UFO Author and Jesus

A man named Lou Baldin has written a book that I am not going to purchase or read.  His premise is that Jesus and the story of Jesus was a hoax by the Jewish community at the time to make Christians the focus of Roman wrath instead of Judaism.  The hoax worked so well that eventually many people believed it and Christianity was named the religion of the Roman Empire.

I decided to do a little bit of research about Lou Baldin to see what his background was.  I was wondering if he was a disenfranchised theologian or someone promoting some other religion.  He wasn’t either.  He is primarily an author about UFOs.  

Okay, before you tell me that I am being narrow minded about UFOs I’m not really.  I’m pretty indifferent to much of the material about UFOs.  When I was in grade school I had everyone in my class very excited about the picture I took of an unidentified pie plate that I had tossed into the air.  I told everyone that I had taken that very exciting picture—with my 1964-1965 Commemorative World’s Fair camera.  The pie, a lemon pie, was mediocre, but my picture was pretty convincing and the story I wove was very good.  Even my teacher thought it was fun, with a smile on her face and the wink in her eye.

Which brings me back to Lou Balden.   For some bizarre reason I have a very difficult time taking a person seriously in the realm of theological thought when that author’s primary vocation has been writing about UFOs.  I say this not just because Lou Balden write about UFOs.  If Anthony Bourdain wrote a book questioning the existence of Jesus, I’d have comparable cautions.  Bourdain write about restaurants and food, I take him seriously.  About Jesus, not so much.  Bourdain, I actually do take seriously in his writings.  Balden.  Okay, I’ll be honest, I think he’s loopy.

I get tired of people writing about Jesus.  This may sound odd, but many of the people write about Jesus for some very unusual reasons.  Jesus often gets morphed into the image and likeness of and needs of the authors rather than people reflecting on who and what Jesus actually was and is.  It is just beyond the election and we all were serenaded with joyful demonstrations of Jesus being a good Republican and Jesus being a good Democrat.  I suspect that neither party would have really wanted Jesus to speak at their conventions.  Personally, I found many people to be offensive in their worldview of Jesus and their own political beliefs.  There is some flexibility in how one interprets the Bible and the words and deeds of Jesus.  There is some flexibility in terms of what we believe divinity means.  However, to completely morph Jesus into something or someone else completely new?  Not so much.

One person who reviewed Balden’s latest book said that Balden is getting away from UFOs and finally playing it straight as an author.  I beg to differ.  He’s still loopy.