Way of the Master vs Rational Response

This post is in regards to this video that Jono suggested I watch. So if you're reading I suggest you watch it to! Definitely interesting.

I thought the atheists made terrible points quite frankly and they had no concrete facts they continued to ball park numbers and figures and couldn't even look the Christians in the face while they were talking. The male continued to push everything onto the female who, for one, said that the United States is "the most religious of all countries," which isn't true because India has a population over 1 billion people as compared to the United States which only has a little over 300 million of which (according to Wikipedia), in both cases nearly 99% of Indians claim to be of some faith whereas only 91% of Americans claim to have a religious affiliation or connection, meaning we are far from the "most religious of all countries." Maybe she meant, we have the largest Christian population in the world, meaning her argument is that the largest nation of Christians have the highest crime rate of all nations. Without getting into an argument of how difficult it is to not only measure crime rates in general, but also in the same universal way, I feel she is off base here. I searched Google for something or anything concrete in regards to crime rate and found nothing. However if she wants to go this route I think it's worth noting that we probably have one of the largest atheist populations in the world besides communistic China. For although Sweden might have an atheistic population of 80% or 90% (which the atheist in the video struggled to come up with adding to their lack of credibility), they only have a population of 9 million people meaning 810,000 atheist(90% of 9 million). This in comparison to the United States whose 2001 ARIS (American Religious Identification Survey) has the atheist population in the US at 8.4%. Sure that number could have changed significantly over the last six years or might be off because only 50,000 Americans were polled, but if any bias were to exist I think it would be in favor of increasing the percentage of religious followers in our country. For I'm sure there are a lot of atheist (whether they call themselves that or not) who might check off Christian because they go to church once a year because they have to go with their families. Either way we'll use this 8% as a ball park of atheist in our country of over 300 million people would me that we have an atheist population of roughly 25 million, in other words one of the larger atheist populations in the world. Therefore, no wonder our crime rate is so high! LOL j/k, but you can see how numbers can be skewed in favor of one's bias.

I also didn't feel as though the Christians did a wonderful job either as you mentioned. They especially had trouble with the question about why such a perfect and loving God would create evil, and I think this is a pretty simple. The evil in this world is God's way of presenting the imperfection of this world as compared to the perfection of the next i.e. Heaven. If this world were perfect, why would we as humans need Heaven and why would we need to turn to God and religion in our hardships. However, even in this world he is a loving God, for as pointed out in John 3:16-18, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."

Thanks for reading let me know what you think.

My Mission

I am surrounded by countless people who aren't Christians, from my direct family to my very best friends, and I don't think that's by coincidence. Naturally I feel God put me in their lives for a reason and I hope that I can do what I can to help guide (not drag!) them to God. I mean why not believe? I understand that it may be a step out of people's "comfort zone," yet at the same time the Christian way of life coupled with the promise of eternal life sounded good enough for me to at least look into it and learn about it... I hope the people that I love so much feel the same way.

When All Hell Breaks Loose

Tiff suggested that I listen to Rich Nathan's most recent sermon entitled "When All Hell Breaks Loose," so naturally I did. As an insight, Rich Nathan is the senior pastor of a mega church called Vineyard Columbus, he is an unbelievable speaker combining his Biblical knowledge, with worldly knowledge, and throwing a few lighthearted jokes in between. However, he really challenges the congregation and doesn't do so in a roundabout way. So anyhow, he opened his sermon by mentioning the fact that more than likely Americans didn't hear about a letter written from the Islam leaders of the world to the Christian leaders in an effort to build a bridge of peace between the two religions. Instead of the news filling the airwaves and telecasts with such a ground breaking and hope filled news, the news stations elected to push Britney Spears custody struggles and the Lance Armstrong dating Ashley Olson stories. After informing us of such happenings he got into the actual sermon which this week was about the end of times. Two things in scripture must happen to signal the end of times, an event must occur in the form of a great rebellion, this in addition to the culmination of evil ultimately expressed in one person, the anti-Christ. The culmination of evil is what Rich Nathan is going to talk about today in addition to the end of times. When talking about the end of times one should exhibit stability. Nathan went onto say that stability is a good trait in many other things such as the economy, the sea, other people, etc. The apostle Paul describes the anti-Christ to be the lawless one, doomed one, opposing one, and worshiped one, but Paul never says "anti-Christ." However "anti-Christ" is mentioned a few times in the Bible. The spirit of anti-Christ is the always the spirit of lawlessness, as they hate any type of law, whether governmental or religious. Along the same lines of being stable in the face of the end of times, we must also practice self denial, and be able to say no to oneself and say no to our selfish desires and therefore practice sacrifice to God.

