“Who do you think I am?”

Do the signs around campus and the advertisements in this paper really want me to answer?

I think anyone who is convinced they have found the One and Only Truth, and declares it, is creepy and possibly schizophrenic.

But I’m not supposed to think about the group organizing this campaign. The Campus Crusade for Christ, in a quest for converts, wants to know what I think about Jesus.

Mostly, I don’t. I think he’s probably dead and decomposed and any extraordinary claim to the contrary requires extraordinary evidence. I don’t think he should have been crucified, but that’s because I think no one should be nailed to a piece of wood.

God? I don’t think there’s any evidence so I try not to believe anything. If the Sky Father’s around, He seems to like His privacy.

However, I don’t care what anyone else thinks about Him so long as it doesn’t involve war, burnings at the stake, dead doctors or someone preaching to me.

I do not want to hear the good news. First off, a widely known bronze-age book is not news. Second, the idea of a “crusade” makes several personal portions of my anatomy retract and pucker.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Crusades. The Crusades were a medieval quest to bring the glory of God back to the holiest of cities, establish His kingdom on Earth and to display His infinite mercy by hacking, slashing, robbing, raping and generally kicking the shit out of the people who believed in a slightly different God. While the Christian soldiers were up, they massacred some Jews in Europe and took the raping/pillaging thing on tour to a few cities in Italy.

The Campus Crusade for Christ doesn’t quite have the same flair. To date, no long swords. But it did bring us the “Do you agree with Glenn?” campaign, which was quite enough. This year, Jesus’ teaser campaign is “Who do you think I am?”

Bill Bright, an evangelical preacher, founded the Campus Crusade for Christ 40 years ago. His mission is simple: convert as many students as possible into an army of the faithful, spread the Good News, and smile smugly at the unbelievers because they’re going to boil in a lake of offal and sulfur.

Bright is not a Luddite. Computers are another way of spreading the word and modern advertising is fine in His eye.

When the Bible talks about the Lord working in mysterious ways, it wasn’t ruling out an advertising campaign that hawks Jesus like Burma Shave.

“It is our prayerful objective to help take the gospel to over six billion by the year 2000,” Bright writes online, “with at least one billion receiving Christ and one million churches being planted.”

Why?

Once everyone has heard the word, it will be time for the final judgement. Bright is pretty sure that once the Great Commission is fulfilled, he’ll be sitting on a cloud, surrounded by clean-cut virgins and chuckling at Scientific American subscribers.

Campus Crusade for Christ members, according to their online literature, believe everyone needs to believe. The Bible is the beginning and the end of truth; it is “infallible and completely inspired.” Disagreement is not encouraged and the line for hell forms to the right of the Pope, Darwin and columnists. Those people are the enemy in “spiritual warfare.”

When the Campus Crusade at Berkeley held its “Do you agree with …” week, some people did not want to be saved and thought the suggestion was rude.

“Spiritual Warfare was rampant during the week, which was encouraging to us as it was confirmation that the outreach had eternal significance,” the Berkeley group wrote. “By Thursday, we could feel the difference between the feeling of oppression at our table on our main plaza and the feeling of freedom inside the Christian house just off campus where we met to pray. … It is important to remember that there will be all types of responses from people and Satan will do his best to keep the outreach from being effective.”

Yeah, Satan has a real thing about outreach.

And God, at least their God, has a thing about science.

Science tries to find things out. It asks tough questions and doesn’t take anything on faith. As far as science is concerned, only something testable is truth. When it comes to the God hypothesis, science doesn’t think there’s any evidence one way or the other and the burden of proof falls on the believers.

Those who think they have the Truth resent this a bit. “What, this old book isn’t enough? But it says it’s right!”

Occasionally, the believers try to produce something for science to examine. Faith healing, for instance. Scientists insist on having control over the experiment and, after analyzing the data in their unholy science caves, say faith healing works as well as a sugar pill or somebody else’s God.

Scientists are goddamn well not going to be chuckling with the virgins.

Neither is the Daily Nexus’ campus editor, Eric. Eric has one of those Darwin versions of the Christian fish symbol on his car. Actually, he has several of the Darwin fish. Christians, hoping to save Eric and his vehicle from eternal damnation and engine rattle, keep ripping the fish off of his truck. And Eric keeps putting them back on.

I agree with Eric.

Brendan Buhler was very disappointed to find out his gin is not considered holy juniper water. Up until the Rapture, “Black Box” will appear every Thursday. Praise be.