Here's the answer key to the Storage Wars Jerusalem contest last week. All
answers left to right.
1:49 Peter Breitbart, who appeared in several vids; any of those titles are
acceptable. Crazypills2 the Clown, who also appeared in several vids.
1:55 Unnamed lady robot (though I used the working name of Sephia) who
appeared in four vids related to cosmology. Gilligan and the Pett Bomber, from
Rescue from Pett Bomber Island. Obelix, appeared in Tacitus Says Christ Mythers
Have Gaul.
2:01 Batman, appeared in Did the Bible Blunder 3. ReligionFreeDeist in his
jackass costume, from Plumber Under Pressure.
2:10 Bart Ehrman, who has appeared in dozens of vids. Faith, from Paul's
Angels: Faith. Cult of Dusty, from ForBibleTruth and Cultof Dusty Hammered by
the Historians.
2:25 Pres. Bartlett from President Bartlett Gets Pared.
2:32 Dorothy from Penn and Teller's Bible Bull Ripped. William Lane Craig
from Dawkins' Dodge.
2:38 Rebecca Watson and Richard Dawkins from Thunderf00t’s Strategic
Assessment (Dawkins has appeared in others as well).
2:41 Ray Comfort from If Ray Comfort Were a Fundamentalist Atheist.
3:12 Dr. E from Dr. E: Jesus vs Attis (or Osiris would be acceptable).
3:18 Norman Geisler from Geisler's Christmas Carol or Rise of the
Ehrmanator. ChristianRoadWarrior from WYTW Raw: ProfMTH and violently graceful
Lose Their Job
3:30 Unnamed elephant from The Tale of Jephthah. DarkMatter2525 from
several vids, though he has only appeared in that form in Dark Doesn't Matter.
3:35 Mike Licona from Geisler's Christmas Carol.
3:45 Unnamed Borg from Social Concepts 4: Submit to the Collective.
Kittenkitoko from Jephthah in the Hot Seat or Dawkins' Ironic Hypocrisy.
3;58 Joan from Social Concept 3: Shame vs Guilt. Unnamed guy from Wah Wah
World 4.
4:03 Unnamed clown from Plumber Under Pressure.
4:09 Unnamed bull from Who Authored Luke-Acts? Thessalonians 2 from The Man
Who Wrote THAT!
4:50 Troi from Why is the Man's Head Shiny? or Submit to the Collective.
4:59 Penn from Penn and Teller Bible Bull Ripped. Scram Man, from several
vids. Barry the atheist from Symphathizes with Wolves.
5:08 Count Blarg from Did the Bible Blunder 3. Unnamed assistant to
Confucius from Be a Moron Onto Others.
On TektonTV today, I offered a followup vid as a reply to the same emergent
Christian to whom a prior vid and Forge post was addressed (link below). There
was little in the way of new argument from him this time; what he did offer was
mostly a sustained rant, peppered with personal accusations, vacuous slogans,
and angry re-assertions of defeated premises (I spent a lot of time referring
to prior arguments he ignored or was unaware of!), but this gave me a chance to
make a few things clear about my use of harsh language towards certain
opponents, as well as address a few other issues.
“All the Time.” The emergent made the rather vague charge that I used harsh
language “all the time”. How this is rated is not explained. Obviously, since
e.g., comments on YT engage me less than a total of 15-20 minutes a day, and at
least 70-90% of those on any given day are not to fundy atheists, “all the
time” seems hyperbolic to say the least.
In reality, most of my time these days is spent on writing projects such as
an e-book on the atonement and articles for my e-zine (the current article on
my docket is on Orthodoxy). It seems rather that the emergent is so obsessed
with the idea that it is all he thinks about “all the time.” As I explain in
the vid, though, my use of harsh language is governed by occasions brought TO
me. I don't go looking to pick fights with fundy atheists in the YouTube
comments. In every single case, they come to MY channel -- or to one my work is
hosted on -- to pick fights with ME.
