goal is not to completely change the mind of anyone who reads Zealot and believes it. Rather, I want to make it clear that there are problems with Aslan’s thinking that are discernible even to the layperson. It becomes clear, even in the introduction, that he does not approach his scholarship without an agenda. If I can just make you a little uncomfortable as you swallow the claims of his book, then I will be content.

My response today is to the Author’s Note at the beginning of the book. Zealot opens with the line “When I was fifteen years old, I found Jesus.” What follows is a short explanation: Aslan was at an evangelical youth summer camp in Northern California. He credits the beautiful surroundings with cultivating an environment where “given enough time and stillness and soft-spoken encouragement, one could not help but hear the voice of God.”

There is much to be said about the culture of evangelical youth camps from about the 70’s to at least the 00’s, and not all of it is flattering. I attended many an evangelical youth camp and conference as a teen, and I can attest to the fact that they can be the perfect environment for producing false converts. I would characterize as “false converts” those who raised their hand in response to an invitation to “accept Jesus into your heart”, prayed a repeat-after-me prayer, then went back to life as usual without any change in lifestyle that would support the claim of an internal heart change. The term “false convert” isn’t meant to disparage or call into question the sincerity of anyone who raises their hand in such fashion. It’s simply the truth that irresponsible evangelism can produce people who think they are now disciples, but whatever they’re following isn’t the Jesus of scripture. Often it’s a Jesus of their own design… often of the larger culture’s design.

Although I don’t for a second question the sincerity of the people who ran those camps and conferences that I was a part of, they were excellent at producing emotional experiences that caused us to feel as if we’d had an encounter with God. Some of that may have been real for some people- I could not possibly say. As for me, most of my “experiences” during those times were peer pressure and whipped up emotion. I sit here at 30 as a serious Christian, in theology pretty much Reformed and holding to traditional historic doctrine, but I don’t credit my growth to a single camp or conference I attended.

Aslan goes on to reveal that having been raised in a family of “lukewarm Muslims and exuberant atheists”, he received the story of Jesus with gladness. From the outset, however, there are a few issues I want to address with regard to his “gospel presentation.” I will produce it here in its entirety, all emphasis added is mine:

“Two thousand years ago, I was told, in an ancient land called Galilee, the God of heaven and earth was born in the form of a helpless child. The child grew into a blameless man. The man became the Christ, the savior of humanity. Through his words and miraculous deeds, he challenged the Jews, who thought they were the chosen of God, and in return the Jews had him nailed to a cross. Though he could have saved himself from that gruesome death, he freely chose to die. His death was the point of it all, for his sacrifice freed us all from the burden of our sins. But the story did not end there, because three days later, he rose again, exalted and divine, so that now, all who believe in him and accept him into their hearts will also never die, but have eternal life.”

These responses are perhaps a little nitpicky, but I expected, (fairly, I think,) that a book written to undermine the entire premise of a worldwide 2 millennia-old religion would have worked just a little harder to make sure it’s accurately representing the foundational orthodoxy. I understand that Aslan experienced a very certain flavor of evangelism, but his brief synopsis of the gospel message surprised me.

Became the Christ: The term “became” implies that he wasn’t when he started out. I am going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume that he meant he “became” as in he “entered into his ministry, before which he simply worked a quiet life as a skilled laborer.” “Christ” means “anointed one”, a title used in the old testament for high priests and kings. According to traditional Christian belief, Jesus was the Christ from the second he was conceived. He entered his ministry at the age of 30. He did not have to do anything to become the Christ. Rather, his actions proved that he was.

Thought they were the chosen of God: They were the chosen of God, according to the entire canon of scripture. The Jews were not mistaken on this count as Aslan seems to imply. This is an important distinction, because there is a massive storyline threaded from the Old Testament to the New in which God sets apart the nation of Israel to be his chosen people by making promises to Abraham, freeing the nation of Israel from slavery in Egypt, entrusting them with the Mosaic Law, establishing them in the promised land, and then allowing them to cycle through periods of disobedience and discipline, obedience and favor according to the promises he had already made. And yet the temple, the sacrifices, and the feasts were all “shadows” (Hebrews 10:1) pointing to the fulfillment of the greatest promise given to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:15- “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” According to the beliefs held for the last 2,000 years of historic Christianity, Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise.

It may seem like such a minor nitpick, but the implication that the Jews were not the chosen of God, but simply thought they were, unravels, without a grounds to do so, the narrative the groundwork of which is laid in the very opening lines of scripture. I want to give Aslan every benefit of the doubt, but his Author’s Note from start to finish makes me believe that he isn’t content to allow the evidence to speak for itself, but feels the need to discredit Christianity with his characterization of it.

Accept him into their hearts: this is unhelpful “Christianese”. Nowhere in scripture, neither the old testament or the new, is anyone commanded to “accept Jesus into their heart”. This is an invention of man, and unhelpful as long as it muddies the picture of what true salvation looks like. Rather, we are called to repent and believe. Jesus himself called people to repentance and belief in the gospel (Matthew 11:20, Mark 1:15, Luke 13:3). John the Baptist, who prepared the way for Jesus, called for repentance (Matthew 3:8, Mark 1:4, Luke 3:8). The epistles consistently call for a faith in the words and work of Christ that is grounded in repentance.

