An Engineer’s Gospel

I noted in my original post that there is a scripture that says "how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard?"  It's logical that you can't believe in something if you've never heard about it. I could get all philosophical about how God speaks to individuals in different ways: through nature; through our consciences; through dreams; through scripture; through other people. Instead I want to take this opportunity to give you, the reader, the Andy Shaw version of the Gospel. "Gospel" simply means "good news" and my hope is that you'll see that Jesus really did bring some very good news indeed. I'm no theologian so you're going to get this engineer's plain and simple version here!

Origins

We live in a universe that had an origin: a first cause. We live on a world that had an origin. Both were made by an intelligence outside of the universe who's all powerful, all knowing and not tied down by limitations of space and time. We call that intelligent being God. God made the Earth and all that is in it. The high point of His creation is humankind. In scripture it says "So God created mankind in His own image,in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them." It also says "God saw all that He had made, and it was very good."

So in the beginning God created something that was very good. Scripture also paints a picture of God walking and talking with the first humans, Adam and Eve. In other words they interacted in a personal and relational way. Life really was good...

Bad News

But (you knew this was coming) our first parents weren't content with what they had and were tempted to go for more than God had intended. They wanted knowledge so they could be like God even though God had told them not to. This unfolds in the Bible as the simple act of taking a piece of fruit from a tree, the fruit that God had told them not to.  This act of disobedience soured the relationship between God and humankind and brought a spiritual death to our first parents that's passed on to all generations after them. This willful disobedience to God is still in every human born on Earth. Our relationship with Him is broken.  Beyond our broken relationship with God, the first act of defiance also brought death and devastation to all of creation. What was once very good, is now not so good.

Our continued defiance against God is what the Bible calls sin and one of the earliest examples it gives is Cain and Abel. "Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast?  If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.’" Cain didn't listen and decided to kill his brother. We've been defying God and looking for reasons to kill each other ever since, it seems. Our relationship with God is broken. Our relationships with others are broken. We're lost, we're broken. We need help.

Good News

Into this broken world steps Jesus.  Jesus claimed to be God and proved it by dying and rising from the dead.  In dying on the cross He took on Himself our sins and opened the way for us to restore our relationship with God.  

What Jesus did for us is a free gift from God. It’s not something we can earn through religious activities or by trying to be a good person - or at least a better than the person next to me. It is a gift.  And as with all gifts, you can chose to accept it, reject it or just plain ignore it. If you do accept it, the scriptures say “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”

Response

Having read this post, you can't plead ignorance as a reason to not believe, but how do you respond and receive the gift God has given?  The scriptures say simply “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Most often this is done through a simple prayer, telling God that you need forgiveness and believe that Jesus’ death and resurrection was sufficient to do so.  Nothing more. Nothing less. No rituals. No good works. A free gift.

The following website includes a simple prayer that can be prayed to make that first step in following Jesus by receiving His free gift: https://peacewithgod.net/

Saving Truth - A Review (also on Goodreads)

Saving Truth: Finding Meaning and Clarity in a Post-Truth World by Abdu Murray
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Having seen a video of Abdu Murray at an event in UC Berkeley (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3PKL...) discussing some of the topics in this book, I was intrigued to read it. I was not disappointed.

Abdu hits the nail on the head in identifying that we live in a "post-truth" culture where personal preferences are more important than the truth. You only need to look at the posts in social media to see we "like" whatever we agree with and fill comment boxes with hateful words for whatever we dislike.

Freedom
One of the most impactful discussions in his book for me is the topic of freedom. Many focus solely on freedom from restraint, which is actually a desire for autonomy. He says:

"Simply put, focussing on freedom from restraint encourages a sort of narcissistic preoccupation on the self and the fulfillment of our desires."

To counter this, Abdu argues convincingly that true freedom is deeper than this, requiring freedom for the greater good and freedom from sin to be added to the mix in order to experience real freedom.

Human Dignity
Later chapters of the book deal with very sensitive subjects including the longest chapter which focuses on sexual identity. Abdu deals with this and all topics in a very respectful and thoughtful manner. If anyone is dealing with these issues and can hold off on their own biases for just a chapter, they will find some kind, gentle and clear discussions on the topics.

Christ Focus
Abdu is a devout follower of Christ with a strong intellect and poetic eloquence. My favorite quote of the whole book is in the last chapter and it exemplifies this well, I think:

In Jesus Christ, we have both the truth who satisfies our quest and the personality who satisfies our need for connection. He is the truth our minds seek and the person our hearts embrace. He validates facts and personal preferences without sacrificing either. His words expose the fact of our sin. The fact of his sacrifice demonstrates his unbounded love for us. And the fact of his resurrection provides us with the joy of knowing our desires can be fulfilled. There they are: joy and knowledge, feeling and fact, coupled together. Putting it all together is how we go about saving truth.