This simple point erases a good number of
complaints from the be-nice bellowers:
Those who comment know very well from watching the vids that they're not
going to be given a free ride with a song and dance. Most (not all) of the vids
contain sarcastic humor, so there's very little chance fundy atheist commenters
do not know what they're getting into.
In contrast, a point I do not address in the vid: Although I don't go
picking fights in comments, I do sometimes appear to do so when I produce vids.
Of the current set of 175 vids, a fair number are directed to a position held
by someone who made another vid; of that, a fair number are directed towards
persons who "threw the first punch."
Some, however, are towards persons who had nothing to do with
me before -- mostly, two YT users designated ProfMTH and NonStampCollector.
But
hold for the caveat: I picked those two as targets on request of YT users who
were distressed by their arrogance and the bullying. So however you look at it
-- I'm almost never, if at all, the one looking for trouble. My work is almost
completely reactionary.
That's how it was when I wrote articles for Tekton years ago, too. Nothing
has changed. If you're an atheist who does civil discourse, and doesn't go out
of your way to do poor research or to deceive, you have nothing to worry about
and will get the red carpet from me. If you do get called down by me, and
acknowledge your mistakes and show a willingness to dialogue and improve your
effort -- as has happened with a few atheists over the years -- the same carpet
comes rolling out.
But if you're a fundy atheist who doesn't care about the truth, who
continues to use sources like Wikipedia or Acharya S or Robert Ingersoll; who
makes excuses such as "Christian scholars are too biased so you can't use
them" -- I'll roll up that carpet and knock you over the right field wall
with it.
As noted in that last entry, Christians like this emergent one who enable
such behavior are no better. You'll see in this vid samples of comments from
such fundy atheists, who this emergent lunatic has the temerity to say are just
"asking questions in the name of God." Which god, I ask? Loki? Eris?
(Is there an Aztec god of discord and destruction they're following, maybe?)
And I also point out a great irony: By enabling these wolves, the emergent is
actually insulting honest seekers and being a “poor witness” to them.
Offensive Christianity. I allude to Christianity being profoundly offensive
in its social context. This is the sum of what I call the Impossible Faith
thesis. There’s a link below explaining some of the points made in the vid.
This thesis formed the basis for one of the sections in my book Defending the
Resurrection. It’s been criticized by a couple of atheists (including one who
was paid $5000 by another atheist to write a refutation of it!), and I have
replied in turn.
Personal Testimony. There’s a link below to a series on my other blog about
evangelism and apologetics, and how Christians have placed themselves in a trap
of sorts by making personal behavior a judging standard for the truth of the
Gospel.
Reading Lists. The emergent coddled a fundy atheist who refused to do
assigned reading I offered so that they could comment more intelligently. I
should note that I did this specifically to this critic precisely because they
were not willing to learn and be inquisitive. Most viewers will not have done
the reading before commenting; but most readers will also not rail off with
misplaced objections, either. There’s a difference between the way I treat
willing learners and those who steadfastly remain willfully ignorant.
To address a related point: I don’t attack disagreement. I attack willfully
and stubbornly unintelligent, misinformed, tendentious disagreement. And fundy
atheists specialize in that (as is to be expected, since that was their mode as
fundies, too).
Seeking Weak Christians. One thing the emergent fails to grasp – being too
ensconced in his role as an enabler of bullies – is that the set of fundy
atheists I deal with are “anti-evangelists” who are specifically seeking weak
victims. Very few openly state that they are out to deconvert Christians; John
Loftus is one of those who does. This set of fundy atheists has a strategy set,
which includes the “guilt trip” of declaring that you sure are unloving if you
don’t just accept their manipulative ways and become their doormat. They also
tend to use “reason, logic and evidence” – the words, not the actual products –
as a bludgeon. Used their way, this becomes an insult in itself (as it
indicates to the Christian, “you are oblivious to reason, logic, and
evidence”).
