We all grow up in cultures that we don't entirely understand, and especially we don't always understand where certain values or ideas originated. After all, the evolution of these values and ideas happens over centuries, so no one is entirely capable of knowing everything that led up to the present and the cultural values and ideas that we have inherited.

And those of us in the West have grown up in a culture that has been shaped by Christianity for two thousand years now, even down to the level of our genes. If we like the values and ideas that we have inherited, we ought to acknowledge their origin and appreciate that origin, even if looking back we can see that bits here and there may not have been technically accurate and other parts have more than a hint of smoke and mirrors.

And I am also reminded of Pontius Pilate asking "What is truth?" It is a question that has never received a satisfactory answer.

In the modern world we tend to think of "Truth" as a representation that correlates to an underlying reality, but if we look at ancient usage it often seems to describe rather something that can be relied upon for a desired outcome. A spouse who is true, a friend who is true, an arrow that is true: these are things that are reliable and do what they are supposed to do. To say that these things correlate to an underlying reality does not make sense.

So with that in mind, what does it mean when a modern atheist looks at Biblical narratives or Church doctrine and find them not credible at a factual level? Does it mean all those things should be discarded? Does it mean that the atheist should thoughtfully examine these things and their history and discover what wisdom may lie in some or all of them? Is there any worth in these things at all?

I'm afraid that my comments here will seem a bit disconnected and they will certainly be incomplete, but I hope to at least spur some thoughts of possibilities that most have never considered - which if true would probably demolish both atheism AND Christianity as most professing believers understand it, and yet can satisfy the promises made by both our faculties of reason and the Bible.

Let us first look at the ministry of Jesus. That is, after all, at the very root of Christianity.

Believers like to quote Jesus as saying "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6) They tend to presume that this means that the only way to salvation for any individual is to accept Jesus as their savior. But is that what this verse actually says?

Look also as Matthew 7:13-14: "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

Is Jesus the gate? A gate is like a marker or a guide to the correct path. In ancient usage, then, does the gate correlate to Truth? A path is another word for a Way, and the goal of this path is to avoid destruction and reach Life. If Jesus is the Way and the Truth and the Life, it would sound like he might be describing himself here, or at least his role.

And while we are in Matthew, let us continue to the very next passage, verses 15 to 20:

"Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them."

In other passages we can see that Jesus's disciples do not always understand what he tells them. If those who were with him frequently misunderstood him, should we assume that self-appointed gatekeepers two thousand years removed from him have interpreted everything correctly? Let us look then at what Jesus actually said while applying some degree of reason. Note especially "By their fruit you will recognize them" which he repeats here twice, and "A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit."

It looks to me that Jesus is very results-oriented. Jesus doesn't give a damn if someone loudly proclaims their devotion, he cares only about what sort of person they are. Verse 21: "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." Now I should say, other verses tell us that salvation is through faith rather than works - but as with the idea of Truth mentioned above, Faith appears to describe reliability more than anything else. Remember that the fruit Jesus spoke of was spiritual fruit. That is, salvation is for those who reliably do their best to do God's will. If worldly results do not always match expectations that is not a deal-breaker. After all, "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men, Gang aft a-gley", as the poet Robbie Burns has told us, and it would be counterproductive to intentionally punish those whose intentions were good for every inevitable error.

But this 7th chapter in Matthew is very rich. Jesus continues in verses 24 through 27: "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash." Notice that Jesus talks about putting his ideas into practice or NOT putting his ideas into practice. Empty affirmations - or the lack of them - mean nothing. Jesus's focus is practical.

I know that some will disagree, but to me these verses together imply that whether someone knows the name of Jesus or not is almost irrelevant. Oh, surely if one has heard the message directly they are more likely to understand what they should do, but Jesus doesn't say they have to do these things in his name. He only says that they need to do them.

These verses would seem to imply that doing the will of God is what is important, and so an atheist - or a Buddhist or a Muslim or a whatever else - is acceptable to God if they make an honest attempt to do his will in practice, whereas someone who professes the name of Jesus but makes no attempt to do God's will is NOT acceptable.

Now at this point Christian zealots will point to the fact that of course perfect people will be acceptable to God, but that there are no perfect people and so something more is required. Well, yes - but I have a hard time believing that a God who would sacrifice himself to bring salvation to to the world is going to quibble over such details. It would just be incredibly petty, stupid, and counterproductive for an infinite God who loves humanity.

But let us move on to the next step. By this time most people have heard of chaos theory and the "butterfly effect". Those who want to know more can do independent study, but I am speaking of the idea that a very small cause can have huge and unpredictable effects over time. The classic example is the butterfly whose flapping of its wings ends up causing a hurricane on the other side of the world.

And let us also look at the Fermi Paradox and the idea of the Great Filter. That is, the universe is vast yet we see no evidence of aliens: is there a Great Filter that destroys almost all species before they can expand into space? And is that filter behind us or ahead of us? Or heck, are there multiple filters, some of which we have passed and others which have not yet reached?

Well, if Jesus is the Narrow Gate, and the cramped and twisting path, and the guide to life - is he talking about individual salvation? the salvation of our species? both? Is Jesus's sacrifice on the cross like the flapping of the butterfly's wings that causes enormous and distant results? If one filter is in the past and another filter is in the future, it would explain why Jesus must come a second time. If the filter is so effective that we see no other species in the galaxy that has made their way through it, this implies that humanity's odds of survival are not good - which puts me in mind of the scene in the 2018 movie "Avengers: Infinity War" in which Dr. Strange examines 14,000,605 possible futures and only finds a single course of actions which will result in victory; and also of the 2019 follow-up "Avengers: Endgame" where we see that a sacrifice was necessary.

