For those of you who are at McMaster, I’m sure you will have seen the counter-campaign (posters and sidewalk chalk) against the “I Agree with Dave” blitz that Campus Crusade is doing this week. If you go to their discussion forum at http://www.iagreewithdave.com/phpbb/, you’ll really get a sense of the raw nerves this campaign is generating on campus. Similar things have happened at other campuses doing these types of campaigns (the Guelph response was even stronger), which in a sense means that CCC is doing something right since the Gospel message should be “offensive” to those who are yet to believe. Taking aside all the usual arguments about the tactics and what the response might be if a non-Christian organization was doing the same types of things (ie. probably nothing at all), the reason I bring this up though is that, between this campaign and reading about evangelism this week in the Purpose-Driven Life, I have been reminded about how often we just settle into our neat little social groups in which everybody agrees with us and/or is at least tolerant to the Gospel message instead of sticking our necks out like Dave and Campus Crusade are doing this week. How often do we take a risk and identify ourselves as believers to people who may not like us too much for saying so? I think this is particularly interesting consider with a group as close as ours is, where it would be very easy to socialize within the ‘oXyGEN cocoon’. While there are certainly many different ways to go about evangelism, and not all of us are perhaps gifted to evangelize in the way CCC is doing this week, it’s a question I do think we should at least think about as we evaluate how well we are fulfilling purpose #5 for our lives this week.
We are starting a contemporary choir for the first service. I would like to invite anyone and everyone who likes to sing, to join this choir.
To join, you don’t even need to be that good of a singer— I just want you to love to worship God.
We’ve set up a Yahoo! Group called PhilpottChoir. You must be signed up to the group to get information on rehearsals, songs, etc.
The first rehearsal will start at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 30th in the Philpott Auditorium.
After that initial rehearsal, we will rehearse once a month on Saturdays, starting at 6:30 p.m., also in the Philpott Auditorium. These rehearsals will be 1.5 hours long.
I hope you join us! Wouldn’t it be great to have a 50 voice choir!!??!!
As some of you are aware, there is a new grad student in my lab who is extremely interested in the Bible — to an extent about salvation, but right now particularly how it can help him be a “better person”. He now has a Chinese-English bible (he just arrived from China last month) and is asking me questions about things he doesn’t understand as he works his way through. Fortunately I convinced him to start at Matthew instead of Genesis, so I’m off the hook on Leviticus for a while However, he asked me four questions today which I thought I’d share, because (a) I was fairly unprepared to answer 3 of the 4; (b) they may be questions you hear witnessing to completely unchurched people who are just searching out the idea of God existing, let alone whether or not Christianity is the answer; and (c) perhaps you could give me some ideas on how to answer a couple in particular better than I did. Some of them might seem really obvious or even silly to us, but I found that answering them for somebody who is just thinking about the concept of whether or not there is a “supreme being” for the first time is actually kind of difficult:
1) If Jesus is God’s Son, who is God’s wife? — obviously the virgin birth is the answer here, with Mary essentially being God’s conduit to bring Jesus into the world. Interestingly, in these days of in vitro fertilization etc. the idea of a virgin birth doesn’t sound as crazy as it used to. I think he was satisfied by my answer on this one.
2) If God created everything, where did God come from? — an interesting question to which I don’t think anybody can come up with a completely satisfactory response — I told him I’d think about a better response, and this site (coupled with the link provided) is pretty good: http://www.christiananswers.net/evangelism/responses/home.html#existence
3) What was God doing before he got around to creating the universe? — I have no clue! Ideas on what to say?
4) (particularly in the context of the pre-human creation time) doesn’t God have any friends? — this question I think is derived from a basic misunderstanding of a supernatural being; on the other hand, in last week’s PDL reading, Warren emphasizes how God has emotions etc. and so values relationships (with us now, but what about before we were on the scene?) Again, outside of talking about how Christians have relationships with God which God values, I didn’t have a great answer here.
Please feel free to post any answers you might have to these questions or other questions you have been asked (or thought of) so we can all be better prepared when these opportunities come up to fulfil purpose #5.