Can you call it “accepting Jesus into your heart” and truly be saved? Yes, absolutely. I only highlight it here because it is not the way that Christianity has historically framed the call to salvation, and it may be characteristic of a shallow understanding of Christian theology, particularly soteriology- the study of salvation.

Aslan continues on to divulge that he himself comes from a family of “lukewarm Muslims and exuberant atheists” who fled Iran after the revolution that resulted in the replacement of the government with an Islamic Republic. To Aslan, to be Muslim and to be Persian were inextricably linked, and because the violence of the revolution led to the Aslan family leaving as refugees, they left behind their religion when they left behind their homeland. Aslan then reveals that to him, “Jesus, on the other hand, was America… accepting him into my heart was as close as I could get to feeling truly American.”

This is a strange and telling statement that reveals a bit more about what was underlying and framing Aslan’s conversion. Although Christianity has been the most culturally accepted religion of America for the past 200 years, that status is waning rapidly. One of the reasons I felt the importance of responding to this book was my concern about how Aslan would characterize Christians and Christianity. To an “outsider” reading his book, the way he describes Christianity will sound like what they understood from a cultural perspective, and they’ll accept it at face value. But I hope my reaction to the phrase “accept Jesus into your heart” will point you toward a different truth that Dean Inserra recently identified in depth in the book The Unsaved Christian: every major religion has a cultural impact in the place where it is most prevalently found, but not all who claim the title “Christian” actually believe in the core doctrines of historic Christianity to the point where their lives reveal actions and attitudes that are slowly changing to more closely reflect the Christ of scripture and less those of the culture- even “religious” culture. I am not making a claim about the genuineness of Aslan’s belief when he first claimed to be a Christian, but I am calling into question his characterization of Christianity as a whole and asking the reader to consider that not everyone who seems to be a Christian outwardly is actually one inwardly. And statements like this one, that “Jesus was America” seem to perhaps betray a desire on the part of a young teen, not so much to become right with God, but to fit in with the dominant culture he found himself a part of. This is an understandable desire- imagine a so-called Christian expat teen finding themselves living in a foreign country and being entranced by the beauty of the country’s dominant religion.

A few more responses to quotes from the introduction before I end this post:

“The more I probed the Bible to arm myself against the doubts of unbelievers, the more distance I discovered between the Jesus of the gospels and the Jesus of history- between Jesus the Christ and Jesus of Nazareth.” – The traditional Christian view is that the bible is a cohesive whole (though not chronological from front-to-back)  that points to the historical Jesus, the Christ, from start to finish (John 5:39). We draw no distinction between Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus the Christ, for they are one and the same. I am truly curious about how one could draw this conclusion, that Jesus of Nazareth is not the Jesus presented in the gospels, by “probing the bible” as a teenager. Aslan does not elaborate.

“The bedrock of evangelical Christianity, at least as it was taught to me, is the unconditional belief that every word of the Bible is God-breathed and true, literal and inerrant.” – Aslan at least makes the concession that this is the way evangelical Christianity was taught to him. I wonder if he ever entertained the thought that perhaps what he received was well-intentioned and genuine, but not entirely accurate? If every word of the Bible is literal, then God literally has feathers, and is also a literal rock, a literal tower, and a literal shield. If I told you that God is truly and actually a literal shield that one could strap to their forearm, you’d laugh at me. “But I’m just taking the bible literally!” I’d say. And you’d say “But obviously the bible is filled with different genres, and part of a historically consistent, honest and accurate interpretive method is to recognize when you’re reading poetry, when you’re reading apocalypse literature, and when you’re reading a letter addressed to a group of people.” And you would be right.

Statements like this concern me, because even if Aslan doesn’t intend to, he is very subtly discrediting Christians by implying that on the whole they take every word of the bible literally. Using the phrase “unconditional belief” helps to paint this picture of a American Christian who is stubborn and perhaps even blind to the “real” truth that is right in front of them.

“The sudden realization that his belief is patently and irrefutably false, that the Bible is replete with the most blatant and obvious errors and contradictions- just as one would expect from a document written by hundreds of hands across thousands of years- left me confused and spiritually unmoored.” – The note I have written here in my Kindle is just a big ???

That is an extraordinary claim, and yet Aslan sees no reason to provide evidence of any sort. There are no footnotes here to point toward outside sources that can confirm “irrefutably” what he clearly believes to be true. The most disappointing part of this narrative that Aslan was a young bright-eyed Muslim teen who accepted Jesus into his heart only to read the bible for himself and immediately and “suddenly” understand that it was “replete with the most blatant and obvious errors” is that for 2,000 years there has been a growing canon of robust and satisfying answers to what can easily be perceived as “errors” and “contradictions”. Did he do any research into those explanations? Did he really think that millions of people across time and culture, hundreds and thousands of miles and years apart were content to just shut their eyes and cover their ears to the blatant and obvious errors, even to the point of horrific persecution, torture, and death by the thousands?

In case you’re interested in exploring just a small portion of the answers offered to accusations of contradictions and errors in the Bible, http://defendinginerrancy.com is an excellent and fascinating resource to begin with that I use often for my own personal study.

“[After I discarded my faith] I continued my academic work in religious studies, delving back into the Bible not as an unquestioning believer but as an inquisitive scholar.” The author has convinced me with this phrase that he is making a concerted effort here to mischaracterize believing Christians as intellectually dishonest, unthinking, and unquestioning. This simply could not be further from the truth.

Read the next part here.