Outspoken atheist Bill Maher closed his “Real Time” HBO show February 5 ranting against Christianity. Such invective is common for Maher, but this tirade was shamelessly biased, infused with unveiled hatred, and remarkably uninformed.
And we need to pay attention.
Since the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot, secularists and postmodern progressives have seized upon any opportunity to cast the Jan. 6 riot as an illustration of hateful Christians, claiming that evangelical Christians were kowtowing to Donald Trump and that Christians were the real bad guys. For people like Maher, and others looking for an excuse to portray Christians as the American problem, Jan. 6 was a dream come true.
Maher denounced the riot at the Capitol as a “faith-based initiative” and said that Trumpism was a “Christian-Nationalist movement that believes Trump was literally sent from Heaven.” He prattled on about how the folks in QAnon are evil, not because their ideas are anti-social or their actions illegal, but because they are religious, and that Republicans are delusional because they are Christians, and that Christianity is a myth alongside such things as believing in “baby-eating lizard people.”
And then, at the heart of his invective, was this: “Magical religious thinking is a virus and QAnon is just its current mutation.” And he renounced the biblical notion that “There’s an apocalyptic event looming, . . . a titanic struggle of good versus evil.”
On the one hand, Maher makes a point. We have seen an ideology develop around Donald Trump, a “Trumpism,” that assumes he is the one last great hope of America. Christians have to be careful about that. No human being is the last great hope of our nation. God is.
But, on the other hand, while it’s easy to brush aside Maher as just another vindictive secularist who despises religion, Christians should pay attention to his diatribe for what it illustrates about the condition of our culture and the danger of toxic atheism. And what it shows about where we are headed.
See, for all his angry babbling, we cannot ignore the most troubling part of Maher’s rant, that is, his cavalier accusation that “magical religious thinking is a virus.”
In the past, mainstream atheists tended to retain an elitist indifference toward Christianity, seeing faith as a backward annoyance, born of uneducated ignorance, and assuming that religions would eventually be demolished as humanity advanced through science and reason. And, thankfully, usually those indifferent or elitist atheists did not agree with the aggressive, militant atheists, the ones who advocated a proactive demolition of theism. Marxists, socialists—you know, those guys.
But no more. In the 21st century, the tables have turned. The toxic and angry atheists have taken over the conversation and are aggressively advancing against people of faith. They are not willing to wait for reason to push away faith. They would rather destroy Christianity than wait for it to subside.
Often called the “new atheism,” it started when a host of academics began teaching that all religions, mostly Christianity, were hindering the progress of humanity and needed to be stopped. They adopted terminology designed to slant the discussion about faith toward contempt and to advocate for the humiliation and, ultimately, the elimination of people of faith from the landscape of Western culture.
Their strategy? Change the narrative. They started referring to faith as a “virus” to be purged and cleansed from our culture. People of faith, they argue, are sick, even demented. They must be stopped, and their sickness cleansed.
And people are listening. For two decades your students have been taught this worldview by atheist professors in secular college classrooms. And that’s why it has grown rapidly in popularity, trickling down into mainstream pop culture. The new atheists, such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, write best-sellers, gobbled up by postmodern progressives who have already abdicated the domain of truth to angry, ranting secularists.
And that brings us back to Maher. As this new atheism leaked into the mainstream, talk show hosts adopted their terminology that Christians have a “virus” or a mental illness (remember when Joy Behar implied that Pence was mentally ill?).
It is not hard to see how alarming this is. And it is no coincidence that Marxism and socialism are on the rise in Western culture at the same time that atheism is becoming more popular and turning aggressively toxic toward Christianity.
Guilt by association has historically been a handy weapon to diminish or even destroy people who disagree with the narrative. The Nazis used it. Marx, Mussolini, Castro. You get the idea. And it’s being wielded with unveiled aggression in 21st century American culture. So if people showed up at the Capitol riots who claimed to be Christians, then all Christians must be violent and a danger to society, right?
Who would believe such nonsense? Anyone listening to the narrative, that’s who. Because–never forget–whoever owns the narrative owns the country.
So how should we respond to this?
- Don’t be surprised about persecution.
We are on the front end of an open and advancing persecution against Christians. Christians willing to stand for biblical truth, morals, and ethics are already having their livelihoods destroyed and their voices silenced. When aggressors want to enforce a narrative, any pretense will do.
This should be no surprise (John 15:18). While I am a firm believer that we should oppose and expose persecution whenever and however we can, within moral and legal boundaries, and we should not permit our rights to be extinguished unchallenged (Acts 22:23-29), we should also not be surprised when we see it coming. If you live for Christ, you will be persecuted in some way (2 Tim. 3:12), and persecution is always progressive.
- Know what you believe.
Learn to answer atheists and others who are unfamiliar with Christianity, confused about it, or hostile toward it (1 Peter 3:15). And, in particular, be able to clarify the difference between your Christianity and your politics. (Start here: You are not a follower of Trump or of Biden. You are a follower of Christ).
- Stop wasting time on trivial matters.
Time is precious. Christians need to stop squabbling among themselves and start being the Church in the world. Cultivate good works, advance the gospel, love your neighbor, and stand for the truth (Titus 3:8-9). And learn to speak for the truth without being vindictive (Titus 3:1-2).
And stay away from conspiracies, stop arguing about mundane matters (aka, Covid masks), and start focusing on the stewardship of your short time to serve Christ (Titus 3:9-10, Eph. 5:15-16).
- And pray for those who persecute you.
Yeah, there’s that. Because, I think Jesus knows, it is pretty hard to be angry at someone and argue with them when you are praying for them (Matt. 5:44). And, when it comes down to it, it matters more what Jesus thinks of Bill Maher than what I do.
Maher was scoffing when he said, “There’s an apocalyptic event looming, . . . a titanic struggle of good versus evil.”
But he was biblically accurate. And it’s probably closer than we think.