ABOVE: KURT EICHENWALD
NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE JOINS IN THE WAR AGAINST GOD
BY DON BOYS
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
“The Bible: So Misunderstood, It’s a Sin.” As Ronald Reagan said, “There you go again,” an apt comment on Newsweek’s recent hit piece on the Bible as they continue the war on God. Of course, Newsweek,
struggling to pay its bills, will use anything to denigrate, denounce,
and deny the Bible especially if it pulls in a few bucks of advertising.
The writer of this hit piece waswhose claim to fame as a respected journalist was in the area of business but is now totally discredited as to his motive and his character. Poor Eichenwald comes across in this infamous piece as a totally incompetent writer without even a modicum of journalistic skills for research, balance, fairness but as a rabid, foam-at-the-mouth zealot for the left.
Wiping the foam from his lips he wrote his first paragraph depicting evangelical Christians as nuts, jerks, and flakes comparing us to the Westboro Baptists in Kansas. From this inauspicious beginning it is obvious that he is dishonest or totally uninformed; either reason would be justification for yanking his journalist credentials.
Eichenwald’s untrue, unfair, unkind characterization of Christians would be like my suggesting that all journalists are wild, woozy, and wicked people who get to work at 10:00, have a three hour lunch break consisting of three shots of cheap gin, stagger back to the office to work a couple hours then buy a quart of wine from the local grocery and go home where they cause havoc in the neighborhood, beat their wives and knock their children around until bed time. Now, I’m sure that is true of a few journalists but it is irresponsible to suggest that is true of most of them. Kurt was irresponsible.
He spends much ink dealing with snake handling as if that is normal in real Christianity! Some leftists are dumb as a box of rocks or are so short of arguments that they depict Christians as carrying a sack of rattlesnakes to church each Sunday.
Eichenwald makes a very silly statement when he declares that “evangelicals are always talking about family values. But to Jesus, family was an “impediment to reaching God.” He took that position because of a naïve misinterpretation of Matthew 19:29 where Christ spoke about forsaking father, mother, brother, and sister for His sake and their inheritance of eternal life. Of course even Christian neophytes are aware that the Bible clearly commands us to love and support family and to honor father and mother.
Kurt further shows his immaturity or dishonesty when he charges that all female Christians in political life should quit (or remain hypocrites!) because of 1 Timothy 2:12 that commands a woman not to teach and have authority over a man. This is a much discussed verse and theologians in various denominational groups take various interpretations but everyone knows it specifically deals with women in the local church. Kurt doesn’t know that.
There is no way Eichenwald could have done any research without knowing about I Timothy 2:12 yet he was way out in left field and gave no indication of objectivity. Of course, true objectivity is as hard to find in Newsweek and all liberal media as white dinosaurs in Kentucky.
Eichenwald is out of his league in this article. In paragraph after paragraph I cringed in embarrassment for him and Newsweek. He was like a 12-year old kid making an appearance at the Major League Training Camp in Florida with a desire to play in the big leagues. The kid would be told to come back in a few years. I’m afraid it would be many years before Eichenwald could qualify for the Theological Big League. Mainly because Kurt seems to be blind (or keeps his eyes shut) therefore can’t read the Bible he accuses us of not reading!
He continues to prove his lack of knowledge (or honesty) when he charges that fundamentalists “twist phrases and modify translations” to prove some of our “biases and beliefs.” The fact is most fundamentalists may be guilty of a little twisting (always wrong) now and then but we never “modify translations.” We would rather be caught naked in subzero weather on Fifth Avenue during rush hour than mess with the King James Bible. We take it as it is–inspired, inerrant, and infallible.
Kurt then charges that Christians believe “Mosaic law from the Old Testament directs American government.” Gasp, does he mean that we believe that our basic judicial system is based on the original Ten Commandants? If so, then everyone knows that is true: From Israel, to Rome, to England to America. You know, don’t bare false witness, don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t commit adultery.
He further charges us with Bible illiteracy but with his litany of mistakes, mishmash, and misrepresentation, that is like a skunk accusing a rabbit of having bad breath. Our “illiteracy” allegedly causes parents to “banish children from their homes.” No doubt this refers to parents who require children to live decently, get a job, not fornicate, not use vile language and no pornography if they want to live at home. How dare they!
