Frankenstein

Joel Osteen Stretches It.

I had to scan in the cover for Joel Osteen’s Become a Better You today, the cover I had been using was from Amazon and was not the International Cover, so I had to actually handle a Joel Osteen book.

Now it’s easy to jest about dear old Joel, but other than seeing him on YouTube, I didn’t know if my views of him were valid or not, so given the opportunity, I figured I would read the start of his book, just to see If I could relate to his teachings.

The first page (I skipped the intro, so I started on page three) starts out great, with a quote from Frank Lloyd Wright, and setting up the whole premise of striving to do better.

Joel keeps the ball rolling – and me happy – by telling the sad fact that many people are living below their potential and not using their gifts an talents.

Then he says that God “wants every generation to be increasing in happiness, success, and significance.” (Emphasis mine)

I’m sure God wants us to be happy and successful doing His work, but I’m not sure about the significance part. Though, when you think about it, Billy Graham was a significant figure in American Christianity so we’ll let this one go.

Joel goes on to expand on this point however, and tells us that we should “always be reaching for new heights… in our finances, careers…” (Emphasis mine)

Now I shouldn’t be surprised that Joel is talking about money in his book, he is, after all, somewhat known for his prosperity teachings. But to bring it out one the first page really shows where the guy is coming from. Good on him for knowing his audience, but for me this only confirms my suspicions that Joel and I read the Bible differently.

The Bronze Snake

Then the people of Israel set out from Mount Hor, taking the road to the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom. But the people grew impatient with the long journey, and they began to speak against God and Moses. “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die here in the wilderness?” they complained. “There is nothing to eat here and nothing to drink. And we hate this horrible manna!”

So the Lord sent poisonous snakes among the people, and many were bitten and died. Then the people came to Moses and cried out, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take away the snakes.” So Moses prayed for the people.

Then the Lord told him, “Make a replica of a poisonous snake and attach it to a pole. All who are bitten will live if they simply look at it!” So Moses made a snake out of bronze and attached it to a pole. Then anyone who was bitten by a snake could look at the bronze snake and be healed!

Numbers 21:4-9

Now I'm no Bible scholar and I have been struggling with this Old Testament jazz, but I'm sure it wasn't so long ago that the Lord was chastising wanting to destroy every last one of them for worshiping a Golden Calf. So tell me, is the Lord being a hypocrite or am I missing some subtle subtext? Part of me just wants to think the Lord is laying on a bit of thick sarcasm to get his message across, and is actually getting a kick out of watching His people gaze up at a bronze snake...

Is Religion the Default Position?

University of Oxford researchers will spend nearly US$4 million to study why mankind embraces God. The grant to the Ian Ramsey Center for Science and Religion will bring anthropologists, theologians, philosophers and other academics together for three years to study whether belief in a divine being is a basic part of mankind's makeup.

"There are a lot of issues. What is it that is innate in human nature to believe in God, whether it is gods or something superhuman or supernatural?" said Roger Trigg, acting director of the center.

He said anthropological and philosophical research suggests that faith in God is a universal human impulse found in most cultures around the world, even though it has been waning in Britain and western Europe.

"One implication that comes from this is that religion is the default position, and atheism is perhaps more in need of explanation," he said.

The study will be funded by the John Templeton Foundation, a U.S.-based philanthropic organization that funds wide-ranging research into questions that deal with the laws of nature and issues of spirituality.

Do Miracles still happen?

After reading Dale’s post about Souls and the comments getting on a tangent about heaven, I’ve been thinking.

My mind often goes off on weird sporadic directions when put into use, ending up in seemingly unconnected places. As such I started thinking about miracles.

Specifically I remembered the time I wanted to encourage a friend, who was looking for a miracle in her life. I read that particular days devotion from a daily C.S. Lewis Devotional book. Can’t go wrong I figured with a man of faith like CS Lewis.

Miracles it seems are not a cornerstone of Christian belief, as CS Lewis clearly stated, there is no point in hoping on the miraculous, as miracles were for Jesus’ time only – or words to that effect.

Needless to say, I didn’t end up being very encouraging to my friend that day, but I did learn that Christians could be divided about miracles. I’ve been witness to enough of them to believe that they still have a place in our modern society, yet I’m not sure I have the faith to bring about a miracle on my own.

Of course, any thinking man will ultimately turn to wikipedia for the final word on any subject, but according to wise old wiki, there are many views on what makes a miracle.

Nothing this complicated is ever easy.

The thing I like about the miracles in my life is the ability they have in giving me hope. I can look back over my life and see God’s hand protecting me in amazing ways – ways that an atheist might call luck – miracles that were not seen as miracles until later in life when I had belief in a divine creator who was looking out for me.

These miracles, or events in my life give me the perception that my life has purpose. Maybe that in itself is the miracle.

WWJD?

Forgiveness

The following news story got me thinking about forgiveness...

'Nazi hunt' launched in S America

A "final effort" is under way in South America to track down and prosecute ex-Nazi war criminals before they die.

Operation Last Chance - a scheme devised by the Simon Wiesenthal Center - attempts to locate Nazis in hiding.

It takes the form of a media campaign and offers financial rewards for any information that results in conviction.

The four countries involved are Chile, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil - where large numbers of Nazis are thought to have fled following World War II.

'Important results'

The operation - launched in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in July 2002 - has so far provided the names of 488 suspects from 20 different countries, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said.

According to the group, 99 cases have been submitted to local prosecutors, resulting in three arrest warrants, two extradition requests and dozens of ongoing investigations.

"Given the large number of Nazi war criminals and collaborators who escaped to South America, the launching of Operation Last Chance has the potential to yield important results," said the Center's chief Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff.

The operation will formally launch at a press conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina on Tuesday.

The center's founder, Holocaust survivor and Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal, died two years ago.

He was credited with helping to bring more than 1,100 Nazi war criminals to justice in the decades after the genocide of the Jews in World War II.

Six million Jews were murdered in the Nazi death camps, along with thousands of Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled people and political dissidents.

Source: bbc

The question that came to my mind was did Simon Wiesenthal forgive those who persecuted him, before he dedicated his life to hunting down Nazi War Criminals? Or did he squander the life he was given by becoming a vigilante, bent on bringing to justice anyone with Nazi connections that had fled the coming retribution? Is it possible to forgive a group of people responsible for killing so many humans? Would forgiving them give the survivors a better life? Or had these demonised Nazis gone beyond the realm of forgivability and were in Gods eyes beyond redemption?