This is Easter and, throughout the Christian world, Holy Men are telling their congregants that they were born no damn good, that they are putrid blots on the cosmos, that their every desire is foul, sinful, indecent.
But! He sacrificed one-third of Himself, to Himself, temporarily, in order to propitiate His own Wrath — so down on your knees with gratitude you wretched vessels of filth!
So, at least, goes the tale.
Albert Mohler, Holy Man, instructs us thusly.
Those who would attack the Church and reject its gospel must direct their arrows at the most crucial truth claim of the New Testament and the disciples: That Jesus Christ, having suffered death on a cross, though sinless, having borne the sins of those He came to save, having been buried in a sealed and guarded grave, was raised by the power of God on the third day.
Notice the inversion here: It isn’t Christianity’s job to prove that fantastic claim is true, it is the skeptic’s job to prove it false.
Seriously? Suppose I were to make the no less fantastic claim that, even as I sit here typing, there is a clutch of tuba-playing walruses marching down my street. Would it be my job to prove it, or yours to disprove it?
But, of course, the intellectual sleight-of-hand, the misdirection, is necessary to Holy Men, for Mohler knows perfectly well that there isn’t a scintilla of objective evidence that the man Jesus ever even existed. There was a first-century tradition that such a man existed, and that cannot be dismissed lightly — but there is no evidence. To grasp the distinction, consider the supernatural being Slenderman, in whose name two teenaged Wisconsin girls stabbed a classmate a while back. There is an Internet tradition for the existence of such a being, and people are known to have acted on that tradition — but there is no objective evidence for the existence of such a being, and there is very strong evidence that Slenderman is an invention.
No wonder Mohler wants to shift the burden of proof.
Next up is Holy Man Austin Miles, who has a theatrical conniption fit over the Boy Scouts’ rescission of its policy against gay scoutmasters.
They take jobs such as that of scout leader in order to have easy access to vulnerable little kids that they can take on unsupervised camping trips, or even, as one scout leader famously did, invited scout members to spend the night in his home. And naïve parents allowed their little boys to go. One case in particular happened in Salinas, California.
John Brockdorf, Scoutmaster of Cub Scout Troop 62, was able to take a little boy home with him, sexualized him so violently that it tore the little boy’s rectum, exposing raw nerves, leaving him in excruciating pain. He cried when he went to the bathroom because of that tear in his rectum which never healed.
However, that little boy never told his parents since his parents always considered him at fault no matter what happened. And don’t think Brockdorf did not see this. He took full advantage. He sensed that his parents would do nothing because the little boy could not talk to them. That is how these wretched people operate. They are clever.
You would think, reading that column, that this assault was recent, No?
No. Miles is talking about something that happened in 1946. And notice who is the author of the piece that link goes to.
Are there any documented instances of ‘out’ gay scoutmasters sodomizing boys entrusted to them since the policy was changed? No. None.
Most Christian intellectualism is of either Mohler’s prove-I’m-wrong variety, or Miles’ plain-vanilla distortion of the facts — and is preached to only the choir, for they know they lose before the clearheaded. If you hear it from a Holy Man, you need to parse the argument carefully and double-check every statement of fact.