Stephen Baldwin Would Rather His Daughter Die than Lie About Jesus

Stephen Baldwin, “actor” and evangelist, is currently appearing on the British version of Celebrity Big Brother. He’s providing everyone with memorable soundbytes.

Like:

If we’re from apes, why are the apes still here? If we evolved from apes, they would have died out…

But this next one isn’t just stupid, it’s frightening:

If someone pointed a machine gun at my daughter and said: “Say Jesus doesn’t exist” and if she turned to me and asked: “What do I do?”, I’d say: “What have I taught you to do?” And she’d say: “Jesus absolutely exists.” And I’d see her in heaven.

Umm… so, in other words, if a crazy man wanted to kill his daughter, Baldwin would rather have her killed than have her tell what he believes is a lie about Jesus.

I know that soundbyte is supposed to show what a “good Christian” he is and how “faithful” he is (as if that’s a virtue)… but all it shows me is that he’s unfit to be a parent.

What would I tell my daughter to do if some axe-wielding Christian wanted her to say “God exists”?

I’d tell her to say, “God exists.”

Then, I’d tell her to kick the scary man in the balls and run the hell away.

…

It’s not the first time I’ve heard of Christians willing to die (or let someone else die) rather than (temporarily) lie about their beliefs.

Telling a lie in this situation isn’t taking away from what you do believe. It’s just the smart thing to do in a horrific situation. That’s just common sense. Say what the maniac wants to hear, placate him, and get out of the jam if possible.

You don’t win any martyr points when you act like a fool.

(via Black Woman Thinks…)

fritzy

“Umm… so, in other words, if a crazy man wanted to kill his daughter, Baldwin would rather have her killed than have her tell what he believes is a lie about Jesus.”

Don’t you know…better to die at the hands of a maniac and go to heaven to praise your invisible sky monster forever than to piss off the all merciful and loving sky monster and have him banish you to eternal punishment. After all, an omnibenevolent and omnicient god can neither understand nor tolerate a lie to save your own skin from death at the hands of a clearly deranged lunatic.

“I know that soundbyte is supposed to show what a “good Christian” he is and how “faithful” he is (as if that’s a virtue)… but all it shows me is that he’s unfit to be a parent.”

It does demonstrate what a “good xtian” he is. I think more and more people are starting to realize that a “good xtian” is often diametrically opposed to a “good person.”
Ron in Houston

You don’t win any martyr points when you act like a fool.

Yeah, crap Jesus can’t compare to 72 virgins.
PrimeNumbers

Or 72 white raisins.
JD

Well, if you really believe it, and you believe that recanting your faith means you don’t get to go to heaven yourself, what are you really supposed to do? At least it’s consistent, even if it is consistently insane.
J

This is actually a requirment of Orothodox Judaism (OJ). It is repeatedly emphasized in OJ that there are three things you should die for
1) Idolatry
2) Murder
3) Sex crimes
Samia

Is ‘heaven’ that place where god finally lets you off the hook from having to do all these strange things?
Neon Genesis

This reminds me of how when I was growing up as a Christian in my parents’ church, I often heard the Christians frequently teach us how if a murderer came into the church building and threaten us to either renounce our faith or die, we were supposed to be wiling to die for Jesus and be honest about our faith. One thing I’ve noticed though is that I haven’t heard them saying this any in recent years, so maybe they realized how insane this sounds.
Jamie

Body counts on a great scorecard.

Ha ha ha! My daughter’s dead, but at least Satan can’t count her among his minions… Aha ha ha! We win! PWN this Sataaaaaaan!
kenneth

-It’s not the first time I’ve heard of Christians willing to die (or let someone else die) rather than (temporarily) lie about their beliefs.-

Sadly, the most common situation is one where they are willing to sacrifice others and not themselves.
Not long ago, a woman let her child die from a disease while she prayed for a cure, yet a few months later she was in an emergency room to get herself treated for abdominal strain.
I can almost guarantee the same concept would occur with baldwin, if the guns pointed at her she should stand up for god, if at him he’ll readily proclaim anything he’s told to.
muggle

Um, even if you really believe, tell her to deny Jesus. She can get down on her knees and beg for forgiveness once she’s rescued or escaped. Isn’t that the way they say it works? That their Jesus always has his arms open wide to welcome back the wayward sinner?

