The Left has progressed from openly mocking Christians to openly mocking the Christian faith. On a recent episode of the “Michael Steele Podcast,” former CNN host Don Lemon suggested that Jesus’s earthly father Joseph used his marriage to the virgin Mary as a perfect cover for being gay. Steele, who chaired the Republican National Committee from 2009 to 2011, chortled right along with Lemon, as the alleged sexual deviancy of Joseph was the funniest thing he had ever heard.
Here’s the substance of the exchange:
Lemon: “Maybe Joseph was this sort of gay guy who said … [laughter] ‘I don’t want her [Mary] to die, or be stoned to death, or whatever because she got pregnant, and she’s not married.’ And then, I am not married and whatever. So, okay, this is kind of perfect.”
Steele: “Because he was an older gentleman, unmarried gentleman.”
Lemon: “Yes, and so it’s kind of perfect. And so, he took her out of her town and took her to Bethlehem.”
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Steele: “And he got out of that town, too!”
The obvious purpose of this fictious libel is to score some cheap laughs at the expense of Christians. But Christians needn’t take the bait.
Factual Challenges
For starters, Lemon’s theory cherry-picks some details out of the scriptural accounts of Jesus’s birth while ignoring others. Specifically, Lemon overlooks Mary’s virginity (Luke 1:34), Joseph’s righteous character (Matthew 1:19), the angel’s appearance to Mary (Luke 1:26-33), the angel’s appearance to Joseph (Matthew 1:20), and the reason given for their travel to Bethlehem (Luke 2:1-5).
If put to a contest of reliability, the gospels will trump Lemon every time. The testimony of Scripture, which is “breathed out by God” (2 Timothy 3:16), is obviously more credible than Lemon’s speculations. God’s words are true even if everyone else is a liar (Romans 3:4).
Furthermore, the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are the only original sources describing the events leading up to Jesus’s birth. If Lemon rejects these accounts as untrustworthy, then there are no other sources — no other facts — upon which to base his irreverent revision.
Plausibility Challenges
In terms of plausibility, Lemon’s story creates more problems than it solves. First, by alleging that Joseph was gay, Lemon implies that he and Mary never consummated their marriage, contrary to Matthew’s narrative, in which Joseph “he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son” (Matthew 1:24-25). Yet Jesus had four named brothers and multiple unnamed sisters, according to hostile testimony from residents of his hometown (Matthew 13:55-56). Two of his brothers, James and Jude, went on to write letters included in the New Testament, and even non-Christian sources record James as a brother of Jesus. If Joseph was gay and never consummated his marriage to Mary, where did all of Jesus’s siblings come from?
Second, Lemon suggests that Joseph and Mary fled from judgmental religious zealots by fleeing from Nazareth to Bethlehem. The problem with this is that Bethlehem lay close by Jerusalem, the center of Jewish religious zeal, whereas Galilee was considered a backwater province (John 7:52). Nazareth, in particular, was despised by religious Jews who lived elsewhere (John 1:46). In neither place could Jews legally execute someone (John 18:31), and in neither place could Joseph and Mary have melded into the crowd. But travelling from Nazareth to Bethlehem certainly wasn’t the way to avoid the scrutiny of religious zealots. Lemon’s fantasy — and Steele’s interjections — also fail to account for the fact that Joseph and Mary later returned to Nazareth and settled there for decades (Matthew 2:23, Luke 2:39).
Spiritual Challenge
Lemon does not suggest that Joseph was gay because it best fits the evidence, or even that it plausibly fits the evidence. He simply spun this yarn because he finds it funny to mock and offend Christians — the kind of Christians who take the Bible seriously and object when people abuse it. Not only did Lemon, an avowed left-wing commentator, find this funny, but so too did Steele, a former leader in the Republican Party. At root, Lemon and Steele are mocking and offending Jesus Christ, who identifies with his followers when they are persecuted (Acts 9:4).
Those who scoff at God and his Word usually do so because they don’t believe in Judgment Day (Isaiah 28:14-15), but eventually they will have to do business with God, and their only hope is to repent and turn to him before that day arrives. Thus, mockery like Lemon’s should not provoke us to angry indignation. It should provoke us to plead with him — and with all who live in rebellion against God — to turn from their sins and ask the only true and gracious God for forgiveness.
The identification between Jesus and his followers goes both ways. Jesus warned his disciples they would be hated precisely because they are his disciples. “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you,” he said (John 15:18). Jesus told them not to worry because he would send the Spirit to them. “He will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness” (John 15:26-27). So, let us keep bearing witness until our Lord returns.
LifeNews Note: Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand, contributing both news and commentary from a biblical worldview. Originally published by The Washington Stand.
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