The Skeptical Believer

Selection from "Who's Got God?"

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 05:03:00 +0000

Twelve years ago as my colleague Jordan Adams and I traded deep, lengthy emails back and forth, I never imagined I would one day collect them into a book. I think I've become a much better writer than I was then, and if I was writing these today I would approach the task much differently. When I seriously began to put these letters together, though, I made a commitment not to change a single word in any way, other than to correct misspellings and obvious mistakes of grammar. It was very important to me to present our words honestly and accurately.

What I'm proud of, however, is that while I may have changed my style of writing, I would change very little (almost nothing, actually) of the substance of what I wrote. I've been through a lot since the days when we wrote our letters, many highs and many lows, but after all that I still believe that "on the third day, He rose again."

Without further ado, a true story of my first profound spiritual experience--the first time I heard God speak directly to my heart. From Who's Got God? pp.136-137:

October 15, 2001
Subject: The essence of your suggestion.

Jordan, you said you couldn’t be more sure that the whole thing was a crock.
Well, I couldn’t be more sure that it’s not, because of the experiences
I’ve had in my life as a result of making this choice, day by day
(and also because of the experiences I’ve had when I do not make the
choice).

One day when I was about eighteen or nineteen, I was feeling
adrift at sea with my life. I was going through one of the many crises, as
we all do, of “What am I going to do with my life?” I had just rediscovered
God and knew that there was something He had
created me for and put me here to do. But at this particular moment in
my life I had absolutely no idea what it was, and I was in a deep depression
over it.

As I sat on the couchbed in the room
I was using while staying at my mom’s house (this was during a holiday
time and the dorms were closed) I closed my eyes and began to pray
and ask God for help. I imagined a box, suspended and slowly spinning,
inside my chest. Inside that box, I asked God to place what it was He
wanted from me. I told Him I was going to count to three and open
the box. I slowly started counting in my head, imagining this spinning,
floating box, and part of me thought to myself “This is so lame. What
are you doing? You expect God to jump out of this imaginary box and
tell you What To Do With Your Life? Sigh.” But I ignored the voice
and went on counting anyway.

As I got to three and opened the box in
my mind, something happened to me totally unexpected and without
my bidding or unconscious psychological projection. The box melted
away and three words flew confidently and boldly out—big, bold, glowing
words all in caps. Three words that literally changed my life. They
were:

SEARCH FOR ME

I cannot describe how I knew this, but I knew-that-I-knew that these
words had come from Outside me. They completely surprised me—
floored me even—and hot tears of what, I don’t know—thankfulness,
awe, inspiration, something!—poured down my cheeks. It was the first
spiritual experience I had ever had, and still the most intense. It contin-
ues to guide me to this day.

Since that time, I have become convinced
that the One who gave me those words was the God who is described—
not totally explained, but described and revealed—in the Bible and by
Jesus. As I have drawn closer to this God, I have seen and experienced
many wonderful things. I have been instantaneously healed of a physical
affliction (no, not at some ridiculous faith-healing convention but in
the privacy of my bedroom) which has never recurred to this day [Author's
Note--and still hasn't more than 10 years later], I have
received specific and real answers to prayer (stuff like the exact amount
of money I desperately needed arriving at my doorstep totally unexpected
by me, or struggling mightily with a specific issue or doubt or
depression only to have my pastor speak a message on that exact subject
the next day, etc.), I have seen others be blessed in the same way, and
most important I have been given (and I use the words ‘been given’ very
deliberately) a sense of peace, purpose, and “blessed assurance” in the
reality, the actual nuts-and-bolts reality, of this God I have been striving
to draw near to.

This is not to say I have become a saint since that day. Far from it. Since
then, I have done some horrible deeds, thought some ugly thoughts.
And I don’t say that in a romantic sense, as if to put myself on a higher
pedestal by showing how humble I am. There are some truly evil things
about me, some disgustingly black corners of my soul. I am a sinner, in
the fullest and nastiest and messiest sense of the word. I think if you’re
honest about yourself, Jordan, you too would agree with this about
your own life.

But this also confirms my belief in the God I worship
and love! Because the depths of ugliness I surprise myself with…he’s
already told me about in the Bible. He already knew it! And I have also
experienced the incredible grace and completely unmerited forgiveness
that He offers, and that I read about in the Bible. I’ve said this so many
times in my conversations with God: “God, I don’t know how or why
you do it. If I were you and saw me acting and thinking the way I do,
I would have vaporized me in a flash of totally justified anger LONG
ago! WHY in the world do you love me?!?”

Knowing the ugly part of
my self, and knowing that God loves me anyway, never tires of forgiving
me and always ecstatically welcomes me back into His presence, knowing
that He even DIED for me...while I was rejecting Him!..., makes me
literally fall on my knees in humble gratitude and unexclaimable adoration.
Paul’s letter to the Romans (5:7-8): “Very rarely will anyone die for
a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare
to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were
still sinners, Christ died for us!”

To this I can only be speechless.

Shalom,
Jeremy

Who's Got God?

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:00:00 +0000

When I first started The Skeptical Believer, it was meant to be in conjunction with the publication of my first book. I originally saw the blog as a supplement to the book, and a way to expand on some of the issues raised in it. Here is the introduction from my first post here:

I started this blog in tandem with the upcoming publication of my first book (details to be released soon!). Co-written with a colleague, it's an honest exploration of faith, truth, and finding common ground with those who see the universe differently.

The Skeptical Believer is all about taking an honest look at faith. Let's face it--all of us have questions and doubts about our worldview no matter what we believe in. My premise is that it's vital to meet these challenges, confront them head-on, and be able to admit that we don't have all the answers. And just as importantly, to never settle for pat, skin-deep cop-outs when it comes to the most profound and sometimes troubling issues of life.

Well, life has a funny way of getting in the way sometimes and now I find that nearly two years have gone by. But wait, there's more!

I am very excited to announce that, at long last, my book Who's Got God? is now available for purchase!!!

It can be had at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell's in paperback version, or through Lulu.com in either hardback, paperback, or super-cheap downloadable PDF. In addition, you can request a copy from most brick-and-mortar bookstores like Barnes & Noble. Check out the Google link for you international readers in the UK or Australia.

Lulu is offering 25% off the purchase of any number of copies of my book (up to a maximum savings of $50) from now through December 14. It could make a great Christmas present for the spiritual seeker or honest skeptic in your life. Simply enter the code BUYMYBOOK305 during checkout to receive the discount.

From the Book Description:Many people today live unexamined spiritual lives, never questioning or exploring their own faith. Whether we’re too busy or just plain lazy, too many of us don’t know why we believe what we believe. Readers of this book will get a glimpse into two active spiritual lives, one Christian and one New Thought, and get an inside look at what drives them to their belief.

While profound differences do exist, there is so much in common that we can focus on. In an age where reality television is the role model for airing grievances, this book shows how one can be openminded to opposing ideas, see the truth in the other side and even give ground when needed, all without feeling that one’s own cherished ideas are being overthrown in the process. In the end, the question isn’t ‘Who’s Got God?’ but rather ‘Who’s God Got?’

Next I'll post a sample chapter. Stay tuned!

--Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not its falsity.

REVIEW: Love Wins, pt 3

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 01:33:00 +0000

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

I’ve been promising a wrap-up to my review of Rob Bell’s Love Wins for some time now, so let’s get ‘er done. This will dovetail nicely with the last post I made for our church blog, How Can A God Of Love Send People To Hell?

Let’s talk about the image of hell that most of us, Christians and non-Christians alike, are brought up to believe the Bible teaches.

First of all, are any of you parents? And if so, do you love your children? If not parents, do you have a pet that feels almost like a child to you? Do you have brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents, close friends who you love more than anyone else in the world?

Allow me to tell you a true story.

I have a 3-year old son. He is the greatest joy of my life, and the highest fulfillment of the dreams I had for when I grew up. I love him so much that it’s hard to even imagine having a second child and feeling that same amount of love and “fatherliness”.

And yet one day I heard myself say something to him in anger that I swore I would never say to my children. My own father said it to me once, and I remember what a cruel thing it was, how it unfairly wielded a father’s authority as a weapon. And so I told myself that day I would never be the kind of person who would say that to his own son.

Well, I’m sure that every single parent reading this knows what’s coming. Fast forward 30 years or so. My son was misbehaving and being willfully rebellious. I had placed him in the corner where he continued his angry rebellion, physically striking out at my face and without thinking I said in a loud voice, “Do you want to stay in the corner forever?”

Exactly what my dad had said to me that day.

I realize that in the grand scheme of things, in this world where some fathers brutally terrorize their families and perform horrible evils to their own flesh and blood, this really doesn’t even rate a blip on the radar screen. Every parent gets angry and loses their patience with their kids from time to time. But all the same, it hurt me when it was said to me as a child. I remember it to this day. And I had made a promise that I wouldn’t say it.

In a way, isn’t this how we are trained to look at God and His salvation? Isn’t this how many of us grow up thinking Hell is all about? That unless you sinners stop misbehaving, unless you start to believe the right “doctrinally-pure” articles of faith, God is going to put you in the Corner for all eternity?

And not just any old timeout corner. In this Corner that we think God supposedly puts us in, we will be tortured forever. Either physically, like being burned alive every day for trillions upon trillions of years without end, or spiritually, where we are actively tormented and assaulted psychologically for the rest of eternity.

Is that the God we serve?

Would you do this to your child?

“Son, you’ve got until you’re 18 years old to clean up your act. On the day of your 18th birthday, if you haven’t graduated high school and gotten a job, and if you haven’t started to obey me, I am going to take you to the dirtiest, foulest, most toxic sewer on the planet. You think you’ve seen disgusting filth before? You ain’t seen nothing until you’ve seen this place. It’s worse than your worst nightmare.

This sewer is run by a man who used to be my right-hand man until I had him sent to jail for being a merciless, savage, violent felon. He was sent to work there as punishment and pretty much just took over the place. I am going to take you there, and I am going to throw your body right into that raw sewage and tell that man to light it on fire until it burns out.

And then I’m going to tell him to do it again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

I will never listen to your cries of pain, your entreaties, your sobs of repentance. I gave you enough time. And I told you ahead of time what the consequences would be. It’s only fair.”

“By the way, did I ever tell you how much I love you?”

If you think that’s horrific, that is nothing compared to what some (well-meaning) people say God will do to you unless you shape up and accept His Son before you die.

Is that the kind of Heavenly Father you believe in? Someone who, if he were an earthly father, would be arrested within minutes and very likely executed for crimes against humanity? He would be the worst, most vile scum of a human being ever to walk the earth, someone who could do that to his own child.

Does this sound ANYTHING like the Father that Jesus taught about? The God that he called “Papa”? If so, then he was one incredibly twisted person with a heavily damaged psyche, and I would call on everyone to stop following him immediately, even if what he said was true. Better to be crushed in a rebellion against that kind of God than to fall in line behind Him.

“But what’s the point of ‘being saved’ then? Are you saying it doesn’t matter if you believe in Jesus or not?”

I think this kind of question is completely understandable given the anemic spiritual education we get in most churches on this topic. However, it misses the point of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection entirely.

Yes, believing in Jesus is immensely, eternally important, but things aren’t so black and white. For if we say that we are saved by believing, and damned for not believing…isn’t that salvation by works? If you believe the right thing you will be saved? If you don’t believe the right thing, you won’t be saved?

I thought we were saved by grace, through faith, and this not of ourselves. Grace, by its very definition, is not in your control. If you are going to heaven because you believed the right thing, then this is something you did yourself. And if you are to be condemned for not believing the right thing, this is something you failed to do yourself.

I don’t have all the answers. Nobody does. My point is that the reality of salvation is so much more than what we have made it.

So much more complex.

So much more simple.

Isn’t that just like God, though? God’s grace, His character, and His message to humanity is so simple that a small child can understand it, yet so complex that the wisest of men can spend their entire lives plumbing its depths and barely even scratch the surface. I mean really, where in the universe do you find reality being black-and-white? The physical universe is made up of matter, but also energy. Light is a wave, but also a particle. Your body is solid, but the atoms that make up your body don’t actually touch each other.