I recommend this book to all Christians who want to speak the truth in love, and to anyone who really does want to seek the truth and discuss it in respectful dialogue.

#SavingTruth and www.AbduMurray.com

Intellectual Objections

Number 4 in my list of reasons to not believe you might perhaps expect to be higher up the list. Surely it's not logical to believe in something you can't see and what about the whole science versus faith debate?

Reasoned Faith

For me personally this is an odd one, because it's always seemed logical that there's a God. If you investigate the evidence for Jesus coming to this Earth, doing what He did, why He did it and the repercussions across history, there's nothing more reasonable and logical. I'm an engineer, with a PhD. As far as I can tell, I've never been brainwashed, I'm not gullible and I am able to look at things objectively, weighing up facts and coming to sensible conclusions.  Now I'm not saying I'm always right, but I am usually logical.  When I look at the existence of the Universe, the place of humanity in it and the problems of evil versus good, they all have reasonable descriptions in the Bible that are consistent and logical. Outside of scriptures I've read plenty by very intelligent Christian authors such as C.S. Lewis, Lee Strobel and Ravi Zacharias, to name a few. All three of these fellas give reasoned and compelling arguments for the Christian faith. My own faith in Jesus is a reasoned faith, it is not a blind one.

What's the Game?

So what gives? Why is there even a discussion of science versus faith? I am a person with a strong faith, who uses science and sees no need to pit one against the other. I think there are a number of reasons why there are apparent conflicts between science, reason and faith. I could probably write whole blogs on each (hey, material for a future series!), but here I'll just list them out with some brief comments:

1. Bad science - there I said it.  There is a lot of bad science, philosophy and rhetoric that claims to be scientific fact but really it's not.  Whenever a scientist starts a monologue with "We know..." or "Perhaps..." my skeptical radar kicks in.
2. Scientism. When science becomes a philosophy of life ("In the name of science"), that can be a dangerous thing.  I always think back to the classic line from the original Jurassic Park movie where Jeff Goldblum's character, Dr Malcolm says "Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should." If you recall the end of the movie, it didn't work out so well.
3. Pride. This comes from both people defending their faith and those defending science. They both want to win the argument and don't really want to discover the truth. There are many scientists and philosophers, good and bad with a lot invested in their ideas who get very emotional when they're challenged. They ignore the facts and throw stones rather than answering the challenges with rational proofs.
4. Ignorance. No-one can know everything but I think a lot of the talk of conflict between science and religion is bogus and comes from ignorance about what the other "side" believes to be true.
5. A hidden agenda. And this is the big one.  I've heard it said and I think it's true that many folks who state they have intellectual objections to Christianity, actually have moral objections. That is, they don't want to believe the Christian message, whether it's true or not. It's a heart issue, not a head issue.

Using Reason to Find Faith

I have a feeling I'll be quoting his book a lot, but I've just finished reading a pre-release copy of Abdu Murray's excellent new book "Saving Truth" which has the subtitle "Finding Meaning & Clarity in a Post-Truth World." Chapter 7 of his book is titled "Clarity about Science and Faith" and in it he breaks down what science is really about and what faith, in the Christian definition, really means.  Rather than disproving faith, Abdu makes a strong argument that the observations we get from science are actually part of discovering the wonder of God that can lead to faith. Whether it's the intricacies of the structure of DNA or the mind-blowing beauty of the stars, we can see God's fingerprint in nature and be in awe.

To wrap up this blog, here is a quote from the chapter that's pretty cool:

"Science confirms the truths in Scripture. Scripture unveils the poetry of science. The confusing fog of the false dichotomy between science and faith fades. The sea of glass mingled with fire that is the intertwining of faith and science becomes clear. The signals of transcendence reveal our relevance to the Transcendent One."

Further Reading?

So there you have my take on intellectual objections to believing in Jesus. Perhaps this blog took a different tack than you expected in that I didn't list a bunch of intellectual objections and give arguments against them.  There are plenty of books that do that much better than I could here. But to be fair, if you do have genuine intellectual objections here are a few resources that might be helpful from the authors mentioned in this blog and others:

• The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel
• Jesus Among Secular Gods by Ravi Zacharias and Vince Vitale
• Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
• Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton
• I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek
• Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe

Enjoy!

Missing Out

In my last blog I ventured into the tricky territory of cultural differences which is subject material that I'm probably not the best qualified to address.  For this blog I think I'm on safer ground, talking about what you think you'll need to give up, or what you'll miss out on in order to follow Christ.

