Albert Mohler, The Very Mightiest Theologian Of Them All, addresses a reasonable question in today’s edition of The Briefing: If the Passover story is true, if Our Invisible Friend really did kill every first-born child in Egypt, then why on earth should any decent adult worship him?
This is a fair question. After all, would any decent adult welcome into his home the author of a similar, smaller-scale, contemporary indecency? Bashar al-Assad, say?
Mohler, y’all will not be surprised to learn, is ready to smack-down that impious quibble:
Now, here you have what is theologically described not merely as atheism, but as protest atheism. This became increasingly popular after the Second World War. Protest atheism says that this kind of God, the God of the Bible, not only does not exist but must not exist. It is not merely an argument about being, that is the argument that there is no such God. It is an argument about morality that there must be no such God.
There you go! The complainant is an atheist! If he were a good, decent, godly person, he would see that the story must be true, or our faith is in vain, et cetera, et cetera.
Unhappily, Mohler never addresses the root questions: What sort of god would do such a horrible thing, and what sort of person would want to spend eternity with that god?
As it happens, there is virtual unanimity amongst Biblical scholars that the Jews were never slaves in Egypt, that the entire story is make-believe:
The Book of Genesis and Book of Exodus describe a period of Hebrew servitude in ancient Egypt, during decades of sojourn in Egypt, the escape of well over a million Israelites from the Delta, and the three-month journey through the wilderness to Sinai. The historical evidence does not back this account.
So Mohler expects us to believe a tale for which there isn’t a scintilla of support in the historical record, but also to worship an amoral killer that most of us would never permit in our home.
Most people, I never tire of saying, have too much sense and decency to be good Christians; it’s the ones who don’t that you need to avoid. In the story of the Passover I think we have a good example of it. After all, Trump’s evangelical base was happy to learn of that shoot-em-up in Syria last week — and will go to church Sunday morning and pledge their undying loyalty to a god who has done vastly worse with neither apologies nor denials.
So: Which is it? Christians don’t actually believe those old tales, don’t actually believe that the Bible is inerrant, but say they do because it’s a shibboleth that goes with belonging to their ridiculous club, or are they so empty-headed they are unaware of the blinking-neon contradictions?