Now, if you've been a part of one of our churches for a while, you've probably heard me say something along these lines before.

But an argument could be made, and we're not going to make the argument today, but an argument could be made that Christianity, all of Christianity, really rises and falls on this simple idea that the Gospels, Matthew, Martin, Luke, and John, the four accounts of the life of Jesus, that Matthew, Martin, Luke, and John are reliable accounts of actual events. In other words, if Matthew,

Martin, Luke, and John are actually telling us a true story about Jesus, then Jesus rose from the dead.

And if Jesus rose from the dead, then what he claimed about himself can be trusted and game on and

off we go. And of course, the gospel writers, Matthew, Martin, Luke, and John are our earliest, and

most people would argue, are really our only window into the life and the teaching of Jesus.

Of course, the question is, how do we know if the gospels are reliable accounts of actual events?

And that's actually the question, if you're kind of skeptical of Christianity,

you know, please don't measure Christianity by all the Christians you've met or the version of

Christianity you were raised in. This really is the issue. And of course, the question is,

how do we know if something, an ancient document is a reliable document? And one of the criteria,

one of the criteria used to determine if an ancient

document is actually reliable is referred to in this kind of academic, but it's pretty interesting,

I think, is called the criterion of embarrassment. This is actually a thing. And the logic goes

something like this. I'm going to give you a long sentence than a short sentence. The logic of

the criterion of embarrassment goes something like this. I'm going to give you a long sentence than a short sentence. The logic of the criterion of embarrassment goes something like this. A historical account is deemed likely to be true

if the account is embarrassing to the author or to the character, an author is attempting to cast in a

positive light. In other words, somebody might make up a story to make somebody look better than they are or to further or advance the story that's not true.

But an author isn't going to fabricate a story that actually makes the character they're trying to elevate look stupid or look like they're disorganized or look foolish or look like they unnecessarily failed.

An author would have, this is the thing, an author would have no reason

to fabricate something that undermines the agenda of what they're writing. Or to say it the opposite

way, the short version is simply this. If an account is embarrassing, it's probably true. It's likely

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