God Desires Worship!

A long time ago when I was a little boy of seven or eight years of age, my cousin told me a story concerning his friend’s younger brother. According to my cousin, the little guy went to the corner store and bought a dime’s worth of candy—back when a dime bought quite a lot. Anyway, the young lad paid for his treasure with some stones he collected from his yard. Obviously, the woman who gave him the candy thought he was cute and took the stones as payment. Of course the stones had no value, but the incident is priceless.

 

The Bacchae – Christianity and the Enlightenment

It is expected for civilizations to remember the past and to judge accurately why those things occurred and evaluate what has brought us to where we are today. It has been said, and I believe it is a truism, that those who neglect the study of history, or rejects its implications are cursed to repeat its mistakes. Christianity preaches Christ and him crucified. We have no real citizenship or home in this present world. However, just because we are here in a real physical world means that, like it or not, we have contributed a worldview to this world that we claim will one day be destroyed.

 

The Bacchae – The Jews and the Greeks

Thousands of years ago Euripides wrote a play called The Bacchae.[1] In it he portrays worlds in conflict. In his world two distinct and opposing points of view were being played out in real history. The rational (philosophers), represented by a group of men in his play, depicted their dry, rather insensitive understanding of the world. On the opposite end of the pendulum was the more irrational and popular point of view held by the polytheistic culture of the time and represented in Euripides’ play by a group of women. In the end the polytheistic culture (the irrational) wins over the logical premise of the philosophers (the rational), and the women kill the men and cut them in pieces. Gory, yes, but it is a fair representation of history.

 

Jesus and Gautama—the Buddha

Did you ever wonder why Christianity is scrutinized so much? I mean we have people claiming Jesus is not an historical figure; we have the textual critics that seek to show not only syncretism, but that the apostles were not the true authors. Some would place the writing of the New Testament late in the 1^st century CE to the middle of the 2^nd. Then you have the critics looking for contradictions and which of the variants represent the true manuscripts. With the possible exception of the Hebrew Scriptures, where do we find such scrutiny in handling the rest of the world religions? Now, I am not complaining, on the contrary, I invite the controversy given my faith. The fact is according to the Scriptures, Jesus (the Lamb) was supposed to be keenly observed, scrutinized etc. to see if there was any fault or sin in him (cp. Exodus 12 and the unblemished lamb).

 

Christianity Copied Mithraism?

I recently received a “comment” to my What I Believe page. It was rather lengthy, not the normal two or three sentences. I decided to reply to the gentleman by way of a series of blogs that address the claims he made in his lengthy critique. Please don’t think I am seeking to make light of this man’s criticism; I mean only to give it the importance that it deserves. Obviously “Ra” [short for "Rana" in his email address (?)] thought it important enough to offer a lengthy reason why what I believe about Jesus and Christianity is wrong, so rather than give a very lengthy reply, which probably no one would read, I’ve decided to take portions of his commentary and reply to each in a separate blog. Anyone who wishes to do so may check to make sure I am quoting Ra in context, and I welcome any correction, if someone believes I am abusing the common courtesy everyone deserves who takes the time to offer his or her comments.

 

Can You Trust God If He Wasn’t In Charge?

It is the opinion of some scholars that Paul inserts a parenthesis between Romans 9 through Romans 11 and begins writing of other matters to support what he has already written. In chapter nine Paul shows that because God rejected Ishmael that the children of the flesh do not inherit the promises of God. The children of the promise inherit. Abraham wanted a son and devised a plan whereby he would have a son. He married Sarah’s slave, Hagar, and through her gave birth to Ishmael. Ishmael was Abraham’s child according to his will, according to the flesh.

 

Does God Exist?

I found this video on one of my facebook friend’s site. I thought it was really interesting. Perhaps you will like it as well. :-)

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This is basically an annulling of Epicurus’ dictum, which he used thinking to prove there is no God:

• Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
• Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
• Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
• Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

If darkness does not exist, in that it is not something that can be measured but is in reality the absence of light; and if cold also does not exist, according to the laws of physics, but what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat, then evil—like darkness and cold—does not exist. What we call evil is what happens when people act without the presence of God’s love in their hearts! Wow! I never thought of it that way. Did you?