By Matt Friedeman, PhD
January 27, 2005

(AgapePress) - Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gave a humdinger of an indispensable speech for people of faith who are wondering when they are ever going to catch a break from their culture.

Summary: bad treatment to be expected. Get used to it.

Addressing the Knights of Columbus Council 969 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Scalia said that belief in biblical Christianity is, well, foolish. "For the son of God to be born of a virgin? I mean, really. To believe that He rose from the dead and bodily ascended into heaven? How utterly ridiculous. To believe in miracles? Or that those who obey God will rise from the dead and those who do not will burn in hell?

"God assumed from the beginning that the wise of the world would view Christians as fools ... and he has not been disappointed ...."

Scalia makes an important point, of course. Basic Christian orthodoxy is outrageously beyond the understanding of a this-world rationality. Born of a virgin, resurrection, supernaturality, a next-world judgment.

Preposterous ... idiocy ... comforting only to the shallow-minded. These are the thoughts of so many of the intellectual elite. One wonders: if this impossible faith were merely a conglomeration of implausible doctrinal assertions, might not people consider believers foolish but only in a quaint, innocuous manner?

But there seems to be today a vehemence, an ugly mean-spiritedness of the mockers when they speak of Christians and their biblical affirmations -- how to explain that?

It is not the unpalatable doctrine that has the non-believers shouting invectives through their proverbial foaming mouths. No, it is unpalatable doctrine applied. Christians, you see, believe that the teachings of scripture belong not merely in the church and around dinner tables, but in the marketplace and the state capitols and in the media and even in the Oval Office.

That is what unnerves so many of the academicians, the irreligious power brokers, the old media and the Democratic Party post-election. These people, these Bible-thumpers, actually think that their ethical beliefs ought to be adopted by ... everyone.

Gasp.

Scalia told the faithful in Baton Rouge to "have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world."

Yes, but know this -- the most passionate contempt will be reserved for those who, when the darkness seems to be winning, shine the light of God's glory and illuminate the gloomiest situations. Be prepared, at that very point of redemption, for the onslaught of the scorn of which Scalia speaks.

And bask in it.