‐‐--------------------
Jeremy Clarkson is a funny man. At times he’s crude and sometimes refreshingly honest in a nonconformist way. His latest opinion piece for The Times is pitching against French restaurants ripping off tourists, ‘These scams aren’t enough if you ask me. Gullible tourists are being sold cheap wine but why stop there‘. The piece is the work of an imaginative mind and with humorous analogies and a serious point as well. As he pokes the bear on scamming and the human ability to be conned, he throws out images like this one,
‘I could substitute the steak in the pie with chlorinated bear meat from Lithuania and no one would know.’
That’s funny. And depending on where you find yourself on the epistemic spectrum, you’ll either roll with Clarkson’s final jab or take offence. Or perhaps, like myself, you find yourself in a third space, namely, that was a rather naive take, Jeremy Clarkson.
He suggests (no doubt with a drop tongue in cheek),
‘Go big. That’s my message if you are considering becoming a celebrated conman. Take a lesson from the biggest fraudster of them all: Jesus. I can walk on water. My mum was a virgin and my dad’s God. And I’m going to start an industry selling this guff that will last for 2,000 years. Top man.’
There are plenty of classic and famous examples of scamming. The problem with Clarkson’s crescendo piece is that it’s plain simple wrong. A scam is a lie designed to steal from those who are conned. Jesus didn’t take, he gave his life. Also this, the believers in Jesus Christ don’t lose, they gain; not some cheap substitute but something more valuable than any bottle of vintage French wine.
If the whole Jesus episode is a scam, it’s not a very clever one. Think about it; if you’re required to die a gruesome death in order for your scam to succeed, then you won’t get to see your success. And that makes you either really stupid or certifiable. Unless of course, you rose from the dead, in which case the entire scam theory is dismantled.
I came late to Top Gear, but I’ve now watched many episodes, and I follow The Grand Tour and will soon watch Clarkson’s latest season of his farming show; it’s all great television. My knowledge of cars could fit Inside the boot of a matchbox car, but who cares. The shows are hilarious, captivating, and often stunning viewing, and a tiny bit educational. So I’m not coming from the angle of an anti-Clarkson. As the world knows, Jeremy Clarkson loves to throw verbal hand grenades. Some ignite while others like this one are a dud.
The idea that Christians are victims of the world’s greatest con job is a little bit laughable. Christians aren’t ignoramuses. I guess maybe some are and that’s okay because God isn’t only interested in the intelligent. But you have to be an eyeless and earless underground mole to actually believe Christians are not aware of the extraordinary nature of Jesus’ claims and character. That’s the entire point of Christianity. People don’t stop storms with a word and provide 5000 instant meals, but Jesus did. Dead people stay dead, but Jesus didn’t.
There are two forms of scepticism that are prevalent today. There is an old-school type of scepticism, one which Jeremy Clarkson is repeating, and there is a newer and more formidable scepticism taking hold, especially among Gen Zers.
Old fashioned scepticism was cool and trending. The 4 horsemen of the new (now gone) atheism presented a confident and brash unbelief. Scepticism was viewed as a sign of the mature mind. The more I doubt, the smarter and wiser I am!
There is a shift taking place as to how and why scepticism continues to be a prominent theme. The old age of scepticism was about assertiveness and confidence in ourselves and our ability to know what is true. That kind of scepticism is still around (alla Jeremy Clarkson), but a new type of scepticism has emerged and it’s based on fear. We are sceptical because we are unsure who to trust. Which ideas and words are reliable?
We live in an age of misinformation and disinformation and so we often have reason to be a little suspicious (which is a point Clarkson is making). Scepticism has become a protective mechanism because it’s hard to know who to believe. A dose of scepticism can be healthy. Asking questions and investigating is sensible. However, at some point, you need to put your faith somewhere. Scepticism can’t be the default for everything in life, otherwise, we are left believing in nothing It’s like stripping a building of its bricks one brick at a time soon enough there’s no building left.
We can’t disbelieve everything, and neither is it safe or sensible to believe anything and everything. So what are we meant to do with Jesus and his claims?
I suspect that Clarkson’s objection to Jesus isn’t foremost an intellectual one, but something else, a moral or personal objection. For that’s how scepticism often works. As Aristotle famously laid out, our beliefs are formed by a combination of logos (reason), pathos (desire) and ethos (personal resonance).
