Fact or Fiction?

Sunday's message at church got me thinking hard about something that's always bothered me. People who try to pass off Christianity as "just another religion" or "a bunch of stories made up by people long ago".

Carrie had jury duty this past week. Yes, she got selected to be on a jury. As a juror you listen to the evidence, you listen to expert testimony, frequently you hear from eye witnesses. You weight the preponderance of the evidence presented, you weigh it against the law, and you render a verdict.

Let's talk about evidence, and Joe Society's ability (or inability) to figure things out.

Do any of you remember 9-11? Sept 11th, 2001. i do. I was at work. Actually, I was walking back through the skywalk from getting a coffee. At that time, there were some businesses that had TVs in their windows running news feeds. People were gathered around them. i was standing in front of one of those screens when the 2nd plane hit the towers. I can still vividly remember it. I don't need the newsreels to play it over and over again. It's a scene that is embedded in my brain and will never go away. I could accurately describe it to you today. That was over 16 years ago. I think that is probably true of many of you that were alive at that time. You could probably write how you felt, what people were saying, where you were, what you and your family did. You could probably accurately write how it was very strange for several days after the attacks, you would look up into the sky and think to yourself how odd it was to not see contrails from passenger jets streaking across the blue, September sky. Yes, I am quite sure that 16 years later, those of us that witnessed any part of that event could still vividly recall it.

Julius Caesar. Everybody knows all about Julius Caesar, right? He's a well-established figure of history. His exploits in the Gallic Wars, his murder in the Senate, all accepted completely as fact by Joe Society. We have writings from contemporaries as well as compilations of what most claim to be Caesar's own "histories" of the Gallic Wars (although most scholars will claim that they were more pro-Caesar political statements than history). The two most important sources about Caesar are Seutonius and Plutarch, both written in the 2nd Century. It took approximately 12 different manuscripts to piece together what we now know of as Caesar's History of the Gallic Wars. The oldest of those manuscripts is actually NOT from the 2nd Century...it's from the 9th Century. A full 900 years after the reported events took place.

Yet, we accept as undisputed "fact" Caesar's History of the Gallic Wars, and attribute Caesar as the primary author.

The New Testament contains accounts from 5 eyewitnesses to the death and resurrection of Christ. A large part of the New Testament was written by Paul (Saul of Tarsus). A mere 15 years after the events took place. Peter - eyewitness accounts. James (brother of Jesus) - eyewitness accounts. John the Disciple - eyewitness accounts. Matthew - eyewitness accounts. Mark (who uses Peter as a source). Luke (who uses Paul as a source).

There are over 25,000 documents that attest to the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. There are eyewitness accounts. The Risen Christ appeared to over 500 people. The tomb was empty, and the big dogs of the day...the Romans, the Jewish political folks (King Herod), and the Jewish ecumenical leadership, could not produce the body. Hard to think that a dozen or so fishermen with no military training at all would have been able to overpower the Roman guards, steal the body, leave the gravecloths, and perpetrate a massive fraud and coverup. And nobody ever spilled the beans. Think about it...would YOU die for what you knew was a hoax? All but one of the Disciples died a horrible, painful, tortuous death. Because they refused to give in to pressure. They knew what they had seen. They knew what was true.

Yet today...Joe Society wants to simply pass Jesus of Nazareth off as a fairy tale. A myth. A legend. They want to dismiss the Bible as fiction.

Really? We send people to death row with less evidence.

Jesus of Nazareth. The Messiah. The Son of God. It's not myth, it's not legend, it's not fiction. It's not a hoax. It's fact. Well-established fact.

Do you want to know why people push back against Christianity? Because if they accept Christ as King...everything has to change. Starting with them. Me. You.

My two cents worth today.