Monthly Archives: September 2012

Saturdays with C.S. Lewis: Why the Next Generation is Rejecting Christianity

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If we had noticed that the young men of the present day found it harder and harder to get the right answers to sums, we should consider that this had been adequately explained the moment we discovered that schools had for some years ceased to teach arithmetic. After that discovery we should turn a deaf ear to people who offered explanations of a vaguer and larger kind — people who said that the influence of Einstein had sapped the ancestral belief in fixed numerical relations, or that gangster films had undermined the desire to get right answers, or that the evolution of consciousness was now entering on its post-arithmetical phase. Where a clear and simple explanation completely covers the facts no other explanation is in court.  If the younger generation have never been told what the Christians say and never heard any arguments in defence of it, then their agnosticism or indifference is fully explained. There is no need to look any further: no need to talk about the general intellectual climate of the age or the influence of mechanistic civilization on the character of urban life. And having discovered that the cause of their ignorance is lack of instruction, we have also discovered the remedy. There is nothing in the nature of the younger generation which incapacitates them for receiving Christianity. If any one is prepared to tell them, they are apparently ready to hear.

C.S. Lewis, “On the Transmission of Christianity,” God in the Dock 115  (London, 1946).

View the Dead Sea Scrolls FOR YOURSELF Right Now!

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The Dead Sea Scrolls are the earliest known manuscripts of Biblical text currently in existence. They are arguably one of the greatest archeological finds of our time.  Found in 1947, some shepherds accidentally discovered some caves containing jars of parchment. The Great Isaiah Scroll was initially sold by one of the shepherds for $29, today it is a priceless treasure. Within the 800+ scrolls in this collection, The Dead Sea Scrolls contain at least fragments of every book in the Old Testament except the book of Esther. More than ten scrolls were beautifully preserved intact including two copies of Isaiah.

Here is your chance to examine the most prominent scrolls with your own eyes.

(if only my old hebrew professor in seminary could see my interest now.)

 

Click these links for High Res. zoomable photos of the actual scrolls and insightful descriptions. Very cool stuff.

 

The Great Isaiah Scroll

The Temple Scroll

The War Scroll

The Community Rule Scroll

The Commentary on Habakkuk Scroll 

 

$$$-The Price of College-$$$

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See You At The Pole – 2012 – Awaken

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This morning students around the country are gathering at flag poles on their school campuses. It is a morning to stand and be counted. A morning to lift up to our God prayers for our friends, family, schools, administration, teachers, city, state and national governments.

I will be spending my morning at Oakland Middle school where I am predicting 150+ students will gather in Jesus’ name to pray. It is an honor to stand among them.

Whether a single student standing alone, two or three huddled together in unity, or hundreds gathered in front of the school, See You at the Pole is about students praying for awakening on campuses all over the world.

The 2012 See You at the Pole theme is Awaken and the Scripture is Ephesians 3:14–21—“For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father… I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts…And I pray that you… grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and…that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine…’”

Pray for these teenagers today that as they take a stand on public property and exercise their religious liberty, they will be a light that points not tho their own spirituality or goodness, but to Jesus.  For He is the only hope for our schools, our nation, and our world.

To Him be the Glory this morning.

If you are reading this before 7:00am, hey, I’ll see you at the Pole!

Here are some quick links if you want to learn more about this national movement.

SYATP Frequently Asked Questions

SYATP.com

SYATP Store

Wiki write up on SYATP

Packers vs. Seahawks – NFL Replacement Ref. Mayhem on 9/24/12

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If you haven’t been following the NFL this year, the big story is how the veteran (and highly skilled) referee crew is on a lock out over pension contract issue. This video will go down in history in connection with these “replacement” refs. Check out some of the backlash.

It is a desperation “Hail Mary” pass in the last seconds of the game. Seattle Seahawks are down by 5. The pass is intercepted…no it is caught, no…we don’t know what happened! The two corner refs run in on the scene and simultaneously declare opposite calls. Which call stands determines who wins this Monday Night Football showdown.

No matter where you stand on this now infamous piece of officiating, let me throw out a few thoughts:

  • No one is perfect: not the refs (for sure), but also, not the league and commissioner for allowing this lock out to persist so long. Not the coaches and players who have been bullying these replacement refs. And not even the media who has railed on these refs since the first game of the season. This season has reminded me of the selfishness that comes to light in high pressure moments. Man, no one is perfect.
  • Greed drives the bus: the NFL is a 9 billion dollar industry. Yet this lock out of the veteran refs is over an accumulated 3 million in pension funds. Where is the perspective here!?! Why can these people not work out their financial issues before the football season begins? Greed. Getting all we can get when we can get it. Being self centered. For goodness sakes, when the NFL highlights a spiritual condition of the heart, you know it is serious!
  • Everything in this world will let us down: If you love football, and end up on the wrong side of a call like this, it can be a huge disappointment. While everything in this world will fail, there is One who is completely trustworthy. Where refs and all men will get it wrong eventually, Jesus Christ get it right.
  • There are more important things in life than sports: As much as I love football, I understand that life is more than sports. I was just speaking to an FCA this morning and reminding them of Matt 6:33, which says our first and greatest priority in life is His Kingdom and His righteousness, and if we get that priority right everything else will fall into the correct place.

Keep your #1 priority in focus today!

-Adam

Saturdays with C.S. Lewis: Dying to Self

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But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away ‘blindly’ so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it.
Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952; Harper Collins: 2001) 223-225.

Losing The Hype: Jesus Didn’t Have a Wife

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Which seems more likely – Jesus really did have a wife…and we just now are finding out about it even after 2000+ of microscope focus on His life, or the media is being sensational about this papyrus scrap?

Or look at it this way, will you trust six words that are part of an unidentifiable sentence (the other words in the sentence can’t be read) written 300 years after Jesus’ life with no predecessors or successors on a piece of papyrus smaller than a business card more than you trust four harmonious accounts of his life written by eyewitnesses with thousands of early copies? Now I may just be bias, but one side sounds much more credible.

For a more accurate perspective of this newest intrigue with Jesus’ personal life, read this balanced article.

The Far Less Sensational Truth about Jesus’ Wife – by the Gospel Coalition.

If you have no clue what this blog is about and you have been social media deprived this week, here are a few quick links from major sources to catch you up to speed in the recent historical discovery.

ABC News, Fox News, NY Times, The Washington Post

It is my prayer that we will get to know the true Jesus through the pages of scripture more everyday.

Fantastic FREE Backgrounds and Desktop Images

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If you are like me, you set your desktop wallpaper image to “rotate every 30 mins”. [a nice little feature of my macbook pro] 😉  So I am always on the lookout for some new images that are high enough resolution to look good.

Click HERE for a great link full of high quality pictures. Pick your specific device and download the images formatted specifically for it.

Enjoy. (here is one of my current wallpaper choices.)

Obsessed with Facebook – The Staggering Stats

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Saturdays with C.S. Lewis: What are we to make of Christ?

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“What are we to make of Christ?” There is no question of what we can make of Him, it is entirely a question of what He intends to make of us. You must accept or reject the story.

 

C.S. Lewis, “What are we to make of Jesus Christ?” (originally published 1950; this edition from The Essential C.S. Lewis (Touchstone, 1996)) 331.