I just finished Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche. Why did I read this steaming pile? Because so many people (mainly non-Christians of course) consider Nietzsche a first-rate philosopher. My hopes were high that I would find the same sort of satisfaction I find when I read books by the greats. I’ve read many books and articles by atheists and normally find something in them that is compelling, even if I don’t agree with their conclusions or their perspective.

Very abbreviated description as follows (there is MUCH more to this book than this):

This book is a story about a sage called Zarathustra who decides that man is repulsive because man is weak. We want equality, truth, democracy, religion and it disgusts Zarathustra. He wants man to move to the next level – the “ubermensch” (overman or superman). The path to the ubermensch is difficult of course and it requires you to renounce anything he considers weak. He calls you to “will to power” which means he wants you to be your own maker, your own creator, your own moral voice, and to marry only if you are trying to breed an ubermensch. Otherwise – women are pretty much beneath men or might be a plaything.

Essentially – he is a form of anti-Christ. Anything that is good he would call evil. Things that are normally considered evil he determines are good for the ubermensch to embrace. Revenge is good, non-compassion is good, ruling over others is good, etc. Pity is the WORST “sin”. Get rid of pity for it will hold you back.

He takes Bible passages and basically claims the truth is the opposite of what the Bible says. He generally doesn’t announce that these are Bible passages, so if you don’t know your Bible very well, you might not recognize them as such.

Now let me give credit to Nietzsche for something….he OWNS his entire philosophy and realizes the full ramifications of it and is willing to accept the consequences. Very early in the book he announces that God is dead and realizes the absurdity of life without God. The modern day atheists (say…Sam Harris) are not brave enough to carry this to its logical consequence and try to invent objective goodness without God.

Adolf Hitler put Nietzsche’s philosophy into practice in reality. Nietzsche himself was very worried that nationalism in place of God would result in horrific wars. Well Nietzsche….you didn’t get to actually witness it but I guess you weren’t wrong about everything….

Review of The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
Winner of Pulitzer Prize in 1974

Having never been a big reader of psychology, I’m not sure why I decided to read this book, but I'm glad I did. This book shows our non-stop scream for help from a terrifying world and an even more terrifying knowledge of death. A summary of what I learned is not really viable, since I underlined or highlighted something on practically every page - but here's my best shot...

The author begins by praising Kierkegaard’s amazing diagnosis of the human condition and summarizes:

“he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with.” (page 26). He summarizes Eric Fromm just 2 pages later wondering “why people did not become insane more often in the face of the existential contradiction between a symbolic self, that seems to give man infinite worth in a timeless scheme of things, and a body that is worth about 98 cents. How to reconcile the two?”

He then moves on to basically the main point of his book. Becker claims from birth we repress the truth in order to live with this terror - we are going to die.

He explains how we set up idols in our lives to transfer all the human values we have like love, intelligence, courage, etc and worship at the feet of whatever we’ve transferred them to. We want so badly the affirmation from something outside ourselves to give us a sense of self-worth and we crave immortality. None of this works because whatever or whomever we transfer these values to dies as well. We try to keep them alive (names streets after them, buildings, statues, etc) but in the end it’s just an illusion.

Then on page 173 is a very stark admission:

“…that the only way out of the human conflict is a full renunciation, to give one’s life as a gift to the highest powers. Absolution has to come from the absolute beyond.”

Page 175 – check out the conclusion not of a pastor or theologian but of a psychoanalyst who gave his life to psychology (and also not a theist of any sort).

“Man is a theological being…and not a biological one.”

And finally skipping to the very last page, Becker summarizes Norman Browne:

“He realized that the only way to get beyond the natural contradictions of existence was in the time-worn religious way: to project one’s problems onto a god-figure, to be healed by an all-embracing and all-justifying beyond.”

I found myself in awe at the conclusions of so many non-believers. If I was to summarize the conclusion found in this book it would be as follows:

The best possible thing you could be in this life is a Christian. There is no better way to be happy.

Don't misunderstand me - that is NOT the conclusion Becker offered! It's just the obvious one based on the problem. Why don't they see it?

JESUS SAVES!

