Faith versus Facts: The Charles Manson Addition

"How about my friends? Can they bring knives?"

Recently Facebook people have been sending around these memes about religious stuff. Okay, it's not a recent thing. Some people ALWAYS do this.  The worst part is that several of the people I know who post these things are friends with each other, so I get multiple copies of Doe Eyed Hippie Jesus holding his hand out to me with the caption "Share if you love me. Scroll past me if you want to burn in Hell." Or, you know, some variation of that.

Yesterday, someone posted a picture of Charles Manson with the "So I have a place in your home?" guilty-guilt caption. I paused for a moment because I KNEW it was Manson and wondered if the person who posted it knew. I'm guessing they did not because their comments were all religious and prayerful. I posted the image on my page to tell people it was Charles Manson (no one wants him in their home) and for the most part, things seemed to be fine.

I'm guessing that this started as someone's joke. And it is a good joke. I think this is one of his official early prison pics. I'm not quite sure about that. I suppose someone, for just a second, might think it was Jesus. If they squinted and had no concept of the difference between paintings and photographs? Let's face it, during Manson's time, there were a lot of guys who had the Jesus Look going on. The picture is clearly a black and white photo, though. I have no idea how anyone could mistake this for Jesus.

When I got home today, I realized I was wrong. Someone (who wasn't a close friend and has now been blocked) sent me a nasty private message saying they didn't like how smug and snide I was about this picture. They explained they were a Christian and they could see Jesus in any way they chose to see Him and I had no right to dictate that or make fun of it.

Okay?

See, to me, this is a classic example of the problem between having faith and having facts. If I have a quarter in my fist and ask you what kind of coin it is, you can believe as much as you want and as hard as you want that it's a dime, but that does not change the fact that it's still a quarter. When I open my hand and show you the quarter, I'm not oppressing you or dismissing your faith . . . I'm just showing you what the item really was. Your faith has nothing to do with it. You can't make quarters turn into dimes and you can't make Charles Manson turn into Jesus.

Jesus with the Roman Guards . . . or something.