Life's Paths

I’ve had a number of blog entries on the mind; none are particularly important, compelling or even informative. Some of the same hum-drum.

I thought about writing on the annual “War on Christmas”--this article does such a tremendously comprehensive job, that no additions are necessary. Perhaps a moment of amusement reflecting on the salvo shot by Wintery Knight where he complains…

*WARNING: The following is fairly graphic and if you are easily upset by such images, you may want to skip the following paragraph.

... stores are not stocking enough Christian Christmas Card selections. Mind you, not that Christian Christmas Consumerism Cards are eliminated; only that there are not enough of them.

I am both amused and (I think) a bit offended. Amused, of course, because Christians face such little “persecution” anymore in the United States and United Kingdom, they are forced to make up injustices. They have it so easy, the best they can come up with is they don’t have more choices when buying Christmas Cards at certain stores. (Obviously they could make their own to say whatever they want, OR they could order on-line from a variety of vendors…but we shouldn’t mention that. They have a God-given, Baby-Jesus-came-to-Earth RIGHT to more Christian Christmas Cards at the local Gas Station!)

Offended because they think this is the best an Evil Atheist Conspiracy could do. If you watch cartoons (I have children) the villain often comes up with some ridiculous plan parodying how to take over the world. Like making a ray gun causing people to be addicted to bologna, and the villain will purchase all the bologna in the world, thus taking over the world.

I get the same feeling. We plan to eliminate Christ out of Christmas by reducing the number of Christian Christmas Cards? (How many people even send Christmas Cards anymore? We do, but only to the last bastion that send some back.) That is our secret weapon? Next we plan to force Telegram companies to not work on Christmas Eve, so Christians can’t send Christmas Telegrams. Mwuahahahaha. [What? They don’t do that anymore?]

I finished Dr. Licona’s book The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach and thought of doing a review. Does a good job on providing the historical background—but nothing really groundbreaking, in my opinion. There aren’t any “new” documents to review; everything we have has been reviewed before.

It was the application that felt a bit week. Inevitably, Dr. Licona determined the “best” explanation was that Jesus rose from the dead. He concluded if you are either:

1) a non-theist; or
2) a theist who doesn’t believe in a God who resurrects himself

then you are too biased to be persuaded by the evidence. This only leaves people who believe in a God who resurrects himself…wait…does this mean only people who believe Jesus rose from the Dead can be convinced by the evidence that Jesus rose from the dead? But if they are already convinced, why do they need evidence to prove it?

I’m sure my review would be considered “tainted” because I fall in the wrong group.

Jon, over at Prove Me Wrong asked me to lead a Bible study of non-believers regarding the topic of Resurrection of Jesus. And who should show up? Dave Armstrong. Sadly, he was less than impressed with my performance, writing his own opinion as to the inadequacies of the discussion. Eventually leading to this monster discussion involved numerous people and a wild number of topics, keeping me busy there.

Leading to two other threads, including (to me what is quite bizarre) a thread on whether I had a proper hermeneutic as a Christian on what the Bible teaches about abortion.

And these trivialities have occupied my internet time.