There’s no basis for doormat Christianity. Even acts like giving your
clothes away to someone who sued you was in fact an act designed to shame your
opponent – just like Gandhi shamed the British with his non-violence (which I
expect escapes the emergent sorts as well). The emergent uses the Message
“translation,” which, as the vid notes, offers the ridiculous rendering that
you are to “gift wrap” your item of clothing and make it a present. That not
only adds a great deal of words to the text, it also adds our cultural
presuppositions.
As part of their anti-evangelism, I noted, these fundy atheists will even
leave comments on vids that are just devotionals. Now I imagine it will be said
that Christians will also evangelize on vids that have to do with eg,
evolution. And that’s true. But it’s also just as inappropriate and not an
excuse.
Millennial Change. In close -- as TektonTV approaches 1000 subscribers, I
have decided on a solution to the problem, one that will shut down the
complaints once and for all -- though not in a way you might expect. You can
look for that once TektonTV passes the magic number. My final note on this is a
clue – I design my riposte such that those who take themselves least seriously
will have the least problem with it. That’s all I’ll say – those who have ears
to hear, will hear.
Today on TektonTV, we've added a vid laying the law down on a species of
professed Christian which is set to bury the Western church as it lays on its
deathbed. We've had many occasions to answer the denizens of the emergent
church (Brian McLaren, Carl Medearis, and others) but this is the first time
(apart from a few comments on Amazon to Medearis) I've addressed any directly. This one objected to my use of "pwnage" against fundy atheists and those who destroy the truth. Nothing unusual there. (I'd better add here for qualification, since otherwise it will be assumed: I don't mean here reasonable atheists. I mean open, bold, deceivers and profaners.)
Since there's nothing particularly unusual about any emergent -- seen one,
seen them all -- we won't bother to name them, but will present here their
(typical) responses for commentary.
"We have to made God and Jesus attractive!"
We do? That's funny. God did all he could to make Jesus UNattractive in the
first century: A crucified man (the highest form of shame known, in a society
where honor was highly valued and shame desperately avoided), who came from
Nazareth in Galilee (from the wrong side of the tracks, and a land known for
being the Afghanistan of the day), and was resurrected (when pagans thought the
idea of resurrection repugnant, and Jews thought no one would be resurrected
until the end of the age)...need I go on? I compiled a huge list of reasons
precisely why God and Jesus were NOT attractive in the first century; and a
minor league arrogant, or any emergent, is going to say we need to make Jesus
"attractive"? What do they want us to do, add lipstick to the crucified Christ?
The fact is, the Gospel is not "attractive". It is not personal
therapy. It is not for the purpose of making you feel good, or so you can have
"experiences" in church (most of which are self-induced euphorias
anyway). It is not an "I Can Only Imagine"
song where we get to dance and sing. It is erasure of sin for sinners; it is
eternal service and work on behalf of the Kingdom. The faithful servant didn't get ten cities so
that he could go on vacation in them.
"We need to listen to the grievances of these fundy atheists!"
No we don't. For one thing, they're all old news. For another, they've all
already been answered. Fundy atheists -- not "regular" atheists
necessarily -- aren't raising these objections because they want an answer.
They are raising these objections to annoy, frustrate, and anger Christians.
They are raising them as a way of undermining Christians' faith and in turn
undermining their support for causes they (the fundy atheists) support --
whether it be abortion, same-sex marriage, or keeping the Ten Commandments out
of their offended vision.
The fact is that these “grievances” have been postulated since Ingersoll,
since Paine, in some cases since Celsus. The answers have been around just as
long. It does not take a great deal of effort (with most of them) to discover
that they are bogus. However, fundy atheists as a whole have an aversion to
reading. I have offered to buy three of them a free book – only one has taken
the offer, and that was one who I’d consider right on the cusp of rational (as
opposed to fundy) atheism. So we don’t need to listen to their grievances –
because they’re not looking for solutions.
"These fundy atheists are people who have been hurt by the
church!"