If this interpretation is correct it would explain a great many things. It would explain why God required a sacrifice in the first place. It would satisfy our conscience that says that no one deserves eternal damnation just because no one told them about Jesus. It would explain why atheists might be wise to practice Christianity even if they can't bring themselves to believe popular interpretations of who and what God is.

So who is God anyway, that he might demand a sacrifice to preserve humanity?

Well, there are many answers, but few that are satisfactory. If we look at scripture, however, we get one surprising answer hiding in plain sight.

We are told that the Church - spiritually called Israel - consists of those who keep faith in Jesus. We are also told that the Church is the Bride of Christ.

What does it mean to be a bride? Well Genesis 2:24 tells us "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." If the Church is the Bride of Christ, therefore, it would imply that the Church and Jesus are One, and whereas Jesus is God then the Church, being One with God, must also be God - or a part of God. Now THAT will surely rankle many a follower of Jesus who has not yet comprehended this.

But one might say that that is merely a metaphor, and surely we should not conclude that the Church is an essential part of God - a substrate we might say.

But then how do we explain First Corinthians chapter 12 in which the Church is described as the Body of Christ - especially verses 12 through 26:

"Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body — whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free — and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.

"Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

"The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it."

Now in modern terms we might think of God as an emergent phenomenon that comes out of a unified humanity - the Church. Today we understand more about biology, and we know that a human body is not merely hands and feet and the like, but consists of trillions of individual cells that are specialized to fill an incredible number of individual roles. We have heart cells and skin cells, cells that make up the rods and cones and other parts of our eyes; we have red blood cells that bring oxygen to the different parts of the body and white blood cells that protect the body from disease; we have brain cells and cells in our stomach lining; we even have non-human cells that make up our microbiome without which we could not live. Despite the enormous number of cells, they all work together to make a single human with a single spirit. Likewise a single spirit - the spirit of Love - can unite humans into a superorganism far greater than any individual human.

And if that superorganism makes up the Body of Christ does it mean that that unified humanity is God? Doesn't that make us sound rather too important?

Well keep in mind how insignificant a single human cell is. We shed skin cells all day every day, with no harm to the body. Every other cell is also replaceable - and in fact, throughout our lifetime these cells ARE replaced constantly. In the same way the Body of Christ loses individuals and adds individuals over time, changing and yet remaining the same, with individuals dying yet the Body living on, from the distant past even into the much more distant future.

Now one might claim that these are just metaphors and should not be taken too seriously - a thought I find amusing because many of those who would object are keen to take scripture very literally elsewhere.

"Spirit" is another word which I think is often misinterpreted, but in the modern world I think it is somewhat analogous to the software that runs a computer. Sure, the hardware is vitally important, but it is software that ends up determining how that hardware is used.

And so we have the Spirit of Love. What does scripture say about Love?

Well, many things, but here I draw your attention to First John chapter 4, verse 16: "God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them."

And also Matthew 18:20 gives a hint when Jesus says "For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them." This would fit with God being a spirit of Love.

Now for full disclosure I should note that there are verses that at first glance would seem to deny everything I just said.

Also in 1st John 4, verses 19 through 21:

"We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister."

Still, I would say that this is true - in the same sense that a human blood cell which travels throughout the body does not know what it means to be human, at least not in a comprehensive way, even though this blood cell is surrounded by human cells everywhere it goes. We, too, as mere humans may be in one sense God, and we may even be dimly aware of the majesty of God, and yet we only see people around us. If this hypothesis is correct then we are, collectively, vital to God's existence - yet, individually, we are nothing. Still, we are healthier when God is healthy, and so it is vital to our own health that humanity is collectively healthy - and that means loving one another.

So, considering all these things together I believe that many an atheist could understand what I have described, and could believe in such a God, and as such might want to endeavor to do their part to maintain the health of this superorganism of which all those who are filled with love for their fellow man are a part.

I know this is getting long so I will try to wrap this up with just a couple more points:

First, 1 John 4:18: "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." So long as much of humanity hates us, it is difficult not to fear, and so it becomes impossible to become perfected in love. But this is not for a lack of OUR love - it is due to those who hate us, many of whom falsely believe themselves to be followers of Jesus Christ, who have decided to fear and hate us. See again 1 John 4:19-21. Still, we should endeavor not to hate them in return, even if necessity requires us to take actions against them for the sake of ourselves and our role in maintaining the health of humanity.

Second, one might ask how much credence I give to these scriptures. Well, at least some. I see two main possibilities: that these scriptures contain the concentrated and collected wisdom of 2000 years of history up through the 1st century A.D.; or that these scriptures are a message from the future intended to convey to us what we need to pass through the Great Filter.

How might we get a message from the future? Well, based on physics as we understand it now time travel appears to be possible, though extremely difficult and far beyond our current technological capabilities. But if humanity, united by love, constitutes God, then God is very powerful and can master time. And if humanity ever attains time travel, then humanity has always had time travel.

Finally, when it comes to interpreting scripture, I consider: if humanity, collectively, attains the ability to send messages through time, then humanity, collectively, will also be capable of creating a text so refined that it will be able to convey multiple messages to multiple recipients in multiple times and places. A text does not mean just anything, and for any text the majority of possible interpretations must necessarily be false. Nonetheless, multiple interpretations may still be true - a reliable guide - and using variations in culture and language over time it might be possible to encode multiple messages in a single text through something like steganography, each message being only readable to its respective recipient.

Maybe this is all just fantasy, and yet these scriptures can still serve as a source of ideas and traditional wisdom which we can use as fodder for thought.