Dec 11 - Dec 19 , 2006

You can view the blogs during this time on Blogger (or e-Blogger) right here. You can read here my journal entries from our mission trip to the Pine Ridge Reservation.

May 7, 2006

Just having finished watching Flywheel with some of my church brothers and sisters, I found an interesting article on Hollywood and Christian movies. It looks like there's suddenly a lot of noise about Christ and movies lately.

Of course, with The Da Vinci Code coming out, there is much argument, understandably, from the Catholic Church, though I disagree with this Catholic Bishop's idea of bringing litigation. I think that would only make more people go see this movie - after all, part of the success of The Passion of the Christ was the amazing amount of pre-release press the movie got because of all the anger and resentment from non-believers.

So should we go see it or shouldn't we? I tend to agree with Barbara Nicolosi. I didn't buy the book, but borrowed it to read it - I didn't want to give Dan Brown a cent. I don't think I will watch the movie until it's available without having to pay for it, so that it doesn't make a cent in profit from me. I like the recommendation that Ms. Nicolosi makes - let's go see Over the Hedge instead.

Meanwhile, from my point of view, I look forward to seeing more movies that bring up God and Jesus, like Jesus Camp. I only wish that more Hollywood movies would present Christianity with more respect and more truth. Until then, I will continue to support movies like Flywheel, Time Changer and those from Cloud Ten Pictures and pray that other Christians will talk to Hollywood with their money - the only language they seem to understand. Then maybe they will begin to cater to our segment of the market instead of all those who are against us.

April 6, 2006

Is it just me or are there more false teachers every day? I've mentioned the Jesus Seminar before in these blogs. Now I'll mention Bart Ehrman. Mr. Ehrman is a religion professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Sounds impressive, huh? If I didn't know better, I would listen to him also.

According to an article on Yahoo!, Ehrman, with Rev. Donald Senior, president of Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, and "other experts on Christianity", spoke at the National Geographic Society's briefing unveiling the Gospel of Judas. (At this point, I can understand why Paul spent his life trying to teach the church the truth - there were so many false gospels out there, and it seems that a new one is being uncovered every day!)

In this "gospel", Judas apparently is the good guy - the only one willing to go out on a limb so that Jesus can be crucified. Unbelievably, Ehrman says, "He's the good guy in this portrayal, He's the only apostle who understands Jesus."

Has this "Christian expert" even read the Bible? Doesn't he recognize that the Bible has a very different view of Judas? Luke 6:16 calls him a traitor, John 13:2 says that the devil prompted him to betray Jesus, John calls him a thief and both John and Luke say he was possessed by Satan. Doesn't sound like a "good guy" to me!

He also says, "The idea in this gospel is that Jesus, like all of us, is a trapped spirit, who is trapped in a material body. And salvation comes when we escape the materiality of our existence, and Judas is the one who makes it possible for him to escape by allowing for his body to be killed."

Again, doesn't he know that God created the physical world, including our bodies, and called it very good? Doesn't he know that at the Resurrection, we will receive our bodies again, recreated and renewed? Jesus wasn't "trapped" in a material body, he came down specifically to be in it! What Ehrman is teaching is dualism, part of the false teaching called Gnosticism, which the Bible is constantly refuting.

Finally, Rev. Senior said the document revealed the diversity and vitality in early Christianity. I'm guessing he's no a big fan of Paul, who insisted that there is only the truth that he has taught.

Where are these guys coming from and how is it that they are always the people the press seem to quote?! If given the choice between Ehrman and the Apostle Paul, I'll choose Paul. I only wish that more articles would quote him instead of these guys!

March 30, 2006

An article from Reuters discusses a study done by the John Templeton Foundation that studied the effects of prayer on heart patients. The study, which claims to be the largest of its kind ever done, found that there was no correlation between prayer and the condition of heart bypass surgery patients. In fact, it found that those who knew they were being prayed for, actually had a higher rate of complications after the procedure.

I have read many studies about the positive effects of prayer in healing, but to be quite honest, I never paid much attention to them. I guess my thinking was, “Well, duh. Of course prayer helps!” So, I almost missed this article because of my usual lack of interest in this subject. That said, I’m glad I did read this because it gives us cause to think.

Why wouldn’t prayer work? Why wouldn’t God answer these specific prayers? Is God saying, “Don’t test me”? Or did it just happen to be that it was God’s Will that these specific people in the study not be healed?

I think the answer is actually obvious if we change our perspective on the subject. Instead of asking, “Does prayer make a difference?” maybe the better question is, “Should we be trying to find scientific evidence for miraculous intervention?” After all, someone going through heart bypass surgery is probably in bad shape to begin with. If prayer healed a subject, wouldn’t that be abnormal and hence placed in the category of miraculous? And if so, can miracles be scientifically evaluated when, by definition, a miracle is something that happens in spite of the normal, scientific, natural world? Maybe those miracles happened to people before they went in for the surgery.

My thinking on this is that it’s an interesting idea but an invalid test of prayer. The results of prayer aren’t always physically apparent and anyone who thinks that a spiritual discipline can be measured in scientific terms might not understand the reason for prayer. Prayer isn’t to ask the Genie God to give us something we want; it’s to grow a relationship with God. That can’t be measured by science.

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