Prohibitions

When I lived in Singapore a couple of years ago, I loved seeing some of the signs that were posted prohibiting all sorts of things.  In fact the Singaporeans poke fun at themselves with all the prohibition signs and fines. You can even buy t-shirts or other souvenirs with them on. Some of the prohibitions seem crazy, but the majority of them are sensible and all of them are there for a reason, namely to protect the public. (By the way, you really don't want Durians on a bus or train - they stink!)

Turning to scripture and the various prohibitions listed there it's easy to see that the majority of them are commands that help society as a whole...

 "'You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’”

So rather than seeing these as things that cause us to miss out in life, they are boundaries that help us to enjoy life safely and with consideration to those around us. Particularly, if we do love our neighbors as ourselves then life as a whole is good, right?

Sugar-coating Sin

The trickier things that the Bible says we shouldn't do are things that fall under the general designation of "sins" which can be sins against others (mostly covered in the list above), sins against God (worst of which is ignoring Him altogether), or, more subtly, sins against ourselves (think addictions).  In the modern world it's not popular to talk about sin and it's effect on individuals and societies as a whole, but it's still there and still takes it's toll on individuals and society. Ultimately the scriptures paint a terrible picture of sin and its consequences. The book of Romans is particularly clear on this:

"The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse... They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them."

Sin does three things: (1) it separates us from God, (2) it sets us against each other, and (3) it enslaves us. There's no way to sugar-coat it, though much of our modern culture tries to glamorize sin, redefine it, or, worse still, ignore it. It's a fallacy that freedom to do whatever you want is the best way to live. In the end the unfettered freedom to do anything often results in you becoming trapped by the very things you do. 

Freedom

In his upcoming book "Saving Truth" Abdu Murray suggests that real freedom is not just freedom to do whatever you want, but is made up of three parts: freedom from restraint, freedom for the greater good, and freedom from sin. In order to be truly free, we need all three.

The best news is that we don't need to strive to achieve this freedom alone, but can seek and find that freedom in the person of Jesus Christ. He said:

 "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

 

Cultural Constraints

I'm pretty sure this is a record for me.  4 weeks into starting this blog and I've posted something every week!  My poor Poop Engineer blog maybe gets 4 posts per year (hmm, just checked and my last post was in 2017, oh dear, how I've neglected the world of poop treatment)!!!

This is my second post looking at why, perhaps, some people don't trust in Christ: some reasons to not believe. This time I'm focused on the cultural constraints that can make it difficult to take the simple steps to faith.

Of all the reasons I've listed, I think this is the one for which I'm least qualified to comment because it's outside of my own personal experience, though it's undoubtedly a big deal for a lot of people.  If you've been raised in a culture where religion is a big part of what you do as a family or in society as a whole, then it must be really tough to go against those traditions.

The one experience I can retell is of a friend to whom I spoke about the gospel message and he seemed really interested.  To him historical facts about Jesus and His claims made sense, but he was Indian and came from a family with strong Hindu traditions.  If he ever made a decision to follow Jesus, it would undoubtedly cause major frictions for him and his family.  I lost touch with him so I don't know what he did with Christ in the end.

Western culture is, for the most part, secular and so it is tough for us to get our heads around other nations and cultures where religion is more intertwined with everyday life. I'm not going to get into the good and bad of the "separation of church and state" here, but as I've traveled the world I've seen that many other cultures have a more integrated view on the spiritual. In a way it's sad that in separating churches from government (which many see as a positive thing), we went the whole hog and separated moral and spiritual guidance from our society as a whole.

But I digress.  The focus of this blog is on how it's tough to break from your cultural constraints and choose to follow Jesus.  Rather than trying to talk about stuff I know little about, I want to point the reader to a couple of organizations that do know a lot about taking a stand for Christ despite, or in direct opposition to, the surrounding culture.

VOM

The first organization to look at when discussing counter-cultural Christianity is the Voice of the Martyrs. This organization was founded by Pastor Richard Wurmbrand and his wife Sabina back in the 1960's.  Their story is told in the book Tortured for Christ which is also now a movie. They stood for Christ in the face of hard-core Communism in the worst of Cold-War era Romania.  Today this organization helps believers in a whole bunch of countries where it's either illegal to become a Christian or life is made very difficult if you do.  They currently have a list of 41 nations in the world where the government restricts a person's ability to become a Christian.  Many of these nations are OK with you being a Christian and visiting the country, but if you're a local and want to become a Christian then that's actually illegal!  In other nations it's not illegal to become a Christian but your rights or ability to do basic things like renting accommodation becomes very difficult. I encourage you to look at their website for more info. If you're a Christian, I encourage you to sign up for their prayer info.

