Who Is Gullible?

I was talking to a co-worker yesterday about spiritual matters and he asked me about the appearances of Mary on interstate underpasses and tortillas. Now I do believe that such things could happen, but excuse me if in many cases, I don’t just turn skeptical. He told me that he was skeptical also.

Then he made an interesting comment. He told me though that there would be some religious people out there who would just believe anything and not bother to check and be bought in by every hoax. I had to agree with that, but then I started mulling that over. Why did he say religious people?

Is this a trait of religious people or is it just a trait of people? Why do we mention religious people first off as if there’s a hidden implication that once you become religious (Whatever that means) then you will be more prone to be tricked by any half-baked idea that comes down the pipe?

Let us remember that the scientific world has had its share of hoaxes. Do we not remember Piltdown Man? How many PH.D.’s wrote their dissertations on Piltdown Man? Now years afterwards, what has the conclusion been? It turns out that Piltdown Man was a hoax.

How about the idea that the people until the modern times believed that the Earth was flat? This idea has been bounced around so much that people believe it’s true. Unfortunately, there’s not a shred of truth to it. They all knew it was a sphere and the way to do that is to just read them.

How about Galileo? We don’t get the truth in this story. This wasn’t a story about religion vs. science. It was a story about science vs. science. It was also a problem of ego vs. ego as both the Pope at the time and Galileo had huge egos and neither one would relent. Today though, it’s used as religion vs. science.

I’ve recently seen someone even using the account of Secret Mark. I pointed out that this was also shown to be a hoax and I’m still waiting for a reply from this individual. It’s my guess that I will be waiting. Anyone wanting to see the story behind this can read Lee Strobel’s “The Case for the Real Jesus.”

I could go on. The point is that the atheistic side has had its share of gullibility. Now I’m of the mindset that gullibility is not a good trait, but it especially isn’t one in Christians. We should be people of the truth. We should be willing to crack open books and check with experts and see what the truth is.

However, people are not gullible because they are religious. They are gullible because they are people and some of them just happen to be religious. Being a Christian should not mean you open your mind to everything out there and swallow it all. It should mean you seek out and believe that which is true.