Christians - What would you do if it were discovered Jesus never existed?

[vorlon13]

I'll cite how the Mormon's are handling their own problems with their church's history;

They release information in small dribbles at looooong intervals.  Clearly, if you dump too much truth about old conniving Joe Smith all at once, you're going to stir up a shit hemorrhage.  If that information dribbles out over 100 years, the church continues along just fine although there is a risk of outsiders (and the infrequent disgruntled insider)  keeping track of all the dirt and accumulating it, and releasing a large heap of it all at once.  Like the Tanners did.

You can discourage folks in  the pews from considering the implications of the released information too.  There is a phrase in Mormonism that keeps coming up in regards to church teachings, rules, dogma, strictures and edicts; the thinking has already been done.  See how easy that is?  Repeal permission to keep multiple wives, allow blacks to hold the priesthood, etc.  No one asks why there was a change, whether the church was in Error before, or if the church is in Error now simply because, obviously, all that has been worked out by the higher ups, already.

You can also 'indemnify' the pew warmers from the 'remote' possibility of official church 'Error'.  Just assure the sheeple if they follow a stricture, tenant or belief in good faith, God will allow for that if the church is actually promulgating a mistake.  God values the obedience more than perfection in observance of the actual rules.

Show trouble makers the door, but don't continue making a big deal of it.  For instance, many/most of the early witnesses to the Book of Mormon and various other issues were eventually excommunicated by the church hierarchy.  The church doesn't keep announcing so and so was excommunicated, but they will still keep listing him as a witness in the front of the Book of Mormon.  They can have it both ways by doing it this way.  Troublemaker is gone, and they are still apparently a witness to the gold plates, angels, miracles, whatever is needed.

Change the church history.  Inconveniently, Joe Smith made some incorrect prophecies, they are ignored or changed, and some prophecies that would have been really convincing had they been made prior to whatever an  event was, were simply written up later and back dated.

Trot out the apologists to say things like, "Well, if you could prove Joe Smith was convicted in the state of New York for money digging and swindling people, you would have disproved Mormonism".  And then when such proof is found, deemed incontrovertible, and presented to the church, the apologist never mentions that topic again. And the church continues.



So, if a Christian church was digging in a mid east archaeological site, or rooting around in their archive and found something or several somethings that disproved Christianity, I think it is clear, there would be many, many ways of handling the problem, and the members aren't ever going to get their panties in a knot.  The Mormons have conveniently issued more than enough paperwork over the years to easily have emptied their churches and caused the peons to rise up and burn all their edifices to the ground, but they have diluted it over 18 decades so far, and damn few in the church outside of the hierarchy have ever stood back and absorbed it all at once. Christians can control information in house as well as the Mormons can. And it's easy to blame outsiders for all manner of problems and motivations regardless of what they nail to the door of the church.

Here at AF, I note the christers get a pretty rough ride, and I accumulate all the arguments made against their positions.  The christers never look at the big picture, however.  You might get one to admit a minor defeat in a single skirmish, but they will never look over the entire mass of findings against them all at once, because if they do, they will come to our side.

It's how the game is played.