Editor’s Note: Join us as we time-travel to Christmas Past — not so far as Ebenezer Scrooge’s 19th century England, but a shorter trip to 20th century America where an atheist pastor of a fundamentalist church returns to give the Christmas sermon he would have given if he could have said what he really meant.

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By Rev. Mason Lane

My sermon today will challenge each of us to test our mental flexibility and see how we process new information and new evidence. One of the finest hallmarks of humanity is the ability to adapt and adjust to new information.

The rugged, adventurous and creative peoples of Scandinavia believed for centuries that their God Thor was responsible for making lightning bolts and thrusting them down to earth.

Today the ancestors of the Vikings no longer believe Thor lives in the heavens and once tossed lightning bolts that scared the animal hides off their forbearers. New information about how lightning bolts are created changed their belief and they adapted.

For most of the entirety of human history we humans believed that the world was flat and if you traveled to the edge, you might fall off and over the edge into an empty abyss. There are some people, members of The Flat Earth Society, who believe that. They reject the new evidence about our planet. How many of you think the earth is flat? I’m not seeing any raised hands, so I assume we all have accepted the new evidence, the new information that most of humanity that ever lived, never knew; that the earth is round.

It’s also in the last few hundred years that we humans, thanks to the hard work of scientists, learned that many diseases are caused by tiny creatures we can’t see with the naked eye, microbes called germs; bacteria and viruses. Anton van Leeuwenhoek discovered germs with the invention of the microscope in 1675. By the early 1860’s Louis Pasteur had proven that germs cause disease.

Yet almost 200 years after the discovery of germs Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse University in France made the statement in 1872, “Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction!”

Sometimes it takes us a long time to absorb and adjust to new information, and in spite of new evidence some humans will insist on clinging to the old ways of thinking and believing.

So this Christmas service I’m going I offer you a gift of information I’ve acquired through extensive study and research over the past two years. What you do with this gift is entirely up to each of you. What happens to me, as your Pastor, will be up to our board of deacons.

In my passion to lead souls to Jesus, I have constantly sought to discover ways of persuading people that Jesus is the Son of God who was born of a virgin and died for our sins.

Since I was a young child I always assumed there was abundant historical proof of the life of Jesus. So two years ago, I set about to find that proof. Surely this would not be difficult, and I imagined that I would enjoy finding so much evidence.

After two years of research and consulting historical scholars at some of the finest theological universities in the United States and Israel, I was stunned not to find historic proof of Jesus.

I was astounded to learn that in the entire first century, not a single historian, religious scholar, politician, philosopher or poet mention Jesus. His name never occurs in a single inscription and is never found in a single piece of correspondence. The first story about his life by Mark wasn’t written until 70 years after his alleged death. Bible scholars don’t really know who actually wrote that first story. The other gospel stories were copied, expanded and embellished from the Mark story.

How could this be? Jesus would have been the premier rock star of his era! He caused political unrest and disturbance. He was said to be a miracle worker and a superhuman! Massive crowds of thousands came to see and hear him. A crowd of five thousand would compare to a crowd of a million today. His fame was said to spread everywhere in the region!

Historians were busy recording so much of what was happened in that region during the time of Jesus. Yet something is very wrong with this picture. Something is very amiss when not one shred of evidence can be found by the best of scholars that the heralded events of Jesus’s life ever really occurred.

However, once during my search there was a moment when I was filled with excitement! I found a brief reference

made by a Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, about Jesus, called the Messiah, who was crucified and rose from the dead.

I was so thrilled at my discovery! At last something! I was so relieved and felt vindicated about my years of preaching. Hallalujah!

Then a dark cloud began covering my blue sky. As I studied more, I learned this was a forgery and wasn’t in Josephus’ original writings. No wonder the insertion was completely out of context and at odds for what Josephus, a Jew, would write.

Oh the heartbreak of knowledge! The forgery was inserted into later copies of Josephus’ writing in the third or fourth century when the Catholic Church realized the glaring problem that there was no historical evidence of Jesus. None.

This information and evidence has shaken my faith in the gospel story I’ve been preaching and teaching to you my congregation, my brothers, sisters and dear friends I love. I would not right for me to withhold this information from you. You are decent people seeking the truth and you deserve this gift. I was as shocked to learn this information, as I see you are. I can tell by the looks on your faces right now.

But would you rather I not be forthright and honest with what I, to my own immense consternation, have discovered? So I’m presenting the evidence of my research as a Christmas gift of honesty, full disclosure and transparency.

We all know the scripture that says,

“The truth shall set you free.”

My gift today is truth. After we sing our closing hymn and have the benediction, I expect I will meet with our board of deacons.

Let us stand and sing.

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Bio: Mason LaneI was ordained by the Christian Faith Church Pentecostal in Mishawaka Indiana.As a credulous child I was raised Christian fundamentalist Baptist. I later became glory-shouting Pentecostal. I ceased believing in the irrational and supernatural at age 30, thanks primarily to reading the “bible”, and thinking simultaneously. At the time of my de-supernaturalizing, I was General Manager of WHME-FM radio station in South Bend, Indiana, a Christian radio station and Pastor of Christian Faith Church in Mishawaka, Indiana. I resigned both positions and moved to Phoenix Arizona where I became dean of students at DeVry University.

I’m still a person of faith. My faith is now in Science, Nature, Love, Friends, Family, Music, Humor, Art, US Constitution, 5,000-year-old Golden Rule, and Separation of Religion and State.

>>>>>Photo Credits: “Josephus Antiquitates Iudaice” by Brother Maciej and Master of the Lady with Unicorn – Andrzej Kłossowski (1990). Biblioteka Narodowa w Warszawie: zbiory i działalność. Biblioteka Narodowa. ISBN 83-70090-44-3. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Josephus_Antiquitates_Iudaice.jpg#/media/File:Josephus_Antiquitates_Iudaice.jpg

“Louis Pasteur, foto av Félix Nadar Crisco edit” by Nadar – File:Louis Pasteur, foto av Félix Nadar.jpg. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Louis_Pasteur,_foto_av_F%C3%A9lix_Nadar_Crisco_edit.jpg#/media/File:Louis_Pasteur,_foto_av_F%C3%A9lix_Nadar_Crisco_edit.jpg

“Wüger Kreuzigung” by Gabriel Wüger – http://www.engen.de/toparchiv/ausstellung/beuron.htm. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:W%C3%BCger_Kreuzigung.jpg#/media/File:W%C3%BCger_Kreuzigung.jpg