The future of this blog

I just got back this morning and I've really missed being able to get on this blog as often as at home... I think I'm addicted to this blog. (But that's a good addiction, right? ;) )


I'm thinking of more ways to get the most use out of this blog as possible. After camp, I'll try to get a discussion board going and then we all can post topics and discuss all the various issues you'd like to talk about. But until then, another idea I have is this: for those of you who have been posting on here perhaps I can give you all priviledges to post blog topics of interest and ability to moderate as well. I can't just give one priviledge... the way blogger works is that it's all or nothing. But I'd rather not be the only person to post a blog on here.

Perhaps for those of you who are going to camp (I think we're all signed up to go, right?), we can find a time to meet and toss this idea around. I really like the blog Heather wrote and I really like the topic Kyle wrote (which with his permission, I'd like to repost as a blog topic... Kyle, are you there? Let me know if it's okay to repost it. It's a great topic. By the way, I tried to check out your blog, but it wasn't there.) and it would be great for Jessica and Taylor to be able to start up a blog topic as well, such as on the ones regarding free will and worship.

Let me know what you all think about this (in other words, please comment on this!). We'll discuss even more at camp about this when we have time.

God is Everywhere

Hi guys! it's Heather Lynch, as opposed to Heather Rhoda.
i'm writing a post on this board because its somethign that God pulled at my heart. its a little aparatic to read, i think, but it all ties together if you pay attention. It's not all that greatly written, but its not something i planned to write, so keep that in mind as you read.



I just got a very vivid, clear message from God in the post peculiar of ways.
A lot of you know my sister, Tasha. she and I share a room, and have bunkbeds. she was playing on my bed, and it was my job to put her to sleep tonight. She was scared and fought sleeping in her own bed because, as she claimed, God wasn't down there.

to get her to go to bed i had to convince her that God was where she slept, and that he was everywhere, that there is no place god ISN'T.

I realized that God being everywhere is something she is still learning and is a concept that she has yet to fully grasp.
For those of you who were in church on wednesday, you know that most of the night consisted of prayer. whether it was for something big or little, everyone in that room needed prayer, and only about half came up to the front to share (As far as my knowledge. i believe some people went for prayer after service was over.)
I know a few people who were having some difficulty in their lives... whether big or small... and they wouldn't go up for prayer when they needed it.
it occured to me that some people might have got that classic, scenario-like 'i'm not worthy of God and have no buisness askign him for help' kind of thing. It dawned on me that people may have convinced themselves that God wasn't with them anymore.

and i guess what i wanted to say is that God is, infact, everywhere.
its a difficult concept for humans to understand. there is not many things in this world that can be everywhere, at once, hence its not a concept that we as humans will be able to grasp.
not even something so common as the air we breathe is everywhere. God is the one and only thing.
He will see everything you did, are doing, and will do. he knows all... and will forever forgive you for everything that you do.

i know that this is small... its something that we all know in the back of our heads....
but it's also something easily forgotten. if you don't keep in your head that God always loves you, that he is everywhere, and will ALWAYS BE everywhere no matter what you do or where you go, then you will forget, and you will fall away from God.

a love that never ceases is a hard thign to grasp. so is the fact that God was not created, he always was. but i think that knowing in your heart and in your head that God is always around you no matter where on earth (or even out of earth) you go is the most difficult concept to grasp as it is the most easily forgotten.

~Heather Lynch~

Your discussion time!

Before I head out to lovely Maui (woo hoo!), I just wanted to leave this blog entry for all of you. If you'd like, you can comment on a blog in the past and just leave a note here saying, "Yo, I wrote something on the blog about 'Is the Bible Myth'. Tell me what you all think."

Or you can also discuss here some of the other issues we haven't discussed yet, such as reasons you give others for believing, what works, what doesn't, etc. Or you can talk about what other religions believe like Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Buddhism, etc. Berry's offered to be "devil's advocate", so watch out for him! :0 j/k haha.

OK, I'll check in while I can. I have a volunteer moderator, so .... no funny stuff! {:P}

Blog update!

I'm stepping out in faith here...

I changed one of the settings for this blog so that people can comment without having to create a blogger account (earlier I didn't know what this option did but I tested it out on a test page).

BUT PLEEEEEEEASE.... when you comment, please do not choose "anonymous". Instead, please select "other" and use either your real name or your "user name" that we'd recognize. Or for WB, GF, ISFC, and anyone else with accounts, you can still log in as well... whichever is easier!