I’m really bothered by something and it’s starting to irritate me greatly. I keep reading and hearing about kids going off to college and then dropping out of church and never coming back. There are lots of reasons cited (hypocrisy, someone hurt them, they don’t like the rules, etc) but there is one reason given which I think is simply because our discipleship training simply doesn’t include it. The reason is Intellectual challenges to Christianity.

They’re going off to college like sheep to the slaughter. Their professors are “authority figures” and supposedly the most knowledgeable people in their subject field. When the professor makes a case for agnosticism, “the Bible is full of myths”, atheism, inclusivism, etc – they will sound very credible. It will be logically laid out with historical case studies, cultural studies, scientific proofs or other academic supporting documentation. Dad and Mom and their local pastor seem like “well meaning folks” that really aren’t in touch with reality. “God said it, I believe it and that settles it” is not going to get it done in a university setting.

I watched this video on youtube. A guy like this might end up being your kid’s college roommate or something. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAuFJKQh83Y

These are basically the questions he asked:
1. Why should anyone believe the Bible? How do you know that it is true?
2. Is there any rational justification for belief in God?
3. Why are you a Christian? What is the main reason you are a Christian?
4. Do you think the world is 6,000 to 10,000 years old? If so, how do you reconcile the findings of science today?
5. Why would you believe anything on faith?

Every Christian should be able to answer these! Why don’t we have apologetics as part of our discipleship programs, or part of kids ministries? We are just asking for kids to walk away from the faith because we haven’t armed them for battle.

Colossians 2:8
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

I Peter 3:15a
But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

I think we are doing a major injustice to any high school student by sending them off to college without proper training in basic Christian apologetics.

Since Rob Bell wrote his new book, Love Wins, there has been quite an incredible amount of conversation about heaven and hell (which I conclude is a good thing). For many Christians though, this book also became the reason to label Rob as a heretic.

So what exactly constitutes heresy? I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I found the following list elsewhere on the internet:

1. Denying the divinity of Jesus Christ.[ Jehovah's Witness]
2. Denying the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.
3. Denying the incarnation.
4. Denying the doctrine of the Trinity [one GOD, three persons].
5. Denying the human nature of Jesus Christ [one person, two natures]
6. Denying the necessity of the death of Jesus Christ as atonement for our sins.
7. Denying the efficacy of the atoning death of Jesus Christ.
8. Denying the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.
9. Denying the visible return of Jesus Christ in the Power and Glory of the Godhead.
10. Denying the bodily resurrection of all the dead.
11. Teaching that there are multiple god's in the universe. [Mormonism]
12. Teaching there are multiple ways to heaven (other than through Jesus) {I added this one}

Now of course I agree with this entire list, but here’s the thing – as far as I can tell – so does Rob Bell. What Rob is saying is that we might not be aware of all the possible ways in which someone can “come to Christ”. He brought up the OT, apostle Paul, (others too) and suggested that none of them ever said a sinner’s prayer. Check out this quote from page 115:

“Will everybody be saved, or will some perish apart from God forever because of their choices?
Those are questions, or more accurately, those are tensions we are free to leave fully intact. We don’t need to resolve them or answer them because we can’t, and so we simply respect them, creating space for the freedom that love requires.”

Basically he is saying, “you don’t know who’s going to heaven or hell, so quit being judgmental and starting acting in love.” He then goes on to suggest that people might get a 2nd chance after death (something I don’t personally believe), but that you could continue to reject Christ eternally. Does that make him a heretic? One of the damned? “Farewell Rob Bell”? Where exactly is the line you cross that makes your heresy damnable? If you choose to deny #2 or #8 on the above list, is that enough?

The average Christian is not an avid reader of philosophy. Even fewer Christians would bother to read atheist books, blogs or articles, and unfortunately sometimes we miss things that should be grabbing our attention.

One of my heroes is Dr. William Lane Craig who is probably the most feared Christian apologist in atheist circles. Richard Dawkins (who wrote The God Delusion – a NY Times best seller) has refused to debate him so many times it’s really embarrassing to their side. Finally on Friday night at Notre Dame, Sam Harris (author of The Moral Landscape and another giant in the atheist field) agreed to debate Dr. Craig regarding whether you can have objective moral values and duties if there is no God.