Geeze!

Got to say it doesn’t surprise me when a Christian’s an unfit parent. Both my mother and my ex were Christian parents. Abusive assholes.

John LaRouquette (I probably fucked up the spelling of his last name even though I’m half French, sorry John, love ya) actually did a bit in reverse on his all too short-lived sitcom some years back. His character was Atheist and his wackadoodle coworker held a gun on him and made him pray. It was obvious that there was nothing sincere about that prayer. Only fault I found was nothing happened to her. He let it slide.
Richard Wade

Baldwin’s daughters will be 14 and 17 this year. I wonder how they feel privately about Dad aggrandizing himself at their expense with this hypothetical child sacrifice.

Gee, thanks Dad. Sure is great to know what you’ll give up to preserve your personal religious integrity. Like for instance, …me.
Sue D. Nymme

This reminds me of a conundrum I came up with some years ago. I’ve asked a few Christians, but none have come up with a decent answer.

Let’s suppose that you believe that, at this moment, your family is in a state of grace. They’ve just been to confession, or they have otherwise just prayed for and asked for (and received) forgiveness for their sins. Wouldn’t the kindest thing that you can possibly do at this point be to murder them?

They will be in Heaven. Yes, murder is a sin, a terrible sin, but you can ask Jesus for forgiveness, and He always forgives. You can take your chances that you will die later on in a state of grace.

I can’t find a reason why that would be immoral, from a Christian point of view.
Nora

Oh yeah, that’s sad but not at all surprising. We did a study on Cassie whoever, the girl who said she believed in Jesus at Columbine and got killed for it. There was even a book about it, “She Said Yes.” We were constantly challenged to think very hard about how we would answer that question. I always felt guilty because I knew there was no way I’d say I believed in him if someone was going to shoot me for it. I was clearly a terrible Christian and they’re probably glad to be rid of me.

Christians love martyrdom. It’s freaky.
Lagunatic

Christians love martyrdom but hate Islamic terrorists….. I’ll never get that.
hoverfrog

One of the stranger things about some Christians is that they see this as a good thing and that they see it as proof of their god’s existence. “Why would so many people die for Jesus if he wasn’t real?” they cry. “Because they believe something to be true doesn’t actually make it true” I reply. Do they listen though? do they hell.
Erp

Actually Cassie dying for her faith at Columbine appears to be an unsupported myth. Another girl, Valeen Schnurr, was asked, was shot, and survived. The sole surviving witness of Cassie’s death did not hear the supposed exchange.
Cafeeine

Why is that when I read the exchange, I see Baldwin saying “Well, honey.. you have two thugs threatening you. One is threatening to kill you, the other is threatening to give you eternal torment and suffering, but he also loves you. You know what to do…”
OBSirius

When I was a little girl, many years ago, I attended Sunday school. I remember one day the “teacher” told us a story about a group of children who were told to renounce their belief in Jeezus or die. She told us we should never deny Jeezus, and that death was a better alternative. Gave me nightmares for days. Little children should not be told dying for Jeezus is a good thing. Neither should anyone else, for that matter, but if Baldwin thinks this is something he needs to do, the next time someone puts the question to him he can take a stand if he wants.
Laura

Yeah, I remember watching those apocalypse movies, and knowing my parents would both martyr themselves and us kids rather than say they didn’t believe in Jesus. My mom said it would be REALLY hard, but she would have to do it. It was (and still is–I cannot IMAGINE doing that to my own daughter) actually pretty awful, but I know they meant it because they have sacrificed in some ways their relationship with my brother and me rather than even examine whether or not maybe my brother and I have some good reasons. But we’re just “rebelling”!

The concept is based on a verse in the Bible that says Jesus will deny in heaven who denies him on Earth. Guess St. Peter is burning in hell then!
Casimir

An interesting thing about Islam is that Islam actually allows adherents to lie about their faith in circumstances like that. IIRC, it’s in the hadith as opposed to the Koran itself, but they take the surprisingly sensible view that it’s ok for the Muslim to go on living rather than be forced to die for Allah’s glory.

