The Famous Bear E-mail Forward
I get a lot of e-mails from Christians. One e-mail forward that I get often is a Christian idea of a joke at the expense of atheists. Stop me if you heard this one:
An atheist was walking through the woods.
‘What majestic trees!’
‘What powerful rivers!’
‘What beautiful animals!’He said to himself.
As he was walking alongside the river, he heard a rustling in the bushes behind him. He turned to look. He saw a 7-foot grizzly bear charging towards him.
He ran as fast as he could up the path. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the bear was closing in on him.
He looked over his shoulder again, and the bear was even closer. He tripped and fell on the ground. He rolled over to pick himself up but saw that the bear was right on top of him, reaching for him with his left paw and raising his right paw to strike him.
At that instant the Atheist cried out, ‘Oh my God!’
Time Stopped.
The bear froze.
The forest was silent.As a bright light shone upon the man, a voice came out of the sky. ‘You deny my existence for all these years, teach others I don’t exist, and even credit creation to cosmic accident. Do you expect me to help you out of this predicament? Am I to count you as a believer?’
The atheist looked directly into the light and said, ‘It would be hypocritical of me to suddenly ask you to treat me as a Christian now, but perhaps you could make the BEAR a Christian?’
‘Very Well,’ said the voice.
The light went out. The sounds of the forest resumed. And the bear dropped his right paw, brought both paws together, bowed his head & spoke:
‘Lord bless this food, which I am about to receive from thy bounty through Christ our Lord, Amen.’
The morals of the story are that there are no atheists in the foxhole. When an atheist believes that he will die, he falls on his knee to God. Atheists are prideful and can’t admit that they are wrong even with clear evidence. Being a Christian means that one is virtuous and good.
The irony of this little tale is that the character of God in the Bible actually does use bears as a weapon to kill people… children no less. This e-mail forward was probably inspired by the story in II Kings 2:23-24. But that story was not really funny and had questionable moral value. So some Christian probably took that story and did a re-write.
The funny thing is that some Christian thought that he could improve on God’s divine tale and that he actually did. This story of the Christian bear maybe stupid, but it is better than God’s version in which two bears slaughter 42 kids for making fun of someone’s bald head.
As far as humor goes, I think I have to give this one to God though. The story in II Kings is much funnier but mainly because it is meant to be serious. I mean really, “Go up, thou bald head.” That insult alone is hilarious.
