Edwin Eugene Aldrin, Jr. is better known to the American public as Buzz. He is the second man to have walked on the moon on July 20, 1969, and the last surviving member of the Apollo 11 mission. At the age of 94 – and married for the fourth time just last year – this man has many stories to tell! One of those stories nearly got him arrested.
Bart Winfield Sibrel is a conspiracy theorist infatuated with proving that the landing on the moon was a hoax perpetrated by NASA and the government. The astronauts and everyone involved are merely pawns in the great deception.
Through the years, Sibrel has confronted several astronauts including “Neil Armstrong, Alan Bean, Eugene Cernan, and Edgar Mitchell (where Sibrel posed as filmmaker associated with the History Channel).”1 On September 9th, 2002, Aldrin was confronted by Sibrel “outside a Beverly Hills hotel he was lured to on the pretext of being interviewed for a Japanese children’s TV show. The footage shows Sibrel confronting Aldrin and demanding he swear on the Bible he walked on the Moon, calling the former astronaut out for being a “thief, liar and coward”.
“You’re the one who said you walked on the Moon when you didn’t,” Sibrel says. “Calling a kettle black …”2
“Will you get away from me?” an irate Aldrin warned the man in the incident caught on video. Sibrel responded, “You’re a coward and a liar and a … ”
“Aldrin, then 72, socked Sibrel in the jaw, right when he finished the sentence with “thief.” Aldrin is also reported to have been aggressively poked with [a Bible].3 The video of the incident can be seen at https://repo.library.stonybrook.edu/xmlui/handle/11401/8438.
“On the day following the altercation, a statement from a lawyer for Aldrin described the “6-foot-2, 250-pound Sibrel forc[ing] Aldrin up against a wall and refus[ing] to let him leave”, thus making the case for self-defense. Aldrin made the case to police that he had been attempting to defend “himself and his stepdaughter, who was with him at the time”.
“Sibrel gave the tape to the police, apparently alleging assault…Shortly after the altercation, Sibrel told the St. Petersburg Times: “[Aldrin] has a good punch. It was quick, too. I didn’t see it coming.”
“… since “witnesses testified that Sibrel had provoked [Aldrin], assault charges against the former astronaut were dropped”. Police either did not file or dropped charges based on Aldrin’s lack of a prior criminal record, witness accounts of Sibrel’s having drawn Aldrin to the hotel under false pretenses, Sibrel’s aggressiveness before the punch, and his having declined to seek medical attention and sustaining “no visible injury”.4
The human, fleshy side of me applauds Aldrin. We can sense his anger over being called a perpetrator of deceit, a liar, and a thief (no clue is given as to what Aldrin allegedly ‘stole.’) However, the Christian side of me knows that we can’t go around poking people in the jaw who annoy us or make false accusations against us.
We must live by a higher, Godly standard.
Peter wrote in 1 Peter 2:11-12, “Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; (12) Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation.” He went on to say in 1 Peter 3:15-16, “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear: (16) Having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ.”
Jesus was falsely accused right up to the crucifixion. Never once did He retaliate or strike out. He was “like a lamb to the slaughter.” And Jesus left us an example to follow.
When we are tempted to go all Buzz Aldrin on someone, let’s look to Jesus as a much better and perfect example. Let’s follow His instructions given in Matthew 5:38-39. “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: (39) But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_Sibrel
2https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/world/moon-walker-buzz-aldrin-punches-conspiracy-theorist-bart-sibrel-ng-b881265392z
3https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/buzz-aldrin-punches-moon-landing-conspiracy-theorist-bart-sibrel
4https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_Sibrel
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