BEHOLD, HOW GOOD AND HOW PLEASANT IT IS FOR BRETHREN TO DWELL TOGETHER IN UNITY! PSALM 133:1

Jerry Falwell, a purveyor of (child!) pornography? Jerry Falwell, opposed to preaching the gospel to high school students? Jerry Falwell, refusing to defend the unborn? Is this the same Jerry Falwell who stormed the halls of Congress in the 1980s, spiritually and politically terrorizing any senator or congressional representative who didn't vote biblical positions on everything from aid for Taiwan to Star Wars? He's the one. However, before taking the accusations too seriously, consider the source: Operation Rescue (OR), the Hezbollah of the pro-life movement. Angry that Falwell refused to publicly support OR leader Flip Benham, who was jailed for trespassing at a public high school not far from Falwell's Liberty University, Operation Rescue leaders accused the university's bookstore-run by Barnes & Noble-of selling child pornography (the Barnes & Noble chain has been indicted on a child porn charge for selling such books as photographer David Hamilton's Age of Innocence). Though the bookstore at Liberty University didn't carry Hamilton's book, OR leaders bought one elsewhere and paraded it before the cameras, where they made the accusation against Falwell. "It is a sad commentary," said OR leader Keith Tucci, "that Dr. Falwell would not condemn child pornographers, and in fact he invited them onto his Liberty University campus. Yet he condemned the Rev. Flip Benham for preaching at E. C. Glass High School. We ask Dr. Falwell to seek God and repent for this horrible injustice." Benham, jailed in Lynchburg on February 18, was sentenced to six months for leading a demonstration on the public school as part of Operation Rescue's "Going to the Gates" program, which attempts to bring an anti-abortion message mixed with a call to repentance and faith in Christ to public high schools. Falwell stated that after Benham and OR moved their battleground "from abortion clinics to public schools, I could not lend my support to such behavior or tactics." Last we heard, OR isn't blocking entrances to public schools. That's the last we heard, anyway.

WE GET THE MARILYN MANSON WE DESERVE

One doesn't have to be some sort of fideistic hick to be appalled at the moral emptiness of American TV, especially in a nation that, at least according to the polls, is Christian. However much people complain about the brain-dead filth on the boob tube (sure, there are some good things on TV, but then, too, Hitler built the Autobahn)-Hollywood is, after all, just giving the public what it wants. And because a vast majority of the public claims to be Christian, of sorts, one could ask, Of what sorts? If in the midst of World War II John Paul Sartre could say that we get "the war we deserve," maybe in Christian America we get the TV we deserve. Let's let one product of American culture, and television, explain for himself the Christian America he was raised in. "You spoonfed us Saturday morning mouthfuls of maggots and lies disguised in your sugary breakfast cereals. The plates you made us clean were filled with your fears. These things have hardened in our soft pink bellies. We are what you have made us. We have grown up watching your television. We are a symptom of your Christian America, the biggest Satan of all. This is your world in which we grow. And we will grow to hate you." Thus saith crooner, lyricist, and composer Marilyn Manson. Here's one case which, for sure, the medium is the message. But don't complain. After all, this is "Christian" America.

ISLAM IN SUBURBIA

In an attempt to stop construction of the Islamic Saudi Academy, a private school on 101 acres not far from Dulles Airport, someone circulated an anonymous flyer giving 12 reasons to oppose the school. Reason No. 3, Subsection F warns: "Dulles Airport is just a short, fast car ride from Ashburn. Any child kidnaped from Ashburn by a foreigner could be on a private jet at Dulles and out of America within one hour. We would never know that this kidnaped child had been taken to a closed Muslim dictatorship." Reason No. 8, Subsection U warns: "High-powered rifles fired by terrorists from within the Saudi training center could reach and kill Loudoun children in their neighborhood backyards and playgrounds." Trying to find a less ludicrous argument to stop the construction, one local pastor said that they wouldn't let the Nazis or the KKK build there, so why should they let the Saudi-whose government kills people-come in and build? Now it's true, the Saudi government doesn't have the vaguest concept of religious liberty, it has a horrible human rights' record, and it does kill people (but, hey, so does ours). However, the question still remains: Should Saudi Arabia, a nation with full diplomatic ties to the United States, be stopped from building a private school in America? The Loudoun county board of supervisors, after much rancor and debate, voted 7-2 to allow construction, which shows not only why the American promise of religious freedom is more than just hollow words, but also why we should be thankful that we live here, and not in a place where there is no religious freedom, like Saudi Arabia.