Because of our alleged “Biblical illiteracy” he charges that we believe that climate change (remember when it used to be global warming?) is impossible because of God’s promise to Noah! Hey, only an uninformed fool would use such an argument when there is no evidence of man-made climate change. Of course, the climate changes every day!
His also charges us with “imped[ing] science” and undermining “intellectual advancement” which, of course, refers to the creation/evolution controversy. He and others will discuss how evolution happened but not if it happened. Such people talk about being open minded but their minds are as closed as a miser’s wallet.
His diatribe is based on “scores of theologians and scholars” but he did not interview or quote one evangelical, let alone a fundamentalist, but three–count them, one, two, three leftists. And he only names one–Bart Ehrman, an apostate New Testament professor at the University of North Carolina. Bart grew up a fundamentalist, went to Moody (after me), then to Princeton where he lost whatever faith he had. Kurt calls him a “groundbreaking Biblical scholar” when he is really an apostate. I could have chosen a kinder term but I’m committed to honesty and accuracy.
Dr. Michael Kruger, an expert in early Christianity wrote of Eichenwald’s “jaw-dropping ignorance of the facts about the Bible.” Kruger declared that Eichenwald’s article “is short on the facts, it has little understanding of interpretive principles, it assumes that it knows more about theology than it really does, and it pours out scorn and contempt on the average believer.” Right!
Dr. Daniel Wallace, commented on Eichenwald’s “numerous factual errors and misleading statements, his lack of concern for any semblance of objectivity, his apparent disdain for and lack of interaction with genuine evangelical scholarship, and his uber-confidence about more than a few suspect viewpoints.” Wallace is Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Seminary.
Eichenwald charges that none of us have ever read a reliable Bible–that we have translations of translations of translations of bad translations that have been altered hundreds of times. The fact is that we have over 6,000 good Greek manuscripts going back as far as the second century! When Kurt writes about corrupt manuscripts he gives the impression that he knows what is corrupt and what is not corrupt. Neither he nor anyone else has read the original autographs. Kurt is a charlatan.
Kurt shows his shallowness with his antiquated charges: there are two (or even four) creation stories; Christ’s geologies are contradictory; the events around His birth are in conflict; the resurrection stories are in conflict; Moses did not write Deuteronomy; Noah taking two or seven kinds of animals on the ark and the number of days the water was upon the earth; the question of David killing Goliath and many others.
Kurt tells us that unicorns did not exist even though the Bible mentions them ten times. It is really humorous to hear liberals deal with this subject. They seem to be clueless about the extinction of species since the beginning of time and all evolutionists agree with that. Unicorns could have existed and like the dodo bird disappeared long ago. Furthermore, a whole herd of unicorns could be found tomorrow grazing on a Peruvian mountainside!
Eichenwald may not believe much of the Bible but like all humanists, hedonists, and homosexuals he believes Jesus when He said, “Don’t judge” in Matt. 7:1. However, we are not to judge unfairly or without judging ourselves first. In fact, we are commanded to judge righteous judgment in John 7:24. Kurt is very careless with the context of his criticism.
Wonder if Eichenwald, in all fairness, will do a hatchet job on the Koran as he has the Bible. No, because he is a coward. He knows Christians are taught to turn the other cheek while Koranic Muslims are taught to behead critics.
(Next column: “Newsweek’s Hatchet Job on the Bible!”)
http://bit.ly/1iMLVfY Watch these 8 minute videos of my lecture at the University of North Dakota: “A Christian Challenges New Atheists to Put Up or Shut Up!”
(Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives, author of 15 books, frequent guest on television and radio talk shows, and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years. His shocking books, ISLAM: America’s Trojan Horse!; Christian Resistance: An Idea Whose Time Has Come–Again!; and The God Haters are all available at Amazon.com. These columns go to newspapers, magazines, television, and radio stations and may be used without change from title through the end tag. His web sites are www.cstnews.com and www.Muslimfact.com and www.thegodhaters.com. Contact Don for an interview or talk show.)
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