Oh really? If we allow in trivial or manufactured offense, including that
willfully exacerbated by a refusal to look for answers (as above), then that
might work out. As for REAL offense, well -- when I did an article on
witnessing to apostates, I found a survey on a leading fundy atheist website (a
forum, though the thread is now defunct), and the largest portion (28.5
percent) of atheists cited “theological/doctrinal problems” as their reason for
questioning their faith. Another 27 percent claimed that their faith “no longer
made sense” or that they “grew out of it.” Ten percent cited “Bible
contradictions” as their reason to initially question Christianity.
Where did "hurt by the church" come in? Fourth. Way fourth. About
6 percent. Not that this is an excuse to spread crap like "Jesus didn't
exist" or "the Inquisition killed 24 million people."
"We need to show the love of Jesus!"
Ah yes. Love. Now that’s an error not unique to the emergents; like most of
the church today, they define love in terms of sappy sentimentality and
universal politeness to even the most despicable despot. It’s not that; and that
is nothing at all like the agape understood by first century peoples, in which
the greatest good was always at the fore – even if that meant having to crack a
few noggins for the sake of the whole. Emergent love would send Saddam flowers
and gently (so as not to offend) ask him to repent. Agape love would depose
Saddam, put him on trial, and justly execute him – for the greater good of his
people, and the world at large. That’s the difference between modern
individualism and collectivism.
Not surprisingly, with that sort of view of love, emergents have no idea
what to do with Biblical passages where God says he'll smear dung on people's
faces, or where God orders the Canaanites destroyed. They wring their hands and
profess to be disturbed by them and to be trying to figure it all out, but the
traditional hell will freeze over before they arrive at a real solution. The
only solution they have, as Medearis says, is to keep pointing at Jesus and
hope no one notices. (McLaren tried some sort of incoherent approach that
claimed some sort of misunderstanding, but it is awful hard to misunderstand,
"these people must be evicted from the land, or die.")
"If you don't know a person, you have no right to tell them they are
wrong."
Ah yes. There's another of those made up emergent rules. Last I checked,
right and wrong was determined by accordance with facts and truth, not whether
you "knew" a person. The emergent church is obsessively relational,
insisting you need to become close to and familiar with a person and earn their
“respect” to be able to have the "right" to correct them.
The problem
is that the sort of personal familiarity they describe has been unknown until
the modern era; in agonistic, collectivist societies like the world of the NT,
people did not "get to know" each other save in rare circumstances,
and “respect” as we know it was unknown; honor was the closest analogue, and by
that reckoning, an inferior could not correct a superior, but a superior was
free to correct an inferior, and equals could correct each other only with
caution. Which means, by the emergent view, almost no one had the right to
correct anyone else until around 1867.
“You can’t judge someone’s heart. Jesus could, and that is why he was
allowed to insult the Pharisees! You’re not Jesus, pal!”
By this reckoning, as Douglas Wilson has noted, we also can’t do anything
else Jesus did – because who knows what’s actually going on? We can’t help
people either – how do we know they’re not evil, and going to abuse us or
others if we help them now?
Beyond that, if we want to appeal to Jesus, let us remember that he also
said that we could know people by their fruit, and Jesus himself didn’t call on
any divine knowledge to judge the Pharisees – he said that by the overflow of
their hearts, their mouths spoke (Matt. 12:34). He didn’t have to dip into the
divine knowledge well to get that – so why would we need to?
I’ll add a side note. It seems emergents are especially enamored of Bible “translations”
like “The Message” which are actually pretty poor paraphrases, because they
find in them the sort of relational or sympathetic twist they’re looking for.
That’s typical of their mistakes. As John Kohlenberger sums it up, in a
Christian Research Journal article on The Message:
So how are we to view The Message? It is an expansive paraphrase that is not
so labeled, as is The Living Bible. Beset with inconsistencies, its idiom is
not always “street language”; its terminology is often idiosyncratic to its
author. Compared by noted literary figures to the groundbreaking translation of
J.B.Phillips, I believe The Message often lacks Phillips’s creativity and
conciseness.
