Monday, July 12, 2010

Food for Thought...


"The most ancient records we have not only mention but take for granted things like kings and priests and princes and assemblies of the people; they describe communities that are roughly recognisable as communities in our own sense. Some of them are despotic; but we cannot tell that they have always been despotic. Some of them may be already decadent and nearly all are mentioned as if they were old." - The Everlasting Man, pg. 61-62.

Famous Christian author G.K. Chesterton may have written this book as an ode to dispel the silly un-truths that many people take for granted about God. Recently I have been thinking about a particular form of bias as it concerns people trying to discount God, Jesus, and the miraculous. C.S. Lewis refers to it as chronological snobbery; and I have to admit that prior to becoming a Christian... I upheld it. This is basically the belief that ancient people were too primitive to know any better but to believe in some all-powerful Divine entity. That they were so afraid of the weather, the environment, and the like, that they huddled together seeking shelter from things they didn't understand. Man needed God 'back in the oldin' days' because he didn't know any better. Only Zues could have created lightening, right?

I like Chesteron's way of dispelling this myth in the passage above. Ancient man had societies, rulers, common sense, and intelligence. He was able to build and test things, and able to reason with the best of them (remember Plato?). No, I'm afraid that if and when something out of the norm and miraculous did happen, human beings were quite able to understand that it wasn't business as usual. A miracle was a miracle the same then as it would be now. When word got out that a former religious leader named Jesus of Nazereth rose from the dead after being publicly scourged and crucified, it was just as remarkable then as it would be today.

The food for thought is this: if we attempt to escape from the idea of God by dismissing Him as a primitive form of wish-fulfillment, then we need to be careful how we define the notion of primitive. Modern technology and science aside, people were still people - even back in 'the oldin' days.' God is more than wish-fulfillment. He is the very reason that we have wishes in the first place. Thank you Chesterton for reminding us of this.


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Interesting Quote


"One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time."


- John Piper



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Sunday, July 11, 2010

Evidence vs. Conclusions


I recently viewed a debate between top-notch Christian philosopher William Lane Craig and atheist New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman. The topic of the debate was "Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?" The format of the debate was normal, both men spoke at a college, and had time for opening statements, 3 or 4 rebuttals, and then a Q&A session. Craig laid out his criteria in favour of the resurrection: 4 pieces of evidence that had to be refuted in order to disprove it actually happened. He cited the quick and large-scale spread of Christianity after the death of Christ, the multiple attestation of the 4 different gospel accounts (among other corroborative evidence from non-Christian writers outside the Bible), etc.

Dr. Ehrman offered the opposing view, that Jesus probably didn't rise from the dead because: the Gospels differed from each other by way of contradictions, they may have been recorded after some decades of verbal accounts handed down and possibly distorted, and that people don't rise from the dead generally speaking. In effect, Ehrman was attacking mainly the idea of something miraculous happening; namely that anyone (in this case Jesus) could be raised from the dead at all, because miracles just don't happen.

Now what was most interesting about this was that neither man attempted to erase any of the accounts in the New Testament. Ehrman didn't say, "well Jesus wasn't killed," or "Jesus was mythical." Instead, (and as Criag says in one of his rebuttals) the key points of evidence weren't being discredited, but rather Ehrman just concluded different things based on that same evidence. Two men who have studied the gospels in great detail, arrived at 2 different conclusions not based on what happened... but rather what those things that happened meant. Now this is an interesting concept because the Bible warns us that there are people who "see without seeing," and "hear without hearing." This I believe is how people can read the life-changing testimonies of the Bible, and get caught up in the fact that in one gospel Matthew refers to 10 disciples, but in another gospel Mark may refer to 11.

Ehrman was basing his conclusions about Christ rising from the grave based on his refusal to allow for the miraculous ever occurring. In short, by excluding God from the outset, he effectively removed God from the conclusion. Of course we could argue the same thing from Craig's perspective. Wasn't the fact that Craig was a believer from the outset influential in his acceptance of the resurrection as actually occurring? But think about this. If it never really happened, then what is all the fuss about? What was the big deal 2,000 years ago? Why are people's lives being changed every day by the power of the Gospel message? As C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity, "Christianity is either the truth that we are blessed to have received from a gracious God, or a lie from the pit of hell." (paraphrased).

I come down on the side of believing that Jesus DID rise from the grave, that the Bible is actually more than a just a collection of stories from some wise people, and that miracles DO happen. What a cruel hoax it would be if there was no Christ, or if He hadn't actually been resurrected. If this were true, we would still be dead in our sins, and this life is all there really is. But if the reverse is true, then we are an incredibly blessed species, because something up there really does revere and love us. Make your own choice regarding Jesus, but make sure you look at the evidence fairly, allowing for both possibilities: that miracles couldn't possibly happen, or that they can and do happen. How much more sense the 4 Biblical accounts make in light of the supernatural, as they were always meant to.


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Resurrection Sunday Still Matters

The literal, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is the linchpin of the Christian faith.  It doesn't matter which denomination or slant ...