CNN’s Don Lemon understands Christianity about as well as he understands anything else — which is to say, very little.
The cable host this week attempted to make a point about America’s founders and the fallen nature of man, but in doing so revealed his unfamiliarity with the Christian doctrine that Jesus Christ was a perfect man.
Amid his defense of the vandals who destroyed not only Confederate monuments but also statues of Ulysses S. Grant, abolitionist Hans Christian Heg, and even a monument to Spanish poet and victim of slavery Miguel de Cervantes, Lemon had this to say: “These are the conversations … that we should be having. And, yes, they are messy. And sometimes, people are not smart about which statues they take down. Fine.”
He continued: “Here is the thing: Jesus Christ, if that’s who you believe in, Jesus Christ, admittedly was not perfect when He was here on this earth. So why are we deifying the founders of this country, many of whom owned slaves? … They are not perfect. They are not perfect. We have to stop deifying them.”
Lemon is not wrong when he says we should not deify mere men, but it is near impossible to hear his point over the sound of his squeaky clown shoes.
As to whether Christians believe Jesus Christ was a perfect human being, that has not been a serious question for believers in more than 1,500 years.
In the Bible, simply look to 1 Peter 2:22, “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth”; Hebrews 5:9, “and having been made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him”; Hebrews 7:26, “For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens”; Hebrews 7:28, “For the law appoints as high priests those who are subject to weakness, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect forever”; and 1 Corinthians 15:22, “for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ”, which presents the Son of Man as the anti-Adam, or the opposite of fallen.
The creed of St. Athanasius also calls Christ “Perfect God, Perfect Man.” Moreover, in A.D. 451, the Council of Chalcedon declared of Christ’s nature:
And just because Lemon says Christ was “admittedly” not perfect, I should point out that there is no tradition that I am aware of and no scriptural citation that has Him declaring, “Hey, I am only human!”
All of this is a roundabout way of saying: Don Lemon is a great fool. A perfect fool, even.