What’s also interesting is the Christian critique of that position that I’ve seen. It’s: “Islam allows adherents to lie.” Full stop, omitting the part about how they’re only allowed to do it when their lives are in danger.
Buffy

He so doesn’t get my vote for father of the year. Psychopathic git of the year, though…..
Korinthian

Might as well give him a show on FOX.
kenneth

Actually casimir, muslims are allowed to lie to infidels. The reasoning is that the infidel is a godless reprobate (doesn’t matter if they have a god btw)and would never hold to their own agreement, therefore, an adherent of islam may lie to them because the infidel would just lie to gain advantage anyway.
inky

I remember going to youth group a few years after the Columbine tragedy and the youth minister told us a story about a girl at Columbine: One of the gunmen asked her if she believed in Jesus and she said “yes” then he shot her. It creeps me out that this old man seemed to be telling us kids that we should let ourselves be shot in that situation.
anothermike

Brother Alec had some father-daughter issues also. Then there’s super-xtian, Mel Gibson with his shenanigans, and all those funny-hair, funny-suit Sunday morning guys crowing away and making tons of bucks via naive believers. On the radio there have been many wackos getting poor folks to send them the green. Ah! Entertainment, death, religion, and other forms of consumer fraud; Not to mention the cause and effect of religion as it relates to war throughout history.
GJ

You’re right, Erp, that Cassie didn’t die for her faith at Columbine. How the myth was started, how it was perpetuated (even by those who knew it was a myth), and how it was eventually exposed as a myth has been nicely documented by Dave Cullen in his book ‘Columbine’.
Casimir

Actually casimir, muslims are allowed to lie to infidels. The reasoning is that the infidel is a godless reprobate (doesn’t matter if they have a god btw)and would never hold to their own agreement, therefore, an adherent of islam may lie to them because the infidel would just lie to gain advantage anyway.

[citation needed]

If you’re going to say something like that, you’ll need to cite your sources. I mentioned it was in the hadith earlier, here’s some background, apparently there are supporting verses in the Koran itself. I have yet to see anything that supports the idea that Muslims can just tell any bald-faced lie to infidels, but rather they can only lie in certain sensible situations.
Revyloution

Odd that his daughters shouldn’t lie about their belief in Jesus, but its perfectly fine to lie about evolution.

The double standard is almost too much.
hoverfrog

The Pilgrimage 22:30 So shun the filth of idols, and shun lying speech,

The Troops 39:60 And on the Day of Resurrection thou (Muhammad) seest those who lied concerning Allah with their faces blackened. Is not the home of the scorners in hell?

The Ranks 61:7 And who doeth greater wrong than he who inventeth a lie against Allah when he is summoned unto Al-Islam ? And Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.

The Quran says lying is bad, even about Allah.

On general principles I would agree that lying is not a good thing but because we’re not limited by Iron Age or medieval thinking we can be reasonable about the subject. We can apply moral rules to a situation and decide which is more appropriate. In my mind anything you say or do under the threat of death except perhaps killing an innocent is permissible. A live body gets to attempt to repair any harm done with their lies. A dead body doesn’t gain anything from the truth and has already lost everything of value.
Claudia

Well, speaking as a female scientist I don’t really think its a huge deal that there aren’t very many in the mosaic (Curie IS there, BTW). Many of the pictures are of paintings and its a simple sad fact that due to inequality the list of very notable female scientists in history is simply much much shorter than the list of male ones. We’re working on it 😉

I like the mosaic, especially the idea of it, but it could be much better. There simply aren’t all that many individuals used in it. Besides the usual changing of color scale to meet the needs of the picture (which I don’t pariticularly object to) if you look at it carefully you’ll see that many frames are repeated very often, sometimes right next to each other. Also, there are different pictures of the same individual (Darwin, Einstein, Dawkins and Newton, on cursory observation), and also a fair number of repetitions of the laeger picture of Sagan.