In the introduction, Eugene Peterson compares his pastoral ministry to his
work as a translator: “I stood at the border between two languages, biblical
Greek and everyday English, acting as a translator, providing the right
phrases, getting the right words so that the men and women to whom I was pastor
could find their way around and get along in this world” (p.7). Much of The
Message reads like a sermon: text plus interpretation and application. Unlike a
sermon, however, the reader does not know where the text ends and the sermon
begins.
Because of its interpretive and idiosyncratic nature, The Message should not
be used for study. If read for enlightenment or entertainment, the reader
should follow the advice of Saint Augustine, as quoted in the original preface
to the KJV, “Variety of translations is profitable for finding out the sense of
the Scriptures.” Acts17:11 commends the Bereans for evaluating Paul’s teaching
with the Old Testament Scriptures. In the same spirit, The Message needs to be
evaluated against more consistent and traditional translations, especially when
its renderings evoke a response such as, “I didn’t know the Bible said that!”
or, “Now I understand what it means.”
In sum: while the phrase “the Message” is Eugene Peterson’s translation of
“the Gospel,” not everything in The Message should be treated as gospel.
I’ll say this in close. Emergents, with regard to fundy atheists, have a
parallel in the secular world. Our school systems are enduring what some have
called an epidemic of bullying, as the weak are preyed on by the strong, and
the strong receive nothing but slaps on the wrist, counseling, and
“understanding”. To enable a bully is far more despicable, however, than the
bullying itself.
Emergents who insist on being nice to fundy atheists and other
destroyers or deceivers are enablers, and their act in so being is therefore more wicked than
the first.
Appeasement doesn't work. The emergents need to learn a lesson from Neville
Chamberlain.
We'll get to the Forge post early this week as I'm using it to post answers to a "test" I offered on TektonTV to arrogant fundy atheists who think they're hot stuff because they aced the Pew religious knowledge test. This vid is not a challenge to my Christian readers, so feel free to watch and check the answers if you're one of those.
Today’s entry is a companion to a YT vid I just loaded in which I highlight examples of Skeptics and fundy atheists who make absurd demands of God based on the premise that if He’s omnipotent, He ought to just go ahead and do whatever they find convenient. This post explains where each of the four real-life examples I gave came from.
Example A – the source for this is J. E. Hill, who had said, precisely:
When I read that "lack of paper" defense, I just shook my head, and wondered why Yahweh didn't give them enough writing material to eliminate all the confusion.
Fundy atheist Farrell Till added to the idiocy with this comment:
…why would an omniscient, omnipotent deity, who had performed for the Israelites such wonders as the parting of the Red Sea, the sending of manna down from heaven for a period of 40 years, the gushing forth of water from rocks, etc., etc., etc., just so that he could get his "chosen ones" from Egypt to Canaan, not have lifted a finger to make sure that "John" and the others who were recording his "plan of salvation" for all mankind throughout the rest of human history, had adequate scroll materials to tell everything about that plan that was necessary to make it credible and understandable, but he doesn't seem to be too eager to answer that question.
Example B – this one comes from a Skeptic of the Acharya S variety, J. B. McPherson, who, in her Holey Bible – Old Testament affected the part of a Mark Twain and said several things like, “Why not just zap the whole kit and kaboodle over to the land where he wanted them and save all the time and trouble involved?” throughout her book.
Example C – happened right on YT recently at the time when I was doing my responses on Elisha on the bears.
Example D – this example came to me by way of a personal email, so I will not disclose the name of the source. But you can see at this link that there are people who think this is God’s obligation.
Someone wrote me the other day about The Jury Is in, asking if I could refute it.
Ha ha. Of course I can, I already did. TJII, formerly the showcase project of infidels.org, was my second major online refutation project back in the late 90s (the first being a comparison of Lincoln biographies), and from it grew much of the content of my books. You'll still see remnants of it here and there on the site, too. I still check infidels.org now and then to see if there's anything worthy of attention. Uploads seem to be a lot less frequent there than I remember, though, and it seems quality control over there has gone clockwise down the loo.
