May is the month of birthdays and Mother’s day. My sister Marge’s and Bunny King have birthdays along with many other friends. Marge and Bunny will also be celebrating ‘Mother’s day’. I have a birthday too. This year I reached the age when I should ‘be in earnest” That is in accordance with Sam Johnson one of the greatest writers in the English language. He wrote, “At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest”. So it is a good reminder to be in earnest by giving more love to my wife June and our children, grandchildren, and all our friends. Actually it is good idea to ‘be in earnest’ at any age or at any task but I could not forget the adage by Doctor Johnson since it just happened to be my seventy-seventh year.
Recently I reread the account of Thomas the apostle being in doubt about Christ having risen from the dead. He and his doubt are still referred to as a classic example of a so-called intellectual skepticism. In reality however it is the classic example of a plain old skeptic. However Thomas, who would not believe his fellow workers and friends, was quickly convinced upon seeing Christ himself. He was so quickly convinced that he never carried out his demands for proof, viz., “First I must see the nail scars in his hands and touch them with my finger. I must put my hand where the spear went into his side. I won’t believe unless I do this” But we find there is no report that he did what he said he would do in order to believe. He believed upon seeing Christ. But to those who wish to use his doubt as a being reasonable even this fact, i.e., his not demanding the very proof he said he would require is ignored. But our so-called intellectual skeptics keep referring to the incident as evidence of a reasonable doubt. Despite the ten or so people who told him they saw Christ and all the other evidence provided by the women who went to the grave, etc. The point is it seems is that such doubters don’t see any evidence that might alter their convictions. Another classic example today is the unbelievable questions being raised in Iran and elsewhere that the holocaust even really occurred! Historical facts are dismissed without much reason when it satisfies the end the believer seeks. In Iran’s case they have vowed to wipe out Israel and want to first dismiss any sympathy that might still exist for the millions who died as a result of hate. Some fanatic is not doing this in Iran. It is the expressed belief of the Prime Minister. An opinion writer in the St.Petersburg Times wrote, “The evidence of the Holocaust is incontrovertible. We have today extensive records kept by the Nazi death machine itself, thousand of photographs and films, countless books and histories and dozens of museums containing artifacts of the martyred…. To any one who has doubts about the Holocaust, such a mass evidence must settle those doubts—unless, of course, something else is at work.”(emphasis added) (Warren Miller, opinion essay, April 25,2006 St.Pete’s Times)
Usually the ‘something else’ is that we don’t care to accept it as real, despite its overwhelming reality, since it might alter our predisposed belief. We say we are skeptical when in fact we are really just ignoring the facts.
One of the classic examples of “controlled doubt” is found in Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson’s beliefs about Christ. They believed he existed and taught. They believed he taught good moral truths and in fact, Jefferson, clipped out passages from the scripture, in Greek, Latin and English and pasted them side by side in three columns to create his own scripture. But despite their both claiming Christ was a good moral teacher they would not believe he was divine and rose from the dead. How then could he have been a “moral teacher” if he lied? He stated he was the Messiah, the Son of God, and proved his divinity with many things but particularly his rising from the dead. Yet once again it is an example of the intellectual picking and choosing to create their ‘belief’ or as the opinion writer said ‘something else is at work’. They ignore any facts that don’t support their ends.
In Thomas’ case the rest of his life is testimony of what he believed. He went and taught Christ’s message and is believed to be the founder of some six churches in what today we call India. He accepted the facts and his doubt was gone. Another contemporary example of ignoring historical facts can be found in the best seller “The Da Vinci Code”. It is fiction but is promoted as being based on historical fact. It alleges that the divinity of Christ was something cooked up by the Nicean Council decreed by Constantine. All the historic facts demonstrate that that is ‘fiction’. In fact one of the reasons for the Council was to attack the heresy or error of one Arius who was preaching just that namely, that Christ was not divine. So clearly historically prior to the council there was an understanding from the gospels and elsewhere of the fact that Christ was divine. There are many other so-called historic facts in this novel, which are really only “fiction”. It sells books and it is ‘something else at work’ when it comes to the historic facts.
It is easy for us to be astonished at those ignoring the historic facts of the holocaust. But some are not upset or amazed regarding the historic facts of Jesus Christ. The usual alleged basis for the difference is in the way the evidence was created and preserved. The holocaust has films, pictures, countless books and histories. There are also some persons living that had witnessed the event or spoke to those who were there. While with Christ the evidence is in the writings of those who knew him and of historians shortly thereafter recording and retelling his life. This is the only kind of evidence we have of events that occurred two thousand plus years ago. To dismiss it as not be sufficient evidence, etc. is a form of ‘chronological snobbery’. We will only accept the kind of evidence similar to what we can find about the holocaust as evidence. Yet we believe many others, like Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Buddha, Roman historians, etc. whose evidence was created and preserved in the same manner as that regarding Christ. Yet you never read or heard of any one stating that they really are or should be ignored, since their writings, existence, etc. are without sufficient evidence. As the opinion writer said “something else it a work here” It seems to be a classical predisposition not to believe since belief in His teaching and life may require a change in ours.
A lawyer’s practice is concerned with evidence. His job is to analyze the facts whether written or oral. His end is to convince first himself and then possibly a jury of listeners. His must be convinced that the conclusion reached is as close to the truth as humanly possible. A lawyer-journalist skeptic, Legal Editor of the Chicago Tribune and a graduate with Master’s degree from Yale Law school, decided to disprove Christianity, the Gospels, and Christ were all historically created legends. Somewhat like Jefferson and Paine he could believe Christ existed and was great teacher but beyond that he was a ‘skeptic’. His skepticism was challenged when his wife told him she decided to become a Christian. He had won national attention as an investigative reporter in exposing the fact that the Ford Motor Company knew its Pinto gas tank was susceptible to explosion upon a simple rear ender. All this led to him writing a book entitled “The Case for Christ”. He traveled the world interviewing some fourteen scholars in ancient history and the bible. He cross-examined them on questions like, could the biographies of Jesus be trusted, what is the eye witness, documentary and scientific evidence, etc; he raised the question about the divinity of Christ and did Christ claim such; how much evidence was there concerning it. His most exhaustive research was on the resurrection to which he devotes four chapters in the book of cross-examining scholars. All of his research done to support his skepticism led to it being lost in acknowledging the facts. He states: “By November 8, 1981, my legend thesis, to which I had doggedly clung for so many years, had been thoroughly dismantled. What’s more, my journalistic skepticism toward the supernatural had melted in the light of breathtaking historical evidence that the resurrection of Jesus was a real, historical event. In fact my mind could not conjure up a single explanation that fit the evidence of history nearly as well as the conclusion that Jesus was who he claimed to be; the one and only Son of God” His conclusions to one with open and seeking mind are clear and profound, “unless of course there is something else at work!”
We wish you all a happy May time and until next time, Pax tecum!