Yesterday, while washing the dinner dishes, I heard my wife call over from the other room.
“Brad, can you come here? Tell me what you think of this.”
She was sitting at the computer, reading her email. A friend had forwarded a message with a subject heading that said, “This is incredible!”
A sure prompt for heavy eye-rolling.
Scrolling down the contents of the screen, I could see that this friend had forwarded a message from another woman, who had attached a series of photographs depicting the remains of what appeared to be enormous human skeletons lying among the ruins of an excavated archeological site. It all looked very official and scientific, with crystal-clear photographs of an unearthed human skull that was half the size of the full grown man standing next to it with his spade. It was definitely one heck of a gigantic skull.
The friend’s email went on to exclaim the magnificence of how science supports the scriptures, quoting verses from the Old Testament book of Numbers about the Israelites coming across tribes of Giants called the Nephilim:
“The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.” Numbers 13:32-33
“What do you think?” asked my wife. She was not sure what to make of it, coming from a trusted friend.
My immediate reaction: “It’s a hoax, of course. Who would believe this crap?”
I immediately conducted a Google search for “Human Giant Skeleton” and found the many articles revealing how a fake photo-shopped photograph went viral thanks to “a very receptive religious audience.”
In other words, “those stupid Christians.”
Why did my wife’s friend not immediately question the validity of this far-fetched tale? Well, probably because it came with a bible verse attached to it. I was so angry and embarrassed, I wanted to march over to that woman’s house and give her a good slap on the wrist for being so dumb. Being so overtly spiritually gullible is downright sinful, as far as I’m concerned
Why do some Christians have to completely suspend their critical thinking for the sake of propping up their perception of the Truth? Who cares if the biblical story of a tribe of giants is actual historical truth, or merely a writer’s enthusiastic exaggeration? My faith is not going to fall apart if all that biblical talk of giants was just a figure of speech, rather than literal.
And dollars to donuts, I bet the same woman who originated this sensational chain email in the name of the faith is undoubtedly running with the same crowd ranting against the Emergent Church movement and “secular humanism” and anything else that threatens her dogmatic perception of what “Truth” is. But how many Christians out there are marching for intellectual integrity?
Not enough, apparently.
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