The Emperor Has no Clothes


It was almost 200 years ago Han Christian Anderson wrote a tale where a child says this about the naked Emperor. What a great parallel to today's puffed-up Christians. Year after year people leave the faith. Those who remain behind shouting, "Read the Bible you sinners," are like the emperor who was told he was wearing beautiful garments that were invisible. Like puffed-up Christians today, he was naked.

Wearing the Bible and pretending it is the finest of royal clothing is coming to an end. Surveys confirm people are reading the Bible less and less. And for good reason. Evidence has been piling up for decades the Bible is not historically accurate and was used to control the poor by the rich. As time has moved along, there has been more skepticism about walking on water and the dead coming back to life. If the Bible is used to disguise Christianity and people see through it, we have a modern day example of the naked emperor. It's fun to follow the different responses with the Christian community to this decline in the use and importance of the Bible. I've read that prosperity gospel preacher, Joel Osteen, holds up the Bible at the beginning of his entertainment/motivational sermons. Then, he does not mention it again. That is probably about the right amount of Bible for today's church goers. 

One has to agree the printing press and the cheap Bibles if produced was a big reason Christianity thrived for so long. The printed page, as we all know, is being replaced with the electronic impulses that produce what you are reading this on. For whatever reasons, the Bible has not thrived in the new technology as it did when printing technology was new.

When we compare Hans Christian Anderson's little person who remarked about the naked Emperor to removing the Bible from hiding flaws in Christianity we have to wonder who is the person that removed Christianity's invisible clothes. It was before Richard Dawkins. It was even before Madalyn Murry O'Hair who founded American Atheists in 1963. Way back in Biblical times there were doubters and we've been doubting ever since. 

Hooray to all of us who shout the emperor has no clothes.  

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