Some people believe that Procter & Gamble is run by a Satanist, and that their logo is a Satanic symbol.  Or that the infamous Madalyn Murray O'Hair is trying to ban all religious broadcasting.  Or that some company is making a film about Jesus' sex life.

Quick!  Sign this petition!  Call and complain!  Send them emails, faxes, letters -- stop them before they carry out their dark plots against Christianity!

None of these stories are true (see snopes.com for more details), but many Christians continue to propagate these and other myths in the name of Christ.  When we pass these rumors on and write letters to complain, we are trying to do the right thing.  And Christians certainly aren't the only ones who can be misled.  But when we spend our time fighting nonexistent conspiracies, we lose credibility.  People begin to ask themselves, "Are Christians gullible?  Are they taught to accept anything without question, and is that the only reason they can believe all this nonsense about miracles and rising from the dead?"

An atheist friend of mine posed this question on a newsgroup I used to read.  He pointed us to an article on the Christian Coalition's website (no longer available there) which discussed the hoaxes mentioned above.  The article concluded with the following statement by Bob Passantino:

"It's not just a stamp we're wasting," he said. "It's our credibility. Our credibility is on the line. People might think if Christians are stupid enough to fall for this falsehood, maybe early Christians were gullible enough to fall for the resurrection story. In my view, there are consequences."

I thought and prayed about this for a while, and one thing struck me.  The men and women who became the first followers of Christ differed markedly from the Christians of today in one very important way:  they were radicals who were willing to lay it all on the line and change their entire world view for the sake of what they believed.  We all know about the persecution of Christians in the early days and the legendary deaths of many of the saints, but it goes even beyond that.  These people lived by what they believed, and they died by what they believed.  You can say they were mistaken if you wish, but you cannot say that it was easy for them.  And when something is difficult, you're likely to think very hard about why you're doing it.

Today's Christians have it easy.  It's chic to be Christian in America.  The rock band All Star United has a song that says, "This Jesus thing, it's a smash hit."  Sure, maybe Christians get bad press every so often, but that seems only to add to the feeling that we're doing something right; it increases our unity and gives us something to fight against.  We've got big churches with big numbers and plenty of mailing lists and Christian groups and radio programs and Bible studies and ministers and priests and televangelists everywhere...  We can pick and choose, decide which groups to belong to, and then as long as we show up every week, they'll tell us what's good and what's bad and they'll explain the mysteries of the Scriptures and let us know when the next potluck supper is. Sometimes, if we want to be really radical, we can get a bunch of our Christian friends together and go protest something or write some letters or make some phone calls from the privacy of our own homes...and we feel like we're accomplishing for Christ because we spoke our minds.

Is it any wonder that we're so gullible nowadays?  We have nothing on the line.  I think there are still plenty of radical things for Christians to do in this modern community, but most of them involve personal contact with people we don't want to be around (think: the homeless, the drug addicts, the prison inmates, the homosexuals, the "sinners," the sick, the elderly, the hurting, the unlovable, or whoever it is that we most hate being around) or other types of situations that take us way outside of our comfort zone.  We modern folk don't like being uncomfortable.

In short, Christianity just ain't what it used to be.  The first Christians had very visible opposition and very clear goals.  For us, things are much more subtle.  The gullibility creeps in because we so earnestly desire to see the "Christians vs. the world" conflict become apparent, yet we don't want to leave our comfort zones.  What could fit the bill better than an organized campaign against satanic companies and evil atheists?  When that doesn't work, we can form organized campaigns against the "heretics" in our midst.  This is one of the reasons that phenomena like witch hunts manifested themselves in "Christian" societies.  It's not because Christians are inherently gullible.  But when Christians have a majority, we have to look for more "evil" to fight so we can convince ourselves that we are still truly radicals and "not of this world."  And we'll believe anything to do it.

But love is the most radical thing of all.