Christian Doctrine: A Mishmash of Inconsistencies and Contradictions

If you’ve ever tried to follow the twists and turns of Christian doctrine, you might feel like you’re stuck in a maze of contradictions. On one hand, God is portrayed as all-loving and all-knowing, yet we’re expected to believe He created flawed beings and then blamed them for their flaws. On the other hand, we’re told that salvation comes only through faith in Jesus — despite the fact that Jesus himself taught a completely different message. How does any of this make sense? Spoiler alert: It doesn’t.

In this chapter, we’ll look at some of the most glaring contradictions, from the expulsion of Adam and Eve to Paul’s warped version of justice. Brace yourselves — this one’s going to be a bumpy ride.

1. The Garden of Eden: The Original Design Flaw

Let’s start with the story of Adam and Eve. According to the Bible, God creates the first humans, places them in a garden, gives them free will, and then — surprise! — they use that free will to disobey Him. This “sin” brings death and suffering into the world, and now we’re all stuck paying the price.

But here’s the thing: If you create something, you are responsible for how it behaves. It’s like a manufacturer designing autonomous cars. Sure, the car might have its own programming, but if it crashes, that’s a design flaw, not the car’s fault. Imagine a car company trying to argue in court that their self-driving car ran over a pedestrian because it chose to. The judge would laugh them out of the courtroom.

If God is the “manufacturer” of humans, how is it that we’re to blame for using the properties He gave us? He designed us with free will, and free will by definition means we can make choices God might not like. If that’s a problem for Him, maybe He shouldn’t have given us free will in the first place! And yet, we’re told that God’s love is behind this decision — though it seems more like a setup for inevitable failure.

2. The Snake in the Grass: Wait, Where’s the Devil?

Now, let’s talk about the snake in the Garden of Eden. Most of us were taught in Sunday school that the snake was actually the Devil in disguise, tempting Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge. But hold on a second — where does it say that in the text? Nowhere!

The story in Genesis doesn’t mention the Devil at all. The snake is just a snake, and the story reads like a tribal cautionary tale — kind of like stories about trickster animals in other cultures. It’s a simple story about curiosity, temptation, and disobedience. Later scholars, desperate to make sense of why humans should suffer for eternity, retrofitted the narrative with the idea that the snake was Satan.

It’s a sneaky trick to shift the blame away from God and onto us. If there’s an all-powerful God who allows a malevolent being to tempt us and then punishes us for falling into that trap, what kind of love is that?

3. The Sacrificial Lamb That Wasn’t

Next, let’s take a detour into Old Testament law — specifically the Passover lamb and the scapegoat. Christian doctrine loves to compare Jesus to the sacrificial lamb, saying he was “killed for our sins.” But this comparison makes no sense.

At Passover, the Israelites ate the lamb, and its blood was smeared on doorposts to protect them from the avenging angel. The lamb wasn’t killed for their sins; it was part of a ritual meal. Then there’s the Day of Atonement, where the scapegoat had the sins of the people placed upon it — but the scapegoat wasn’t killed. It was sent into the wilderness, not slaughtered.

So, if Jesus is supposed to be a lamb, he should have been eaten, not crucified. And if he’s a scapegoat, why wasn’t he set free to wander the wilderness? The whole narrative gets twisted beyond recognition to fit the idea of Jesus being a sacrifice for sins. In reality, the Jewish traditions these metaphors are based on don’t line up with the way Christian doctrine portrays Jesus’ death at all.

4. Jesus’ Teachings vs. Christian Doctrine: The Lost Son and Unconditional Love

Now let’s turn to Jesus himself. The parable of the lost son is one of the most beautiful stories in the Bible. In this parable, a father’s son takes his inheritance, squanders it, and eventually returns home, expecting to be punished. But instead, the father welcomes him with open arms, no questions asked. He throws a feast, gives the son new clothes, and rejoices. This is what love looks like.

There’s no mention of atonement or punishment. The father doesn’t make the son beg for forgiveness or prove his worth. He doesn’t demand a sacrifice. He just loves his son, plain and simple. This is a far cry from the vengeful God of Christian doctrine who expels Adam and Eve from the Garden and demands blood for forgiveness. Jesus’ message is about unconditional love, not legalistic justice.

5. Paul’s Doctrine: Salvation Through Faith Alone?

And now we come to Paul — the man who, more than anyone else, shaped what we now call Christianity. Paul’s message is very different from Jesus’. According to Paul, humans are hopelessly sinful and can only be saved by having faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection.