Poster on my wall from VOM shows nations where it's tough - even deadly - to be a follower of Christ

RZIM

The Ravi Zacharias International Ministries is a group of speakers from around the world who are "apologists" i.e. they are experts in answering tough questions about Christianity and giving compelling reasons to believe. Their tag line is "HELPING THE THINKER BELIEVE. HELPING THE BELIEVER THINK." Several of their speakers come from non-Christian cultures. Most notably, Abdu Murray is of Lebanese heritage and a great speaker on a whole bunch of topics.  Another person to look for is Nabeel Qureshi, who passed away last year. He wrote an award winning book describing his journey from Islam to Christianity. Check out the RZIM website or listen to one of their many YouTube posts for more info.

Is it worth it?

Ultimately a decision to believe in and follow Jesus comes down to the question "is it worth it?" In my little corner of the Western World choosing to follow Christ means some people think I'm a bit odd, maybe a moral person, maybe a hypocrite, maybe "religious," or maybe a bigot, at worst.  But in other corners of the world, choosing to follow Him may mean losing prestige, losing family, or even losing your life.

In talking about the cost of following Him, Jesus said:

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?"

In the same  discussion He says:

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

In other words, you need to be willing to give up everything for Him, including your own preferences, desires, wants or needs. Ultimately you have to be willing to give up your life for Him. In some nations today, many believers do just that. They think it's worth it. Or, I should say, they think He's worth it.

Let me finish with something Paul wrote. It's a bit long, so forgive me, but I think it's worth reading it all as it captures well the sentiment of those that understand the benefits and joy of knowing Jesus:

"But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

 Paul thought it was worthwhile giving up everything to follow Jesus. Many people around the world do too, including me.  Do you?

Whenever you're ready to get off the fence, this website that I posted in my last blog might be helpful... https://peacewithgod.net/

Comfortably Numb

The child is grown
The dream is gone
And I have become
Comfortably numb.
  (George Roger Waters, David Jon Gilmour)

In my last blog I said that this just might be the top reason for people in the Western World to not respond to God.  With all the conveniences of modern life we rarely think about eternity. I once heard a speaker say (I think it was Robert Lewis or maybe it was Belinda Carlisle??!!) that we are the first generation to expect heaven on earth.

Whether you gauge human existence using something like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs or Max-Neef's fundamental human needs, it's not hard to argue that at least the basic needs for a comfortable life on earth are within the reach of a large portion of people in Western nations.  Our modern homes have running water, toilets, electricity, central heating and air conditioning.  We can drive in our own vehicles to the local grocery store or take an airplane half way around the world. Add to this, the advances of modern medicine and we are living in an age that would blow the minds of our great grandparents.

So here we are in the 21st century, living our long lives of ease with not a care in the world (mostly). Why worry about heaven? I can think of a couple of very good reasons...

Easy life or a Full life?

Jesus said...
"I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full" 

 From the start, Jesus is all about giving us a full and complete life. He doesn't promise an easy life but He does promise a full life.  In backing this up, Paul wrote "For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness." If you want a full life, with meaning and direction, it makes sense to go to the One who gives meaning, the One who can give direction and, ultimately, the One who helps you find your purpose in life. A full life.  I can honestly say that in my own life, Jesus has come through in spades for me in this. My life hasn't always been easy and I certainly don't have it all together, but God has blessed me with the fullest and most purposeful life I could imagine.

This may be contentious (and I'm a little hesitant to post it, to be honest), but if you want evidence in addition to scripture, something to consider is the activity of the brain as an indication of the fullness of your life, through the fullness of your thinking.  I recently read a book called "Finding God in the Waves" by a fella called Mike McHargue who also goes by the name of "Science Mike."  I can't say I agree with his theology but in his book he has quite a discussion on how prayer and religious experience shapes our brains. It physically shapes your brain. People who pray and seek God have more activity and connectivity between certain parts of the brain than those who don't. Perhaps this shows that if we want to live out the full extent of how we're wired and meant to function, then we should seek God.  In other words we're wired to seek God.  Or in more classical terms, St Augustine put it this way: "Our hearts are restless, until they can find rest in you."

If you want a full life, living out what you were wired to be, then turning to Christ is the best way to do that. So do it!

Eternity

I could have started with this one as it's the most compelling reason for anyone to consider seriously the claims of Christianity.  But I wanted to avoid the reader thinking I'm a typical "turn or burn" kind of fella and so I thought I'd ease you into it with a softer start!  Oh wait, this blog is about "getting off the fence" so what the heck...