Huh?

This is the world that the Lord has made. He is apparently extremely comfortable with paradox.

And isn’t this just like Jesus? Where in the gospels did he ever give a straight-up answer to a question?

“Good teacher, what good thing must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Whoa, stop the presses and hold the phones! In fundamental American Christianity, this is the only question in the universe that matters. This is the entire reason Jesus came to earth, packed right here in these twelve words. So here’s his chance to let us know. Here is Jesus’ chance to be unambiguous. Here’s his chance to give a direct, clear answer to the most important question any of us can ask. If the whole reason Jesus came to Earth was to make sure we knew how to get our spiritual fire-insurance card, then you can be confident that He’d make sure to answer this question as bluntly and directly as possible. Something like:

“My son, to inherit eternal life you don’t have to do anything. You’re saved by grace, through faith in me. Believe I’m the Son of God, that’s it!”

But he didn’t say that.

Instead, he answers this man’s very direct question by asking: “Why do you call me good?”

What???

If God’s mission was to send Jesus in order to give us all the Three Easy Steps To Getting Out Of Hell And Getting Into Heaven, then he blew it big-time. And if he wouldn’t just answer the dang question with the obvious, easy answer…well maybe there’s more going on than we’ve been taught to believe. That is the underlying message of Love Wins. That when it comes to the Infinite and Eternal, the only black-and-white answer we should have the temerity to give is that God loves us infinitely and eternally.

--Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not it's falsity.

ASK: How Can A God Of Love Send People To Hell?

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 04:54:00 +0000

This can be one of the most troubling and serious questions that you may ever wrestle with, whether you're still considering following Jesus or have been a disciple of His for 50 years. The very notion of hell is unsettling and, quite frankly, disturbing.

This is exactly how it is supposed to be.

Hell is an aberration, an abomination, a place that was never meant to be. Hell was not a part of the original creation. In fact, hell is not even meant for humankind. Hell is made as the banishment awaiting Satan and his angels. The tragic tale of humanity is that there will be some of us who will choose to join him there. But the fact that the idea of hell seems so out-of-place and "wrong" speaks to this truth that it is not where we are meant to go. Hell is supposed to shock the mind and the senses. However, don't let that unease keep you from considering the claims of Jesus. If we preached a God that made complete and perfect sense to us, we'd be preaching a man-made god, not the Infinite Creator of the Universe who so vastly exceeds our intellect and imagination that we can't even think or imagine the extent of how much He does.

But back to the question: how can a God who claims to be perfect and infinite Love send people to a place of infinite punishment and torment??? There's no way I could possible hope to cover all the relevant aspects of hell in one short blog post. If you didn't make it to church this Sunday, I highly recommend watching Steve's message. In addition, I'll post some resources at the end for further study. So instead of a full discussion of hell, I want to focus in on only this aspect of it, the question asked in the title.

First off, a giant misunderstanding about hell is that it's a place God angrily throws people who didn't do things the way He wanted them to, or simply believed the wrong things about Him.

Hell is not a place where people are consigned because they were pretty good blokes, but they just didn't believe the right stuff. They're consigned there, first and foremost, because they defy their maker and want to be at the center of the universe. Hell is not filled with people who have already repented, only God isn't gentle enough or good enough to let them out. It's filled with people who, for all eternity, still want to be the center of the universe and who persist in their God-defying rebellion. --D.A. Carson

Hell is the place for people who don't want to be with God, who don't want to bow to anyone but themselves, who don't want to serve others but want to be served and to oppress others for their own gain. When Jesus returns to end our present mode of history, God will finally shout ENOUGH! to the world. When he comes back, He will be saying "From now on there will be no more rape, no more murder, no more child abuse, no more hatred, no more oppression, no more condemnation. That is finished with, now and forever." Justice and peace will finally reign and all wrongs will finally be righted.

Unfortunately, that won't be good news for everybody. That type of world will not be desired by all.

You may (perfectly reasonably) object, "But perhaps God could just change them so that they see the light and realize how wrong they are." The problem is that these hell-bound people already have seen the light, and they consciously rejected it, knowing full well what they were rejecting. Consider this: to be "cured" against your will by God of pride, selfishness, and total independence would be a sort of divine cosmic rape of your very soul. As Chesterton said, "Hell is God's great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice." We are not programmed robots but powerful beings with self-determination and free will. True free will demands the possibility of rejection of God's love and way of life.

What are you asking God to do? To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? He has already done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They [do not want to be] forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does. - C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

It is theorized that the gates of hell are not locked from the outside by God, but rather from the inside by its own inhabitants. It may be possible for a being in hell to leave it any time they wish and join God in heaven, but because of its very nature, the type of souls that go to hell will never want to enter God's presence. It would be like a vampire walking into the bright noonday sun. For someone whose whole existence is wrapped up in self-worship, self-centeredness, and "getting what's mine", the sacrificial, servant-love of God that will characterize heaven would be like bright, powerful rays of burning painful light. Heaven would be hell for those types of people.

"Milton was right…'The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words 'Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven.' There is always something they insist on keeping even at the price of misery…" - C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

The only kind of people in hell will be the kind of people who agree with that statement...even if all it means is to reign over the flies of the garbage dump (see Steve's message for that neat insight). But imagine a whole nation populated with only those types of people. That's why hell will be misery and torment--not from any external punishment by God, but because their own wretched, selfish desires will constantly be frustrated by all the other people there who will also be trying to become "lord of the flies". Or imagine it like a drug addict who is so totally addicted that no amount of drugs bring them even the smallest high anymore, yet they're still addicted. That is the misery of hell.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that God doesn't send people to hell. People send themselves there, and they want to be there. Nobody will be in hell who doesn't want to be, and nobody will be weeping behind hell's gates because they realized just a bit too late how wrong their life was lived. There won't be a single person in hell lamenting that they're not in heaven because they 'missed it by that much'. "All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell . No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find."

I truly believe that if you are the kind of person who wants to be kinder, gentler, more loving, more compassionate, more self-controlled, more giving, and truly wants to be with God and live in a place where agape reigns supreme and is the normal mode of existing, then you will be in heaven. The caveat is this: you can't do it on your own. Anyone who's seriously tried to will themselves to being a better person solely by their own power knows keenly well how impossible this is. I'll let God sort out the details, but if you are not yet a follower of Jesus, then read His love letter to all of humanity, written in the blood of Jesus' sacrifice. The Spirit of God is the only power in this universe that can transform you into that type of person and guarantee your inclusion in that community with a seal of ownership.

In closing, the best quote that I have ever read on this, one which so completely captures the essence of the doctrine of hell in one solitary sentence comes, again, from C.S. Lewis:

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." - The Great Divorce

For further study and reflection on the reality of hell, I recommend the following: (and please forgive me for pimping my own works ;)

The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis
The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis
Handbook of Christian Apologetics, Peter Kreeft & Ronald Tacelli
Who's Got God?, by Yours Truly [pages 69-74]

--Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not its falsity.

ASK: Isn't Christianity A Straitjacket?

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 21:57:00 +0000

"Freedom is the ability to do what you want and define life on your own terms. Christianity takes both of those away."

This is a very American (and modern) objection to Christianity. After all, the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is in the Declaration of Independence. It's in the very DNA of our country (I'm not going to get off track here and delve into politics and all that, but it's my belief that this phrase is widely misinterpreted today and has become a selfish and superficial attitude rather than the ground-breaking statement of political freedom it was meant to be).

So when a person becomes a Christian, do they have to give up their freedom? Don't you become a slave to one group's view of morality? Do you have to give up your voice and become just another sheep in the crowd?

Many people think becoming a Christian means just that.

I'd like to address this by looking at it in a couple different ways. First, what does the word "freedom" really entail? Is true freedom being free from all constraints and letting me do what I want? I think not. I think that exercising this kind of freedom is an illusion and actually leads to less freedom. For example, you're perfectly free to eat anything and everything you want to without restraint, but acting on this kind of freedom inevitably leads to slavery. Soon you'll weigh 300 pounds, have high cholesterol and diabetes, and very possibly die. This freedom will eventually take everything from you.

The movie Pinocchio has some great wisdom in this regard. On Pleasure Island, kids have complete freedom to do anything they want to do. Eat nothing but candy, play all day and stay up all night. Smoke, drink, and gamble. For awhile, it's heaven on earth but as we all know, it's really a trap. The boys eventually turn into donkeys (or jackasses, wink wink) and are sent off to be slaves, working in the mines or sent off to the circus.

We're all slaves to something. Even the free-est of thinkers give their allegiance to something. The important thing is not to escape being a slave, but choosing what (or who) will be our master.

Being a Christian means giving our allegiance to the God who made us and designed us. This is the only kind of slavery that makes sense, since God knows how we work best. Choosing God as our Master and living the way He says is best actually leads us to more freedom, because we align ourselves with the way the Universe actually works, and the way human relationships were meant to function.

Think of a train. If you dump a train in the middle of a field, it gets stuck and can't move anywhere. But put that same train on the tracks it was designed to run on, and see how far it can go. The train finds its freedom on the tracks, not off of them. Human beings are just like this.

Another way in which people object to Christianity is to say that the Christian community is too constraining. They have certain ideas about morality, and to be a part of the group you must follow them or risk being ostracized. This is true, I won't deny it. But why people think that this only applies to Christianity or other organized religions has always kind of baffled me. The fact is that every community has standards. That's part of what defines any community--a shared set of values. As Keller says in The Reason For God:

Any community that did not hold its members accountable for specific beliefs and practices would have no corporate identity and would not really be a community at all. We cannot consider a group exclusive simply because it has standards for its members. (p. 40)

Perhaps a better yardstick to judge a community by is not how stringent its moral standards are, but the results of living in that community. If a community leads its members to be more loving, more charitable, more neighborly, then I think we can agree it's a positive community. It doesn't really matter how strict its standards are if it leads its people to become better, kinder people. Conversely, a community which leads its members to condemn outsiders and attack those who disagree with them is not a good community to be in. They may have the loosest rules in the world, but if the spirit of it is arrogant and divisive, then that's a negative community and makes the world a little (or a lot) darker.

You can find both types of community in the world today, and you'll find them among all belief systems. Any Christian community that is ungracious and accusatory rightly deserves criticism for their attitude, as does any other community. And we know that this is clearly not the way Jesus intended His followers to live. His community was to be marked by love and compassion. Any Christian community who denies this (and they are out there) is simply wrong. It doesn't take a rocket scientist of degree in Biblical Studies to understand what Jesus means when He says "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (Jn 13:34-35)

True freedom, then, is not the freedom from all rules and standards. True freedom is freedom for. For aligning yourself with the way the Creator designed you. For fulfilling your destiny. For loving others the way God has loved you.

All of us are a slave to something. Our freedom comes in choosing what we will allow to be our master. You must choose: choose whether to be a slave to sin, or to be a slave to the One who takes away all sin.

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. (2 Cor 3:17)

--Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not its falsity.

ASK: How Can You Say There Is Only One Way to God?

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 20:59:00 +0000

My latest blog entry for our church.

--Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not its falsity.

ASK: Isn't the Bible a Myth?

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 05:32:00 +0000

Hi gang,

I'm writing a series of posts for my church's blog to mirror our pastor's next series on apologetics. Check it out at http://www.journeyoc.com/blog/. I still have more thoughts on Love Wins, so that'll be coming Soon™.

And if you live in the Orange County, CA area, come on down and visit us at Journey Christian Church. We're a place where everybody is welcome, nobody is perfect, and anything can happen!

--Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not its falsity.

Ah heck, I'm just gonna copy the post over here after the jump =P

As Christians (and especially Protestants) we rely on the Bible as the primary source of our information about God. Indeed, we believe that the Bible is the ONLY fully complete and accurate revelation from God to His people.

It would behoove us then to understand why we believe that, don't you think?

