Supernatural loathing, supernatural love

Let's do word association but let's use names instead.  Ready?  What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the name:

Abe Lincoln.  Honesty?  Emmancipation?  Slavery?  Civil War?  Funny Beard?  Stove-pipe hat?

That was easy.  How about this one:

Bob Hope.  USO?  Viet Nam?  Troops?  Slapstick?  Golf?  Ski-sloped nose?  Actor?

Or how about:

Ted Bundy.  Horror?  Execution?  Serial killing?  Capital punishment?  Pornography?

Ick.  Sorry.  Something a little lighter.

Laura Ingalls Wilder.  Stories?  Wonder?  Beauty?  Goodness?  Family?  Pioneers?  Half-pint?

Really it's extraordinary what names can evoke in our hearts and minds.  They are more than words, more than labels.  Our name becomes our identity.  You can change your name to Ochocinco, Prince or some bizarre symbol, but you can't escape escape the "dork" that is associated with it.  Your name plainly identifies you.

Here's another name.

Mohammad.  Islam?  Prophet?  Peace?  Jihad?  Allah? 

Mention the name Mohammad around most folks and you'll not likely get a viceral reaction.  Perhaps a yawn.  Some may say something about of terrorist activities.  Some suggest he's prophet of peace.  Others identify him as the founder of the world's largest cult.  Does his name illicit hatred?  Maybe in Israel.  Maybe among a thin fraction of Americans.  Most just shrug him off as a religious guy not of their flavor.
One more name.

Jesus Christ.  God?  Teacher?  Rabbi?  Man?  Madman?  Myth?  Epithet?  Savior?  King?  Delusional?

Do you know of any other names used as curses and exclamations?  You might find Pete and his sake much further down the list.  Samuel Hill would be even further down stream.  Mom's a fan of Judas Priest, and not the rock band.  No, Jesus Christ ranks among the top curses out there.  Not Mohammad.  Not Buddha.  Not Davey Koresh.  Jesus.

Apart from man's affinity for slurring Jesus' name, there exists no more unwelcome name in serious conversation than Jesus Christ's.  Drop his name and you'll not get a dispassioned shrug.  In fact, I surmise that a fractional minority would shrug at the name.  You'll get eyes that well with tears of love and eyes that flame with primal hatred.  The world witnessed the latter a few weeks back when Brit Hume suggested that a relationship with Jesus Christ would be just the ticket for Tiger Woods to cure the hellish slice that had become his life.

Wow.  Had Hume suggested that Woods undergo a sex change to solve his problems, we would likely have heard nothing of it.  Had the journalist encouraged Mr. Woods to anchor himself in his Buddhism, we could have heard the yawns from Yakima.  Nobody would have noticed had Hume advocated for the general God, that nameless unknowable deity who many presume to be the one behind the curtain of all religions, but Brit Hume got specific.  No, worse.  Brit Hume went Christian.  In public.  On a news program!

The response came swiftly.  If Fox is the place you'll hear folks chat with normality about Jesus Christ, MSNBC sees the name as far more subversive than some Islamic loon trying to detonate his underpants.  From the mouth of stellar sportscaster gone rancid, Keith Olbermann, we get this peek into the heart of what one camp thinks about introducing folks to Jesus Christ (the entire schtick is here -- yikes!):

"This crosses that principle “Keep religious advocacy out of public life” since the worst examples of this are Jihadists not to mention guys who don’t know their own religions or other people’s religions like Brit Hume."

Wow.  I could spend the next few blog posts pondering the Orwellian creepiness of Mr. Olbermann's opinion.  For example, when did religion get relegated to privacy?  Why can one's convictions about God not influence his life outside his home and/or church?  A Christian telling an unbeliever about what Jesus said about heaven and hell is equivalent to lopping off the head of Daniel Pearl or blowing up the USS Cole or razing military barracks in Lebanon or Dhaharan or 9-11?  Let me anchor for a bit on knowing other people's religions and hating Jesus Christ.

If Mr. Olbermann had a working knowledge of Christianity he would know the mandate Jesus gave to his followers to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them, teaching them to observe all his commands. 

If Mr. Olbermann understood Christianity, he would know that Jesus and his disciples seemed to think that man was a broken mess through his own rebellion against God and that the only way solution was Jesus alone.  Two verses after John's famous third chapter, sixteenth verse, he states, "Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God." 

Ooh.  That's not a very Jack Black Jesus.  He sounds downright condemnatory.  Peter, one of Jesus' closest friends, had the gall to assert, "And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."  That's not the stuff of MSNBC.  Jesus claiming that no man gets to the Father but through him is not very all inclusive, it's not very open-armed to Islam or Zorastrianism.

But you know what?  He knew he wasn't going to make friends.

"Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."

He told his disciples, "You will be hated by all for my name's sake."

Why?  Why this absolute loathing?  Olbermann wouldn't hemorrhage if Hume advocated Pilates, so why so with the Prince of Peace?  Why is it adoration or acrimony and not apathy?

Is it because, as the Bible indicates, that man stands opposed to God, hostile to the commands of the One who created him?  Paul indicated that one day every knee would bow and acknowledge the lordship of Jesus Christ.  If man is not willing to so acknowledge in this lifetime, the sobriety and tragedy of the next will make all too plain the truth behind what Christ proclaimed. 

And therein lies Olbermann's loathing.  His reason does not reign supreme.  How dare anyone suggest that there is a God to whom we are accountable, to whom we are answerable?  How dare one declare that apart from God's solution, we will spend eternity condemned and separated from God in a state of everlasting torment?  How dare we?  Because that is what God himself declares throughout his word.  And so the Brit Hume's of the world offer up what Jesus told us to offer up, the solution to man's sin problem.  Him.  Jesus Christ himself.

Really, his name is wonderful.  It is the name upon which life hinges.  Should that be repugnant?  Not really.  It's not surprising that it's vile to so many, but it doesn't have to be that way.