Jesus said...
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

So Jesus is telling us that the road to life isn't easy, and may not be the most obvious, but He encourages us to seek it. If we don't, we're simply on the easy, broad road to destruction, or as the great philosopher Bon Scott called it, the Highway to Hell (take it away Angus...)

Beyond wanting a full life, or a good life, we need to be thinking about eternal life.  I recall someone posting a quote that said something like "Life is not a dress rehearsal..." but in the Christian worldview, that's exactly what it is... or more like a prelude and preparation for something much bigger and much, much better. As Saint Paul says, quoting Isaiah "It is written that no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human mind has known.  God has prepared these things for those who love him."

When I was at high school back in the UK many moons ago, I happened to have a Christian teacher for Religious Education.  In one of our lessons he told us about something called Pascal's Wager.  The gist of it is if you "bet" on there being no God and no life after death and it turns out He does exist in the afterlife, then you're toast when you have to face Him, but those that believed in Him will be fine.  But if you "bet" on God and live to serve Him and yet it turns out there is no afterlife, then your fate will be the same regardless of your belief, but you will have had a decent and moral life anyway.  On balance, it's better to "bet" on God.  At the time I hated this reasoning.  It didn't seem right that someone would make a decision to seek God based on the toss of a coin, or a base instinct to save your hide, but the logic is hard to argue against.  If you want to hedge your bets, then it makes sense to consider what God wants.

We are all mortal and will one day die. We need to think about eternity and if it exists, as I believe it does, then we'd better consider what God wants us to do.  And what He wants us to do is pretty clear to me...

John wrote...
Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

 If you're ready to get off the fence, this website might be helpful... https://peacewithgod.net/

10 Reasons to Not Believe

So I'm going to take a different approach to argue the case for believing in Christ by starting from the position that what is said about Him in the Bible is plain and true. If you read the New Testament at face value it's clear that Jesus was God, that He came to the Earth to die for our sins, that He came back to life after His death and that if we accept what He did and believe in Him, He promises us the same thing which is eternal life after death. No need for us to appease God, no need for us to make sacrifices, and no need for us to be perfect in everything. Just accept that Jesus died for your sins and follow Him. Done.

If it's that plain and simple, why doesn't everyone respond and believe in Him?

There are many reasons to not believe. I'm going to present 10 I can think of and over the next several blogs I'll attempt to unpack each one, giving some counter-arguments for believing anyway. My hope and prayer is that I'll help someone to face their objection, their excuse for not believing, and get off the fence. Here goes...

1. Comfortably Numb

I may be totally wrong, but I think this might be the number 1 reason in the Western World why people don't believe in Christ, or at least don't respond to Him.  We live in comfortable homes, with TV's and all modern conveniences. We don't think about eternity, we don't worry about life after death. Life is good. Until it's not...

2. Cultural Constraints

This is a big one for anyone growing up in a community with strong cultural and religious roots.  This is not something I can say I've experienced directly but if, say, you've grown up in a strong Muslim, Jewish or Buddhist family and all your family value their religion with all it's traditions, then it's extremely tough to decide to follow a different path.

3. Missing Out

If I believe in God I'll have to give up smoking, drinking, cussing, sinning, having fun, breathing, eating... oh wait maybe I got carried away.  But there is the sense that in order to follow Christ you have to give up on fun and freedom.

4. Intellectual Objections

This is the one I've read about a lot. Doesn't science prove there's no God?  How can a rational person believe in something that requires "blind faith"?

5. Plain Ignorance

There is a scripture that says "how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard?" That's fair enough. If you've never heard about Jesus and what He did, then you can't respond to Him.  You can't believe in something if you've never heard about it.

6. Maybe Later

Strangely, this is the one that kept me from believing for many years.  I'd heard about Christ and "the full gospel message" and it made sense to me, but I just never responded. I figured I'd do it someday in my own sweet time but God had other ideas!

7. Peer Pressure

What will my friends or family think of me if I become a Jesus Freak?

8. Christians

Yup, they're all hypocrites, right?

9. All Paths Lead to God

This is the Hindu position, I think, that it doesn't matter which religion you follow because they all lead to God. Let's be inclusive and not be exclusive in our claims. Sounds nice but it's problematic, especially when you consider it's a belief exclusive to Hinduism. Hmmm.

10. Too Far Gone

God could never love me. He can forgive others but not me. I'm not worthy of His love.

So, I just finished writing the last blog in this series, so I went back through the list here and added in hyperlinks to each one for easier access. Enjoy!