Hi, I’m Wayne Jones, and welcome to re:Christian, a critical and satirical reconsideration of Christianity, the Bible, and God. This is episode 23: “The Last Supper: A Happy Atheist’s Advice on Life.”
I will start with two caveats. I do happen to be a happy atheist but I have no business giving anyone advice, partly because my circumstances are specific to me and may not be universally applicable, and partly because I know a few things about a few things but it is a bit grandiose for me to spouting about life advice. The other caveat is that I am not a philosopher or theologian or even self-help guru, and so for those reasons also I’m really not qualified to tell anyone what to do in order to be happy. If you want to know about 18th-century English writer Samuel Johnson, or personal minimalism, or the intricacies of various writing style manuals relating to the proper formation of entries in a bibliography, I can help you out, but Life with a capital L—not so much.
Today is a big day on the Christian calendar and in the biography of Jesus. The Last Supper. He has the pleasure of a great meal with his closest followers, the Apostles, but he knows he’s destined for torture, crucifixion, and death on Friday. That might diminish one’s appetite a bit. Take a look at Da Vinci’s famous painting of the event (there’s a direct link to it in the show notes of this podcast). There appear to be a couple of buns on the table but not a lot else: I’m hoping it was Italian-style, where you get some bread before the delicious main courses arrive, but if not, it’s not much of a death-row inmate’s last meal.
The other thing is that everyone at the table is either importuning Jesus for something or other, or arguing among themselves while pointing back toward Jesus. I imagine them saying, in the first case: “Jesus, for the love of, well, God, if you’re going to be killed tomorrow, why don’t you skip town instead of hanging around with us waiting for the first course to arrive.” And in the second case, I imagine the real complainers, you know, the assholes who are always blathering on about something, and never satisfied even with a free meal: “So, we get invited to this supper and all we get is some dry bread to start? If there’s not fresh lamb out here in about five minutes, and some goddamn sauce, I’m leaving. I mean it.”
And the third thing is one of the big controversies about Da Vinci’s The Last Supper. The person sitting at the right hand of Jesus appears to be a woman. Many defenses and arguments have been laid down that this is not a woman, and certainly not Mary Magdalene as some have speculated, but rather the apostle John. For sure, I haven’t read all the arguments against this being a woman, but, really, come on. Look at the other twelve people at the table, who are evidently men. They exude he/him/his as their pronouns. That person to his right is a woman, or at least in transition.
Here is a partial description of the Last Supper from the Bible. Interestingly, only three of the evangelists (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) wrote about it. John did not. Hmmmmm. Perhaps put of by not having been invited? Or, more simply, he couldn’t write about it because he wasn’t there. Anyway, here is how Mark describes it:
13 So he sent two of his disciples, telling them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. 14 Say to the owner of the house he enters, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ 15 He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there.”
16 The disciples left, went into the city and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover.
17 When evening came, Jesus arrived with the Twelve. 18 While they were reclining at the table eating, he said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me—one who is eating with me.”
19 They were saddened, and one by one they said to him, “Surely you don’t mean me?”
20 “It is one of the Twelve,” he replied, “one who dips bread into the bowl with me. 21 The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.”
22 While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take it; this is my body.”
23 Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they all drank from it.
24 “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many,” he said to them. 25 “Truly I tell you, I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”
26 When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. (Mark 14:13–26)
There may not have been much more than bread, but there was at least something to dip it into.
So what does this have to do about my skewed advice about living a happy life? I’m a mere atheist. I have to get by somehow without the certainty or even hope of salvation and eternal life after I’m dead. I’ve come up with a short list of practices that I follow that go a long way to keeping me happy and feeling that I am able to maintain some integrity is this existential abyss that I am cluttering and sputtering around in.
I thought of two people, both writers, when I put this together. Both are (and I hate to use this stupid word) “controversial,” but only because most readers and people don’t really pay attention, and make silly assumptions and conclusions. The first is the great writer Vladimir Nabokov, born in Russia, lived in Europe and then in the US, and when his novel Lolita was such a success he was able to move to Switzerland, where he died in 1977 at the age of 78. Lolita is a novel about a man in his 40s who has a regular sexual relationship with his stepdaughter, who is 12. Hence the controversy for some people. In his defense of himself in the afterword to the book (this was 1955) Nabokov wrote that there are only three topics that are “taboo” in fiction. Two of them are pedophilia and a good marriage between a mixed black/white couple, and the other one is “the total atheist who lives a happy and useful life, and dies in his sleep at the age of 106.”
The other person I thought of was Jordan Peterson, whom some people view as intolerant and intolerable, and others of us have actually read and listened to what he has to say. Just read his book, 12 Rules for Life, and get your mind changed about him.
So, here’s what I’ve come up with, borrowing especially the last line from Peterson, and compiling the other lines from self-help and common sense. It looks simple, but just try it for a month, and see both how much happier you are, and how much trouble you get yourself into with other people:
Love yourself
Be kind to yourself
Stand up for yourself
Be kind to others
Always tell the truth
Christians, dear Christians, all we have are these few years on the earth that was not created by your imagined God. Use this list. Make your own list and be happy while you’re here. Spoiler alert: when you die, you are not going to awaken and find yourself at any gate, to heaven or to hell. You’re done.
And so am I.
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