After all, in an age where machines can read your mind and men can travel to the moon, what sane, rational person could possibly believe in a 2000 year old book filled with fairytales? One of the most common objections you'll hear from a skeptic is the 'game of telephone' argument. You know how it goes:

Isn't the Bible really just like the children's game of telephone? One person whispers a message to the person next to them, who then repeats it to then next person, and on and on in a circle. By the time the message gets back to the original person, it's changed so much that it's completely unrecognizable! And the Bible has been copied and copied for thousands of years, and translated into so many different languages, there's just no way that the Bible we have today is the same one that was originally written.

That's actually a completely reasonable assumption to make...as long as you don't know the facts behind how the Bible we have today came to be. In reality, the Bible is the most reliable ancient text in all of history in any culture. No other ancient book even comes close to matching the Bible's reliability. Consider the following: in determining the authenticity of ancient writings, two of the main pieces of evidence that scholars look at are how many copies of that manuscript still exist, and how long these copies were written after the original. For example, here are the numbers for some of the most famous and influential writers of antiquity:

Author, Title	# of Copies	Time Gap
Homer, Iliad	643	400 years
Tacitus, Annals	20	1000 years
Caesar, Gallic Wars	10	1000 years
Herodotus, History	8	1350 years
Plato	7	1300 years

It's important to note that each of these works is regarded as firmly reliable by historians. By contrast, the wealth of manuscript evidence supporting the Bible is almost embarrassing. For the New Testament, we have 24,970 manuscripts available, with the earliest fragments within 50 years of the original writing.

For the Old Testament, there are fewer manuscripts in existence, but this actually serves to increase its reliability in this case. The reason is because each copy of the Old Testament was regarded as absolutely sacred by the Jewish scribes; after all, they believed they were copying the very words of God. If a scribe made one single error while making a copy of the Torah (Old Testament), if they made one letter wrong, they burned the entire copy and started over from the beginning. This was in the days when you had to do it all by hand!

Let's go back to the game of telephone, but add one simple rule to it. Instead of listening to the message once and then passing it on, let's say you can now repeat the message back to the person whispering it to you and ask them if you got it right. And you can do this as often as you want until you get every single word right. Wouldn't you think this would vastly improve the accuracy of the message?

In fact that's exactly what we see with the Bible. Do me a favor and read Isaiah 55 really quick. Does that sound like anybody you know? Yeah, I thought so. In fact, this passage so closely mirrors the life of Jesus in the New Testament that for a very long time, skeptical scholars said that it was obvious the early Christians had rewritten that passage to force it match up with their beliefs. And for a very long time, there wasn't much a Christian scholar could do to directly disprove this claim, because the earliest manuscripts we had of the Old Testament were dated at 900 A.D.

But then a funny thing happened. In 1947, a young shepherd boy threw a rock into a small cave. Instead of banging off the wall, he heard the rock shatter some pottery. Inside these clay jars was an astounding treasure: what we know today as the Dead Sea Scrolls. The scrolls were dated at 125 B.C. In one fell swoop we gained a thousand years of proximity to the original Old Testament, and more importantly, found copies that predated the birth of Jesus.

Upon comparing Isaiah 53 from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the next earliest copy, about a thousand years later, only seventeen letters were different. And not a single one of those differences changed the meaning of the passage. In fact, most of those differences were simply a matter of spelling the same word differently, kind of like 'theater' and 'theatre'.

By the way, does anybody else think it's incredibly awesome at the poetic ways in which God continues to reveal Himself to us? Think about it: a young shepherd boy who's proficient at slinging rocks? Treasures in (literal) jars of clay? Our God is gracious, elegant, and likes to give us a playful, knowing wink every now and then. How could you not love that?

So the next time someone says you can't trust what you read in the Bible, tell 'em about Homer and Caesar, telephones, and shepherd boys throwing rocks.

-Jeremy

REVIEW: Love Wins, pt 2

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 04:56:00 +0000

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Whatever you’ve heard about Love Wins, whether positive or negative, Rob’s main thesis in the book is simply this: that God’s love is far bigger and more powerful than any human being can conceive of. Infinitely bigger. Eternally more powerful.

I think that’s something we can all get behind. Right?

Rob urges followers of Jesus to practice opening their minds a bit, and to be okay with asking questions. To imagine that perhaps God’s plan for humanity’s ultimate destiny is more complex and bigger than the binary saved-or-condemned-forever belief that is pounded into us. He asks the question, “if God’s love is the most powerful thing in the universe, and He wants all people to be saved and reunited with Him, does He fail in the end? Does God get what God wants or not?”

He doesn’t come out and answer the question directly, but it seems clear his belief is that eventually all people will be won over by the love of God. He posits the notion that perhaps Heaven has an eternal open-door policy and that you will be welcome to enter it if you desire to be a citizen of the kingdom.

Even if you’ve died and “gone to hell”.

To many that idea will sound simply ridiculous, even heretical. Indeed, that is exactly the word that some have used in describing this book. After all, I can hear many of you thinking right now, “But how can we even be discussing this? ‘It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment,’ ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved? Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved,’ and ‘Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire,’ and many others! Scripture is quite clear on this!”

This is the peril of using solitary verses, without taking the full context of Scripture into account, to base a theology on. Using this same logic it is absolutely equally acceptable to say, “But Scripture is quite clear on this—salvation is through works alone! ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father…for I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me something to drink, naked and you clothed me. And depart from me, you who are cursed…I was hungry and you fed me nothing, thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, naked and you did not clothe me,' ‘Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress.’ And that “book of life” verse from Revelation? Read just a couple lines before that—apparently you get your name in it by your good deeds: ‘Another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.’”

Hmm, you see the dilemma? Perhaps God’s ways aren’t quite as easily grasped as we tend to think. Perhaps the Bible isn’t a textbook of facts to extract one by one. All I’m asking is that you keep your mind open to how the Lord works. Very likely it’s completely different from anything we can imagine. Rob Bell may be completely wrong on this, and you may be completely right. That’s fine. Just don’t become crusted over with an inflexible view of doctrine that has been debated among Bible-believing, Jesus-following Christians for centuries. Remember the Pharisees, how they were unwilling to change their mind of what God truly was like.

“The wind blows wherever it pleases.” Jn 3:8

That is an image of freshness and ever-changing-ness, not static stagnation and rigidity.

---

Objection: But that’s not fair!

Of course it’s not fair. God has never been fair. The whole Christian faith is built on the premise that God doesn’t treat us how we fairly deserve.

Jesus takes great pains to spell this out for us. He tells the story of a Prodigal Son, but throws in a brother character—the Good Son—who sulks because the Father treats the runaway with just as much love as him. He tells the story of workmen who get paid the same wage regardless of how long they actually worked in the field that day. He promises a dying criminal who only has moments to live that they will see each other in Paradise. And he refers to Jonah, the reluctant prophet, who was actually furious at God for saving the depraved people of Nineveh.

So you’re right. It’s not fair. Nothing about God’s ways are fair. So what if it’s “unfair” that a murderer’s deathbed repentance wins him the same salvation you who’ve followed Him all your life have? If that’s your attitude, then I fear you have missed the entire point of Jesus altogether. Shouldn’t you instead be glad that one more person has chosen the light? Isn’t it good news, glorious news, when one more lost child finds their way home?

---

Objection: What's the point of following Jesus now if you can get into heaven after you die?

As before, I believe this question misses the point entirely. Jesus never was in the business of handing out passes to heaven. Salvation, properly understood, is about this life now and the life to come...which will also be here on Earth. I'm not sure exactly where this idea sprung from, but most people today seem to think that Heaven and Hell are spiritual places that our souls go to and occupy for eternity.

This is not what the Bible teaches.

Heaven will be right here. In this universe. As a physical reality. The Bible speaks of God redeeming this earth, and this cosmos. If our souls are conscious after our death, it is only temporary until He fulfills His plan for history, at which point we will be returned to physical bodies. Fundamentally different than what we can conceive of now, but physical all the same. The body that Jesus had after His resurrection gives us glimpses, hints. After all, he is called the "Second Adam" and the first of the new kind of humanity.

And “salvation” is quite often referred to in the Bible as a process, not a one-time event. Not a black & white, binary either/or system. Consider the 12 disciples. They weren’t “believers” in Jesus until after he rose from the dead, and they spent 3 years living with him! Even Paul himself states cryptically,

“continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” (Phil 2:12-13).

If there’s one thing I’d want you to retain after reading these posts, it’s this: Remember the Pharisees. As a follower of Jesus, there are only a small handful of things that you must believe at all costs, and as strange as it may seem, a correct belief about every detail of heaven and hell isn’t one of them.

Don’t become so rigid in your thinking, so sure of your knowledge that you close down your mind and stop probing the mystery of God’s love. That’s what the Pharisees did. They weren’t evil people. In fact, they were far more devoted to following God than you or me. But they exchanged the glory of God for their traditions and their doctrines—which they got directly from the Bible. They backed up their false righteousness from Scripture.

Remember the Pharisees.

--Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not it's falsity.

REVIEW: Love Wins

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 06:42:00 +0000

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

I know this review is a bit late to the party, but since this book has attracted so much attention even outside of Christian circles, I thought I'd write my thoughts on it.

I’ll get it out of the way right now instead of beating around the bush and say that I absolutely loved this book. It’s a rare quality when someone can teach about Hell and cause you to love God even more than you already did.

Let me also make two upfront statements regarding this book:

1) I do not 100% fully agree with every single detail that Rob Bell writes in this book.
2) Nowhere in this book does Rob Bell state or imply that ALL people who ever lived will “go to Heaven” and that nobody will “go to Hell”. I fear that anyone who is saying these things in criticism of the book simply has not read it, or has badly, badly misunderstood (perhaps willfully) his entire point.

I don’t say those things out of a need to “defend” or “justify” the fact that I loved this book. I say them because I’m afraid that a lot of people—Christians—immediately shut their ears and stop listening to what you have to say when you say you like Rob Bell, and I really want you to give him a fair shake. Don’t you hate it when someone hears that you are a Christian and immediately makes all kinds of assumptions about you? That sword cuts both ways.

You don’t have to agree with Rob Bell. You are totally free to think he is 100% wrong. Just don’t condemn him as a heretic for discussing the issue. Remember the Pharisees!
One of the things I love most about the book is that he has taken concepts that I have struggled to explain to others many times, and sheds light on them in such a simple way. Reading this book was one of those rare times when I kept saying to myself “This is exactly what I’ve believed and apprehended all along, yet I could never quite find the right words.” C.S. Lewis is one of the only other writers who has ever done that for me—take immensely complex subjects and transform them into ideas so easily understood that you marvel at how you never thought of that before.

Not that Bell provides tidy, bow-tied answers to the questions of Heaven and Hell, and “the fate of every person who ever lived.” In fact, in many ways he raises even more questions. More on that later.

The sad fact is that a staggering number of people who follow Jesus and claim to love the Bible have their theology all messed up when it comes to the afterlife. I really don’t have an idea where it all comes from, but for some reason most everyone’s idea is that Heaven and Hell are spiritual places that our souls go to after death and and that this is how you will spend all eternity.

Did you know that’s not what the Bible teaches?

What we think of as “Heaven” today is only a temporary place, and there is even some biblical evidence that everyone including Jesus-followers will not even be conscious as a spirit until Jesus comes back. I don’t know if that’s true, but there are verses to support that idea.

Let me be clear on what I do know. You are not going to spend all of eternity as a soul with no body.

The Bible is crystal-clear on this fact. The redeemed universe is going to be a PHYSICAL universe. Just like the one we now live in, but more. Better. The way it was intended to be. This isn’t even a “hidden teaching” of the Bible. It’s plain as day. Do you really think God made this universe—which he called good— just to vaporize it once it’s used up?

Where is there any place anywhere in the Bible in which God operates like that?

No, God has never been a God who gives up on what He created just because it becomes used and abused. Including you.

Ever since the very beginning, God has taken dirty rags and made them white as snow. He has taken leaky pens and written majestic poetry. He has taken broken instruments and played glorious music.

