Here's a fascinating dialogue between a Jew, a Catholic, and some biblical Christians.  It's only a five-minute read and very well worth it in my opinion.

 

Here's an excerpt:

 

DONAHUE: Thank you. Do these 16 million people believe Jews can go to heaven?

MOHLER: Southern Baptists, with other Christians, believe that all persons can go to heaven who come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And there is no discrimination on the basis of ethnic or racial or national issues, related to who will go to the Scriptures. It’s those who are in Christ. The defining issue is faith in Christ.

DONAHUE: So a good Jew is not going to heaven.

MOHLER: Well, all persons are sinners in need of a savior. Jesus Christ is the sole mediator. And the gospel, we are told by the Apostle Paul, comes first to the Jews and then to the gentiles. And salvation is found in his name, and in his name alone, through faith in Christ.

DONAHUE: So if a Nazi killed a Jew, a good Jew, practicing Jew, the Jew goes to hell, but the Nazi still has a chance to get to heaven. That would be the consequence of your position.

MOHLER: Well, the gospel is not just for the worst of us. The gospel is for all of us. And the scripture tells us the hard truth, that all have sinned. And that Nazi guard is going to be punished for his sin, and it will be judged as sin. His only hope would be the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. And the profound truth of the gospel is that the salvation that can come to any person who comes to faith in Christ-can come to that Jew who was killed and to that guard who does the killing. That’s the radical nature of the gospel.

 

I was listening last night to a debate between Messianic Jew Michael Brown and Rabbi David Blumofe.  It's a wonderful debate to listen to and ponder.  During the Q/A at the end, the concept was presented (in 'question form') of a Nazi mowing down innocent and pious Jews with a laugh and then praying to Jesus for salvation right before the Allies shoot him.  The emotional question (posed also by Donohue) is: how could such a person go to heaven, when the pious Jews he killed go to hell?  How could such extremely bad people go to a good destination, while the good people go to a bad destination?

 

Michael Brown answered the question very well - listen to the mp3 to hear his answer.   I have a slightly different thought in reply (and why the hypothetical story is deeply flawed in its presented form).  Actually two thoughts.

 

First, as Brown also mentioned, it is not enough to simply say that one believes in Jesus God's Messiah; one must actually believe (in one's heart or inner being).  True repentance is necessary, not just the saying of a magic saving formula.   This involves seeing oneself as God sees - i.e. agreeing with the Bible's portrayal of oneself as (not abstractly but personally) very very wicked and sinful, unable to please God, unable to ever earn one's salvation; in a word, doomed.  And it involves true heart belief (inevitably producing action as fire produces heat and smoke) that Jesus' death-on-my-behalf is my only hope.

 

Second, the story overlooks the fact that "ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."  When the Jew is said to be "innocent" and "pious" compared to the Nazi, that is a human comparison looking at outward appearances.  Compare the two next to each other, and sure - one is 'worse' than the other, outwardly speaking.  The Holocaust Jew has never killed someone, etc.

 

But has the Jew ever told a lie?  Has the Jew ever had an angry-without-cause or covetous thought toward someone?  Has the Jew ever felt lust?  Our sinfulness (and I am obviously including myself here) is usually buried beneath layers of piousness and outward showy good works... self-woven layers that everyone without exception enshrouds themselves with.

 

In response to the question of the Nazi and the Jew, the Bible says, "Hold on a second -  every single person on earth has performed despicable acts of abominable evil against God and his/her fellow man, every day.  Some people's acts are worse than others, but all have performed these acts.  All, moreover, are 'sinners by nature', 'unable to please God' even if they wanted to... even our best deeds are soaked with pride and a refusal to honor God as He deserves."

 

Once the Nazi and the Jew are seen as two wicked sinners who are both deserving of hell, the flaws of the emotional argument above become evident. A more accurate picture might be a homeowner peeling up his floor and finding two termites, one of whom is abusing the other, but both of whom are destroying his house.

 

And it so happens that the same emotional picture is often asked with respect to other religions - Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, etc.  The Christian answer is: "Although there are moral distinctions that can be made on a relative scale, we need to look at the absolute scale.  The truth is that both (and indeed every person on earth) deserve eternal destruction.  But the good news is that God has provided a way - belief in Jesus God's Messiah - by which whoever believes can be saved!  Jesus Christ underwent the eternal destruction that I deserved."