A good example of this is an item by one Daniel June, a professed former Assembly of God believer -- and still one mentally, to judge by his performance -- who offers an extended rant on Revelation and the horror of dispensational end times scenarios. I can't do much more than laugh at most of June's extended rant, for more than one reason. To start, of course, as a preterist, I don't hold to the position June is ranting about, so my own refutation could stop at, "YAWN -- what else you got?" There's a lot of argument by outrage, which as usual seems to comprise at least 50% of any presentation by your average run of the mill Skeptic who believes that there's no reason to waste time arguing rationally when there's a chance to throw blood and guts in the reader's face. I'm especially amused inasmuch as June also whiffs past me with the whole "eternal torture" in hell tango. So, of course, June's miserific paean over allegedly wholly innocent people (eg, "elderly men and women, who have worked to put their children through college, and are enjoying their golden years spoiling their grandchildren", blah blah blah -- all we need is for Fred Rogers to waltz in and change his socks) being ransacked by Jesus on his white horse pretty much falls on deaf ears for lack of relevance. One would hope that infidels.org would someday get enough quality control to sift out people like June who still carry this kind of emotional baggage. But as I've said, a fundy atheists hasn't really changed from being fundies; it never occurs to them that their idea that Revelation preserves a doctrine of only "a few thousand Christians" being saved (!), and their absurdly literalistic reading of apocalyptic language (so backwards that it would warrant a collection of high-five noogies from the Essene community) was a joke when they believed it and is even more of a joke now that they're critiquing it. Maybe the reason infidels. org doesn't filter such people out is because it would leave them with only enough writers to count on one hand. One might also have hoped that June would have checked out some scholarly commentaries on Revelation to set him straight, but his first source is...er...Harold Bloom. On the virtue of his being someone who "has probably read more books than any man living, and published more literary appraisals than any scholar I have heard of..." That probably speaks more to June's lack of exposure to scholarship than to any virtues Bloom may actually have, but the fact is that Bloom remains a patent ignoramus on the interpretation of first century Jewish apocalypse, and his opinion of it -- which assumes as grossly literalistic a reading as June does -- deserves little more than a laugh track.
It doesn't get much better later, as Jung and Nietzsche (!) are called in for comment; obviously neither expense nor time was spared by June in engaging the most reputable Biblical scholarship available. Harrumph. NOT.
From there it doesn't get much better in terms of content either. June engages an extended screed on end times movements and their failures; on supposed parallels between Revelation and Genesis which he apparently swallowed as a Christian (and which owe far more to homiletics than to contextualizing scholarship); and a series of frankly dumb statements like this one:
The gospel of John calls the Jews "sons of Satan," and this John calls the Jews "the synagogue of Satan," though Yahweh had put a curse on anybody who cursed the Jews... Um....no. The Gospel of John does no such thing, actually. It calls certain Judeans (natives of the nation of Judaea), whom Jesus specifically addresses, sons of Satan; and that's the sort of riposte folks back then used without being the least bit sensitive about it (read: Jesus to Peter, “Get thee behind me, whatsyername!”). So likewise the "synagogue of Satan" reference in Revelation; the modern ignoramus like June gets into hissies over such language, but for the first century reader, this is raindrops fallin’ on their head while they take a few moments to think of a better riposte to throw back. June is walking straight into a contest of the dozens and having a cow over these guys making such offensive comments about each others’ mothers. His gross literalism, a rebound from his ignorant fundamentalist past, erupts like a geyser of pus from the overinflated pimple of his mind; and to grasp the depth of his absurdity, try to imagine him taking what I just said literally, too. June further laments a "confused young man" he knew who "wouldn't touch anything electronic because 'Computers are the Beast.' " What he fails to grasp is that he has become no more grown up in his exegetical skills than those people have. He amuses himself with all the variations made upon 666, but had he more of a mind than to quote someone as ignorant of such matters as Thomas Jefferson (!) and Thomas Paine (!!) he might have discovered that -- golly! -- Nero does indeed fit that bill quite well, thanks. And it doesn't take the Riddler to figure it out, either. Seriously, folks. This is meant to be the cream of the crop at infidels.org these days? This is what they allow to write for them? It's almost enough for me to demand that James Still and Jim Perry come back. Or maybe even (gulp) Stevie Carr. Stupid as they were, not even they were bozo enough to rant about Revelation as the product of a "half-wit, no-talent writer". Nor were they of such childish mind as to think that a yards-long blood and guts rant substituted for the legwork of textual analysis. (On the other hand, Stevie did sometimes think quoting someone of the level of Paine was a good idea.) I guess the Golden Age of the Secular Web has been given over for the Tinfoil Age. It’s too bad they don’t have better hats than that.
