August 13, 2009
MST3K videos and Charlie the Unicorn are good enough reasons to praise You-Tube. My "all-hail" is tempered, however, by the recent spate of emails linking to a vile little video coyly suggesting that our President may be the Antichrist.
The arguments are so very bad and it is so over-the-top that I suspect a Colbert-like mockery of conservative Christians. If so, a disturbing number of people are taking it seriously. Of course if the video is no spoof, but serious, then it is serious in the sense that a deranged 7-11 clerk might really believe he is Elvis. Sadly, the maker of the video has revised it to remove factual errors and attempt to fix his arguments, suggesting a commitment to this epic fail.
Traditional Christians, called to be loving, truthful, and logical, should be the first to reject this foolish video, because it is hateful, wrong, and illogical. The Antichrist is a literary symbol for all that is bad about humanity and many traditional Christians think that eventually there will be one tyrant who incarnates all those evils. Calling or even suggesting that someone is the Antichrist is worse from this perspective than calling a man "Hitler."
Even someone with minimal charity would only think such a thing about another human being, created in the image of God, based on compelling evidence.
If one believes, as I do, that President Obama is making bad, even dreadful policy decisions, strong opposition is justified, but comparing political differences of this sort to cosmic evil suggests, at the very least, a radically sheltered life. In our own time, it would be easy to list numerous international political leaders running regimes remarkably worse than our own. Comparing the political situation for traditional Christians in America to the thousands suffering torture and martyrdom all over the world reminds any reasonable believer how good American Christians have it.
Does any sane man doubt that North Korea would be better off if President Obama ran it? This video, and the people who sent it out, goes even further and says Obama, may be worse comparing President Obama to the most wicked man who will ever live. Conservative Christians should beware when they realize that this is folly so great that one cannot imagine even Joe Biden uttering it.
Needless to say the video gives no evidence that President Obama is the Antichrist. Even if one believed that President Obama was an enemy, such a strong accusation without evidence is uncharitable. Charity applies to everyone, since Christians have it on good authority that we are to love our enemies.
Almost as bad as the lack of charity is the disrespect that the video shows to the Bible. I take old books seriously, particularly the Bible, but by their nature old books are harder to read well than new books. Reading a book badly is in many ways worse than not reading it at all.
The video dishonors the Bible by not taking the time to learn to read it openly, honestly, and without preconceptions. The good news is that we can use this video to remind folk that old books need to be read in historical context (parts must be read in context with the whole) and with linguistic sensitivity (Greek and Hebrew are not codes for English readers).
This video is an example of how not to read an ancient text.
The entire claim that Obama may be the Antichrist centers on a verse (Luke 10:18) that in context is a response to the ministry of his disciples and not to the end of the world. Jesus is speaking of Satan and not the Antichrist. So the argument cannot succeed, even if one accepts the dubious idea that the Bible contains coded messages only comprehensible to a modern audience.
Originally the video claimed that the Aramaic Jesus spoke was "the oldest form of Hebrew," but this hopelessly wrong idea has been fixed. It should not give one much comfort in the linguistic skills of the maker of the video.