You probably didn’t hear about this in church, none of your friends were talking about it, it wasn’t going to make the news anywhere – but I can tell you – in the apologist/atheist/philosophy circles this was a big deal.

Dr. Craig absolutely annihilated Sam Harris on this. Seriously – it wasn’t even close. Sam finally abandoned the topic altogether and started trashing the God of the Bible, the problem of evil, etc – none of which had anything to do with the topic at hand. What was so awesome was that Dr. Craig knew he could not lose this debate, reasoned that Sam would just use it as a platform to trash the Bible, and pulled out a copy of a book called Is God a Moral Monster by Paul Copan and suggested everyone read it if they wanted answers to what Sam was saying. He was then able to say that none of this had anything to do with what we were debating, reinstated both premises in the argument and easily triumphed.

We need more people like William Lane Craig that understand physics, logic, theology, and academia every bit as well as our atheist counterparts do. How many kids at Notre Dame left that debate with a renewed faith in God? How many atheists, agnostics and enemies of Christ are doubting their position after such a thrashing? All I know is that I was personally blessed watching that debate and found myself thanking God repeatedly for Dr. Craig.

My community group read the book “Radical” by David Platt and one of the challenges in the book was to commit to read through the entire Bible in a year. It’s been awhile since I’ve done so, so I thought it would be good to accept the challenge and read the entire Bible again.

Reading the Bible this quickly is difficult for me as I always come across things I’d like to dig deeper into, but nonetheless must keep going. I’m way past this part in my reading but I cannot get Genesis 22 out of my head. I was always taught that God will never ask you to do anything that contradicts his Word in the Bible. If that is true, how do we reconcile that God told Abraham to kill his son? If I told anyone that I have heard directly from God that I was to harm my daughter, all of you would rush to tell me I had definitely not heard from God. Yet Abraham had heard from God. He didn’t tell anyone what he was going to do because everyone would have said he was delusional or crazy.

What an amazing example of “obedience”, “faith”, and “belief”. If Abraham had tried to kill Isaac simply because God told him to, that would only constitute obedience (this is what I see the church trying to accomplish and it doesn’t work). To have faith requires the possibility that you may be proven wrong. To believe something is to have an assurance that you are right. So if Abraham truly believed God would not have him kill Isaac - that would really not be a true test of his faith. Instead, he believes he must kill him (because God told him to) but at the same time have faith that Isaac will not die (or at least be brought back to life)!

This blows my mind – Abraham is the man.

Most of you know I try to go out and get a beer with at least once a month with my neighbor who is an agnostic. He and I have become very close friends. He is a screaming, bed-wetting, left-winged, socialist democrat and I’m about as far to the right as you can get since I’m a Libertarian.

Last night was our planned night to go out. He called me and said that he would be a little late since his wife (a social worker) had something come up at the last minute and would tell me about it when we went out.

As it turns out, a 13 year old girl was wandering down MY STREET. One of my other neighbors was out walking and saw this girl; she approached her and the girl told her that she had just escaped from her family who was abusing and raping her. This neighbor took her back to her house and called….guess who….my friend’s wife who is the social worker. As it turns out, she had walked miles and miles trying to get away from her family and just happened to walk down my street.

So I look at my friend and say, “Why are you sitting here with me? Don’t you need to be home consoling your wife and making sure she’s ok after dealing with something so evil?” He looked quizzically at me and said “This is what she deals with every single day. You think she’s more shocked because one of them wandered over to our street?”

So the non-Christian social worker who makes $28K per year and already had 40 similar cases now gets to deal with one more disgusting case. I exclaim “that’s outrageous!” His reply? “You voted for Nikki Haley (tea party/Republican governor of SC). She’s announced she’s going to cut funding even further, so I guess (wife’s name)’s job will just have to get a little tougher.”

Now the bad news….ready? My friend told me the police will come and most likely take the child back to her family. The testimony of a child isn’t worth much unless it can be substantiated.

I’m a true political libertarian. I don’t believe that someone’s need gives them a claim to someone else’s property or time. They do however, have a claim on us via our claim as Christians. Where is the body of Christ? Why don’t we scream for justice for the least among us? How can we just pretend that girl is not really there? She’s there! She exists! What in the HELL are we doing?