The argument is made that Christians best imitate Jesus by not taking offense at insults and attacks on their traditions and icons.

There are many reasons why this is false.

There is the obvious one that Jesus himself did not tolerate the desecration of the Temple.

He actively threw the money-changers out of its precincts, over-turned their tables, chased away their animals, and put them out of business.

Then, there is the invective Jesus used  – “serpents,” “devils,” “liars,” “hypocrites.”

Is this Jesus meek and mild?

No.

There never was a Jesus meek and mild.

That is a concoction of well-bred, middle-class Sunday School misses.

They cannot be blamed for knowing nothing about real men, but we can.

Jesus slept out in the open, with only stones for his pillow.

He went for days without food or sleep.

He preached and healed in sun and rain on the hills and on the lake-shore, in front of sweaty, restless crowds of thousands of peasants.

He worked and lived with illiterate fishermen and carpenters, who drank and swore.

He routinely castigated the lawyers and scribes and the powerful members of the Sanhedrin.

Indeed, the entire Gospel story is the story of the relentless persecution of Jesus by the religious “mafia” that had an iron grip on the spiritual life of the Judeans.

That was the iron grip that Jesus broke on the cross.

So, using Jesus as an excuse for our cowardice doesn’t work.

But there are other reasons.

As the symbols of a tradition are denigrated with impunity, they lose their power over the minds of the young.

Young people don’t yet have the experience or discernment to filter out the abuse and distortion.

The young go by what they are told, not so much in words as in deeds, by their elders and their peers.

When the adults around do not respond to the tidal wave of filth and abuse directed at the Christian tradition, the young do not take Christianity seriously.

They see it only as the butt of jokes. The punch-line of comedy routines.

Faith flourishes with physical persecution. The shedding of blood creates martyrs.

But faith is hard-pressed to survive Saturday Night Live and a moral martyrdom of unending, undefended humiliation.

Jesus Christ will survive it. So will his saints.

But the rabble who perpetrate this barbarism and the cowards who countenance it will not survive with their  humanity intact.