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Archive for March, 2017

THE TOTALITY OF DOGMA

Posted in Me & The World, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 25, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Dogma: an official system of principles or tenets concerning faith, morals, behaviour; a settled or established opinion, belief or principle.

–Dictionary.com

This word has taken on a negative context in our culture, suggesting narrow-minded inflexibility that many people insist is simply wrong.

Now, read this meme (posted in an atheist Internet community) again. Doesn’t it sound a little…dogmatic? Consider the points it makes:

“Dogmatic” people lack freedom. Well, freedom to do what? I follow Jesus of Nazareth, who many people believe is the divine Son of God and I do my best to live my life according to His principles.

What freedom does Lindsey believe I lack? Can I not think the world is a beautiful place? Of course I can. And I do.

Does this mean I’m going to walk around with rose-coloured glasses and ignore the many, many human-caused problems that plague this planet? Absolutely not. That would be delusional. So should I wonder if Lindsey is deluding herself?

“Dogmatic” people’s vision is clouded and close-minded. Really? Yet another dogmatic assertion. My vision is clear enough to see the world is beautiful AND horribly messed up. One of the reasons I follow Jesus is I believe faith in Him is the starting point to fixing that mess.

As for the apparent horror of being “close-minded”, should my brain simply drift like an aimless amoeba for all time? Is that what Lindsey’s mind is doing?

I like what famed British writer and thinker G. K. Chesterton wrote about being open-minded: “Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”

I shut my mind on something solid when I decided to trust the evidence and believe that the sacrificial death of Jesus paid the price for all the wrong things I’ve done and all the right things I’ve failed to do (a price I could NEVER pay on my own). By doing this, one of the primary source documents of Jesus’ physical life on earth says I’ll “not be lost but have eternal life”.

What Jesus did is a gift that’s offered to everyone, including Lindsey. Including YOU. If you accept that gift, one of Jesus’ earliest followers says you’ll have “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness [and] faithfulness”.

This won’t happen overnight. But if you say ‘yes’ to faith in Jesus, a life-long construction project will begin. And it won’t end until this life ends and you spend eternity with your creator.

Interested? Yes or no, post your thoughts below and let’s have a conversation.

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THE FACTS ABOUT ‘BRAINWASHING’

Posted in Me & The World, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 18, 2017| 2 Comments »

Oh boy; there’s a lot of fabulous content in this atheist meme. So let’s get started.

1. Brainwashing: Is there brainwashing in among people who follow Jesus of Nazareth (who many believe is the Son of God)? Sadly, yes. I’m sure if you search long enough, you’ll find some parents who, in effect, brainwash their children to ensure they grow up without ever, ever questioning their beliefs.

Gee, wouldn’t that also apply to parents in other faiths, as well as atheist parents? YES.  In fact, whether Matthew Laramore likes it or not, all of us — including him — are brainwashed in some way. To deny that is to ignore reality.

2. Has the history of Jesus followers been marked by violence? Unfortunately, yes. People who are opposed to this faith often bring up the Crusades (a series of violent wars, in the 1100s and 1200s, aiming at retaking the Middle East from Islamic rule).

What most critics ignore, however, is at least some of the Crusade campaigns were a response to large-scale violence instigated by Muslim forces against Jesus followers. Investigate for yourself, if you don’t believe me.

Either way, except for the occasional lone-wolf lunatic, Jesus followers left violence behind many centuries ago. I thank God that Jesus followers understand that love, not violence, is the way to tell the world about Him.

3. The whole “wearing a half-naked dead man nailed against a crucifix” thing has nothing to do with promoting Jesus as non-violent.

It wasn’t Jesus followers who nailed Jesus to a cross; it was soldiers of the Roman Empire, acting on the orders of their leaders. Those leaders were responding to pressure from religious authorities, who believed Jesus was a threat to their power and the religious laws they forced on people. They were right.

This leads to a wonderful truth: Jesus came to free us from brainwashing, from violence and from religious laws.

Looking for evidence? Consider these passages from the ancient writers:

Give the Lord a chance to show you how good he is.
In other words, don’t be brainwashed; check out God for yourself.

Don’t fight back against someone who wants to do harm to you. If they hit you on the right cheek, let them hit the other cheek too. (from one of the four original-source accounts of Jesus’s physical time on earth).
In other words, don’t resort to violence, even if someone is violent against you.

Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. (the words of Jesus.)
In other words, it’s not about “religion”. It’s about a relationship with the Son of God that can start now and stretch into all eternity.

Consider all this carefully. Jesus is about good news, not about anything advanced by Matthew Laramore. Interested? Yes or no, post your thoughts below and let’s have a conversation.

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A CASE OF BAD TIMING?

Posted in Me & The World, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 4, 2017| 2 Comments »

JesusFollowing Jesus of Nazareth, who many people believe is the divine Son of God, can lead to a transformed life, now and for all eternity. So this graphic, posted on an atheism internet community, brings up a very good point.

Did the millions of people who lived and died before Jesus was physically on this earth, about 2,000 years ago, have any chance of going to Heaven? Maybe that’s a question that’s occurred to people like you, who are open to spirituality.

Ancient writings, including four original-source biographies of Jesus, do not provide an absolutely clear answer – as I’ve discovered while researching the question.

Depending on which website you visit, there are long essays that quote various parts of the Bible to make this or that point. I gotta admit, reading some of this stuff made my eyes glaze over.

But in the end, each website came to the same conclusion: people were granted admission into Heaven, where they will spend eternity with their creator, through faith. Not in themselves. Not in their ability to live good lives, to be kind to others and/or to attend church regularly.

They went to Heaven based on faith only in God. One of Jesus’s earliest and most influential followers explains how this faith thing worked in the life of Abraham, who (1) lived and died thousands of years before the arrival of Jesus, and (2) is often considered the common denominator in the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths:

If Abraham, by what he did for God, got God to approve him, he could certainly have taken credit for it. But the story we’re given is a God-story, not an Abraham-story.

What we read in Scripture is, ‘Abraham entered into what God was doing for him, and that was the turning point. He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own.’

Another ancient writing from an early Jesus follower mentions a number of other faith-filled people who were prominent in the centuries before Jesus arrived:

Each one of these people of faith died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believing. How did they do it? They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting, and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world.

People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home. If they were homesick for the old country, they could have gone back any time they wanted.

But they were after a far better country than that—Heaven country. You can see why God is so proud of them, and has a City [a place in Heaven] waiting for them.

I think it’s pretty plain, from these writings, that the atheist who created the meme that inspired this blog didn’t bother to research the character and principles of God before asking the question.

So what’s YOUR viewpoint? If you believe there’s a glorious life after this one, how do you think you’ll get in on it? By just being a “good person”? (If that’s where you stand, who defines “good” and how good is good enough?)

What about faith in Jesus of Nazareth? Does it make sense to you? Yes or no, post your thoughts below and let’s have a conversation.

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