God is the master weaver, able to take the black threads of life’s tapestry and weave them into a beautiful, redeemed whole. He takes lives of destruction and turns them into vessels of love.

Our God is not a “throwaway” God.

{Part Two is found here}

--Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not it's falsity.

Ground Control To Major Tom

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 06:28:00 +0000

I’ve been meaning to check in for awhile now just to give an update on the blog. Right now I’m working on a review of Rob Bell’s new book Love Wins. It’s almost finished, but a very exciting work project came up and has been causing me to burn the midnight oil so I haven’t been able to put the finishing touches on it.

I’m hoping to have a new post up within the next week or so. Check back then for my thoughts on the book that’s got so many Christians talking!

--Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not it's falsity.

Resurrection Post-Script

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Sun, 22 May 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Just a few thoughts I wanted to tack on to the end of my Easter series, Resurrection is Go!

What's Your Faith In?
You’ve all heard Jesus’ saying about having the faith of a mustard seed:

I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. Matthew 17:20

What does that actually mean, and what does it have to do with the Resurrection?

Faith, you see, depends not on how much of it you can muster up. As Eugene Peterson says, “You don't need more faith. There is no 'more' or 'less' in faith.”

Faith is not a matter of degree or quantity; it is a question of object.

It doesn’t matter how much faith you have in something if it’s not real or not capable of saving you. As my good friend and spiritual mentor Tim Timmons says, you can have all the faith on earth that a quarter-inch of ice will support your weight should you decide to go ice-skating on a frozen pond in Ohio. But your amount of faith means absolutely nothing, because the simple fact is that a quarter-inch of ice is not enough to hold you up. If you decide to act on that faith, you’re going to get very wet, maybe even very dead!

On the other hand, you can have only the smallest, tiniest, barest smidgen of faith that four feet of ice will hold you up on the same lake. You may skate out into the middle in fear and trembling, sure that at any second you will crash through to the water below and freeze to death. And yet you will be safe. Your faith has been well-placed in a trustworthy object—no matter how little of it you have.

This is what Jesus means. You may have faith only as small as a mustard seed, a seed so tiny that it is almost invisible to the naked eye. Yet if you place that faith in Jesus, anything will be possible, for the object of your faith is Something and Someone real. Someone powerful. Someone who created the universe and has the power to save you.

So Sit Down Already!
There’s another aspect to faith, however, that can keep you from experiencing its power, even if you have placed it in the right object.

Imagine a chair. It’s a good chair, you think to yourself. Sturdy. Well-constructed. Whoever made this chair knew what they were doing. Yes sir, it could definitely hold your weight.

“So sit down then,” someone says.

“Ahhh no thanks, that’s okay,” you reply, “I know it can hold me up, but I’m cool just standing here and admiring it. I’ll eat dinner standing up, thank you.”

How foolish is that? Faith is the same way. You may possess the faith, and your faith may be in something solid, but if you don’t lean on it, then you’ll never experience the benefits of it! And you’ll be left standing at the dinner table while everyone else sits and enjoys their meal.

So sit down!

--Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not it's falsity.

On The Death Of An Evil Man

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Tue, 03 May 2011 08:22:00 +0000

So Osama bin Laden has finally met the end promised to him almost 10 years ago, and it looks like he ran out of time to become an Apostle bin Laden.

As followers of Jesus, how should we view this momentous event? I think there are a few ways.

First, as an American, I am exultant and jubilant. An evil man who perpetrated the gruesome murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children, inspired many others to do the same, and indirectly caused the death and maiming of many American servicemen and women, has met his maker and paid the earthly price for his actions. It is a completely unexpected and stunning victory for our country. The fact that the mission went off flawlessly, with no innocent Pakistanis being hurt, and no American soldiers being killed, just makes it that much sweeter. The good guys won one. As a matter of state, the killing of Osama bin Laden was justified, appropriate, and necessary.

And on a visceral level, I am extremely gratified that the last thing this scumbag saw on earth was not the comforting faces of family and followers gathered around his deathbed, but the face of a brave American soldier, pointing an assault rifle at his face.

It's a great day to be an American. For the first time in quite a long time.

But how should we look at such an event from the point of view of a follower of Jesus? Should it be any different? Here is my humble opinion:

First, the God of the Universe is on the side of the innocent and the downtrodden. A man reaps what he sows, and those who live by the sword shall die by the sword. Jesus said it would be better "to be thrown into the sea with a large stone around your neck than to cause one of these little ones to sin." (Lk 17:2) That phrase "little ones" does not only refer to children, but also to those of weak or stumbling faith. This man certainly preyed on people like that, didn't he? And fittingly, almost prophetically even, his body was in fact dumped into the sea with heavy weights tied around it. Seriously people, you can't make this stuff up!

The very real forces of evil were dealt a blow today, and I don't believe there is anything sinful in the act of killing bin Laden. I also don't think it is wrong to feel good about his death as the just deserts of an evil life. As long as those sentiments aren't born of revenge or "blood honor" I think they're perfectly fine.

On a deeper level, though, I think we must also grieve at the loss of yet another of God's beloved children meeting their demise while embracing hatred, poison, and terror. Whatever happens on "the other side," Osama bin Laden willfully and repeatedly chose a path of evil, of inhumanity, and of anti-God while here on earth. He had an entire lifetime full of opportunities to turn around, to humble himself, and to learn mercy and grace. His was a life lived in vain and utterly wasted, and that is an eternal tragedy.

Think about this: our Lord loved (loves) Osama bin Laden exactly as much as he loves you. He made Osama bin Laden, planned his exact DNA sequence and lovingly knit him together in his mother's womb. God gave him all kinds of wonderful gifts--wealth and privilege, good looks, and a forcefully magnetic charisma. He could have done so much good with his life. God does not delight in Osama's death:

As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die? Eze 33:11

God is not willing that ANY should perish, but that ALL should come to repentance (2 Pet 3:9) and embrace eternal life--the life that is truly life, full of grace and hope and peace. Osama bin Laden totally rejected that view and instead threw his lot in with the father of lies.

So in our joy and happiness, let us at least keep a small corner in the back of our thoughts that weeps for the man who could have been. But wasn't.

I personally believe that each one of these emotions I am feeling--the joy, the triumph, the satisfaction of justice delivered, and the grave awareness of the awful spiritual tragedy--each one of them is right, appropriate, and good.

But you know what really excited me about witnessing this event? It has very little to do with bin Laden himself.

Just take a look at all the people singing, dancing, and celebrating in the streets at Ground Zero and the White House last night upon hearing the news. All that joy being expressed, all those chants and spontaneous outbreaks of patriotic and victorious singing? All that unity and shared sense of right being done?

All that was being expressed over just one evil, directed mainly against one nation, being erased from the earth.

My friend, can you imagine what that day will be like when God finally stretches out His mighty hand across time and space and once and for all says "NO MORE!" to every wrong, every heartache, every cruelty, every exploitation, every humiliation, every injustice, every rape, every murder?

Can you just picture every tribe, every tongue, every nation, in every corner in all the universe, joining together, throwing inhibition to the wind in glorious victory, singing with one voice the praises of Good finally and for all time triumphing over evil?

I think I finally begin to dimly understand what the coming Day of the Lord will be like.

It's going to be rapturous.

--Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not its falsity.

Did you feel the mountains tremble?
Did you hear the oceans roar?
When the people rose to sing of
Jesus Christ the risen one?

Did you feel the darkness tremble?
When all the saints join in one song
And all the streams flow as one river
To wash away our brokeness?

And here we see that God You're moving.
A time of Jubilee is coming,
When young and old return to Jesus.
Fling wide your heavenly gates,
Prepare the way of the risen Lord...

Open up the doors and let the music play!
Let the streets resound with singing!
Songs that bring your hope,

Songs that bring your joy,

Dancers who dance upon injustice!

-- Delirious?

Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble?

Unable to Leave a Comment?

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 18:42:00 +0000

I've received multiple reports over the last couple days of people being unable to leave comments at the end of my posts. I am currently investigating the cause of this. For now, I have changed the commenting system to a pop-up window which *should* alleviate this problem. However, the actual 'Post a Comment' link is extremely small and hard to read, so I am exploring ways of increasing it.

The original problem may be occurring if you have third-party cookies disabled in your web browser, as the Blogger site requires the use of them in order to function correctly. As far as I know, this new pop-up window system does *not* require their use.

Please try posting your comment again, and if you find you are still unable to do so, please email me at skbeliever23@yahoo.com with the following information, and I'll get it up:

1) The text of the comment you wish to leave
2) The name you wish to post as, along with your URL. Or Anonymous, if you prefer.
3) Browser you are using.
4) Full text of any error messages you receive, if any. This will help me troubleshoot the problem.

I have seen some other blog writers reporting the same thing, so it may be endemic to Google and get sorted out all on it's own--hopefully sooner rather than later.

Sunrise

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 08:49:00 +0000

When they were pounding on the door of the upper room that Sunday morning with their incredulous news, do you think the women had any idea the import of what they had just witnessed? On that morning a new era of history was born, and our Western calendar would eventually be broken into two periods: before Him and after Him.

Even if the Resurrection didn’t really happen, it’s still the most important event in history. The belief that a Jewish rabbi rose from the dead has changed the world more than anything else before or since.

But what does it mean for you and me today?

The Resurrection is the ultimate vindication of Jesus’ life and mission. If it happened, then he really is the Son of God, the Messiah, the Christ. It means you can trust him when he says that God loves you and will do anything for you. It means you don’t have to be afraid of God. It means that you can find a measure of peace and comfort even in your darkest hour, knowing that one day all will be restored, every tear will be dried, every wrong will be righted, and good will eventually win out.

The ultimate question though, is this: did it really happen? I am indebted to Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, authors of the excellent Handbook of Christian Apologetics for the following few paragraphs.

From a strictly intellectual perspective, in order to show that the Resurrection did indeed happen, you don’t even have to believe the New Testament is inspired, infallible, or even true. All you have to acknowledge is that the New Testament exists, and that the Christian church exists.

Those two facts give us 5 and only 5 possible explanations for what happened that first Easter morning (short of nutty theories like Jesus never existed or he was a space alien or such). First of all, either Jesus died or he didn’t. If he didn’t die, then you’re facing 1. the swoon theory. That’s just about the most ridiculous of the choices.

If Jesus did actually die, than there are four remaining possibilities. If he died but did not rise again, then his disciples were either 2. deceived, 3. deceivers, or 4. creating a myth.

That leaves us with only one other option:

5. He died, and he rose again.

That’s it. There are no other choices. I’ve tried to show over the last several posts that the non-supernatural theories don’t hold any water. That leaves open only one possibility: Jesus really did rise from the grave. As impossible as it sounds, it’s the only rational explanation! Believing in supernatural causes for strange events should not be your first line of thought, in my opinion. But if you can rule out all other naturalistic explanations, then it becomes logical to do so. And not only can we quite easily rule out all the alternative naturalistic explanations in this case, there is all kinds of positive evidence for the supernatural occurring here.

There once was a man named Frank Morison. He was a very bright, very gifted lawyer. Mr. Morison respected Jesus greatly as a spiritual master, but believed that tacking on this nonsense about a supernatural ending with him rising from the dead did a disservice to the real Jesus. And so he set out to research and write a book proving that the resurrection was nothing more than a fairy tale.

After several years of research, he found that he was utterly unable to do so. In fact, the historical and legal evidence was so strong in favor of the Resurrection, that Frank Morison ended up a believer and a follower of Jesus.

Oh, he did still write a book about his research. It’s called Who Moved The Stone?

It’s a Christian classic.

But Why Jesus?
You know, there are a lot of religions out there, a lot of spiritual teachers, and a lot of belief systems and worldviews that have existed throughout history. Many of these have spoken profound truths and ancient wisdom that you would do well to live by.

So why follow Jesus?

In my case, I follow Jesus exclusively and as the highest authority of all for this reason:

Confucius said Confucius was a wise man,
Buddha said Buddha was an enlightened man,
Mohammed said Mohammed was a Prophet,
Jesus?

Jesus said Jesus was God.

Oh yes, he made that lunatic claim. He told an entire culture of super-religious people, wholly and faithfully devoted to their god, that he was their god. That he was THE God. The God of Gods.

And then he backed it up.

On Easter Sunday, Jesus put his money where his mouth was.

Jesus stands alone, above all others. Yes, there have been many other religious and spiritual leaders throughout the centuries who have imparted much wisdom and truth. And the truth they reveal is indeed God’s good truth. But all of these men and women are as stars in the night sky when compared to Jesus, whose light blazes forth as bright as the noonday sun. He’s not just another ‘enlightened one.’ He’s not just another way up the mountain. He made the mountain. He’s not just another claimant to the truth. He IS the truth. He created Confucius, Buddha, Moses, Mohammed, Osho, and even Richard Dawkins. He is the great ‘I AM’.

Moses is dead.
Mohammed is dead.
Buddha is dead.
Confucius is dead.
Nietzsche is dead.

Jesus is ALIVE.

All the gurus, all the sages, all the mystics, all the shamans, all the avatars, all the preachers, all the popes, all the prophets, all the imams—all of them are dead. There is only one person in all of history who came back from the veil. That’s why I worship him—he proved himself.

Jesus is ALIVE. The Resurrection is the ultimate proof and vindication of Jesus’ claims to be the divine Son of God. And it’s our greatest hope. Hope that there really is more to this life than the pursuit of money, power, sex, pleasure or fame—all of which evaporate along with our last breath. And it’s hope that the Creator of the universe is an active, involved God who cares deeply about our lives. Hope that the Energy that made you is for you. It’s hope for me personally that I haven’t wasted my life by believing that, and that you and I are not fools for following Him.

But I’m a Democrat!
Well, you’re in luck! Jesus doesn’t care what political party you’re in. Unfortunately, though, in American Christianity a whole host of misunderstandings have arisen about what it means to follow Jesus, and we got a lot of people puttin’ their Jesus in a box. Making him a small, safe Jesus. A Jesus who turns people away who don’t fit in that box just quite right.

What a tragedy that is. How many of my readers have ever read the gospels? Let me ask you a question: in which verse did Jesus ever, EVER, put himself and his mission into a box to be easily understood and easily politicized? In which verse did He tell us that we will clearly be able to see those who are going to ‘get in’ and those who are going to be ‘kicked out’?

I picture a moving box covered in Sharpie:

Baptists - UPSTAIRS, Homos - DOWNSTAIRS (next to furnace).
Republicans - UPSTAIRS, Democrats - DOWNSTAIRS.
Greek Orthodox - UPSTAIRS (iffy) - MORMONS (garage until I figure out what to do with them)

Kinda funny? Hopefully...but if you think you’ve found a box like this somewhere in the Bible, you are wrong and you haven’t done enough research. Every time Jesus spoke He only seemed to confuse people more…people who were looking for the wrong Jesus, that is. The only people before the first Easter that seemed to truly understand what He was about were the scumbags, the sluts, the cheats, and the failures around him.

The ones who knew for sure who was going where when they died?

They're the ones who killed Jesus.

Something to think about. And be afraid of.

So the next time you think you’ve got Jesus in a box and you proclaim to know what He feels about someone’s political-stance/denomination/religion/sexual orientation/etc. etc., I would be very careful before speaking aloud for Jesus. You’re walking on dangerous, dangerous ground. And it’s not ground that Jesus ever trod. Jesus took a flamethrower to that kind of attitude in Matthew 23. One of the extremely few times he ever did speak so directly, with no ambiguity.

Following Jesus doesn’t mean becoming a Republican (or a Democrat for that matter). It doesn’t mean turning off your brain. It doesn’t mean blindly following everything people tell you. It doesn’t mean believing in something that isn’t true. It doesn’t mean hating gay people. It doesn’t mean being intolerant and bigoted. It doesn’t mean never questioning, never doubting, never wrestling, never raging at God.

What it does mean is following the One who created you. The One who knows you the best and loves you the most. It means starting up a relationship with someone who loves you so much that He wielded His awesome power not to obliterate you for failing Him, but to die and visit the Grave for you, and use His unlimited Life-generating, creative power to destroy Death itself so that we could all spend our lives partying together in unison—every tribe, every tongue, every nation, at peace with each other. No more sorrow, no more sickness, no more cruel deaths, no more evil, no more humiliation, no more backstabbing, nothing being done in vain ever again.

People often say that Jesus died to pay the price for our sins for us. This is absolutely true, but they often mean it in the way of God sighing with resignation, “Well you broke it, now I gotta buy it,” as if he was disappointed in us and only going to the cross because we forced Him there. That He had to go die on the cross to save us from an abusive Father who’s super-pissed at how we’ve ruined everything. As if Jesus had to save us from God. That, my friend, is the perspective of guilt and condemnation. And you know what Jesus says about condemnation.

I don’t think Scripture teaches that at all. Instead, when I think of the price that Jesus paid for us, I think it’s more like a lover finding the perfect gift in the window for the girl he’s courting, and being willing to pay any price in the world to obtain it to win her over. Just look over Jesus’ parables of the field and the pearl, the lost sheep, and the prodigal son.

I think the Trinity looked down at His prized creation, at his beloved family, and saw our sin, our brokenness, and our disconnectedness, and the Son said with excitement in His voice, “Our kids are in trouble. They need rescuing. Send me—I’ll do whatever it takes to bring them back!”

That’s the way of selfless love and wholeness. The way of a true parent. The way of agape.

The Grand Enchilada
You see, God is in the redemption business. Even people like Frank the lawyer and rabidly anti-Jesus Saul of Tarsus can be touched and transformed by God’s grace if they keep an open mind.

Where do you fit in the story?

When it comes to investigating and testing the claims of Jesus and Christianity, there can be many obstacles to faith, and many hard questions to be answered—some of them legitimate, some of them merely smoke-screens to avoid having to make any personal choices. But if you are reading this and not yet a follower of Jesus, I challenge you to start here, at the Resurrection.

The Resurrection is the crux of it all. It’s the whole shebang. The grand enchilada. If the Resurrection really happened, then it is the most important event that has ever taken place in human history. You owe it to yourself to take it seriously before dismissing it as just another religious fairy tale.

If it stands, then you can be assured all other matters will fall into place. If it falls, then you don’t need to waste any more time and life thinking about it.

The reason I worship Jesus is because of the Resurrection. There is no other way to explain what happened except that on the third day, he rose again. No other explanation has ever been offered—ever!—in two thousand years to undermine this fact. Many axes have attacked the monument of the Resurrection only to be dulled in defeat.

Jesus’ resurrection is the reason Paul could look back on the prophets and repeat their words:

Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting? (1 Cor 15:54-55)

Jesus’ resurrection means that no matter who you are, no matter what you have done, and no matter what has been done to you, there can be Sunrise in your heart. Right now.

Today.

And forever-after beyond that.

Jesus’ resurrection means that one day, there will be Sunrise over this whole aching world.

Because the Son is already Risen.

He is risen indeed!

--Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not its falsity.

<--Part Twelve Home .

Saturday

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Abandoned.

Abandoned by your Master. Abandoned by your God.

Even in the face of betrayal by Yahweh himself, Jesus still finds a way to entrust the care of his soul to him. Still calls him Father. Still believes. And then he’s gone. His body utterly broken and humiliated. Murdered. Executed.

Dead.

They did it. They won. The bad guys won. How can this be? You can’t make any sense of it. He was supposed to save us. Jesus somehow was able to keep trusting in the Father even unto death, but you can’t. You’re confused. You don’t know which way is up. A rage inside you begins to boil up and you’re just about to start bitterly cursing God when a realization dawns on you, and grips you with fear.

You could be next.

As his mother and a few of the other women receive his body and begin wrapping it in sheets to prepare for burial, you turn around and run.

You could be next.

You’re so ashamed. You want to be there for them.

But you could be next.

You run blindly, unsure where to go. You have no home. Your friends are scattered. You saw a few of them by the cross, heck John was even at the foot of it (foolish!) with Jesus’ mother, but you have no idea where they are now. If you’re seen by someone who recognizes you…well, you don’t want to think about what might happen. In your fear you run to the only place in the city you’re familiar with. The room where you’d celebrated Passover Seder last night before it all went literally to hell.

As the night deepens some of the rest of them trickle in. Over the next day word gets out to most of the disciples that everyone is holed up in the upper room. You all sit there, shell-shocked and confused. Trying, and failing, to make sense of it all. You would have bet your life, hell you did bet your life, that this man was the coming Messiah. Following him had been the most profound experience of your lifetime. Jesus alone held the words of Life, as Peter had said. Where else could you go? What else could you do now? How had it all gone so wrong so fast? It just doesn’t make any sense.

Nothing makes sense.

You mostly sit in dejected silence, afraid and deeply sad. Food has no taste, but the women force you to eat something, even just a bite. Everyone takes a shift as lookout, watching to see if the authorities will show up to arrest you too. You don’t even care anymore. Let them come. Life has lost its meaning.

Occasionally someone breaks the silence with a half-hearted “Remember that time when he…” but you don’t want to listen. It hurts too much. You just want to sit here and grieve, communally and quietly, with your brothers and sisters, the people who had become closer than family these last years.

As another day turns to night, everyone is exhausted. There has been hardly any eating and even less sleeping. You’ve tried to pray to ask God just what He was thinking, to try and get some answers, but you can’t muster up the willpower it will take to confront these questions. You’re not even sure if you believe in God anymore. And if He is there, He certainly doesn’t care about you. It had all been a lie. A horrible, futile lie.

As dawn prepares to break, the women begin to stir; they look like they’re getting ready to leave. “We have to finish the burial rituals,” Mary says blankly, “Sabbath started before we were done on Friday.”

“What’s the point,” you say. “He’s gone. To hell with God and his rituals.”

“Shame on you!” Martha cries. “We owe him at least that much. We owe his mother that much. At least a proper burial.” And they leave, off to Joseph’s tomb.

The women are right, of course. No matter how wrong his beliefs obviously were, the Master’s body deserves the dignity in death that it was cruelly denied at the end of its life. Your mind begins spiraling downward to depression and all the ‘what-ifs’ again. You get lost in your thoughts, not even aware of the night passing and the morning glow faintly rising…

Suddenly, a frantic pounding at the door startles you out of your misery--

“Peter! John! Open the door! Open the door!!!”

It’s the women. Back already?

“Let us in, let us in! SOMETHING’S HAPPENED!”

--Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not its falsity.

<--Part Eleven Home Part Thirteen-->

Friday

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Imagine the scene: you’re one of Jesus twelve disciples. You rode into Jerusalem earlier in the week for Passover, and you’ve been expecting big things. After years of playing around at the fringes, this was the week when he was finally going to do something dramatic, and show the world that he really was the long-awaited Messiah. You didn’t know what he was going to do, but you knew it was going to be BIG.

But now it’s Friday, and instead of glorying in victory you’re standing on a rocky crag just outside the city walls. The stench from gehenna, the city’s burning trash dump, fills your nose. Old patches and fresh pools of blood lie everywhere on the ground. All around you are the sounds of grief and agony—some wailing softly, some crying out and yelling.

In front of you is your Master, the Rabbi you gave up everything to follow. In the last three years you’ve seen things you can’t explain. A mighty storm calmed with the power of a single word. Insane and possessed lunatics restored to their right mind. The blind are seeing. The deaf are hearing. The lame walking. Even the dead live again.

Not only have you seen what can only be called supernatural events happen at this man’s command, but he’s reinterpreted your millennia-old traditions in ways that nobody had ever thought of before, and done so with conviction and authority. He completely befuddled your religious authorities at every turn, exposing some of them for the hypocrites and dead-souled fiends they were.

Truly, if anyone ever had been sent by God, it was him. You had bet your life on it. Gave up the family business, wandered around the country with no home and no money. Broken just about every religious rule you had learned as a child. Your priests considered you a heretic.

But it had been worth it.

