Sunday, 17 May 2009

• Help Me Jesus it’s Another Religion Blog!

  For quite a while I managed to ignore godlessliberal’s recent post (featured on Revelife) that challenges Biblical inerrancy on the grounds of incongruous genealogies attributed to Jesus in different gospels. Generally I have become tired of the whole atheist vs. Christian “controversy.”

   

  But today I was roped in when I read godlessliberal’s post concerning a shockingly ignorant, mean-spirited and un-Christian comment made there by some “Christian” gasbag. I couldn’t resist – had to go see what all the fuss was about.

   

  Never mind that the post itself was generally decent. My take – to be perfectly honest my take is all I’m interested in at this point – is that the genealogy of Jesus is irrelevant if you don’t subscribe to the miracle of the virgin birth.

   

  If the messiah must be in the lineage of King David, then Mary's bloodline, not Joseph's, should be at issue, especially if she was a virgin. You see, it doesn't matter at all what Joseph's lineage was. If he was actually the dad, then we have to go back to square one, right? Jesus is the messiah or he wasn't, independent of the fact of who Mary married.

   

  It should be perfectly clear to every Christian out there that a vast majority of non-Christians do not even remotely believe the preposterous, the ludicrous, the ridiculously impossible myth that Jesus of Nazareth was conceived inside Mary’s womb without the semen of a human man.

   

  Here’s the logical flow:

   

  Are you a Christian?
  No.
  Do you then believe that Jesus (or anyone or any animal or plant or other living organism ever) was born of Immaculate Conception?

  No.

   

  How many of you unbelievers out there think that Jesus was born of a virgin?

  *crickets chirping*

  *cicadas trilling*

  *barn swallows tweeting*

  Uh, maybe I do.

  Okay you go over and stand against the wall. The rest of you, hang out just a minute.

   

  That was fun. Let’s do that again, but taking it one step further. Taking that group of non-Christians who reject the virgin birth, let’s ask what they then do believe about the conception of Jesus (excluding that minority who suggest that Jesus is a fictitious character).

   

  Again, the logical flow:

   

  If Jesus was then conceived the normal, biological way, tell me all the ways that it could have happened.

   

  1. Mary was raped.

  Yes, that’s one way.
  2. Mary had premarital sex with some man (Joseph or otherwise) at least once.

  Good, keep going.
  3. Mary was actually married to Joseph and this has all been a terrible misunderstanding.

  Um, sure, for the sake of argument.
  
  

  Any other reasonable options (remember, this group has already ruled out Immaculate Conception)?

  *coyotes howl*

  *owl hoots*

  *frogs croak*

   

  If I tell you straight ahead that Mary was either raped or unwise, how is this different than saying I don’t believe in the virgin birth? I merely state the obvious extension of that conviction. (I only leave off option #3 because it really opens up a whole new can of worms I’m not even remotely interested in exploring.)

   

  Jesus is my Savior. I write that now without a trace of sarcasm or irony. Every day Jesus speaks to me through the sliver of truth that has somehow managed, despite two millennia of misrepresentations of his teaching, to ring true to heart of life. Jesus’ message is integral to transcendence. I asked him into my heart and there he remains, and he told me he just don’t care what I believe about how he got here.

   

  He also told me that Paul was not really an apostle and y’all should stop reading that shit.

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