Newsweek's Take on the Birth of Christ

Welcome Hugh Hewitt readers! There has been a bit of a stir in the blogosphere today regarding the Newsweek cover story on the birth of Jesus. Basically the author goes to great length to suggest that the story of the virgin birth was probably created by the authors of the gospel in order to “tidy up” the whole story of Jesus’ life. After all, if he wasn’t born as prophesied in the Old Testament, he couldn’t have been the Messiah and that would have inconvenient for the writers of the gospels.

The article is replete with comments from very left-wing theologians, with not a word of rebuttal from the many, many conservatives who really and truly believe the gospels occurred as written. There’s much more in the article and it’s probably worth reading just to see how the liberal theologians think.

It’s funny, but when it comes to religion, the traditional attitudes of the left and right seem to swap places. In politics we know the left is driven by feelings. Don’t bother a liberal with the facts – it’s not important what you do but rather how you feel about it. Conservatives are more results oriented, looking to the facts and not allowing themselves to be driven into bad decisions by their fleeting feelings.

Bring religion into the picture and suddenly it’s the left that wants to analyze the facts to death, even if facts are impossible to obtain 2,000 years later, while the conservatives are satisfied in their faith. It’s still important to be results oriented, and the faith of the conservatives is buoyed by the transformational results of Christ in their lives. The left has to be convinced logically rather than through indirect actions and results.

For me, the simplest method of evaluating the claims of Jesus goes something like this. According to the scriptures, he claimed to be the Son of God. That leaves only three possibilities:

1. He was lying and he knew he was lying. If this is true, Jesus pulled off the greatest con game in the history of the world, yet was the dumbest man alive since he was willing to give his life for his lie. Don’t you think a con man would have confessed his lie rather than die a horrible death on the cross? And what about his disciples? Most of them were executed for their faith. Surely if any of the knew that Jesus was lying, wouldn’t they have said or done something about it?

2. He was lying and he didn’t know he was lying. If this is true, Jesus was crazy, pure and simple. History is full of examples of crazy people with dedicated followers (see Jim Jones and Jonestown, Guyana, or David Koresh at Waco). However, in every case that I can think of the influence of the crazy man was measured in a few years, not centuries. Do you think there would be billions of Christians today if the basis of their faith was a mad man?

3. That leaves the last possible option. He was the Son of God. Given the evidence against the first two options, and the innumerable testimonies of the transformational power of Christ, this is really the only viable option.

I’ll close this little sermon with something I remember hearing over and over during concerts some years ago with the Watchmen Quartet. There was an old man who our manager often referred to – I think his name was Mac. Mac would stand and testify in church, and at the end of the testimony he would always say the same thing: “Even if there is no heaven to gain or hell to shun, living for Jesus is still the only way to go.” I couldn’t have said that better myself.

By the way, for the unbeliever who still has questions, I highly recommend Lee Strobel’s book “The Case For Christ” available at this link.