SATAN, THE EVIDENCE

However well-intentioned, scholar Patrick Glynn, with his new book, God, The Evidence (Prima), proved more than he intended. A personal account of his return to the Catholic fold after wallowing in the closed-minded halls of American academia (in his particular case, Harvard), Glynn talks about how scientific discoveries are forcing researchers to reconsider some of their most fundamental notions about existence. At the top of the paradigm shifters is the anthropic principle, the idea that the universe is so perfectly geared for human life that, Glynn writes, "far from being accidental, life appeared to be the goal toward which the entire universe from the very first moment of its existence had been orchestrated, fine-tuned."

Fair enough. But Glynn should have stopped while ahead. Instead he rushes in where angels (at least the unfallen ones) would fear to tread-and that's the nebulous realm of Near-Death Experiences (NDEs), where thousands of people who "died" have come back to give glorious accounts of life in the hereafter, including encounters with long-dead loved ones. The only problem is that these accounts don't, in any way, square with the Bible. First, Scripture teaches that death is a "sleep," where the dead remain until the resurrection; they don't float out of their bodies like ghosts in some nebulous grainy realm. Second, because the dead are "asleep," the entities these people encounter during their NDEs can't be dead relatives, no matter how much they might appear to be so (if appearance can be deceiving in the conscious realm of everyday existence, who knows the deceptions going on with NDEs). Third, the Bible doesn't teach the existence of a separate, conscious immortal soul that would separate from the body at death; that thought is Greek metaphysics melded into Christian theology, a syncretism that has spawned endless error and confusion. Fourth, in numerous accounts people talk about meeting a divine personage who in a nonjudgmental manner reviews the "deceased's" life before sending him back. How interesting, though, that in most accounts this divine personage (who many believe is Jesus) says nothing about the sinners need of Christ's grace and atoning blood, the most basic teaching in Scripture. Instead, this personage kindly and gently spouts some generic message about love and tolerance that sounds like the New Age pulp coming from channelers and Shirley MacLaine. Glynn attempts to dismiss that criticism by insisting that the message given by this being "tracks very closely with that of the Bible," though it does "fail to confirm some of the detailed doctrines, and certainly the prejudices, of particular sects." Sorry, Patrick, but justification by faith in Christ and redemption by His shed blood aren't prejudices of a particular sect; they're the foundation of God's truth for all humanity, and any Christian who believes that teaching should be suspicious of supernatural experiences that dismiss it altogether.

What makes Glynn's book so disturbing is his attempt to stamp these NDEs with the all-time twentieth-century imprimatur of science. He spends a good part of the book showing how modern scientific research "proves" that these experiences are really some sort of journey into the "next life." After all, who can refute science?

Though Glynn does refer to some possible alternate explanations (based on physiological factors), he leaves the crucial one out: preternatural forces, the only explanation that works. The Bible is clear that Satan is not only a literal personal entity but the great deceiver, and what better way to foment a deception than to give thousands of people "scientifically" documented experiences that, at their core, refute the most basic biblical teachings? After all, if no mention is made on "the other side" about the sinner's need of Christ's blood, why worry about it here?

In a roundabout way, Glynn proves his point. Because NDEs are deceptions, there has to be a deceiver, and that deceiver, according to Scripture, is Satan. But if Satan exists, then God has to exist as well. Thus we truly have God, The Evidence, even if that's not the way Glynn was hoping to get us there.