Gospel truth or legends?

And someone on Answers.org wrote, "As Christians we are commanded ... to be people of truth. When we pass on an accusation ... that is false, we are, whether we know it or not, lying. We are setting a false witness about Christianity — that Christians are bigots who don't care about the truth."

Buhler, an ordained Foursquare Gospel minister, likens urban legends to apocryphal stories of healings and miracles that circulate in his Pentecostal church.

He became interested in urban legends by way of the e-rumor about scientists drilling deep into the Earth and encountering human screams and high temperatures.

The rumor started when a national Christian talk show host read a letter from a man in Norway describing the "discovery" of hell. Buhler called the Norwegian, who immediately admitted that his letter was a hoax. The man added that Buhler was the first who had bothered to check.

"So many stories turned out not to be credible," Buhler said, yet believers passed them on anyway, thinking it might boost others' faith.

"But God doesn't need any help being real," he said. "If you do hold out for what's true and has integrity — say, somebody's life really turned around through faith in Christ — you'll find it, because it's real."

Kevin Lewis, an assistant professor of theology and law at Biola University, a Christian school near Los Angeles, uses urban legends as fodder in classes on legal evidence, apologetics and epistemology. He reminds students that if Christians are to "witness" to others, they must be credible witnesses.

"Urban legends offer a great lesson on why people accept things that don't have any factual basis," he said. "And, unfortunately, there are a lot of reasons why Christians believe baloney."

Modern churches aren't catechizing believers as thoroughly as in the past, he says, leaving many Christians with a superficial understanding of church history and theology. And many tend to accept beliefs from an authority, such as a pastor, without understanding the basis of those beliefs.

Urban legends, Lewis said, can serve as object lessons for discussion of questions like, "How do you know anything is true?" and, "Why should I believe Billy Graham rather than Jim Jones?"

And those questions have serious implications.

"You're cult bait if you don't use your mind," he said.

Web sites like Snopes.com and TruthOrFiction.com typically debunk myths by providing links to credible sources, such as articles in major newspapers. These sources don't offer absolute proof, Lewis said, but they are more trustworthy than, say, an e-mail circulating on the Internet that originated with who-knows-whom.