Malcolm Cutchins: Those who misrepresent God are closing the doors to truth

Doors play an extremely important part of each of our lives. Every home has a few; every car has two or more (except for NASCAR ones).
They provide entry, or attempt to deny it. They are usually where “a welcome mat” lies, but they also provide security against those who would harm us.

We don’t know the detail of why Lauren Burk’s car door failed to protect her last week, but we all know the disastrous consequences of the aftermath.

The door to Room 204 in Norris Hall at Virginia Tech provided a partial delay to that demented killer, soon to be one year ago. On one side was the killer (Seung Hui Cho) intent on murder. On the other side that day was 76-year-old Engineering Science Professor Liviu Librescu. In one account, the professor “shouted for his students to kick out the window screens and jump for safety as he used his body to block the door. As many as 15 students were saved” before the murderer “(shot) him through the door.”

Jonathan Turley in writing about the incident describes this bullet-ridden classroom door as a symbol that “perfectly illustrates the divide between good and evil …”

Now, Auburn University and the University of North Carolina have experienced this divide in extremely evil and cowardly acts against young co-eds.

Soon after the Virginia Tech tragedy, a poster/sign with a large VT logo was sent from Auburn to that campus with the title “We stand with you in Prayer.” Signed by hundreds of Auburn faithful, at the bottom was “from the AU family.” The poster appeared on both the AU and VT Web sites for a while and since has appeared in two national publications. One was Parade Magazine just this past January. The other was in Decision Magazine of June 2007 in the article, “Is Death the Final Word?”

There is a new book with another meaningful door. Chuck Colson & Harold Fickett have written “The Faith: What Christians Believe, Why They Believe it, and Why it Matters.”

On the cover there are steps leading to a partially closed door still with some light shining through the opening.

The door is representative of our Western, God-based, culture, a door that both secularists and radical Islamists want to shut and replace with their different worldviews.

There have been unprecedented attacks against God and against Christianity by aggressive atheism in the last couple of years. Books by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Chris Hedges have been very profitable through their false claims that too many of a gullible public have bought into. As just one example, Harris makes all kinds of false claims about Christians and slavery. That’s especially unfair because it was primarily Christians who brought an end to slavery.

These authors promote the lie that Christians are trying to “create a government run by the Church,” a claim that Colson (and I) answer with a resounding, “That’s absurd.” The actions of the Phelps funeral protest group from Kansas are absurd as well, completely misrepresenting true Christianity.

Colson’s book sets the record straight to offset many of the claims of this anti-God parade of authors. Of course, those who misrepresent are pushing to close the doors of truth all the time, even at the expense of helping evil to triumph. The stakes are high.

Dr. Malcolm Cutchins is an emeritus professor of engineering of Auburn University and writes a column for the Opelika-Auburn News.