In my last post, I took a shot at Ricky Gervais. Well, not really. More like a shot at atheist-flavored ignorance, which even as an entertainer, he’s pretty visible for.
We need to actually speak plainly about what we have recorded in what Christians call the New Testament, or New Covenant. Church people, step out of the shoes of loving Jesus and His Church for one moment. How does the New Testament read or sound on the face of it? Let’s just focus on the four Gospels. That’s where all the stuff allegedly said by Jesus is recorded. Jesus as a liar doesn’t have much evidence behind it; he didn’t lounge in Malta after all the stuff, getting rich after selling purported baptismal water. He got called a blasphemer by his own people, and executed as a disturber of the peace by the Roman Empire. Let’s set aside Jesus’ alleged resurrection and every miracle he did for a moment as well.
Jesus being crazy seems to have some evidence behind it.
No sensible philosopher I have ever heard would talk like that. If Jesus sounds like a good teacher to you, you haven’t read the Gospels at all. Even taking into account the rabbinical penchant for purposeful overstatement, Jesus is pretty out there. Lewis was right: the “good teacher” cope is patronizing born of ignorance of the source material.
To be totally fair, Genesis to Malachi doesn’t read or sound like a home improvement book from Bob Villa. Not sure if you have noticed that. The comedians sure have, and they are not wrong.
Even if we only granted the possibility of miracles and prophecy to the first half of the book [God of Israel: The Motion Picture—.ed] Jesus’ opponents make strong points. I’m not kidding. You’d have to sympathize with the Pharisees recorded in St. John, who basically said, “C’mon, man. We watched you grow up, we know your family, and you came down from Heaven? OK.” In a way, if you don’t see “the bad guys” as the reasonable people, you won’t understand the magnitude of faith, of what God is expecting and inviting you into.
This, by the way, is why religion on ordinary TV seems so stupid: real believers don’t go to God to figure out how to be good people; they go to God because they know they aren’t, and the time for figuring that out and fixing it is very short. The plainer, blunter message is this: God forgives and invites into relationship, because He is going to fix and judge anything broken and evil. When he does, there’s nothing after that, but blissful relationship with God or Hell.
Figure out if it’s possible that the supernatural world could or does exist. Then figure out if that matters to you. But I have known good people at secular nonprofits. You don’t need religion or God, if all you’re trying to do is live and die with a bit of comfort in between.
But what if Jesus is Lord?
Comments