If I wanted to win friends and influence people, I would think long and hard before belittling the nation's majority religion during its holiest season. But every year, without fail, writers launch cheap shots against Christianity -- mocking devout Christians as they celebrate the birth of their Lord.
Newsweek religion writer Lisa Miller's Dec. 18 cover story is one such example. "The World of the Nativity" starts with a groundbreaking discovery: Jesus was conceived out of wedlock and there are nagging doubts about the child's paternity.
Here's the lead: "Sometime around the beginning of the Common Era, a nice Jewish girl comes to her fiance with a problem. She is pregnant; he is not the father... Her explanation, that the baby was conceived by God, must have sounded implausible, desperate, even insane."
Newsweek doesn't buy Mary's explanation for a minute, of course. It also rejects the datekeeping system (B.C./A.D.) that most of us use. And the Bible? What a crock... "On close inspection, the details of the Nativity don't add up particularly well," Newsweek declares. "The birth narrative appears in just two of the four Gospels, Matthew and Luke, and they differ a great deal..."
But Miller's story looks like a puff piece compared to what appeared on our Christmas Eve editorial pages today.
Titled "Jolly Santa has more appeal than Jesus" Ric N. Caric claims in a lengthy op-ed that "the Jesus story is becoming increasingly less attractive and plausible." Caric, a Morehead State University government professor, writes:
"Why have a god who needs and wants to be loved so much that he makes loving him the first law for humanity? Why have a god who cooks up the unlikely plan of tearing his substance apart to create a son who is man and god all in one?
Why make the gruesome sacrifice of that son into the key evidence of the god's love for humanity and belief in that sacrifice humankind's only hope for escaping an eternity of suffering?
Just as there's a big element of masochism in God's sending his son to suffer as evidence of his love, there is a great deal of sadism in God's throwing into the flames of hell anybody who doesn't return his love by believing the whole implausible story.
We have a right to hope for better in our gods."
According to Caric, Jesus is a jerk. Santa, on the other hand, "is one of the few white European figures who translates easily into other cultures," Caric writes.
Perhaps there are readers who enjoy December "Christians are Stupid" editorials , who look forward to the "Experts doubt Jesus rose from the dead" Easter exposes. Maybe there's a market for "Abraham May Not Have Existed" Yom Kippur articles or "Scholars say Muhammad was Sexist" Ramadan centerpieces.
Personally, I prefer not to poke people in the eye -- especially on their high holy days. I'd love to hear what you think.
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