Jesus' tomb, skeptics, and TV preachers

From MSNBC, regarding the James Cameron "documentary" on Jesus' supposed tomb:

Stephen Pfann, a biblical scholar at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem who was interviewed in the documentary, said the film's hypothesis holds little weight.

"I don't think that Christians are going to buy into this," Pfann said. "But skeptics, in general, would like to see something that pokes holes into the story that so many people hold dear."

There are reports coming out already (the linked story above being one) that Cameron's flick has logical and/or factual flaws, so I'm not going to address those. I'm no archaeologist, so I'll leave that business to the experts.

I do find that Stephen Pfann's comment here is especially true, though. There is a special level of delight that certain "skeptics" (ahem) take in refuting Christianity, that they would not experience in refuting anything else they considered false. The live-and-let-live attitude that one would expect from otherwise free-thinking people is absent when it comes to Christianity.

But this is not without reason. They believe Christians to be harsh, judgmental, and hypocritical in their approach to others, and they've got cause to think so. When they think of Christians, the first people they think of are guys like Falwell and Robertson - guys who publicly considered the horrible fiery deaths of 9/11 to be God's judgment of America's tolerance of gay people - and the rest of us get lumped in there with them.

Whether or not God was exercising judgment on America was not up to the Falwells and Robertsons of the world to decide. God showed in the Old Testament book of Job that he does things or allows things to happen for his own reasons; and historically God has shown that he has a longstanding policy of non-interference in man's own free will. I find it more likely that 9/11, and just about any other horrible man-made event you can think of, is just that - man-made.

Does God exercise judgment? Of course. But it is not our place as Christians to announce what his judgment is or what it's for, for the simple reason that, as a rule, God doesn't tell us those things. And whenever a person claims to know, we need to speak up against it, lest we all be seen as sitting in God's place as the only rightful judge.