He was The One. You knew it. After seeing and hearing the things you had, there could be no doubt he was the real deal. You’d heard about other men who had come before and claimed to be the Messiah, but all of them had failed, all of them were dead, and none of them had done the insanely miraculous things that Jesus had.

And this was The Week.

When Jesus told you that he was headed to Jerusalem for Passover, you knew what that meant. “Finally!” you thought to yourself. It was really gonna happen! Time to take his rightful place and put everybody else in theirs. With the kind of power Jesus wielded, nobody could stand against him. And if they didn’t listen to his words, he would make believers out of them by wielding his awesome power, calling down fire from heaven to annihilate his foes, just like Elijah. Nobody defies the Messiah.

You couldn’t wait. Either way this went down, it was going to be glorious.

But then, in the span of just a few hours, everything changed. One of your closest friends, one of Jesus’ trusted inner circle, had betrayed you all. Three years you spent with this man—what was he thinking? What possible reason could he have? Questions about Judas recede quickly though, because by daybreak, events had rapidly spiraled out of control. Judas is already old news.

Your master, your Messiah, had been beaten senseless, mocked by priests and Romans alike, and then the unthinkable.

Sentenced to death.

“I don’t get it,” you thought, “when is he going to strike back?”

He’s had Herod himself in his sights, he’s been in front of the religious leaders who had been so vocally against him, those who dared call him a heretic possessed by Satan. He had stood right next to Pontius Pilate.

And done nothing.

What was he waiting for?

All these questions fade into the background as your mind comes crashing back to the present. Back to Golgotha. And the scene that lies before you.

In front of you is your Master. Jesus. Bleeding. Mocked. Being executed. Dying.

“He saved others, but he can’t save himself,” someone nearby says. “What a joke.”

Is he right? No, no he can’t be. You’ve seen Jesus’ power with your own eyes. With one word you know he could call legions of angels to descend on his murderers like an avalanche of destruction, wiping the earth clean of their very existence. Couldn’t he? Surely he’s just waiting for the most dramatic moment to pull off something spectacular.

And yet minute by minute…his life ebbs away with each drop of blood trickling off that cross. That ugly, rugged cross.

Why isn’t he doing anything? Why won’t he rescue himself? Why won’t God do anything?

Has he abandoned Jesus?

Has he abandoned you?

--Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not its falsity.

<--Part Ten Home Part Twelve-->

Don’t Myth-understand It

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 02:36:00 +0000

I hope you’ll find time to visit my site on Friday, Saturday, and Easter Sunday. I’ve written some pieces that will help take you through each day of that weekend from a special perspective. It may be a powerful new way of thinking about Easter weekend for you.

But back to the topic at hand. There are a lot of theories out there attempting to explain away the Resurrection of Jesus. I’ve discussed many of them in this series, and there are a few others out there as well. All of them have pretty much been vaporized due to lack of any credible support. And so the modern skeptic of the Resurrection today usually stakes her claim on a fairly new default theory.

It’s all a myth. A legend. A fairytale.

As in the belief that Jesus never rose bodily, and either he or his disciples never intended people to believe that his actual physical body rose from the dead. Instead, what they really meant was that he had risen in their hearts. That after he died, they realized his message was still very powerful, and so his spirit was alive in them in the same way your parents’ might be alive in your heart after they’ve passed on.

The people that believe this say that the disciples experienced what is called a resurrection of “Easter faith,” and this was the true message of Jesus—‘believe in the way I lived my life, believe in the teachings I gave you to love one another, believe that the power of love is stronger than death. And then—oh then my disciples I shall never truly die for I will live on inside you.’

See, now we’re cookin’. Now we got the guru mystic Jesus goin’ on. Come on people now, smile on your brother!

According to this theory, it was only much later, after all the original disciples had died, that the church started morphing and mythologizing the story into one where Jesus had risen physically and was God in human form. And so Christianity isn’t really untrue, from a certain point of view (thank you Ben Kenobi)—it’s just more of a feeling thing than an absolute reality. If you feeeeeeel Jesus in your heart, then it’s symbolically true for you and that’s just super! For you.

There’s just one problem with that.

It doesn’t correspond with the historical facts in any way.

Just like all the other theories, it’s an explanation made of balsa wood. Might look good upon a quick glance, but it falls apart under the slightest weight.

The plain fact is that there simply was not enough time for a myth of that nature to build up. It takes several generations for a true story to turn into a legend, but the gospels and much of the New Testament were written while the original followers were still alive. And not only were Jesus’ followers still alive, so were his detractors. They would have been very quick to speak up had they been able.

Not only that, but all the writers attesting to the Resurrection make it abundantly clear that they are specifically referring to the physical resurrection of Jesus. They leave no room for doubt or hedging whatsoever on the matter. Check it out:

The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe…This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. (John 19:35, 21:24)

I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ…I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie. (Galatians 1:11-12, 20)

And my personal favorite:

We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. (2 Peter 1:16)

Doesn’t get much clearer than that! But just in case you’re not convinced, here’s another. In 1 Corinthians 15 we see Paul reciting the earliest church creed, wherein he states straight out that “Christ has been raised” and actually appeared to many people, including 500 at one time. This letter was written between 55-57 A.D., and Paul notes that he is repeating a message he had delivered to them earlier. He visited the church in Corinth in 51 A.D., so this creed had to predate that. Already that’s only a gap of 20 years after Jesus’ death…far too short a time for a myth of resurrection to creep out.

But many believe it goes even earlier than that, to within about 5 years after Jesus’ death. Many scholars believe Paul learned this creed either in Damascus itself or in Jerusalem 3 years after his roadside experience.

This shows, without even needing to read the gospels, that the earliest Christians all believed in a physical resurrection. Paul goes on to say many of those people Jesus appeared to are still alive! Basically, go ask them yourself! If you’re making up a story, that’s not something you’re going to say.

Besides that, the style of the gospel stories is as far from myth as you can get. They are purposefully written as eyewitness accounts, not fantastical tales. The gospels are littered with tiny details, place names, and other observations that have no relation whatsoever to a mythological legend. Read some of the old stories about Egyptian gods that you learned about in school, or read about Zeus and his pantheon of gods and goddesses. Then sit those next to the gospels and compare the two. It’s so obvious that the point really doesn’t even need to be argued.

Look, if Jesus was really nothing more than a sage or mystical guru, then he was absolutely, ridiculously terrible at it. If he never meant his followers to take him literally, then he utterly failed in every one of his core teachings! He becomes very likely the worst teacher in all of human history, as he would be responsible for misleading literally billions of people over the course of two thousand years! To say that this would make him totally incompetent as a spiritual master would be the understatement of the millennium.

Somehow I don’t think you’ll find too many people taking up this line of argument.

Resurrection 2: The Sequel, or Haven’t I Seen This Movie Before?

One final observation on the subject of myth. Some make the argument that the Jesus story is not unique in the slightest. Indeed, there are many ancient cultures and ‘mystery religions’ that tell of gods dying and coming back to life. These stories were meant as allegories for the seasonal harvest cycle, in which a god dies in the winter and rises again in the spring, just like the crops. Jesus, they say, is just another version of that story.

All the explanations given earlier for why the Jesus story is not myth apply here, as well. The gospels appeal soberly and firmly to actual, historical events which really happened at a specific place and time in the world.

Those skeptics argue that Jesus is not unique because he is one among many. I argue just the opposite. Jesus is the fulfillment of these stories. God has set eternity in our hearts, and my belief is that these other harvest god stories are a reflection that all of us have some deep, primal, archetypal understanding of the gospel message. The fact that this idea exists in cultures across the world shows that there is a reality in the idea of God dying and rising again. Those stories are smudged reflections of the true story.

After all, the concept of death bringing about life is written across the entire universe. A seed is buried, a tree is born. A tree dies in winter, is born anew in spring. A star explodes in fiery death, a solar system has the needed building blocks to form.

Every single thing that you eat for nourishment—every fruit, every vegetable, every piece of meat—was once alive, and it’s death provides you with life. Even your own body is continually dying and remaking itself. There is not a single cell that currently makes up your body that existed 10 years ago.

So why is it so surprising that the death of the Second Adam brings about life for Adam’s heirs?

In the end though, after all is said and done, if the resurrection isn’t actually true, then it isn’t anything true.

Jesus’ story, as C.S. Lewis brilliantly observes, is myth become fact.

--Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not its falsity.

<--Part Nine Home Part Eleven-->

Apostle bin Laden

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Can you imagine Osama bin Laden becoming a Christian? Being baptized, publicly becoming a follower of Jesus and then directing the same enormous amounts of energy towards spreading the Gospel as he once had towards killing Americans and Christians?

Me neither, but that is almost exactly what happened to a man named Saul of Tarsus.

Saul of Tarsus was the Osama bin Laden of his day in Israel. He was radically Jewish and ruthlessly devoted to ensuring its purity by wiping out all traces of this new “Messiah Jesus” movement.

The difference between the two, I think, is that Saul was intellectually honest. When confronted with irrefutable new evidence, he actually changed his mind. A lot of people’s beliefs get calcified over time and they become resistant to change. It’s the “right or wrong, I’m right” mentality.

It’s just my opinion, but I believe Saul really did love God passionately even before his encounter on the road to Damascus. He just had missed the point of the Scriptures, like many of his fellow Pharisees.

Because of this, when he was apprehended by Jesus, he realized this really was the Messiah, alive again, and immediately began worshipping him. Paul was a lover of truth, especially intellectual truth, and he was willing to change course when confronted with the errors in his thinking. A good example for all of us to follow.

What does this have to do with Resurrection? What else would have changed this man, so entrenched in his belief that these Christians were blasphemers deserving death, but an encounter with the risen Jesus? That turnaround would be almost as unthinkable as Osama bin Laden doing the same thing, and then going on to write half the New Testament! Can you imagine what it would take to accomplish that?

Some have said that Paul’s Damascus experience was some kind of hallucination brought on by heatstroke, exhaustion, or some other such ailment. But really, that explanation doesn’t fit any of the facts of Paul’s life at all (not to mention, once again, the empty tomb). Don’t you think he wondered the very same thing after the initial euphoria of that spiritual high had passed? Of course he did. This was one of the great minds in world history—he would never have been duped into believing a mere hallucination for the rest of his life…especially with all the suffering it brought him (2 Cor 11:24-27).

I like to imagine God looking down at Saul (Saul is his Hebrew name, Paul his Greek name), seeing both his passion and intellectual greatness, and saying, “We need this guy on our team.” Totally wrong on all kinds of theological levels, but I still like to imagine it. =) And I think there’s is a kernel of truth in there somewhere.

And the church really did need him, too. Paul’s formidable intellect was the perfect complement to Peter’s bottomless heart—the nascent church needed both the heart and the mind to really take off. Peter gave the church its heart, and Paul gave it its mind.

But back to Osama bin Laden.

This is (was?) a man of truly great charismatic powers and organizational leadership skills. Can you imagine the good he could accomplish if he turned his energies towards building up the world rather than tearing it down? His life is a stark reminder that our choices here on earth really do matter. We are immensely powerful creatures, each one of us, with the free will to do what we desire. God respects our freedom enough to allow us to become Osama bin Ladens if we choose.

It may sound ridiculous, but I’d like to have that guy on our side. Well, on God’s side really. He could do great things. He could have been ‘Apostle bin Laden’.

Alas, it seems he has made his choice, and although I believe God can and does work miracles, poor Osama doesn’t seem capable of listening to differing ideas, unlike the real apostle.

Apostle Paul.

--Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not its falsity.

<--Part Eight Home Part Ten-->

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 21:58:00 +0000

Here’s something you may or may never have thought of before (unless you’ve read any of the great books on Christian apologetics out there). The fact that the traditional day of Christian worship is Sunday is another piece of evidence that the Resurrection really happened.

Huh?

Yes, it’s true. Consider this: most of the early disciples of Jesus were Jews, and the Jewish day of worship has always been on Saturday. In the time of Jesus it had already been that way for thousands of years. Setting aside a specific day of worship was so important that it was one of the Ten Commandments.