Muchas thankias. Feedback is welcome! Let me know what you think.

FYI, I'm not sure if this is inviting spam (so I turned on a "word verification" setting). So if it does, we might have to go back to the Olde Way.
... but I hope we don't.

What's the RIGHT way to worship?

Ok, I'm back. I meant to get back to this last night, but because of the storm I was afraid of a power outage, and I didn't want something like that to wreak havock on my computer. So first, let's think about how "worship" in areas even outside of Christianity. (Why even outside of Christianity? Yes, it's wrong to worship anything except for God, but when we think of what people might worship and how they worship, that might broaden our understanding of different ways of how we can worship the true God.)

So I'll list some things people "worship" and how they worship those things:

• Kings & Emporers (let's start with the obvious historical example)
• People have bowed down to kings as a form of worship
• People approach the king in humility
• They will do anything the king commands, even when morally wrong.
  
• Music groups (if people aren't careful, I'd say this could fall into the area of worship)
  
• They may do anything to go see a concert by a certain group and then shout at the top of their lungs when singing the songs.
  
• They memorize all the songs, collect all the pictures, wear the t-shirts, and faint if they shake the singer's hand because they're so excited.
• They tell everyone about how cool the group is.
  
• Money
• Sometimes people dedicate their whole lives to getting more and more money.
• Sometimes (though sooo sad) people will put their careers above family and friends. They give up everything for the sake of getting more money.

Ok, so I've talked a lot about actions here. So we can sing in worship, we can even take the lyrics of worship music and praise God without singing.

so ... what do you all think? Can we apply these forms of worship to God? How?

Some of these forms of worship can also be misapplied as well... such as using worship as an excuse for trashing others (I can't think of a "nicer" way of putting it. :\ )

Wrapping up the topic: God's Law

So just to wrap things up here, I gave my little sermonish thingy on Sunday about God's Law, God's Love, God's Grace. Just to save a bit of time, I'm going to copy what I had in my notes. If there are any questions or you'd still like to discuss, feel free!

I gave three main points:

1. God’s Law: A reflection of who He is – perfection

• Laws are always a reflection of the Law-Giver
• Who is God?: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), I am the vine; you are the branches (John 15:5) (and God's more than just what those verses say)
• People were already sinning before the written or oral Law was given.
• Rom 5:20 “God's Law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were.”
• Adam and Eve were at a perfect relationship with God. Adam and Eve separated from the vine when eating from the tree of knowledge.
• What is sin, what is evil?A separation from God. As Augustine said (from around 300A.D.) "it's a deprivation of goodness that ought to be there." Good should be there, but it is absent. (WB if you weren't there on Sunday, I'd be happy to discuss this with you. It's a very important thing to understand how evil got mixed up with this world. Let me know!)
  

2. God’s Love: True love desires what is best for the beloved

• God can’t restore us partly, but must restore us fully to restore the perfect union.
• God loves us so much that He’ll take us as we are, but He loves us too much to keep us as we are.
• If a wife is deathly ill, and there's a cure in the Amazon that will cost the husband everything, perhaps his own life, if he truly loves her, would he risk everything to go get the cure? That's what Jesus did.

3. God’s Grace: The demonstration of His love

• Jesus gave himself up for us so that we could be perfectly reunited in Him.
• Why's the "Law" still there for us to look at? We can follow the master's footsteps, though we are no longer bound to the Law and works will never make up for our past sins; only His sacrifice and grace do. Jesus tells us to follow him, and if He's truly our Lord, we ought to do the best we can.
  

Future blog topics

I thought to just create another blog for our brainstorming of different blog topics so I don't forget where we posted blog-ideas.

So... so far, we've got the following:

1. God's Law and disappointment
2. Is worship limited to hymns only?
3. What to do when people say "Christianity is a crutch"
4. I think I'd like to discuss a few ways to defend the faith without the discussion becoming a battlefield.
5. Arguments for Christianity (not arguing, but presenting a case for Christianity)

Any others? Should we discuss things like reasons why abortion is wrong (there are actually very good and not-so-emotionally-charged reasons for why abortion is the wrong way to go), other religions (which ones), etc?

God's Law

Sorry it's taken a couple of days to get to this blog. I have to admit, this is a toughie. Hmm... first I've got to figure out even HOW to brainstorm on this topic. I'll just write what I've been thinking for the past couple of days.