I was browsing the site I linked to in the previous blog and found this — it’s amazing what some people actually ask (these are apparently all real questions people have submitted to the site)! Anyway, the football question is yet another good reason it’s a good job it’ll be a while until my friend gets to Leviticus Rarely have monkeys on typewriters and football been placed in the same article, let alone one on apologetics, but there’s a first time for everything:
Our church signed up for a free web account for www.fortydays.info and the service was TERRIBLE. Let me just warn everyone now: stay away from www.mysitespace.com. They have TERRIBLE support, and are “DELETE-SITE happy.”
Because the oXyGEN group signed up for an account with them, they decided we were cheating and trying to have two sites! They deleted both accounts.
This is ridiculous! Are they trying to discourage sharing links with friends?
We tried to work it out with them, to negotiate, to come to some sort of mutually satisfying terms. First we were told not to email them— we could only post to the message board! All of the links on their site to the message board were BROKEN. They finally sent me the right link, and we posted our question. Not only did they NOT answer, they deleted our two messages from their message board and suspended the board membership! Rather than provide support, they stuck their head in the sand and pretended there were no complaints!
Please post this on your blog, and/or link to this complaint. If people are looking for free web hosting, they need to know how BAD this host is. We would never pay them a cent for fear their support would be just as horrible. If this is how they treat people who are signing up for free acounts, they shouldn’t offer free accounts.
Let’s show ‘em how we bloggers can spread news.
We wonder if it had more to do with our site being a Christian organization? If so, shame on them.
I’m sure there are some fools out there who would rather go for the free web space than do what’s right. Trust me, STEER CLEAR. MySiteSpace.com is Bad News. Tell the world.
…in the philosophy of science - specifically Darwinism. Daniel Dennett, primary proponent of the Naturalist viewpoint (that is, the belief that Evolution is fundamentally without purpose), has conceded that life is showing signs of having purpose “in the course of a dialogue with [Robert Wright, visiting fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values]—and extracting the concession was a little like pulling teeth.”
A fascinating admission, and given the manner in which it was achieved, bound to have serious ramifications elsewhere.
I must first issue a disclaimer that it’s entirely possible that only I would be intrigued by this article since I do my thesis research in nanotechnology, but I found this really interesting.
Two big trends in science now are biotechnology (finding ways to use biological processes in traditional industries or simulating biological processes with synthetic materials) and nanotechnology (which allows us to essentially manipulate materials on an atom-by-atom basis). In a sense, both these thrusts are trying to copy God — do the same things natural biology and chemistry can while having full ability to CONTROL what happens. While we’re still a long way from the cyborgs of Star Trek, scientists are already having conversations about the ethics of all of this and, most surprising to me, how they feel these technologies might help to answer the question we are currently in the midst of attempting to answer from the Bible: what is the purpose of life? If we are essentially trying to “make life” via technology (or make our lives “perfect” through, for example, the invention of side-effect free psychosomatic drugs which some scientists claim will fire the right biochemical pathways to make us feel happy and fulfilled all of the time no matter what), can we somehow also use technology to answer cosmic questions (or at least avoid having to ask them since the “need” for a God becomes irrelevant when we feel so good all of the time)?
At any rate, here’s the article: http://reason.com/rb/rb050102.shtml Stick with it past the first few paragraphs (especially you non-scientists) and it gets pretty interesting Most interesting line: “There is this strange urge in us to transcend our biology. If you can’t buy Christianity, there is a strong desire to create those same visions of heaven and transcendence through our technologies.” It’s all a little scary (and probably wildly optimistic at least in the next few decades), but it’s interesting to see how many people who would vehemently deny the existence of God or at least the validity of Christianity are so desperately seeking answers to the same questions God so beautifully answers for us.
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However, he asked me four questions today which I thought I’d share, because (a) I was fairly unprepared to answer 3 of the 4; (b) they may be questions you hear witnessing to completely unchurched people who are just searching out the idea of God existing, let alone whether or not Christianity is the answer; and (c) perhaps you could give me some ideas on how to answer a couple in particular better than I did. Some of them might seem really obvious or even silly to us, but I found that answering them for somebody who is just thinking about the concept of whether or not there is a “supreme being” for the first time is actually kind of difficult: