3/27/24

I had a friend in college who, whenever he thought someone was telling him some yarn, would say, “Get in that kitchen and fix me a baloney sandwich!” 

This time of year at Christmas and Easter,  I get fed a lot of baloney, and over the years, I think I’ve developed a pretty good baloney detector.

There are some who claim the resurrection of Jesus, the key event in the history of humanity, is baloney and, honestly, if you can debunk the resurrection, then our entire faith falls apart. 

Don’t take my word for it. Paul writes in I Corinthians 15, “if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ. . .” 

Our proclamation’s in vain, your faith is in vain, we’ve represented God . . . you see, a lot rides on whether or not the resurrection really happened. 

So, of course, the enemy will do what it can to attack the resurrection. From the beginning, when the soldiers reported the resurrection to the Chief Priests, they bribed the soldiers, telling them, “You must say, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ If this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble’” (Matthew 25:13–15).  How slimy is that! I felt nasty just typing it!

Opposition to the resurrection began day 1 and continues to this day – and not just the resurrection! Every year around this time, people on social media will make the same tired old claims about Christianity stealing its main beliefs from other religions. In particular, they’ll say that Christianity stole the resurrection from the Egyptians or from the Persians. 

In his documentary, Religulous, Bill Maher (not a scholar, but a talk-show host/comedian, which I suppose makes him an expert) asks an actor playing the role of Jesus at the Holy Land Experience in Florida, “Does it bother you that the story of a man who was born of a virgin, was resurrected . . . was something that was going around the Mediterranean for at least a thousand years? We’ve got Krishna who was in India a thousand years before Christ. Krishna was a carpenter, born of a virgin, baptized in a river . . . there’s the Persian God, Mithra, 600 years before Christ, born on December 25th, perform miracles, resurrected on the third day, known as lamb, the way, the truth, the life, the savior, the messiah . . .” 

I could go on with Maher, and I could quote others, but you get the point. 

When I was in debate class at the University of Alabama, I learned 3 words to push against nonsense. You can use these 3 words if you run into a family member or co-worker or someone who, with an air of superiority, starts spouting this stuff. Because they think the truth of what they’re saying is both obvious and beyond question, you’ll usually stun them into silence by saying:

“State your sources.” 

In other words, “Where’d you get this?” And if they push back with “it’s history” or “everyone knows it,” push them back with, “where’s it written? Prove it.” Typically they’re repeating something they heard somewhere, accepted it because it sounded good to them and never checked it out for themselves.

You see, everything Bill Maher said in that quote is baloney – and we’re not talking Boar’s Head bologna here, this is plain old past-its-sell-by-date Oscar Mayer baloney. Sliced thick and served cold.

This is garbage people made up, and you will never find anyone giving you any evidence from the ancient world that proves these claims. None of them. 

But they get repeated over and over again as if they’re, well, gospel. 

The main cesspool  for this stuff was published in 1999: The Jesus Mysteries, by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. They were not scholars, nor were they writing from some field of expertise. They gathered up a lot of claims about the main points  of Jesus’ story being borrowed from ancient myths (including the resurrection)  and published them in this book to refute Christianity – without a SHRED OF EVIDENCE that supports any one of their claims! 

When asked by the BBC to comment on this book, New Testament scholar, N.T. Wright, my current favorite New Testament scholar, wrote, “this was like asking a professional astronomer to debate with the authors of a book claiming the moon was made of green cheese.” Other scholars, both sacred and secular, have more than adequately debunked Freke and Gandy’s nonsense. Feel free to look it up. 

And yet, these stupid claims are repeated over and over and over . . . 

I don’t care if you’re talking about religion or politics or who makes the best chocolate pie: if you disagree with something, argue about the merits of the issues, don’t make stuff up! 

Is there evidence that supports the resurrection of Jesus? I believe there’s good evidence! I’ll write more about it next week. 

In the meantime, remember: Easter is a time for lamb, colored eggs, and chocolate bunnies. 

No baloney.