In order to truly understand why God gave us (specifically the Jews) the Law in the first place, we have to understand God, right? I mean, if the Law was given by God, then it's a reflection of God. In general, laws are a reflection of the "law-givers". Spanish laws reflect Spanish culture & leaders, Iranian laws reflect Iranian culture & leaders. When the leaders & culture change, the law changes. (However, God's character doesn't change, so what's in the Law doesn't change.)

How can we describe God's character? Perfection, Love, Goodness. There are also other attributes that demonstrate God's abilities: He is the giver of life, all-knowing, all-present, all-powerful, ever-living (eternal). Anything else I missed?

So then, if the Law is a reflection of who God is, then the Law must be a reflection of perfection, a reflection of love, a reflection of goodness. So why do we hate the Law? Because we can't match up to it. No matter how hard we try, we don't love perfectly, we don't always do what is good, and therefore we aren't perfect.

Why are we this way? It has been understood by the Jews that what the parents do affects future generations. Because of Adam and Eve, the scales were tipped and we gained a tendency to sin. However, God didn't give up on humanity at that point. His love for us was so great, that instead of destroying us, He planned on restoring us.

Why would He have to restore us? I'll save that for the next blog. But until then, why do you think God would have to restore us? Why not leave us the way we are?

I'd love to hear your honest feedback on all this because I'd like to try to anticipate some questions people might have in the back of their minds when I discuss this on Sunday. Are there things in this blog you think others might have a problem with? Anything unclear or missed?

I know, I'm giving a lot of questions... but I sooo want to help others truly understand what the Law really is. Thanks for your help! :)

Does the Bible Say, "God won't give you more than you can handle"?

I was thinking about this question that ISFC asked, and it's a really good one. Does the Bible actually say that? I know there are a lot of people who go through some serious stuff - much worse than I have. Often when people are going through difficulty, other people might say this sentence with good intentions. They want to comfort us and give us hope. They might not know what else to say. But is the sentence "God won't give us more than we can handle" in the Bible and is this sentence really accurate?

Well, not exactly. Here are some problems I've found with the sentence:

1. it puts the blame on God. Is God giving us the burden for us to try to hold up?
2. this phrase is usually put in the context as handling heavy burdens in life.
3. it says "more than you can handle", which makes it seem that we have to try to handle it alone... "you're on your own, buddy. I'll be here on the sidelines."
   

This phrase, "God won't give you more than you can handle," is loosely based off of 1 Corinthians 10:13 which states,

"But remember that the temptations that come into your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will keep the temptation from becoming so strong that you can't stand up against it. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you will not give in to it." (From the New Living Translation)

So let's compare this verse to the first three points I listed:

1. we can see that, yes, we will deal with temptations that are difficult. God will prevent the temptations from becoming too strong for us. He's not inflicting temptation, but He's allowing temptation and restraining it from becoming overpowering.
2. Second, this passage deals with temptation to sin, not burdens that are due to a fallen world.
3. Third, it says that when we are tempted, God will show us a way out, whether it's leaving the tempting situation, closing our eyes, plugging our ears, getting on our knees, focusing on goodness rather than on the bad stuff. This verse shows that God is right there with us and helping us, even when we don't see it.

Jesus promised at least three things:

1) we will deal with hardship and difficulty because of what’s happened to the world, 2) He said “Come to me, all of you who are weary with heavy burdens and I will give you rest” paraphrased from Matthew 11:28-30 (this is one reason why prayer is so important) 3) As long as we remain with Jesus, one day every tear will be wiped away.

I posted a link (click on the title of this blog) that gave some more insight to this.

Also, the sentence "The Bible tells us that God won't give us more than we can handle" is a common phrase among many Christians. If you hear it, don't bite their heads off, and don't question them into the ground. Use good wisdom and gentleness to explain why that sentence isn't accurate.

The information here can be used either as medicine or bullets. I'd prefer medicine.

if God loves us, why does He allow us to hurt?

This ties into the "problem of evil" question in the last post. If God loves us, why does He allow us to go through pain, suffering, emotional hurt, why does He allow bad people to stay in power. If God loves us, why...? This question has mostly to do with the character of God: if God loves... We have to figure out first what really is love? We've always heard the distinction between love and lust, but here's an easy way to think of it...

Love searches and strives for the good of it's object....even for the best of its object if possible.
Lust strives only for the self... to satisfy the self. For example: lust of power, lust of another, lust for money... me me me.