And yet within one generation this new group of Jesus-followers had changed their day of worship to Sunday, to commemorate the day Jesus came back to life.

It’s hard to comprehend today the magnitude of such a change. Most of us live in a world where tradition doesn’t extend much beyond Christmas rituals and whose house we eat at for Easter. For the Jews, however, tradition meant their very survival. Their traditions gave their national identity clearly-defined borders. It was the difference between their culture surviving or being subsumed into the dust of history.

Quick! How many Hittites, Assyrians, and Babylonians do you know in your neighborhood? Each of these cultures in their heyday was far more powerful than Israel, but it is the Jews who remain today while the others have become archaeological studies. The main reason for this was that the Jewish people held on tightly to their traditions and religion throughout multiple defeats and enslavements.

Even losing their homeland several times for hundreds, even thousands, of years, could not bring about the end of Jewish culture. They refused to give up their beliefs and did not intermarry with their conquerors, which would have meant their culture becoming assimilated with those around them and ultimately being lost.

The day of Sabbath was so sacred to the Jewish people that when Jesus came along and started healing people on that day, it enraged the leaders so much that they actually began plotting how to kill him because of it. Even simply walking through a grain field on the Sabbath was enough to consider him a heretic and a sinner. To them, such an act was the same as spitting in God’s face.

Of course, Jesus’ response brilliantly exposed their utter misunderstanding of God’s purposes for the Sabbath:

I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it? If you had known what these words mean, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the innocent. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. (Mt 12, Mk 2, Lk 6)

Although their traditions saved their race, the Pharisees had become slavishly devoted to them—to the extent that they had substituted worship of Law for worship of God.

So now you see an inkling of why the move to Sunday, and so quickly, was such a bold (some might say reckless) statement. It actually threatened their lives to do so. And yet, they did it anyway.

They didn’t do it lightly, and they didn’t do it as a repudiation of their heritage. The early followers saw Jesus’ mission not as replacing Judaism with something completely foreign, but fulfilling Judaism. Filling it full. Fleshing it out. Finally seeing and celebrating the culmination of God’s work in the people and history of Israel.

The early Jesus-followers also didn’t turn their back on Judaism. They respected and loved their faith. In fact, they remained observant Jews, so much so that the first great controversy in the early church was whether the new Gentile believers in Jesus would be expected to adopt and follow the Law of Moses.

I don’t think it was easy at all for them to change the day of worship to Sunday. It was an apparent paradox for them: they were honoring their millennia-old faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob…but they were doing so by profaning one of their most sacred traditions. And risking their lives at the same time.

What else could have caused them to make such a drastic change?

--Jeremy

Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;

likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not its falsity.

P.S. Another great pointer towards Resurrection that I just came across is that the early church also abandoned another key aspect of Jewish life: the sacrifice of animals. This was as much a core piece of being a Jew as honoring the Sabbath...maybe even more so. And yet this practice completely stopped immediately after the first Easter among those who believed in Jesus.

<--Part Seven Home Part Nine-->

Cha-cha-cha-cha-Changes

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 04:17:00 +0000

One of them was brash and overeager. Two of them wanted the power to kill their enemies. None of them were brave men—when the moment of crisis came, every single one of them fled out of fear for his own safety, forsaking their master to suffer his fate alone.

Yet literally overnight these men changed into powerhouses of faith, love, and boldness. One of the most powerful evidences for the Resurrection is the sudden and dramatic change in the lives of Jesus’ disciples.

From cowering, defeated weaklings to heroically brave and confident messengers of God’s love to all humankind. One night Peter is shouting obscenities at a maid denying that he even knows Jesus and slinking away into the shadows. Forty days later he is standing before a huge crowd and, with no formal education whatsoever, synthesizes the Torah, Jewish history, and the life of Jesus on the spot to form a complete picture of why Jesus was the Messiah, and concludes with authority,

Let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ. (Acts 2:36)

Peter is so powerful and compelling that three thousand people become believers that day.

James, the biological brother of Jesus, thought his brother was insane and at one point actually tried to get him to come home and stop all this nonsense. After the Resurrection he becomes one of the main leaders of the church in Jerusalem.
And every single one of the disciples save one were killed for their belief in the Resurrection.

“Welllll, a lot of people have died for a lie,” some may say. Perhaps, but the difference here is that if the Resurrection was a lie, the disciples knew it was a lie. They all had ample opportunities to come clean and say, “Um hey, you know what? I’ve made a huge mistake. Sorry for all the confusion.” But not a single one of them did. Instead, they all went to their deaths proclaiming that, “on the third day, He rose again.”

And oh yes, let’s not forget the fact again that if they made it up, then they’ve got the sticky wicket of a dead Jesus still lying in his tomb.
Could these guys really have given the world this teaching, that of peace, justice, and God’s unrelenting love for us, if they were charlatans? Really? For me, it takes more faith to believe that than it does to believe in the Resurrection.

Remember too that these were ordinary men. They weren’t soldiers who’d been trained to be brave in the face of danger. They weren’t rabbis who were trained in theology. In today’s world, they might be shift workers at your local fast food joint, mechanics, and accountants. Yet it was these average schmoes who changed the world more profoundly than anyone else in world history. That should give you and me hope!

Even non-believing scholars recognize that something happened to the disciples. A few years back, I was watching one of those ubiquitous shows on the History/Discovery/Science channel about the “historical” Jesus. Generally they’re ridiculous nonsense and not worth watching, but this one in particular was very well-done and fair-minded. One of the scholars they interviewed, who was not a believer in Jesus, said that, while she wasn’t sure exactly what really happened, it was undeniable that the disciples believed with all their being that Jesus had risen from the dead. There was no way to account for the fact that these everyday people completely turned the world upside-down (right-side up?) other than that they truly believed they had witnessed a supernatural event of monumental importance.

I hope she keeps studying that line of thought. Cuz she's right. And there’s really only one explanation that makes sense.

On the third day he rose again.

--Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not it's falsity.

<--Part Six Home Part Eight-->

You (Don’t) Look Like You’ve Seen A Ghost

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 05:35:00 +0000

In the past, some critics of the Resurrection have sought to explain it away by saying that his followers merely hallucinated seeing a risen Jesus. Like most theories, this one too falls to shreds upon the slightest scrutiny.

The apostles made it very clear that when they said Jesus was risen, they meant bodily. They weren’t talking about seeing a ghost or the spirit of Jesus; they were adamant that the physical body of their Teacher was up and about. Now it’s true that this body apparently now had some supernatural abilities—such as the ability to appear in a room unannounced, and the ability to mask its identity until He desired to be recognized—but the apostles (and Jesus himself) took great pains to emphasize the fact that it was his actual body that was risen:

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. (Luke 24:30)

They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. He said to them, "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have." (Luke 24:37-39)

When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, "Do you have anything here to eat?" They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence. He said to them, "This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms." (Luke 24:40-44)

So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!" So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. (John 20:1-9)

After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. (John 20:20)

Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe." (John 20:27)

When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread. (John 21:9)

A very important fact here is that Jesus appeared to groups of people at a time. Hallucinations only happen to individuals. In fact, in the very earliest written testimony we have of the Resurrection (1 Corinthians 15—not the gospels, as one might think), Paul says that Jesus appeared to 500 people at once. As this was only 3-5 years after the death of Jesus, he goes on to say that most of those 500 are still alive, so go ask them yourself!

And of course, we always have our good old standby, our Old Reliable: the empty tomb. If it was a hallucination (did they have LSD back then?) all you gotta do is, you guessed it….Bring out yer dead! Bam, mystery solved. But as we all know by now, there was nobody in the tomb to bring out.

The disciples obviously believed that they had seen a risen, physical body of Jesus. In fact, they took great care to emphasize the physical aspect of it so as to negate any hallucination-explanations. The only way to get around this belief (besides believing they were right) is to say either that the disciples were telling bare-faced lies about the resurrection, or to say that the gospels themselves are forgeries.

I’ll address both those issues in my next posts.

In the end, it’s the hallucination theory that is insubstantial and bodiless, not Jesus.

--Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not it's falsity.

<--Part Five Home Part Seven-->

Hey It’s Dark In Here!

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 05:20:00 +0000

Ever heard of the swoon theory? It’s a good one. Well, not really—it’s more useful for comedic value than anything else, cuz the mental images it brings up are pretty hilarious.

Picture the scene: late in the day as Jesus is being crucified, Pilate orders his men to speed up the death of everyone on the crucifixion-docket that day. It’s the holiest weekend of the Jewish year coming up, and having a lot of Jews hanging on crosses outside their holiest city? That would be bad.

So the Romans begin breaking the legs of everyone left alive. When they get to Jesus, they notice he’s already dead. They stick a spear into his heart just to make sure. He gets taken off the cross, wrapped in burial cloths and spices and placed in the tomb.

Sunday morning rolls around seeing the disciples cowering together in a room in Jerusalem. Dejected and bewildered, they suddenly hear a feeble, rasping knock at the door. Somebody opens the door, and one of the most pathetic figures you’ve ever seen stumbles into the room and collapses at your feet. It’s Jesus! He’s not dead!

He sure is messed up though. Practically his entire body is black and blue from being beaten. His back is flayed open from being flogged. Puncture wounds from the crown of thorns adorn his head. His hands and feet are caked in blood oozing from the holes where the nails were driven. The wounds which cover most of his body are probably all starting to get infected. The odor emanating from him is absolutely foul—blood, sweat, infections (and probably urine too) mixed with the sweet smell of burial spices. It’s enough to knock a man unconscious from ten feet away.

And oh yeah. He’s naked too.

You see, he didn’t really die at all! After he regains consciousness and can speak just loudly enough to be heard by someone leaning in close, he tells you the story of what really went down. See, what happened was that, in their haste, the Romans mistook him for dead, but in reality he had merely ‘swooned’. After being interred, the coolness of the tomb and the reviving smell of the spices brought him back to consciousness. And now here he is, he’s back! Yay!

The absurdities of this situation are obvious and numerous. First of all, there is no way he could have survived the crucifixion. He had already been beaten and flogged to near death earlier in the day. Not even the most hearty of men survived crucifixions—in the state Jesus was in, there’s no way it could’ve happened. Crucifixion was expertly designed by the Romans to ensure death, in as painful a manner as possible (in fact our word ‘excruciating’ means literally ‘out of crucifixion’ or 'from the cross'). There’s no need to go into the grisly details of what it entailed, but they are easily found and studied if you’re interested.

The short end of it is, if you were crucified, you didn’t survive (if you did survive, your crucifiers didn’t—they were executed themselves for failing at their job). But then to top it all off, they also shoved a spear into his chest, likely penetrating the lung and into the heart (as evidenced by the mixture of clear fluid and blood described by John). And when he was taken down from the cross, there were no signs of life whatsoever, not even involuntary signs.

But OK, let’s just say for kicks and giggles that he was the one dude out of all the men ever crucified who somehow lived. The fun doesn’t end there! You see, the Jewish burial custom involved wrapping the body very tightly in linens, and each layer of wrapping was covered in spices, which mixed together to form a sort of paste. When dried, it all hardened together to form a rigid cast of the body. Oh yeah, they also wrapped his head, so he somehow had to avoid being suffocated too.

So Jesus wakes up Sunday morning, wounded so badly that every single person around him thought he was dead. He’s had no food or water to sustain him, no medical attention to treat his grievous wounds, he’s in total darkness—and now he somehow has to wriggle his way out of a hard-shell full body cast. It’s about now that the whole situation starts becoming morbidly comical. I don’t even know how he would do it, but maybe he maneuvered himself into a standing position and hopped over to the rock wall where he jerked his body back and forth a few hundred times to tear apart the fabric covering his body. Hey, it could happen!

So now he’s alive, barely, and out of his grave clothes. His next problem is how to get out of the tomb. Between him and freedom sits a gigantic round stone weighing a ton or two. And it’s locked in place by being set into a deep groove in the ground. Hey no problem, I’m sure he just kind of nudged it with his dislocated shoulder and it fell over! He did it vewwy, vewwy quietly though, because none of the guards keeping watch even noticed this massive rock falling over and the very man they were there to keep watch over limping away.

