cowardice

A few days ago, a co-worker told me about a web site that was hostile to Christ and to Christianity. This site had no other motivation that pure, unadulterated atheistic hatred of God and of anything remotely related to Him, but especially to Christ. I took particular interest in it because the actual location of the web site and the title were basically saying "get rid of Christ" or "we're anti-Christians" or something like that. I don't want to actually list the web address because I don't want to promote this hateful site (but if you read carefully, you'll probably be able to guess what it is).

Now, other than the offensiveness that this site was to me and the scalding accusations toward Christ, I noticed something else while looking deeper into this. You see, this site is part of a web ring of atheist sites that are dedicated to attacking Christianity as their main objective. Actually, when you think about it we should be neither surprised nor threatened by this fact. However, from a purely humanistic standpoint, this singling out of Christianity over and above any other faith is curious.

The Accusations:

I. Jesus is not God nor a son of God, so the web site "is specific in opposing the assertion that Jesus is a son of God;"

This is such a blatant and satanic attack upon the foundation of Christianity. It is designed to be such because the opponents of the Lord know, as we do, that if you remove or corrupt or change how people understand Christ, you will not (because you cannot) adhere to the scriptures. I am reminded of a movie called "Time Changer"¹ that deals with a premise not unlike the one that fuels atheists all over. In this movie (that I do recommend to anyone) the main character is a professor in 1890 or 1900 who has written a book about teaching morals without using the name of Christ (and the teachings of the Bible) as the foundation for why we should have good morals. The story immediately picks up when a colleague vehemently opposes this book on the basis that it is one of the devil's prime goals to encourage good morals as long as they neglect Christ. A while back, I heard the late Pastor Adrian Rodgers made a comment on his radio program, when speaking about eternity, hell, and judgment, that the church pew is as good a place to go to hell from. The point is that the devil doesn't care initially about how you live your life as long as you do it without honoring God.

II. “Jesus is killing us, the focus of the world needs to be ‘the planet an everlasting paradise’ -- not whether Jesus is God or not; wars are fought defending false beliefs about Jesus;”

This second point is inseparably linked to the third one, almost to the point that they are indistinguishable, but I will attempt to explain the difference even though both are moronic. This is an assertion that there are much more important things in the world than Christ, and that by focusing energy on a debate of issues that has at least one side motivated by Christian belief and doctrine, we are neglecting the more important issues. Currently there is an ongoing debate regarding whether marriage should be defined in the law of the United States as a union between one man and one woman. There are many social and political issues and reasons why the same sex marriage debate is on the national political scene, but neither those reasons nor the actual issue itself are the focus of my point. My point is maybe best made in the words of some of the spokespeople for not legally defining marriage as one man and one woman. Senator Edward Kennedy made many comments on this issue, he “denounced the proposed amendment Tuesday as ‘an instrument of bigotry and prejudice,’"² and he went on to say that we should be focusing on more important issues like high gasoline prices.

Even though I do not believe that Senator Kennedy is getting his pointers from atheists, his logic is the same. Basically, since Christianity is false and any ideas derived from the Bible are equally false (at least as being authoritative), then any time, energy, or money that is devoted to moral issues is a waste. Furthermore, this also takes resources away from the “really” important issues such as high gasoline prices, disease research, and others.

My answer to this objection is quite simple. Some people may call it simple minded, but I think that is very untrue and unfair. Morality tells us how we handle issues that arise, and so a clear definition of morality and ethics (or, as it is with marriage, of the foundation of every society) is necessary to tackle all other issues. But even more importantly to this objection, I would ask this question. Think of all of the hospitals, colleges, and other charitable organizations that you can. The vast majority of all of these institutions were started by Christians with the purpose of spreading the gospel or just simply helping out our neighbors. Christians and institutions founded by Christians have saved the lives of many, many people around the world.

III. “Jesus is killing us: the media often reports instances of murders by people justifying their actions based on their religious beliefs;”

Whoa! The audacity and absurdity of this comment blows me away. To the (minor) credit of the author of this web site, the statement doesn’t read “justifying their actions based on their Christian beliefs,” but they come very close to saying it. How? Remember, the main point of this site is to attack Christianity, not Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, or any other religion. So by throwing this comment in, they are implying that Christians are killing people based on our religious beliefs.

Let’s take one step back. There is a discussion that has been had over and over (and will continue to be had until Christ returns, I’m sure) about the evils done in the Crusades or in the Inquisition and these are used as the bludgeons against Christianity. Let’s put the discussion aside right now, and just look at the motivation. Whatever you say about the religion of those people who executed both the crusades and the inquisition, you can find no legitimate support for murdering people or for vigilante justice.³

Now that we’ve looked at the fact that it is absurd to lob this charge at Christians, look at the biggest terror around today. It is not Christianity or Judaism, it is Islam. The murder done in the name of any religion today is done in the name and for the “glory” of Allah through the words of Mohammad, not Christ through the words of Paul, Peter, John, or Jude. But this won’t really bother the atheist that much since they probably lump all religious people into one, big ‘ol, dopey category and so we need to look at how their own ideology plays out in the social realm. In the 20th century (and one can argue for all of human history) the single greatest cause of murder, death, and hardship was the strictly godless and atheist communist countries of China, North Korea, and the U.S.S.R. Stalin alone was responsible for the deaths of millions of people that were executed or sent to the Soviet work camp (Gulag) that turned into a death sentence for the majority of people who went there.

It is offensive and absurd to lay this accusation at the feet of Christianity, even though there have been a handful of vile and despicable incidents of people shooting abortion doctors and the like, and not laying the blame on Islamic terrorism or humanistic totalitarian regimes.

Conclusion:

I was upset and frustrated enough to look for a feedback form to let the author(s) know how courageous and worthwhile this site is. Below is the text of that e-mail:

"This site and argument would have a lot more weight for free thinkers everywhere if you tackled the evil done by other religions. If the slogan and focus of this website is "the planet an everlasting paradise" then why is there not a sister site called undoislam.org or undoMuhammad.org because it seems that Islam poses greater threats to an everlasting paradise (unless that paradise is a world under sharia law) in our modern world than Christianity does.

If that happens (the creation of these sister sites), then your site and arguments may have some social and contemporary weight. But until that time, unless you can show me why Christianity and not Islam is a greater threat to world harmony and paradise, this site is a statement of the author's and supporters' personal cowardice and willingness to voice your opinion as long as you aren't sticking your neck out.

I eagerly await your reply to show me where I am wrong."

I have yet to receive a response. Honestly I don’t expect one. What could be said? Nothing. The web site and the whole anti-Christian animosity and hatred is not based on truth, it is based on selfish pride and arrogance. However, if I ever do receive a response, I will comment on it…be sure of that.

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¹ http://www.timechangermovie.com/site/home.htm

²http://edition.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/06/07/same.sex.marriage/index.html

³ Some people will say that God did just this in the Old Testament with the conquest in Canaan. This is a lengthy tangent, but it can be best discussed when we start from the understanding that the inhabitants were totally wicked. The next question is why the babies and children were killed? My answer is to plead to the mercy and justice of God. I don’t know the total answer, but I can say that God wanted to keep the influence of the pagan gods out of Israel, and we know that any children who die before they have the ability to understand and believe in God, they are saved by God and brought straight to heaven.