When we sin or a person hurts another it absolutely hurts God, but still He endures it. (We rarely think about how sin affects God because we don't see it, we don't hear it. He loves us sooo much that whatever pain we inflict on others or whatever pain others inflict on us, He feels it just as intensely as we do. But we have to remember, God loves them as much as He loves us.) He wants us to come under His wings, but because He loves us, He won't force us to. And with the people who are inflicting pain, God has chosen to not cross over their free will, but instead aims to use it to bring out an even greater good from it than what we can see today.

Let's take an example... the one Pastor Chad talked about a few weeks ago. A boy was raped by a man many years ago. Later the boy grew up, dealt with the pain, and rising above of the hurt he turned to God. Later a lonely old man in a retirement center confessed to the horrible crime and the younger man who was a boy found out about the confession somehow. He went to the retirement center, met the old man who begged for forgiveness, forgave the old man, and told the old man about Christ.

For perhaps 30 or 40 years, the man who was the boy may have continuially asked, "God, why did you allow that to happen?" However, when the old man gave up his life for Christ, I bet it all made sense then. That may have been one of the only ways to get the man to turn his life around and live for Christ. What I'm trying to say is that sometimes life stinks. Why? Because sin has entered the world. We may not know all the reasons for why the world is this way... but we do know that God is infinitely intelligent and truly loves us, and we have to sometimes simply trust that His ways are higher than our ways.

People will sometimes say, "If I were God, I would do _______." ... or set up the world this way or that.... or wouldn't do _______. However, we're not as intelligent as God. He's already thought of every possible game-plan for His ultimate goal (which I think the goal is for us to freely choose and love Him and have a strong, well-developed character... not forced, not robots) and out of every possible world this is the best one for accomplishing those goals.

As many people have said, God has reasons, but we may not know all of them. This is where trust comes into play, and we have to look for the good in all things instead of being swallowed up in the bad.

Well... this is a tough topic, but what do you think? Anything you'd like to add or ask about? (If you want, you can even play devil's advocate ;) )

Some arguments used against Christianity

In a comment, WB posted these arguments people will often use against Christianity. I thought they would be good to get us going. I'll comment a bit on each one...

1. If God was real then people wouldn't go through pain/hurt and we'd all live like kings.

This is typically what's called by philosophers as "The Problem of Evil". Another way of stating this may go something like this... The Christian God is known as being all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good (and all-present and eternal). If God were all-knowing, He'd know about all the evil that could occur. If God were all-powerful, He could stop all evil from happening. If God were all-good, He wouldn't want evil to occur, so He'd prevent any evil from happening. However, we know evil does occur. Therefore, the Christian God doesn't exist.

So... what's wrong with this reasoning? I'll give a hint: it has to do with what "goodness" really is. Also, what would happen if we got all that we wanted, and we didn't have to work? (Look up Romans 5:3-5 and keep in mind that Paul wrote this during a time of tremendous persecution against Christians. There's more I could write on this, but instead of me lecturing, let's discuss.)

2. The bible contradicts science in that science proves the earth was around millions of years ago and took millions of years to create whereas the 'bible' said the earth was created in 7 days.

A lot of people who are skeptical about Christianity bring up Genesis. There are a couple of ways of dealing with this. The Hebrew word "yom" can either mean "day", "year", or "period of time". Yom Kippur means "Day of Atonement". So it could mean creation took place over 6 periods of time. But even if it took place in six 24-hour days, could God accomplish it with all carbon-dating intact? Absolutely. Again, here people get stuck on thinking about the "how did this occur" rather than "that this occured".

3. God doesn't exist becacause you can't see him (this one is classic)

Ooh... there's a lot to say about this. But here's the question I'd ask... "so even if you could see God right now, what about the blind person?... Ok, then what about the people who are both blind and deaf? etc... Would God not exist to them because they would not be able to see Him?" What do you all think about this? Do you have a different response you'd give?

Is the Bible Mythology? (Click here for link)

Recently when I was studying to become a high school teacher, I was considering having a double focus: on German and on Psychology (which falls under the category of "Social Studies"). So I had to take a "methods" course for Social Studies. Lo and behold, the teacher was the same teacher I had in 9th grade at Kenny Guinn Jr. High (yeeeeears ago). He demonstrated one typical opening he uses to teach about Greek Mythology.