To use a car illustration, on both Top Gear and The Grand Tour, Clarkson, Hammond and May presented and evaluated 100s if not 1000s of different cars and vehicles. Did they make their choices of favoured cars based on the vehicles’ engineering and performance, and understanding every bolt, shaft and drop of oil? How often were cars judged, enjoyed or derided, based on appearance and personality? And for viewers, how often were we persuaded and believe their critiques based on ethos? Eat the fool, because we rarely commit ourselves to something big simply because of the engineering.
There’s a story at the end of John’s Gospel where one of Jesus’ friends suggests that the resurrection of Jesus is a hoax. The other disciples had seen Jesus in the flesh and spoken with him, but Thomas assumed better.
Thomas explained that unless he could see Jesus in the flesh and touch where the nails were driven into the body, he wouldn’t believe that Jesus was now alive. Shock, and horror, one week later, Jesus appeared in front of Thomas and he could no longer doubt.
The issue for Thomas wasn’t primarily a scientific or intellectual one, but one of envy. Was he jealous because he was present when Jesus showed himself to his mates?
Jesus’ response to Thomas is fascinating,
“Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Jesus isn’t saying that facts don’t matter. Jesus isn’t saying, it doesn’t matter whether I’m alive or not. It matters because objective reality matters. It matters because if God can’t defeat death no one can. If God can’t dismantle sin and evil, then what hope have we? Rather, Jesus was outlining how people come to a true, reliable, and personal relationship with God.
Jesus doesn’t have to repeat the resurrection. It’s a one-off and one that has been clearly attested to by multiple witnesses whose lives were so transformed by this Jesus that greed turned to generosity, and hate to love and hopelessness to confident hope. Jesus was telling Thomas, believe what I’ve told you. Accept the reliable testimony of those who have the crucified one now alive. As we know from the historical record, literally 100s of people saw him in the weeks following that first Easter.
A question is, why does Jeremy Clarkson choose not to believe? I don’t know. He’s certainly an intelligent man, but perhaps he hasn’t taken the Bible texts seriously and read them with care. I don’t know.
The Australian historian, Dr John Dickson once set a challenge. He said that he’d eat a page from the Bible if someone could find a reputable ancient historian who seriously doubted the existence of Jesus Christ. To this day, no one has stepped forward.
Indeed, Professor Bart Ehrman, who is no friend of Christianity, has this to say about those who doubt the historic existence of Jesus –
“There is a lot of evidence. There is so much evidence that …this is not even an issue for scholars of antiquity. There is no one teaching in a college or university in the Western World, teaching ancient studies who holds that Jesus did not exist.”
The point is, it’s not difficult to refute Jeremy Clarkson’s quip about Jesus and scams. The evidence for Jesus’ historicity, including his death and resurrection is substantial and throwing words around like ‘scam’ is intellectually lazy. It delivers a certain punch line akin to someone drunk on too much cheap Parisian wine.
World-renowned British historian Tom Holland, in his volume Dominion, explores from the perspective of an agnostic, the way in which the message of Jesus turned the world.
“To be a Christian is to believe that God became man and suffered a death as terrible as any mortal has ever suffered. This is why the cross, that ancient implement of torture, remains what it has always been: the fitting symbol of the Christian revolution. It is the audacity of it—the audacity of finding in a twisted and defeated corpse the glory of the creator of the universe—that serves to explain, more surely than anything else, the sheer strangeness of Christianity, and of the civilization to which it gave birth. Today, the power of this strangeness remains as alive as it has ever been. It is manifest in the great surge of conversions that has swept Africa and Asia over the past century; in the conviction of millions upon millions that the breath of the Spirit, like a living fire, still blows upon the world; and, in Europe and North America, in the assumptions of many more millions who would never think to describe themselves as Christian. All are heirs to the same revolution: a revolution that has, at its molten heart, the image of a god dead on a cross.”
Something happened in those years around Galilee and Judea, such that we measure history and hope according to the Galilean.
The Bible authors are so confident that the Apostle Paul wrote to an entire church, if you doubt the resurrection, go and talk to the eyewitnesses. And this,
“if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead.”
Is Jesus the biggest scam of all? If so, it is certainly an audacious one and I’ve been sucked in.
The best way to find out is to read the accounts for yourself. If Jesus is the great fraudster, then either he didn’t think through his plan of being crucified very well… or perhaps his foresight is somewhat better than ours. Wherever you land, this one thing is certain, if God exists and his Son died for the sin of the world and then rose from the dead, this suggestion is too big to ignore.
