Michael Coren just doesn't get it.

The following is Michael Coren's column from today's Toronto SUN, pasted and posted verbatim. (I could have furnished the link, but I'm afraid it might expire.) Without further ado:

TORONTO -- As we prepare to celebrate the birthday of Jesus Christ there is surely nobody who seriously believes that Christianity is not under attack in North America. It was the author and critic Michael Medved, an Orthodox Jew, who pretty much summed it all up.
He made the point that even in a film as banal and forgettable as Alien 3, the secular establishment and its poodle that is media and entertainment managed to throw a few punches. In the movie, one of the violent sexual maniacs on a futuristic penal colony explains, "You know, we're all fundamentalist Christians here."
This, of course, is in outer space.
One would have thought the eternal struggle against man-eating aliens had little to do with organized religion, but apparently not.
Out of context, out of place and just dumb, it nevertheless enabled another group of Hollywood types to bash their favourite foe.
And let us be specific here. Organized religion invariably means Christianity. To attack an Eastern faith or even Judaism would be seen as being politically insensitive.
As for Islam, nobody in Hollywood or the Canadian movie and television business has the courage to risk a fatwa or two.
But in the final analysis it doesn't really matter. Tearing down Christmas trees, banning nativity scenes, mumbling happy holidays, preventing prayer in schools and council chambers - all the dying spasms of the liberal culture.
Now this is important. Never think that the attack upon Christianity is a sign of the decline of the victim. On the contrary. These attacks are evidence of the decline of the perpetrator. So insecure in their ideology are the atheist hordes that they try to destroy anything and everyone that reflects and exposes their weakness.
Every little victory for the secular culture is a major triumph for the Messiah whose birthday we are about to commemorate. Just as the Church was persecuted most harshly by a Rome in massive decline. The darkness before the new dawn.
The attacks also mean that the weak and watery ones fall away, leaving the faith to serious Christians who understand they are here not to edit but to follow Christ. So the culture-friendly types, who submit to every whim of decadence and materialism in their pathetic effort to remain popular, become irrelevant.
It's why the United Church will effectively disappear within 20 years, why the Anglicans will split and their liberal wing evaporate, why the attempt to hijack genuine Catholicism is now stone dead and why solid, orthodox churches are growing in all corners of the world.
It's not about socialism, recycling, sexual licence, climate change, group hugs, self-esteem or never offending anyone. It's about truth, unchanging Scriptural absolutes, church teaching, the undeniable facts of the virgin birth and bodily resurrection, speaking God's message even when it hurts the speaker as well as the hearer and unending love and forgiveness.
It's about doing what is right but never blurring the lines of what is wrong. About exposing sin but offering salvation. It comes at a cost but it is worth more than the world.
Have a wonderful, faithful and prayerful Christmas. Oh, and look forward to Alien 12, in which a sad group of once influential people will announce, "You know, we're all secular fundamentalists here." Then be eaten by an enormous spider from Neptune.

About once a year, I find myself agreeing with something Michael Coren writes. This is SO not one of those times.
First of all, as I have noted recently, we're NOT about to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, but rather an arbitrary date, selected for purely political reasons; the actual date of the "messiah" is unknown by even the most devout of his followers.
That little quibble aside, this column of Coren's goes on to intentionally offend all of us who do not share his views on God...way to convert people, Michael! Any question as to why a certain breed of Christian is held in such ill regard is answered in the smug, holier-than-thou tone of this article.
In Coren's words, Christianity is "under attack". He really ought to talk to a Jew or two: that particular faith has been under attack for generations beyond counting. No matter; the "attacks" he cites are inevitable byproducts of exclusion. Denying heaven to people who dare to think differently tends to rankle. Inflicting hell solely on the basis of an ancient book, translated and mistranslated again and again down through the ages, rankles even more.

It is true that evangelical, fundycostal churches (which Coren tellingly calls 'solid and orthodox') are growing in many areas of the world, while attempts to weaken religion into something more friendly to broader society have largely failed. There's no real surprise here: lamentably, people like to feel superior to each other, and when you remove that from religion you're left with weak wine indeed. The thought "God loves everyone, all the time" doesn't quite have the same heft as "God loves us". And it's a very short step from "God loves us" to "God hates them".

When Coren enumerates what his brand of Christianity is about, above, every last thing he writes details a flaw in the faith:

It's about truth

Okay, I'll play Pilate. What is truth, Mr. Coren?

unchanging Scriptural absolutes, church teaching

Oh, yeah, that truth. Well, it doesn't take long to question that "truth". There are two entirely separate creation stories in the first part of Genesis, with a different order of creation and, most notably, in one of them we have the presence of more than one God. As for church teaching, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Every Christian is taught to ask God to deliver them from evil...a vague concept never defined. I know, evil is supposed to be like pornography, you'll know it when you see it. So: is war evil? More to the point, how about "holy" war? Truth, please, and don't tarry.

the undeniable facts of the virgin birth and bodily resurrection

Uh-huh, yup, virgin birth, yes, bodily resurrection...y'know, it'd really help if somebody could explain either of those concepts without resorting to some variant of "it's a mystery". Memo to Mr. Coren: an "undeniable fact" is one for which there is a vast pile of incontrovertible evidence. I'd love to see evidence for, especially, a virgin birth that could stand up in a court of law. (I'll suspend my disbelief on the bodily resurrection; there are far too many cases of the dead come back to life in the annals of medicine).

speaking God's message even when it hurts the speaker as well as the hearer

Ah, yes, the ol' "this hurts me more than it hurts you" angle, used by bullying parents everywhere. I'd like to ask Mr. Coren the following:

(a) If, Mr. Coren, as your faith suggests, God is so much bigger than humanity, His creation, how dare you speak for Him?
(b) How can any message from an all-loving God hurt anyone at all, ever? I suppose it could if it was delivered improperly--something I'm quite sure has been done a few times in the past--but the message itself being intrinsically hurtful?
(c) How can you reconcile hurting someone with

unending love and forgiveness...?

It's about doing what is right but never blurring the lines of what is wrong.

And which is which? Do you honestly claim to know the answer to that one, Mr. Coren? And is it an answer every member of your Godly clique shares?

About exposing sin but offering salvation.

It is impossible to sin against something as large and powerful as God. It is possible to sin against each other--sin is merely error, after all, borne of wrong thinking. What do you do with an error? You correct it. What do you do with wrong thinking? You heal it. You certainly don't punish the sinner, as the Christian God is rather famous for doing.

It is all too easy for Christians to define sin however they choose. If you are a Catholic, attending a church, other than a Catholic church, was long held to be a mortal sin. Die with that stain on your soul, by Catholic doctrine, and you're headed straight for hell.

If that's Coren's idea of God, I'll pass, thanks. I won't defend the excesses of what is undoubtedly a sick society, although Coren's and my definitions of excess doubtless differ. I, for instance, see nothing at all wrong with a homosexual couple being married in the eyes of God, and I know Coren feels this is nothing short of an abomination. But I reject utterly the idea, nuanced above, that you're either with us or ag'in' us. That kind of simplistic Dubyaism has got the world into no end of trouble. Is it any wonder Bush is an evangelical?