Here's an interesting quote from a debate between a christian and an atheist a few years ago, with my comments below:

Moderator: "You have said that there has been no adequate evidence put forth for God's existence. What for you personally would constitute adequate evidence for God's existence?"

Dr. Stein: "Well it's very simple; I can give you two examples. If that podium suddenly rose into the air five feet, stayed there for a minute, and then dropped right down again. I would say that was evidence of the super natural, because it would violate everything we know about the laws of physics and chemistry (assuming that there wasn't an engine under there or a wire attached to it--we can make those obvious exclusions). That would be evidence for a supernatural, violation of the laws, we could call it a miracle right in front of your eyes. That would be evidence I would accept. Any kind of a supernatural being putting in an appearance and doing miracles that could not be stage magic would also be evidence I would accept. Those are the two simplest ways. I would also accept any evidence that is logically noncontradictory and I have not heard any yet tonight, that hasn't been offered already."

Dr. Bahnsen: "Dr. Stein, I think, is really not reflecting on the true nature of atheism and human nature when he says, "All it would take is a miracle in my very presence to believe in God." History is replete with, first of all, things which would be, apparently, miracles to people. Now from an atheistic or naturalistic standpoint, I will grant in terms of the hypothesis, that that's because they were ignorant of all the causal factors and so it appeared to be miraculous; but that didn't make everybody into a theist. In fact, Scripture tells us there are instances of people who witnessed miracles who all the more hardened their heart and eventually crucified the Lord of Glory. They saw his miracles; that didn't change their minds. People are not made theists by miracles. People must change their world view; their hearts must be changed. They need to be converted. That's what it takes. And that's what it would take for Dr. Stein to finally believe in it. If this podium rose up five feet off the ground and stayed there, Dr. Stein would have, eventually--in the future--some naturalistic explanation. You see they believe things on faith, by which I mean they believe things they have not proven as yet by their senses.

I agree with Bahnsen here.  Specifically, even if Stein saw the podium rise into the air, it would (likely) go against his own belief structure to accept even this as proof of 'the supernatural', because it would be an argument "appealing to a god of the gaps."  If he wished his basic atheistic presuppositions to remain unchanged, he could simply say that the naturalistic explanation for the event had not yet been discovered but that the history of scientific discovery provided hope that such an explanation (for mysteriously levitating podiums) would eventually be discovered.

What do you think?

"...huge edifices of ideas such as positivism never really die. Thinking people gradually abandon them and even ridicule them among themselves, but keep the persuasively useful parts to scare away the uninformed."

John Angus Campbell, "The Comic Frame and the Rhetoric of Science: Epistemology and Ethics in Darwin's Origin," Rhetoric Society Quarterly 24, pp.2750 (1994).

 

Ha.  Yes indeed.

Case in point #1. 

"...born of a gorilla, not of a virgin."

Hmmm.

It is a "Bible for skeptics, seekers, and people of different faiths."

Lots of faiths, perhaps.  But not Christianity.

It's interesting that a book self-claiming to be postmodern and inclusive should so stridently insist that Christians and Jews have "got the story wrong" on origins (and on Jesus).

 

Also, "The first volume in the series – which will eventually present the Torah, Bhagavad Gita, Buddhist sutras, and Sufi mysticism – covers the Gospel of Mark."

Notice one particular "holy book" that's missing from the revisionist/parody-series?   I wonder why...

Here's some hilarious stuff from http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/uds-first-suck-up-to-darwin-contest/#comments , in honor of the 2009 bicentennial of Charles Darwin's birth and the sesquicentennial of his publication of "The Origin of Species".   Here are three of the 'odes'... the link has several more.   They're especially funny because they weave in a lot of real evolutionists' rhetoric, and expose some of the irony involved.  The second and third one especially bring out the problems atheism/naturalism/evolutionism has with reductionism and determinism... i.e. whether consciousness, morality, and free will are merely illusions or not.

 

 

Darwin lived in age of superstition and squalor yet rose above it to lead humanity into sunlight, into the promised land.