Jeremy Clarkson is a funny man. At times he’s crude and sometimes refreshingly honest in a nonconformist way. His latest opinion piece for The Times is pitching against French restaurants ripping off tourists, ‘These scams aren’t enough if you ask me. Gullible tourists are being sold cheap wine but why stop there‘. The piece is the work of an imaginative mind and with humorous analogies and a serious point as well. As he pokes the bear on scamming and the human ability to be conned, he throws out images like this one,
‘I could substitute the steak in the pie with chlorinated bear meat from Lithuania and no one would know.’
That’s funny. And depending on where you find yourself on the epistemic spectrum, you’ll either roll with Clarkson’s final jab or take offence. Or perhaps, like myself, you find yourself in a third space, namely, that was a rather naive take, Jeremy Clarkson.
He suggests (no doubt with a drop tongue in cheek),
‘Go big. That’s my message if you are considering becoming a celebrated conman. Take a lesson from the biggest fraudster of them all: Jesus. I can walk on water. My mum was a virgin and my dad’s God. And I’m going to start an industry selling this guff that will last for 2,000 years. Top man.’
There are plenty of classic and famous examples of scamming. The problem with Clarkson’s crescendo piece is that it’s plain simple wrong. A scam is a lie designed to steal from those who are conned. Jesus didn’t take, he gave his life. Also this, the believers in Jesus Christ don’t lose, they gain; not some cheap substitute but something more valuable than any bottle of vintage French wine.
If the whole Jesus episode is a scam, it’s not a very clever one. Think about it; if you’re required to die a gruesome death in order for your scam to succeed, then you won’t get to see your success. And that makes you either really stupid or certifiable. Unless of course, you rose from the dead, in which case the entire scam theory is dismantled.
I came late to Top Gear, but I’ve now watched many episodes, and I follow The Grand Tour and will soon watch Clarkson’s latest season of his farming show; it’s all great television. My knowledge of cars could fit Inside the boot of a matchbox car, but who cares. The shows are hilarious, captivating, and often stunning viewing, and a tiny bit educational. So I’m not coming from the angle of an anti-Clarkson. As the world knows, Jeremy Clarkson loves to throw verbal hand grenades. Some ignite while others like this one are a dud.
The idea that Christians are victims of the world’s greatest con job is a little bit laughable. Christians aren’t ignoramuses. I guess maybe some are and that’s okay because God isn’t only interested in the intelligent. But you have to be an eyeless and earless underground mole to actually believe Christians are not aware of the extraordinary nature of Jesus’ claims and character. That’s the entire point of Christianity. People don’t stop storms with a word and provide 5000 instant meals, but Jesus did. Dead people stay dead, but Jesus didn’t.
There are two forms of scepticism that are prevalent today. There is an old-school type of scepticism, one which Jeremy Clarkson is repeating, and there is a newer and more formidable scepticism taking hold, especially among Gen Zers.
Old fashioned scepticism was cool and trending. The 4 horsemen of the new (now gone) atheism presented a confident and brash unbelief. Scepticism was viewed as a sign of the mature mind. The more I doubt, the smarter and wiser I am!
There is a shift taking place as to how and why scepticism continues to be a prominent theme. The old age of scepticism was about assertiveness and confidence in ourselves and our ability to know what is true. That kind of scepticism is still around (alla Jeremy Clarkson), but a new type of scepticism has emerged and it’s based on fear. We are sceptical because we are unsure who to trust. Which ideas and words are reliable?
We live in an age of misinformation and disinformation and so we often have reason to be a little suspicious (which is a point Clarkson is making). Scepticism has become a protective mechanism because it’s hard to know who to believe. A dose of scepticism can be healthy. Asking questions and investigating is sensible. However, at some point, you need to put your faith somewhere. Scepticism can’t be the default for everything in life, otherwise, we are left believing in nothing It’s like stripping a building of its bricks one brick at a time soon enough there’s no building left.
We can’t disbelieve everything, and neither is it safe or sensible to believe anything and everything. So what are we meant to do with Jesus and his claims?
I suspect that Clarkson’s objection to Jesus isn’t foremost an intellectual one, but something else, a moral or personal objection. For that’s how scepticism often works. As Aristotle famously laid out, our beliefs are formed by a combination of logos (reason), pathos (desire) and ethos (personal resonance).
