The Slippery Silver Tongue of Sophistry and Bullshit

Pastor, Am I a Christian?  By NICHOLAS KRISTOF

Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and best wishes for 2017! My Christmas Daycolumn wrestles with the question of faith and science — and, to be more precise, whether I’m a Christian. My column takes the form of a conversation with Rev. Tim Keller, the evangelical pastor and best-selling author, in which I grill him about why one should believe in miracles, the virgin birth, or the Resurrection, and about whether one can combine a deep admiration for Jesus’s teachings with skepticism about the supernatural. It’s a tough but respectful conversation between two people who see faith very differently. Read!

Oh, and that guy up there? Yup, he’s definitely a Christian (the guy on the right anyway). I greatly admire Pope Francis and I met him earlier this month at the Vatican as part of a Time conference. I think he resonates so much with so many of us because — even if you disagree with him on family planning or ordination of women — he so clearly is not about himself but about others. He’s a moral voice at a time when we don’t have many.

Speaking of moral voices, do you remember the My Lai massacre of 1968, in which American troops massacred hundreds of Vietnamese civilians? One of the heroes of that incident — an 18-year-old American soldier named Larry Colburn who threatened to shoot any American who continued the massacre — has died at the age of 67. He and a couple of other Americans risked their careers and perhaps their lives by interjecting themselves between the American shooters and the Vietnamese women and children being slaughtered, and by later reporting the massacre. It’s a story of doing the right thing by standing up to leaders determined to do the wrong thing, which may be relevant today. Here’s Colburn’s obituary.

I recently published, a bit tongue in cheek, my list of my least-read columns of 2016, basically the ones that even I fell asleep reading. They were overwhelmingly about social justice issues, from women’s rights to homelessness to South Sudan. Some readers asked which were my best-read columns, and you can see in this list of the 100 most-read articles in The Times in 2016. Three of mine make the list, one about whether Donald Trump is a racist, one about him as groper-in-chief, and one confession of liberal intolerance on university campuses. Basically, hot button issues get lots of readers, and columns on neglected topics get, well, neglected.

Tulsa, Okla., is becoming a center for experimentation in fighting poverty, thanks to the philanthropy of the billionaire George Kaiser. Cassidy McDonald, my 2016 win-a-trip winner, wrote about Kaiser and his beta city in a great piece for my blog.

If you’re a university student, remember to apply for my win-a-trip contest to accompany me on a reporting trip in 2017. The deadline is coming up in early January. I think I may go to Liberia on the trip, and perhaps Sierra Leone and Guinea, looking at education, health and sexual violence.

And now here’s my Christmas column about faith and science today, and what to make of miracles like the Resurrection or virgin birth. I think it’s really important to maintain a dialogue across the “God Gulf” and I really appreciate Rev. Keller’s willingness to engage my tough questions. And to all of you readers, whatever your faith or lack thereof, Happy Holidays!