How Was Your April Fools Day?

I don't do April Fools Day. I don't do April Fools Day pranks, and if pranked I generally respond with such an impassive straight face that Buster Keaton would nudge the guy next to him and proudly say "I taught him that!"

This year my health has been poor (I'm still doing Much better than I deserve thanks to the saving grace of my Savior Christ Jesus) and Wednesday, April Fools Day, I was feeling punier than I have in a while after a morning of tests at the hospital where I was told I had to take more Lovenox (those of you who have to take the 'stab in the ab' know what I'm talking about, right?) and there in a response to a post I made well over a month ago was a long drawn out screed from an atheist complaining about Christianity and Judaism.

If you've ever dealt with an Atheist you know how it always starts "I used to be an evangelical Christian until..." followed by some horrible tragedy or some eye opening event. Then they go on to describe their objections to Christianity based on their experience in such a manner that you now pity them. They're so far off base they are either lying about ever being inside a church ever in their life, or they were spiritually abused and miseducated by the worst pastor ever spawned. (Or, they were catholics and have been duped into thinking that it is part of evangelical Christianity) But when they start listing their objections you begin to see the truth of Psalm 14:1

I've seen articles where the author goes all embarrassed and says "that's not what they mean when the Bible says 'fool'" and goes on to describe wilting flowers and other unoffensive pastoral images of fading light, etc. No - when the Old Testament says "Fool" it means "Fool" the Hebrew word used is 'nabal' which means (oddly enough) "Fool" and has no other connotation. The author of Psalm was David, beloved of God, who did not suffer fools lightly. 

Neither does Charles Hadon Spurgeon: (emphasis his)

The Atheist is the fool pre-eminently, and a fool universally. He would not deny God if he were not a fool by nature, and having denied God it is no marvel that he becomes a fool in practice. Sin is always folly, and as it is the height of sin to attack the very existence of the Most High, so it is also the greatest imaginable folly. To say there is no God is to belie the plainest evidence, which is obstinacy; to oppose the common consent of mankind, which is stupidity; to stifle consciousness, which is madness. If the sinner could by his atheism destroy the God whom he hates there were some sense, although much wickedness, in his infidelity; but as denying the existence of fire does not prevent its burning a man who is in it, so doubting the existence of God will not stop the Judge of all the earth from destroying the rebel who breaks his laws; nay, this atheism is a crime which much provokes heaven, and will bring down terrible vengeance on the fool who indulges it.

The proverb says, "A fool's tongue cuts his own throat," and in this instance it kills both soul and body for ever: would to God the mischief stopped even there, but alas! one fool makes hundreds, and a noisy blasphemer spreads his horrible doctrines as lepers spread the plague.

In our exchange it became abundantly clear that my April Evangelical Atheist clearly didn't know what he was talking about. His railed against the bible for teaching that there are fountains in the depth of the sea (Genesis 7:11-12), apparently he doesn't get the Discovery channel where geothermal vents are highlighted quite often. His foolishness prevents him from marveling at how these underwater fountains and geysers were described 4,500 years before his god, Science, discovered them. He railed against Jews and Christians for spreading the lie that the universe was geocentric, yet his foolishness prevented him from realizing he stuck his foot in his mouth in front of a man who knows the Bible AND history (I give good tour at the museum!) who pointed out that a geocentric universe is the product of his god, Science, in the guise of Claudius Ptolemy in 150 BC and was the "settled science" until a Christian, Copernicus, put the sun at the center of the solar system. He railed about that quite a bit and is still in denial.

He railed against the bible for teaching that the earth was flat and square (because it uses the still commonly used metaphorical statements "Ends of the earth" and "Corners of the earth") but his foolishness prevented him from seeing that the Bible was the first document to describe a spherical earth (Isaiah 40:22). He demanded that the bible claims that the (flat) earth is laid on pillars but his foolishness forces him to ignore the truth that the oldest book in the bible explains that the earth is suspended in space (Job 26:7) 

In the end I realized I couldn't reach his tightly closed mind when he demand to know how a kangaroo can make it from Mt. Ararat to Australia without leaving a fossil record of its journey. This is a question I'm sure that 4-year-olds love to torment their Sunday school nanny with but a grown man? He actually said "if you can tell me that then I'd be a believer" and then and there to invoke the advise of my Lord and Master as recorded in Matthew 7:6:

Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

Then again, he was proud to admit probably the most foolish thing I've ever heard in my life. In describing what he claimed to be a discussion with a Christian:

"...I point out to him that if Jesus ascended to heaven at a speed slow enough that his disciples could watch him ascend, Jesus hasn't even made it to the next nearest galaxy, let alone the far reaches of outer space and ultimately heaven."

That's when I started to feel truly sorry for him, first to deny Jesus (my April Evangelical Atheist falls into the fatal logic trap of calling Jesus a good man - a death trap that ensnares the truly foolish) and to deny God. but then to claim that he knows where heaven IS? Through our exchange he never struck on anything of spiritual significance, he was always basing his hatred on snippets from Genesis and made up meaningless psudofacts that he copies from hate mongers and pastes into his "blog". However this one award winning foolish statement about the assention (which he claims is proof of - something, I never could figure out what or how it proved anything) epitomizes Psalm 14:1 better than anything I could possibly make up, even in my darkest days of heavy drinking;

The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds; There is no one who does good.

Poor April Evangelical Atheist, the very, very best he has to look forward to is (if he's right) absolutely nothing. If he's wrong he's in a world of hurt for all of eternity. He walks the earth with the serpent hissing constantly in his ear: "Is that what God really said?" Worse yet, in the here and now he's all alone, his mind poisoned by the lie that his existence is the epitome of all, that there's no power higher in the universe than his god, Science, which in reality is merely a rusty yet functional tool in the toolbox that we use to understand the marvel of the God of Life's universe. He's not worshiping the creator, he's not even worshiping the creation, he's worshiping his own grasp on man's view of the creation. And from what I've seen from his posts on the internet, his grasp is at best tenuous.

I really really feel sorry for him, and I pray for him. His hatred of Christ is as deep as it is meaningless. I will pray extra hard this Resurrection Sunday that the truth of our Lord and Savior's triumph over death be made known to him because I really do pity the fool.