Ridiculous to the extreme, but I’ll even give that to you and say sure, let’s say it happened like that. In order for the ‘swoon theory’ to still be true, this Jesus—now a wretched, shambling corpse of a man leaking blood and pus—had to somehow convince his followers that he had triumphed over the grave. This Jesus, who apparently remained in hiding for the rest of his natural life letting the apostles do all his dirty work for him, was the Lord of Life and the conqueror of death! Triumphant and victorious!

Once he convinced his (apparently enormously stupid) followers of this and allowed them to believe it, he immediately became a depraved liar and monster. That’s assuming he was still alive 40 days later when Peter stood before a crowd and gave the first testimony of the Resurrection. Three thousand people became believers that day, and if the swoon theory is to be believed, Jesus was kicking back in the shadows letting Peter tell this lie. If Jesus eventually succumbed to his wounds in the 40 days between Passover and Pentecost, then Peter and the rest of the disciples become the deceivers.

What’s interesting is that none of the contemporary opposition to the message of the Resurrection tried to refute it by saying he had merely swooned. Only after more than 1700 years had passed did anyone think to propose that maybe he hadn’t really died (shades of the wild dogs hypothesis).

You can obviously see why this theory is more or less extinct. In the last 20 years or so, about the only person of note to hold to it was an influential Muslim apologist, who called the story a “Cruci-fiction”. But it is fair to say that the swoon theory has been roundly and thoroughly discredited. The fact that it was apparently the favorite alternate-explanation theory during the Age of Enlightenment makes me wonder just how enlightened those rationalists really were.

As one of his followers, I believe that Jesus really, really loves you more than you can even imagine.

He just didn’t swoon over you…

--Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not it's falsity.

<--Part Four Home Part Six-->

The Dog Ate My Jesus

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 01:03:00 +0000

It’s the famous old excuse:

“Jimmy, where is your homework?”

“I’m sorry teacher, but the dog ate my homework.”

We’ve all heard it, but have you ever actually known someone to use that excuse? Have you ever used it yourself? Probably not.

Because it’s ridiculous!

In my last post, I stated that there was no alternative to an empty tomb on the first Easter Sunday morning. Well, that was sort of untrue. Sorry.

I was a little disingenuous there, but for good reason. There has been one theory floated out there in recent times which does supposedly account for there being no body in the tomb. The problem is that the theory is as ridiculous as little Jimmy’s excuse, and should be dismissed out of hand. So although there may be an alternative, I don’t think there are any serious alternatives to the empty tomb.

This theory, which was touted prominently by Jesus Seminar founder and “expert” John Dominic Crossan, states that the reason there was no body in the tomb on Easter morning was because the body was never placed in a tomb in the first place. Instead, he argues, it was either thrown in a mass grave or left up on the cross to be devoured by wild dogs and carrion birds.

Now, on the surface that sounds like it might actually be a plausible explanation. We know that the Romans did in fact make it a practice to dispose of crucifixion victims in this way. But dig down just a quarter-inch or so and it completely collapses into utter nonsense.

The main problem is that in holding to this belief, you by necessity have to call all four of the gospel writers and Paul outright liars, for all of them specifically stated he was buried. The gospels even have specific details as to whose tomb it was (Joseph of Arimathea’s) and why he was placed in it. Then they all tell elaborate stories about women going to the tomb to finish dressing the body, disciples running to the tomb, Jesus appearing to them, talking to them, eating with them, teaching them.

Lies! All lies! Really?

Later I’ll go into why I don’t believe the gospel writers were lying, but does anybody really believe that all of these guys were lying through their teeth when writing this stuff? And that nobody called them on it when they did? No anti-Jesus people at the time spoke up and said, “Uhh hey wait a minute. That’s not true and you know it. We saw him thrown into a mass grave with our own eyes.” No, in fact you see people saying just the opposite and affirming the burial of Jesus.

Another major problem with the ‘wild dogs’ theory is that not only do we have specific evidence that Jesus was buried in a tomb (the gospels), we also have extra-biblical evidence that all Jewish crucifixion-victims in general were buried. The Jewish historian Josephus corroborates this in his Jewish Wars, Volume 4, Chapter 5 (near the bottom of the page). In it, he states specifically that although the Romans did in fact humiliate corpses by casting them away without burial, the Jewish people:

used to take so much care of the burial of men, that they took down those that were condemned and crucified, and buried them before the going down of the sun.

This was to abide by Deuteronomy 21:22-23:

When someone is convicted of a crime punishable by death and is executed, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse must not remain all night upon the tree; you shall bury him that same day, for anyone hung on a tree is under God's curse.

So, really, there’s no good reason to believe that Jesus’ body was devoured by wild dogs. No one at the time used this as a refutation of the Resurrection, and Josephus specifically mentions that Jews were buried. It’s important to note too that his quote is not in any way referencing the Jesus story. He’s not using it to prove a point, he’s just mentioning it as something that happened at the time.

In the end, though, do we really believe that a theory such as this would only come to light after two thousand years had passed?

Really? It took that long for us to figure it out? And nobody, not one single person, who lived at the actual time the Gospels were being written thought to speak up and mention this?

Wow. That takes some faith.

So what do you think? As for me…

I think the dog theory is for the birds.

--SB

Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;

likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not its falsity.

<--Part Three Home Part Five-->

Bring Out Yer Dead!

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 19:33:00 +0000

In our first Resurrection post I ended by quoting Paul from 1 Corinthians 15. If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. Well luckily for that little 4^th grade boy 25 years ago who wanted to be the best Peter he could be, this is not the case!

I passed on to you what was most important…Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said. He was seen by Peter and then by the Twelve. After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles. Last of all, as though I had been born at the wrong time, I also saw him. For I am the least of all the apostles. In fact, I’m not even worthy to be called an apostle after the way I persecuted God’s church.

Note that Paul says the Resurrection is the ‘most important’ of all things. Indeed it’s true, for two reasons. First, if Christ was not raised, then our faith in Him is tragically and comically misplaced. But second, since Christ was raised, we can know with assurance that He was all He said He was. In the verses above Paul lists several facts about the Resurrection, and I’ll be addressing each of them throughout my posts. But let’s begin with the first item in his list: Jesus was buried, and was raised from the dead.

Let’s leave aside for the moment questions of the Bible’s inspiration and assume for argument’s sake merely that the New Testament is a basically trustworthy document. In reality the New Testament is by far the most accurate and trustworthy document in all of ancient history. For our purposes today, though, you don’t have to believe it’s the Word of God, divinely inspired or inerrant.

It is an indisputable fact of history that the man we know as Jesus Christ really lived, and really was executed on a Friday around 32 A.D. Not even the staunchest of critics doubt this anymore. Your answer as to what happened next pretty much defines whether you worship Jesus as Lord or see him as a mere mortal. Claiming that he rose from the dead is admittedly a pretty preposterous argument, but I want to take a look at it from the opposite angle first—what are the alternatives if not that?

The first and most important fact is this: Jesus’ tomb was empty by the time Sunday morning rolled around.

Think about it. Jesus wasn’t murdered because He told everyone they should love one another. He was murdered because he made powerful enemies by threatening their status and position (just check out a short excerpt here that’ll blow your image of a wimpy Jesus out of the water). Those in power knew who he was, hated him with a vengeance, and had a keen interest in stamping out his movement.

If Jesus’ corpse was lying in its tomb while the disciples started spreading the word around town that he had risen, then all his enemies had to do was go pull his body out and parade it around town for all to see. Bring out yer dead! as our good friends the Pythons would say (one of the funniest movies ever made by the way. I will brook no nonsense on that fact. I may not be asking you to believe in the Bible, but there can be no disagreement on this. Anybody saying otherwise shall have ‘Ni!’ said to them until they relent!).

If the disciples were lying through their teeth about it…..Bring out yer dead!

If they hallucinated the whole thing…..Bring out yer dead!

If they were only trying to make a spiritual point (i.e. ‘He’s alive in our hearts’)…..Bring out yer dead!

Indeed, fellas—bring out yer dead! You dear reader would never even have heard of a guy named Jesus of Nazareth if they had been able to produce the body. He would have been just another failed Messiah, and a young SB would never have had to worry about the fact that he could destroy the Apostle John in a footrace. But they couldn’t produce. And they knew it. Don’t you think they tried?

Any way you slice it, you can’t get around the fact that, by early that first Easter morning, there was nobody inside the tomb of Jesus.

What do you think? Are there any alternatives to an empty tomb?

--Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not it's falsity.

<--Part Two Home Part Four-->

Nobody Here But Us Linens

noreply@blogger.com (The Skeptical Believer) — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 01:20:00 +0000

When I was about 8 or 9 years old, the Sunday School classes at my church decided that for Easter we were going to make a little mini-movie about the resurrection. We had the whole thing set up on a large lawn outside the classrooms. Our classroom was to be the 'upper room' where the disciples were cowering after Jesus' execution, and across the lawn, placed against the bushes bordering the edge, we had set up a big foam rock acting as the stone sealing his tomb, complete with Roman soldiers standing guard.

I was cast as Peter, a Major Award for a young kid to be sure! I got to be THE disciple, the leader of them all, the guy who Jesus said would be the Rock of his church! Imagine my excitement and pride at being tapped for such an important role!

Now our teacher, who was directing the action, wanted to make sure we were as accurate as possible, and so she noted to me that John's account mentions specifically that John outran Peter and got there first as they raced to the tomb to see for themselves that it was indeed empty. "Make sure you let him get there ahead of you," she said.

"Very good," I thought, my future thespian's instincts already kicking in. Be true to the script--you got it. And so we started the performance--the women bringing Jesus' body to the tomb, the Roman soldiers standing guard, the angel appearing and scattering the soldiers, Jesus Himself emerging from the cast-aside stone--alive! triumphant! exiting stage left!

And then it was my turn. Here I was, acting out one of the most exciting scenes in history--being one of the first people ever to find a man raised from the dead! I played my part with aplomb, squeezing every ounce of incredulity and 'could it be true?' hope-against-hope that I could muster as I ran the short fifty feet from Upper Room to empty tomb.

There was only one problem:

I was much faster than the Apostle John.

That wouldn't normally be a major problem, except we hadn't rehearsed that bit, and so I didn't realize this potentially earth-shattering, Bible-rewriting fact until the cameras were rolling. Now, the average kid--the normal kid--experiencing this situation would simply slow down his gait and let John catch up and overtake him. But I was no ordinary child, oh no. I had a future actor in me even then. It would be blasphemy to slow down! It wouldn't be true to the essence of Peter, who was always the most passionate and impulsive of all Jesus' disciples. No, Peter would definitely be running full-tilt to get to the stone. And so, thinking quickly (it wasn't a very long run to the tomb, after all), I did the only thing I could in order to stay true to my character without destroying the credibility of the Bible:

I tripped myself. On purpose.

Like I said...not a normal kid. I think we still have it on video somewhere; I recall watching it again maybe 15 years ago or so and having a good laugh at remembering that story.

But hey, you never know. John doesn't tell exactly how he got there before Peter. Maybe the real John was faster than Peter....or maybe Peter did trip on the way, skinning his knees (or getting grass stains on his robes, as happened to me) and greatly embarrassing himself. Can you imagine the scene years later, John writing his gospel on the isle of Patmos, and receiving an IM from Peter: "Hey John? Remember that time when I totally tripped as we were running to Jesus' grave? Uhh yeah...would you mind leaving that part out? kthxbai." And maybe, oh just maybe, I was actually the first kid in 2000 years to rediscover yet another lost mystery of the Bible...

Coming up: an awkward transition which will clumsily answer the question on everybody's mind: "Why in the world did The SB tell me this embarrassing, yet ultimately endearing (right? right?), story?" Stick around to find out!

--Jeremy
Truth poorly defended loses not its truthfulness;
likewise Falsehood aptly defended loses not it's falsity.
<---Part One! Home Part Three--->