To use a car illustration, on both Top Gear and The Grand Tour, Clarkson, Hammond and May presented and evaluated 100s if not 1000s of different cars and vehicles. Did they make their choices of favoured cars based on the vehicles’ engineering and performance, and understanding every bolt, shaft and drop of oil? How often were cars judged, enjoyed or derided, based on appearance and personality? And for viewers, how often were we persuaded and believe their critiques based on ethos? Eat the fool, because we rarely commit ourselves to something big simply because of the engineering.
There’s a story at the end of John’s Gospel where one of Jesus’ friends suggests that the resurrection of Jesus is a hoax. The other disciples had seen Jesus in the flesh and spoken with him, but Thomas assumed better.
Thomas explained that unless he could see Jesus in the flesh and touch where the nails were driven into the body, he wouldn’t believe that Jesus was now alive. Shock, and horror, one week later, Jesus appeared in front of Thomas and he could no longer doubt.
The issue for Thomas wasn’t primarily a scientific or intellectual one, but one of envy. Was he jealous because he was present when Jesus showed himself to his mates?
Jesus’ response to Thomas is fascinating,
“Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Jesus isn’t saying that facts don’t matter. Jesus isn’t saying, it doesn’t matter whether I’m alive or not. It matters because objective reality matters. It matters because if God can’t defeat death no one can. If God can’t dismantle sin and evil, then what hope have we? Rather, Jesus was outlining how people come to a true, reliable, and personal relationship with God.
Jesus doesn’t have to repeat the resurrection. It’s a one-off and one that has been clearly attested to by multiple witnesses whose lives were so transformed by this Jesus that greed turned to generosity, and hate to love and hopelessness to confident hope. Jesus was telling Thomas, believe what I’ve told you. Accept the reliable testimony of those who have the crucified one now alive. As we know from the historical record, literally 100s of people saw him in the weeks following that first Easter.
A question is, why does Jeremy Clarkson choose not to believe? I don’t know. He’s certainly an intelligent man, but perhaps he hasn’t taken the Bible texts seriously and read them with care. I don’t know.
The Australian historian, Dr John Dickson once set a challenge. He said that he’d eat a page from the Bible if someone could find a reputable ancient historian who seriously doubted the existence of Jesus Christ. To this day, no one has stepped forward.
Indeed, Professor Bart Ehrman, who is no friend of Christianity, has this to say about those who doubt the historic existence of Jesus –
“There is a lot of evidence. There is so much evidence that …this is not even an issue for scholars of antiquity. There is no one teaching in a college or university in the Western World, teaching ancient studies who holds that Jesus did not exist.”
The point is, it’s not difficult to refute Jeremy Clarkson’s quip about Jesus and scams. The evidence for Jesus’ historicity, including his death and resurrection is substantial and throwing words around like ‘scam’ is intellectually lazy. It delivers a certain punch line akin to someone drunk on too much cheap Parisian wine.
World-renowned British historian Tom Holland, in his volume Dominion, explores from the perspective of an agnostic, the way in which the message of Jesus turned the world.
“To be a Christian is to believe that God became man and suffered a death as terrible as any mortal has ever suffered. This is why the cross, that ancient implement of torture, remains what it has always been: the fitting symbol of the Christian revolution. It is the audacity of it—the audacity of finding in a twisted and defeated corpse the glory of the creator of the universe—that serves to explain, more surely than anything else, the sheer strangeness of Christianity, and of the civilization to which it gave birth. Today, the power of this strangeness remains as alive as it has ever been. It is manifest in the great surge of conversions that has swept Africa and Asia over the past century; in the conviction of millions upon millions that the breath of the Spirit, like a living fire, still blows upon the world; and, in Europe and North America, in the assumptions of many more millions who would never think to describe themselves as Christian. All are heirs to the same revolution: a revolution that has, at its molten heart, the image of a god dead on a cross.”
Something happened in those years around Galilee and Judea, such that we measure history and hope according to the Galilean.
The Bible authors are so confident that the Apostle Paul wrote to an entire church, if you doubt the resurrection, go and talk to the eyewitnesses. And this,
“if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead.”
Is Jesus the biggest scam of all? If so, it is certainly an audacious one and I’ve been sucked in.
The best way to find out is to read the accounts for yourself. If Jesus is the great fraudster, then either he didn’t think through his plan of being crucified very well… or perhaps his foresight is somewhat better than ours. Wherever you land, this one thing is certain, if God exists and his Son died for the sin of the world and then rose from the dead, this suggestion is too big to ignore.
No comments:
Post a Comment