Blasphemy and Unregeneracy

Note: The following entry, written in ancient times (around last March), was lost in the electronic ephemera (aka the technology bit bucket) after the original manifestation of this blog was clobbered a few months ago due to the temporarily heterodox administrative actions of the author (I was tired and should have left well enough alone...) A recent archeological dig (a word search including subdirectories of the My Documents folder) uncovered this ancient relic, and it is now again available in updated form.

--------------------------

James Cameron’s spurious claims to have found the tomb and remains of Jesus Christ and his family that purportedly factualizes several aspects of the fictional DaVinci Code has drawn positive spin from NBC’s Today Show, CNN’s Larry King Live, and a number of other secular media sources. It has also rightly drawn strong criticism from within and without the Christian community where the many factual and logical flights of fancy surrounding this issue have been publicized. Even the Washington Post, normally no friend to evangelical Christianity, had a story on February 26, 2007 about the widespread factual and logical denunciations of Cameron’s claims by secular and Jewish archeological experts.

Within the Christian community, one question that will inevitably be asked is why are such transparent efforts to destroy the Gospel message being given such credence by supposedly intelligent people like those on the Today Show? Sadly, many answers from the church will come from secular philosophy and psychology, or be lukewarm “Ain’t it awful?” platitudes when the real problem is the sin and rebellion that characterizes unregenerate man and the increasing lack of restraint among those in the visable church as our society continues to lose any meaningful Christian influence.

Among many other scriptural passages that describe the total depravity of man, 1 Corinthians 1:18 well describes the current controversy, “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.” Cameron, King, and the Today Show personalities who so gush over these foolish falsehoods are obviously unregenerate sinners who are perishing. To paraphrase a lesser-known 12-step program maxim, “How else do you expect an unregenerate person to act but unregenerately?”

Another manifestation of this societal unregeneracy is the frequent, open blasphemy against the Creator in the secular media and especially in television. I am sometimes awake late in the evening, and sometimes in the mood to watch juvenile attempts at humor and listen to banal musical arranging and performing, so I do as I did one evening earlier this year and tuned into Conan O’Brien’s 12:30 AM talk show on NBC for a few minutes.

O’Brien’s humor sometimes, let’s just say, veers away from Philippians 4:8 and sometimes when that happens he sings, “I’m going to go to hell when I die”, a few times smirking at the audience, inviting their applause and approval. During that morning’s monologue, O’Brien mentioned James Cameron’s claims and said sneeringly to the effect that, “That’s all we need; another Hollywood type who has found Jesus.” An article on another Christian web site intimates that this type of blasphemy is a common occurrence on O’Brien’s show and urges that people contact NBC to express their outrage.

More recently, comedianne Kathy Griffin's Emmy acceptance speech received similar attention when she demonstrated her professed atheism, not to mention abject boorishness, by blaspheming Christ and declaring her trophy statue to be her god. While not discounting the appropriateness of the outrage to these incidents, I refer the reader to the question back two paragraphs at the end, and especially to 1 Corinthians 1:18.

So, what is the appropriate Christian response to Cameron and O’Brien? At the very least, we need to believe what the Bible tells us about the world and about unregenerate man, and to devote our being to follow the orders we are given to proclaim and live the Gospel of Jesus Christ in this lost and dying world such as are in the Great Commission, the rest of the red words, and the rest of Scripture.