So what's the response to the anti-Christ? God wins! All the world's inhabitants not of Christ will worship the beast (the anti-Christ). As Christians, we are not to give our loyalty to anyone, but to Jesus. It's clearly OK for Christians to honor the government and to love their spouse, but allegiance and loyalty rests primarily with Jesus. Additionally, we won't be guessing who the anti-Christ is as many people speculated about Hitler, Stalin, etc., they were wrong! In order to combat the anti-Christ we must be stable and love Jesus more than anything else in the world. This sounds nice and very easy to do, but in my reality it is something I struggle with every day. This isn't to say that consciously and unconsciously that God isn't the guide and the aim of my life, but at the same time we live in a world surrounded by distractions, but these distractions are very important to most Americans non-Christian or Christian, even such things as jobs, school, family, etc. And I'm not trying to say they aren't important, because they are, but I'm sure that most Americans would have those three things at the top of their priority list with God at the bottom of the priority totem pole. Yet at the same time NOTHING should take precedence over your relationship with God. Now this isn't to say to quit your job or school, sell your possessions, and completely forget about your family in order to live as a monk in Tibet. Instead, what this means is no matter how well or hard life is going, give thanks to God and have the hope and faith to know that God will pull you through adversity. He even has enough power, ability, and mercy to pull us Christian sinners out of the ultimate adversity that is the end of times!

Reconciliation

Yesterday's message by Pastor Mike Wells at First Baptist Church was about reconciliation. Most people, myself included, merely assume that this is a fancy word for forgiveness. However there's more to it than that. First of all, as a definition, reconciliation is, simply put, to move from being enemies to being friends. Additionally reconciliation requires two actions to take place, first an apology and then secondly forgiveness. And it's important to note that reconciliation takes place not only horizontally, or in our relationships with people, but also (and more importantly) it occurs vertically in our relationship with God. We apologize to another person who grants forgiveness at which point we are reconciled, in the same way that through our apologies to God for our sins, He offers forgiveness and we are reconciled. Pastor Mike made a good point where he dispelled the commonly mistaken belief that because our God is a merciful God that He'll grant mercy and forgiveness to all sinners. However, he pointed out this is not the case, He is a merciful God who will grant forgiveness to all sinners who apologize for and repent their sins.

A couple of good passages that show reconciliation in the Bible include The Parable of the Lost Son (Luke 15:11) and Zacchaeus the Tax Collector (Luke 19:1). I personally love The Parable of the Lost Son as basically the son of a wealthy man tells his father "give me my share of the estate," or his inheritance, which he would good upon his father's death. Therefore, the son is pretty much telling his father I wish you would die. The son then goes out on a partying binge and drives himself as low as a human can go, so far as that he was lower low grade servant feeding pigs. He was in so deep that he even "longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating." Therefore, the son ultimately realized his wrong doings and set out to return to his father. Naturally this son was uncertain whether his father would take him back even as a servant let alone as a son, but his father rushed to him accepting him with open arms and forgave him even before his son had the chance to apologize. This is reconciliation.

As for a practical application for reconciliation I think one of the best point that the Bible makes on this topic is that not only is the guilty party supposed to be the first to "make the move" and apologize for their wrong doing, but so to is the innocent party as Matthew 18:15 points out "If your brother sins against you, go and show him his faults, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over." This is very contrary to most of situations that and disputes that I have come across. Typically both sides of an argument are stubborn, but especially the person who is "innocent" in the wrong doing. So the ultimately, quoting the church notes, it is "the one who is committed most to living out God's heart" that will make the first move towards reconciliation.

Thanks for reading, hope this first post was clear, concise, and meaningful!