Again, love the idea, and goodness knows I couldn’t do this in a million years, but I think I’d add another 50 or so scientists to the mix and replace many of the “surplus” Dawkins, Einsteins, Newtons, Darwins, Watsons (couldn’t find Crick, BTW) and Dennetts.
Mark

We don’t need to waste time worrying about people who are willing to die for Jesus. All of us science minded folk know that the chance of facing that choice in real life is less than the chance of getting hit by lightning twice in the same spot and winning the mega lottery six times in a row. They will live long healthy lives telling everyone how brave they are. Also, everyone knows that actors are idiots. That’s why someone else has to write their lines for them. The real problem is the people willing to KILL for their religion.

Lets stay focused on the real problem, People!
Derek

Can’t say that I’m impressed with anything about this article, or the majority of the following comments…including this one.
Arctic Ape

I suspect Baldwin is just lying his ass about what he would do. Sure, some people might actually sacrifice their daughter (or themselves), but they must be rare compared to those who would say they would.

The history of Christian martyrdom is mostly a myth. But the religious culture still glorifies martyrdom in a manner that makes some people actually sacrifice their lives and many people sacrifice smaller things. I see it as a gross misexpression of human tribal loyality instinct.
sc0tt

My advice to the Baldwin girls: If your belief ever does start to fade – don’t tell Dad, because he values his religion more than he does your lives.
Flah

I may be off base, but I recall a recent guest on Bill Maher’s (?)show saying that the captured journalists Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig renounced Christ to survive were not Real Christians. Easy to sit on a couch and say what you’d do faced with that situation, isn’t it?

Xtian martyrdom is based on “sacred tradition” moreso than Biblical text: as Laura pointed out above, Peter denied Christ and was still the rock upon which the church was built. But as usual, folks like Baldwin don’t understand what they purport to believe in, and have created god in their own image.
Pepe Silvia

Bio-Dome was such a good movie though!
Tony

“Odd that his daughters shouldn’t lie about their belief in Jesus, but its perfectly fine to lie about evolution.

The double standard is almost too much.”

It seems that the Ninth Commandment is actually more of a guideline…
Noir the Sable

It looks like someone’s suffering from a case of the Shadrach-Meschach-Abednego syndrome, the classic Biblical tale of three people commanded to deny their god in Daniel 3 and bow down to Nebuchadnezzar’s giant golden statue — the three refuse and are summarily thrown into a furnace as punishment, where an angel keeps them from getting at all burnt. (So I payed attention during kindergarten sunday school before I realized it was mostly just pretty little stories.)

Anywho, I’m not so surprised, really.
Mark

Tony Wrote: “…The double standard is almost too much…It seems that the Ninth Commandment is actually more of a guideline…”

Good point, Tony!

Not only are so-called Christians ignoring the Ten Commandments but they are making up stuff that isn’t there. Its like they are sticking their thumb in gods eye when they add stuff such as new 11th commandment: ” God hats fags” How stupid do christians think God is to have completely forgotten to forbid homosexuality in the ten commandments? I can see God slapping his forhead right now saying “Doh!!!, I forgot that one!”

Likewise, I don’t see anywhere in the Ten Commandments where God forbids a believer from denying his existence in order to prevent a homicide. So how much trouble will you really get into with God when you are standing there on the judgment day and everyone sees that you lied about your faith (not specifically forbidden in the ten commandments) in order to stop a killing which is clearly forbidden by the Ten commandments?

You see, God knows what’s in your heart while Stephen Baldwin only knows what comes across your lips.

The problem is not with God or the Ten Commandments. The problem is Christens. They are stupid, arrogant, deceitful and completely selfish. In fact, those so-called “Christians” are not really Christians at all according to Matthew 7:22.

I’m willing to bet that most of us have never really met a real Christian because clearly you can’t become one by merely saying it with your voice, you must BELIEVE it in your heart.

and…. God knows if you are lying.

I would like to see more atheists stand up and challenge so-called Christians who are clearly ignoring the Ten Commandments. We should stop them from pretending that they are Christians when clearly they are not.
duhsciple

As a Christian, I plead, “Guilty!” to the charge of “being the problem.”

Is there a group or belief system I could become a part of that would be “innocent of being the problem”? I would join that group! Sadly, if I joined, then that group would no longer be “innocent.”