I received an email this week, typical of a handful I have received over the years -- fewer of late than earlier -- objecting to harsh language used on a commenter at the Ticker blog who had been making a set of the usual foolish arguments we've seen from American churchgoers these past few years -- the sort which insinuate that the Spirit is one's own personal instructor and sometime therapist, and makes any pew sitter as competent to exegete and interpret Scripture as (say) N. T. Wright. I also got a YouTube PM from someone who made similar objections to harsh words accorded to YT atheists, using the standard emotional claptrap and poor exegetical reasoning. When I pointed out that I had heard all this before, and linked to my article, the complainer merely reasserted his arguments as though nothing had been said.
After all these years, there's nothing in the mindset of such complainers that seems at all comprehensible. It seems that they're quite tolerant of those who spread error, or bully the innocent, or even cravenly devour the faithful with falsehood; but call one of these wolves a name like stupid or ignorant, and you may as well have announced that you made a hobby of dropping live puppies into boiling water.
It's an ironic sort of sickness that considers harsh words the greater sin. It isn’t, but let’s just grant the premise that is it, just for the sake of argument. I would like to ask such people a simple question.
Let's say you were transported back to 1958, and were brought face to face with a young pastor named Jim Jones. Yes, that one: He who would in 1978 caused over 900 of his followers to kill themselves. Let's say also that you knew that to halt that career from happening, all you had to do was berate and mock Jones to the point that he became unnerved, lost his confidence, and from them on would become nothing more than a minor cult leader that few people paid any attention to. Would you call him names? Or would you decide it was sinful because Jones was a human made in God’s image; or because you had been insulted once yourself and felt bad about it? (That was the two main arguments used by my detractors – bad as they are.) Complainers of this sort lack the perspective this story implies. No, I am not saying that every fundy atheist wolf, or ever wacky Christian who thinks the Spirit is a personal hotline, will end up being a Jim Jones. I am saying, however, that we have foolishly convinced ourselves that harsh and confrontational language -- the sort of thing that can and does effectively break down such people before they can reach their prime -- is a sin, and a worse sin than what such wolves and Spirit-mongers go on to do. Can anyone honestly say that we'd have been worse off had someone confronted and berated an insecure and foolish young Joyce Meyer so that she never got to the point today where she teaches to millions such nonsense as that the Spirit instructs Christians to do things like make fruit salad and open their eyes during sexual intercourse, but instead remained an obscure nobody who taught nothing greater than a home Bible study – which is frankly the most she really deserves to be? I expect the whiners will say that not everyone I call an idiot will have such influence. Assuredly, that is so -- but let's reduce the stakes and see if it gets any better for them. Is it better to allow even ten people to be deceived out of eternal life just because you're squeamish about telling someone they're being -- well, stupid? How about five? How about one? I also expect the complainers to say that well, maybe you will turn someone INTO a Jim Jones by insulting them. I rather doubt that; the arc of behavioral psychology doesn't make that very realistic. But even if it were possible, odds are far better you'd create a Jim Jones by ignoring him or being nice to him than by berating him. Do spoiled children get spoiled because they've been spoiled -- or because they've been disciplined? Wake up, folks. We're in this mess we're in now because – among other things -- for too long we've turned insults into something more to be avoided than letting wolves run amuck. And the problem is still the same – either Jesus was a hypocrite, or else it is indeed not a sin in certain circumstances. After all these years, no one’s given me a good argument against that point, either.