But wait — didn’t Jesus himself say that the two greatest commandments were to love God and love your neighbor? Jesus’ teachings focus on how to live, on being good. There’s no emphasis on believing in a sacrificial death. Yet Paul builds an entire religion around the idea that faith, not works, is the key to salvation.

It’s almost like Paul is preaching a different religion — a religion that Jesus himself might not even recognize.

6. Substitutionary Atonement: The Worst Justice System Ever

Now let’s address the elephant in the room: substitutionary atonement. The idea that Jesus died in our place, taking the punishment for our sins, is at the core of Christian doctrine. But let’s think about this logically.

Imagine yourself sitting in a crowded courtroom. The atmosphere is thick with tension as a monster of a man stands trial — someone who has committed the most heinous crimes imaginable. He has raped, murdered, tortured, and left behind a trail of devastation. The evidence is overwhelming, and the jurors can barely look at him. Mothers in the courtroom clutch their children in fear. The surviving families of the victims — women who were brutalized, children who were slaughtered — sit in silence, waiting for the justice they’ve prayed for.

The judge reads out the verdict: guilty on all counts. The room collectively breathes, relief washing over them. Finally, this man will face the ultimate punishment for his unspeakable acts. He will be held accountable. He will pay for the lives he’s destroyed. Justice will be done.

But then, out of nowhere, a kind and innocent young man rises from the back of the courtroom. He walks forward, his face serene, his voice clear as he speaks to the judge: “Your Honor, I ask that this man be freed. Let him go. I will take his punishment. I will die in his place.”

For a moment, there’s stunned silence. The families of the victims stare, wide-eyed, unable to comprehend what they’ve just heard. How could this be? The man who committed the crimes is about to walk free, and an innocent life is about to be taken.

The judge, shockingly, agrees. The guilty man, grinning and triumphant, walks out of the courtroom, his sins forgiven, his punishment erased. The innocent man is led away to the gallows, while the courtroom erupts into chaos. Mothers scream, fathers weep, and the families of the victims are left shattered and bewildered. This isn’t justice — it’s a perversion of everything justice is supposed to be. The guilty escape while the innocent suffer.

Now tell me, would any sensible person in that room rejoice? Would anyone call this justice? Would anyone feel satisfied, knowing that the monster who wreaked havoc and death has been set free, while a pure, innocent man pays the price?

No. They would feel disgust. Outrage. A deep sense of betrayal. This is not justice. This is a travesty, an abomination of everything we hold dear in a civilized society. Justice is about accountability, about making those who commit wrongs answer for their crimes — not letting them go while punishing the innocent.

And yet, this is exactly the core doctrine of Christianity. We are told that Jesus died to take on the punishment for our sins. But how does that make any sense? How does the sacrifice of an innocent man redeem the guilty? How is that moral? In any other context, this would be considered a miscarriage of justice, not a cause for celebration.

Conclusion: Outrage, Bewilderment, and Rejection

By now, any honest and sensible reader should be feeling a profound sense of outrage, bewilderment, and disgust. If your sense of justice is even remotely intact, you should be horrified by the implications of these beliefs. How can we accept a religion that portrays this bizarre perversion of justice as a virtue? How can we follow a doctrine that treats vengeance as righteousness, that lets the guilty walk free while punishing the innocent?

The Garden of Eden sets us up for failure, blaming us for the design flaws we were given. The story of the snake was twisted into a narrative of demonic deception, simply to shift the blame from a God who sets traps for His own creation. The sacrifice of Jesus is sold to us as a necessary payment for sins, but when you peel back the layers, you find nothing but a grotesque distortion of justice — an inversion of what any sane, moral person would call right.

If you are honest, if you are truly searching for truth, the only logical conclusion is to reject this horrendous doctrine. It isn’t just inconsistent — it’s deeply immoral by any modern standard of decency. This is not love. This is not justice. This is a mishmash of cruelty and absurdity dressed up as divine wisdom.

At the end of the day, Christian doctrine is a hodgepodge of mismatched ideas, internally inconsistent and, at times, downright immoral. The notion that we are responsible for our design flaws, the idea that Jesus’ death was a perfect sacrifice when it doesn’t even align with Jewish tradition, and the bizarre concept of substitutionary atonement all make for a doctrine that crumbles under scrutiny.

Jesus preached love, forgiveness, and acceptance — yet Christian doctrine seems more concerned with punishment, rules, and sacrifice. It’s time to call out these contradictions for what they are: a mishmash of ideas that simply don’t hold up in the light of reason.

At this point, you should be asking yourself: Why would anyone defend this?