We entered the classroom and took our seats. Then the teacher flickered the lights on and off for about 20 seconds (it actually gave me a mild headache). He then asked me what causes electricity. Now if you know me, I started giving a sort of 'technical' answer (as best as I understand electricity!). "Wrong!" he shouted, "it's the gods that create it!" (with a dramatic emphasis on "gods") "Whenever people in the past didn't understand something, they would create a god for it. Now we know better, so we have no need to create gods for things we don't understand."

First, his statement is just a blatant over-generalization. But anyway.... So does this apply to Christianity? Is the Bible just a bunch of myth? Does it read like a myth?

If you've heard of the Chronicles of Narnia, you've heard of C.S. Lewis. He wrote sooo much more than just the Chronicles of Narnia. An excellent writer, he was a brilliant professor at Oxford over in England: one of the top universities in the world. Let me just quote what he wrote in "What are we to Make of Jesus Christ?" (from the book God in the Dock):

"Now as a literary historian, I am perfectly convinced that whatever else the Gospels are, they are not legends. I have read a great deal of legend and I am quite clear that they (the Gospels) are not the same sort of thing. They are not artistic enough to be legends. ... Apart from bits of the Platonic dialogues, there are no conversations that I know of in ancient literature like the Fourth Gospel. There is nothing, even in modern literature, until about a hundred years ago when the realistic novel came into existence. ... And the art of inventing little irrelevant details to make an imaginary scene more convincing is a purely modern art."

If you read the gospels, all throughout you'll encounter "irrelevant details", like what time in the day something happened, that Jesus wrote in the sand, that Jesus' clothes in the tomb were folded. Those all are irrelevant details when it comes to getting the main story across, so those are clues to the literary historian that the text is a record of something that really did occur.

Greek Mythology is not the same; we know it was invented by a man named Homer. Why did he write the Greek Mythology stories? The Greeks at that time had no long-standing history, no gods, nothing to make the people seem "mighty", so the myth was invented to satisfy those needs. This fact is recognized by Greek historians. Also, Jesus doesn't come across as 'mighty' and the disciples don't come across as having perfect understanding of things.... TOTALLY unlike myth.

So... if anyone tells you that Christianity is "myth", you have tools to explain the truth. The gospels (and other historical books like 1&2 Kings, 1&2 Chronicles, and 1&2 Samuel) do not read like myth or legend.

By the way, if you're reeeeeally bored, I created a link to the short essay, "What are we to Make of Jesus Christ?". (Click on the title of this blog post for the link) God in the Dock is actually a collection of essays written by C.S. Lewis.

Answering the skeptics, part trois/tres/drei/three

Small cheer... you just learned a few new languages with this title...how to say 3! :)

We've just done a bit of "soul searching" to find out what our faith in Christianity starts. You all may not be experts in science, archaeology, etc., but there are experts out there that have done a lot of work in these areas, and we trust them. This is TOTALLY fine, because everyone has to trust the "experts" in most areas of study.

Now, of course, this is just my thoughts here, but I think it's very important for us to not lean on only one thing that supports Christianity, but to learn about the different fields of study that also support Christianity. For one thing, it strengthens our faith in Christ to know that God's given us plenty of "evidence" (in different forms... not only hard-science "evidence") to learn about Him, and this goes along with the greatest commandment given: "You are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. ... And you are to love your neighbor as yourself."

I wish it were possible in this blog to go through all of the questions skeptics raise, but if I were to do that, we'd never be able to get to anything else. Let me just say this... for all the arguments I've heard skeptics raise against Christianity, most of their arguments have to do with misunderstanding some of the things in the Bible. What I've noticed is that many skeptics tend to read the Bible through 20th/21st century eyes. We must understand that styles of writing change throughout the centuries. For one thing, today we think in a very "linear" fashion: first this happened, then that happened, and that person was wearing blank, and people reacted [insert adverb here]. We write that way too.

When the Hebrews wrote the Old Testament, they were more "picture" thinkers... "a picture is worth 1000 words" style of writing. Once we understand how the biblical writers wrote and try to see it through their eyes, then we can apply it to our lives. This takes practice and patience for us. It doesn't mean we can't understand anything now... we CAN, but need to realize that there's more than meets the eye when reading the Bible. They also weren't concerned with how things happened... they were more concerned simply with the interaction of God with creation, His promises, and God's revealing who He is to creation.

So what I want to do now is go over only a couple of arguments against Christianity and examine why they are not strong arguments. I will also post a short blog regarding "textual" support for the Bible. Then after that, I hope to examine the support there is for Christianity.