During certain religious holidays (like Christmas and Easter) you can expect the newsmagazines to trot out a cover story on Jesus, the Bible, or Christianity. They are rarely uplifting to those of us who have a true faith. Often the newsmagazines heavily quote liberal theologians and only mention that there are conservative theologians and millions of Christian who actually believe the Bible and the claims of Christ. So it was not too surprising that Newsweek magazine started the year of 2015 with a massive cover story on the Bible. But this time, there was no attempt at objectivity. The author begins with this screed. “They wave their Bibles at passersby, screaming their condemnation of homosexuals. They fall on their knees, worshiping at the base of a granite monuments to the Ten Commandments while demanding prayer in school.” It gets worse as you make your way into the article. But you get the idea. Any pretense of fairness or objectivity flew out the window in the first two paragraphs. Do you recognize this crude caricature of Bible-believing Christians? I don’t. Dr. Albert Mohler posted a blog to respond to some of the outrageous statements in the Newsweek article. When he was on my radio program, we dealt with a number of them. The Newsweek author argues that we all are reading a bad translation of the Bible and makes much of the fact that the story about the woman caught in adultery isn’t in the oldest manuscripts of the gospel of John. The first claim is wrong. The second one is something most Bible students and all seminary students know. I doubt anyone would accept the author’s claim that the story was “made up sometime in the Middle Ages.” You can read the blog by Al Mohler if you want to get more details. He concludes that: “no honest historian would recognize the portrait of Christian history presented in this essay as accurate and no credible journalist would recognize this screed as balanced.” It might be tempting to just ignore such articles, but people read it and believe it. That is why we should follow 1 Peter 3:15 and always be ready to give an answer. http://ncfr.net/ncfr.net/subdomains/commentary/Downloads/Kerby_Anderson/02-12-2015.mp3