Darwin was abandoned by his mother at the age of three months after the insane King George III ordered the death of all infants named “Charles”, “Chas” or “Chuck”. The King’s daughter saw him floating in a basket amongst the bullrushes, however. His superior persona was obvious even at that age and she adopted him as her own.

Darwin grew into a comely man of great height and uncommon strength. He was known to be able to carry a full-grown cow upon his shoulders. Many respected accounts have him running a four-minute mile over a century before Roger Bannister. And in boots.

Still it is the prowness of his mind, not his body for which he is known.

Science was in a primative and unenlighted state before his birth. There was no telephone, eletric light, or aeroplane.

There was no motor car. Not a single luxury.

Darwin’s then theorized that whales might have descended from bears - swimming bears, that is — and all these things became possible.

The glories of the 20th Century would not have occurred without Charles, Chas, Chuck, Darwin.

Much has been written about Darwin, and much more will be.

It can never be enough.

He was a real man of genius. Charles Darwin, we salute you!

As we approach 200 years since Darwin’s birth, how can we go about gauging his importance to the world? When looking at the role of individuals in history, it can be easy to forget that history moves dialectically. Ideas are not the result of individuals, but material, historical processes. If Darwin had chosen a different profession in his youth, the idea of Evolution would have still emerged as a great force in the world.

Does this mean that we shouldn’t honor and revere Darwin? Absolutely not. Material reality chose Darwin to reveal the truth of evolution. By honoring Darwin, we honor the ultimate material reality. Conveniently, Evolution also molded man so that he needed heroes to look up to. Evolution, amazingly, built in a mechanism by which the idea of Evolution can spread. We can honor Darwin by celebrating him and reading his work. In doing so, we fulfill two important Evolutionary needs: the need for a hero and the need for truth about reality. Truth about reality, of course, helps humans advance as a species. Darwin’s work, by undoing the misguided superstitions that evolved for thousands of years, has done more to help us advance as a species than any other man in modern times

Listen my child and I shall tell you
Of the Prophet and His mighty works

The story begins eons ago,
Indeed in the very beginning

For in the beginning were the particles
And, lo, the particles were in motion

Eons passed
Galaxies formed
stars were born; burned for billions of years and died

And in all this time, the particles knew naught
Of themselves or anything else
There was no knowing, my child, for what can particles in motion know?

But slowly, ever so slowly, some of the burned out star stuff
Began to coalesce around a core and form a small planet

Further eons passed and still there was nothing but particles in motion
That knew nothing, for what can particles in motion know?

But then one day, in a warm pond on this little planet
Some of the particles received a surge of energy and
Formed self-replicating groups of bio particles

But still, the particles knew nothing; for what can particles in motion know?

Further eons passed.

And then, oh day of days, came a descendant
Of that first group of self replicating bio particles from that warm pond
And he looked to the heavens and declared “I know.”

This great and glorious amalgamation of bio particles we call the Prophet
Others call him Darwin.

But alas, Darwin did not really know, as he himself recognized
For what can particles in motion know?

I would call you “best beloved” but we know
That love is not real; it is just a chemical reaction in our brain.

So, I shall say, “one who is the object of
The illusory but nevertheless pleasurable chemical reaction in my brain
That I choose (alas, another illusion) to call love”
That is how we came to know that we do not know
For what can particles in motion know?

Quote from this book I'm reading:

"He who spends his life moving away from his treasures has reason to despair.  He who spends his life moving toward his treasures has reason to rejoice."

Very true...

Furthermore, I'd expand it a bit - it's not just "treasures" in a fiscal sense.  It's pleasures, joys, beauties, anticipations, loves, and special people.

This is the incredible and diametrically opposed contrast between Buddhism and Christianity.

Buddha taught - everything in life is 'changing' and slipping away constantly.  If you try to hold on to it, you will only cause yourself heartache and sorrow.  Therefore the thing to do is to 'let go'... of everything.  Try to rid yourself of all desire.  Try not to anticipate anything in the future, or hope for an afterlife, or try to hold onto any beauty or amazing people that surround you.  Because it's all transient.  The present is all you can ever have.

Jesus Christ teaches - "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matthew 6:19-21)

 

Buddha taught - everything that's beautiful is all passing away, so stop longing for it.

Jesus Christ teaches (through His Word given in the Old Testament) -

"Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart." Psalm 37:4

and

"Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters;
And you who have no money come, buy and eat
Come, buy wine and milk
Without money and without cost.
"Why do you spend money for what is not bread,
And your wages for what does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good,
And delight yourself in abundance. 
"Incline your ear and come to Me
Listen, that you may live;
And I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
According to the faithful mercies shown to David.
"Behold, I have made him a witness to the peoples,
A leader and commander for the peoples.
"Behold, you will call a nation you do not know,
And a nation which knows you not will run to you,
Because of the LORD your God, even the Holy One of Israel;
For He has glorified you."
Seek the LORD while He may be found;
Call upon Him while He is near.
Let the wicked forsake his way
And the unrighteous man his thoughts;
And let him return to the LORD,
And He will have compassion on him,
And to our God,
For He will abundantly pardon.
"For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD.
"For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways
And My thoughts than your thoughts.
"For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
And do not return there without watering the earth
And making it bear and sprout,
And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater;
"So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth;
It will not return to Me empty,
Without accomplishing what I desire,
And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it."  Isaiah 55

 

My mom sent me info about this book - The Truth War: Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception by John MacArthur.   Here's the blurb: In our postmodern era, a war is being waged against truth. Absolute Truth is argued away as a belief of the past, replaced by cultural relativism and uncertainty. Surprisingly, the world is not the only enemy. Pastors and Christians have fallen prey to subtle deception and are leading others astray. Dr. John MacArthur sounds the alarm in this call to apologetic arms. He examines how the Emerging Church movement, incorrect exegesis, apostasy, and false teaching are all attacking truth and denying Christ’s lordship. Reserve your copy now, arm yourself with the Word of God, and join the battle for truth today!  

One thing that is pretty noticeable in the blurb (and I presume in the book) is a sense of alarm - notice the words "war", "enemy", "fallen prey", "sounds the alarm", "call to apologetic arms", "attacking", "arm yourself", and "join the battle".   Of course, Christianity in America today tends to be polarized with respect to these words.  If you're an American Christian, you may tend toward one of two responses upon reading the blurb.

(1) MacArthur's right - there's a deception and a war going on - a battle for truth - we need to get back to the Bible, arm ourselves apologetically, and eliminate heresy from our midst!

or

(2) MacArthur's gone off his little fundamentalist rocker again - all this talk of "war" and "battle" is precisely the problem with the church today - instead of showing unity and love to the world, we take up arms and fight to the death among ourselves about doctrinal nitpicks.

Where do you fall on this (admittedly slightly overstated) spectrum?

You probably know which view makes more sense to me.  (1)   Though my habitual thought on this (my Marcius Cato ecclesiotheraputic meta-statement) is: "what we need in the Church today is not less doctrine but more love."

 

But what I really wanted to mention about this book/blurb is this.   In the human body there is a special collection of organs and cells that make up the "immune system".   When foreign material of any type enters the body, the system is triggered and "alarms" the rest of the body, stimulating killer cells, repair cells, tissue inflammation, etc etc.   It is a very sensitive part of the body, responding to tiny little "problems" like a single virus or bacteria swimming through the bloodstream.

It is also an extremely important part of the body, because if these "tiny little problems" were ignored, they would establish a hold on some part of the body, and by the time the body noticed that something was wrong, it would be too late - the bacteria or viri would be swarming through the body and the person would be dead.

Now Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:

But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills.

For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many.

If the foot says, "Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body," it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. And if the ear says, "Because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body," it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body.

If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?

But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired.

If they were all one member, where would the body be? But now there are many members, but one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you"; or again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you."

On the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary; and those members of the body which we deem less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor, and our less presentable members become much more presentable, whereas our more presentable members have no need of it. But God has so composed the body, giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked, so that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.

And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.

Now you are Christ's body, and individually members of it.

 

So it seems pretty obvious that some Christians have been given the (gift? role? interest? talent? task? responsibility? even, genes??) of "sniffing out" what is true and what is false doctrinally... and they are not to be shunned for their sensitivity, but rather supported and listened to.    Meanwhile other Christians have been given the (gift? role? interest? talent? task? responsibility? genes??) of "showing love to all men" and "accepting one another" without much suspicion of whether they might accidentally be "accepting wolves in sheep's clothing."... again, rather than being shunned for their indiscriminate bleeding-heart-ness, they should be encouraged in their role.

Yet the encouragement and support should be tempered with wisdom from the "other types" of Christians.  The ideal church will have BOTH (plus more) types of Christians... the "doctrinally-sensitive" types helping the "oozing-compassionate" types to wisely discriminate truth from error, and the "oozing-compassionate" types helping the "doctrinally-sensitive" types to make sure they're putting their knowledge into loving action.

Example #1 - 2 Corinthians 11:3-4, 19-20 -  But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully. ... For you, being so wise, tolerate the foolish gladly. For you tolerate it if anyone enslaves you, anyone devours you, anyone takes advantage of you, anyone exalts himself, anyone hits you in the face.

Paul explains to the Corinthians that they are way too "accepting" - when someone comes and preaches "another Jesus" or "a different gospel", they blindly and naively accept it!... and Paul writes to them to help them be more discriminating.

Example #2 - Galatians 2:1-10 ... "they only asked us to remember the poor--the very thing I also was eager to do."  

Paul had gone to check with the Jerusalem apostles to make sure the doctrine he was preaching was correct.  They agreed with him that it was correct, but they wanted to make sure that he was "remembering the poor" - i.e. putting his knowledge of the truth into action.  And of course, Paul was gung-ho about that.

 

Thoughts?  Comments?  Personal experiences?

What's the difference between a dirt floor and an "earthen" floor?   Oh, and make sure you inflect your voice just right when saying "earthen".   If you can't see the scintillating beauty of the emperor's new clothes, you're just an unsophisticated country-dweller who can't recognize chic when he sees it.   (How to enlighten yourself?  Read the New York Times every day.)

Favorite quote:
Some aficionados see a spiritual aspect to earthen floors, too. Mr. Rowell said his floor would help create a “sacred space.” Mr. Meyer agreed. “I think people are craving the earth,” he said. “They want to be more primal. How much more primal can you get than dirt?”

The immense crystalline irony of "western civilisation" in its most brilliant peaks groping for truth and reality and meaning, having abandoned the source of true life, God the Creator, and subsequently ending up blindly groveling on the floor, eating dirt and ashes.  But it still considers itself beautiful, oh yes.  Unending, our glorious evolution.  Sublime, our brave new world.

The indigenous americans and for that matter still the poorest of the poor of all the earth have dirt floors.   The time once was when (western, judeo-christian) civilization elevated itself (in a self-aware way) above the dirt.  Now having lost its heritage and being forced to seek more and more stimulation in an desperate quest for meaning, it runs back to the animistic and architectural poverty of the primitive civilizations, like a wolf licking a frozen blood-covered knife, frantic with mixed pain and desire, bleeding to death but unable to pull away.

 

<see comments section>

This six minute video is absolutely hilarious... especially if you've ever heard any of these arguments from an atheist or evolutionist.  There's also a related piece of text, but the video is even funnier.

This really hits on many of the most important questions about God.   Right at the beginning, the question is asked: "If there is a Dawkins, why hasn't he shown himself to me?"

There are lots of obvious answers - perhaps "because he's got better things to do with his time", etc.  But personal subjective experience isn't the only type of evidence... maybe he's "shown himself" to other people...?   Ah, but what if all those other people who claimed to have seen him are all lying?   Or delusional?/hallucinating?   Or merely spreading legends and hearsay?

The logic is almost exactly the same as the evidence for the Biblical Jesus and His miraculous life and resurrection...   and once you have a miracle-working, resurrected, Messiah who teaches that God does exist and that He is in fact "one" with Him, the evidence for the existence of "God" begins to stack up quite substantially...

... here's another very nice list of the "top ten" questions atheists ask, with answers.   All answers except for #4 are pretty good.   For #4, it would probably be better ask a bunch of questions in reply, asking the evolutionist exactly why he's so sure about his scientific theories.