November 15, 2007

The feds couldn’t have indicted Barry Bonds before he broke Hank Aaron’s home run record? This just in.

Stan Guthrie at Christianity Today offers this “Reader’s Digest version” of why he’s a Christian:

Let’s face it: Atheism is in. Not since Nietzsche have disbelievers enjoyed such a ready public reception to their godless message—and such near-miraculous royalties. But even that hasn’t put them in a good mood. Snaps Christopher Hitchens, who wrote God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (although not, presumably, the pronouncements of atheists), “Many of the teachings of Christianity are, as well as being incredible and mythical, immoral.” A feuding Richard Dawkins suggests that believers “just shut up.” Apparently, they didn’t get the tolerance memo.

Other authors—including Douglas Wilson and Francis Collins—have quite capably refuted the new atheist shtick. But remembering Bertrand Russell’s famous essay, “Why I Am Not a Christian,” here is a Reader’s Digest version of why I am.

Creation: The universe, far from being a howling wasteland indifferent to our existence, appears to be finely tuned through its estimated 13.7 billion years of existence to support life on this planet. …

Beauty: Beethoven’s Ninth, a snowflake, the sweet smell of a baby who has been sleeping, and a sunset beyond the dunes of Lake Michigan all point to a magnificent and loving Creator. And isn’t it interesting that we have the capacity—unlike mere animals—to gape in awe, to be brought to tears, before them? Truly did David say, “What is man, that you are mindful of him?”

New Testament reliability: Compared with the handful of existing copies of seminal ancient works such as Homer’s Iliad, the New Testament’s provenance is far better attested. There are thousands of NT manuscripts in existence, some made within mere decades of the events they report. Scholar F. F. Bruce said, “The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar.”

Scripture: Unlike other religious texts, the Bible gives us the good, the bad, and the ugly of its heroes: Abraham, Jacob, David, and Peter among them. Further, Scripture’s message rings true. …

Jesus: Christ’s life and teachings are unparalleled in world history, as any Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim—or atheist—worth his salt will admit. Napoleon reportedly said, “I know men, and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man. …

The trilemma: C.S. Lewis, commenting on Christ’s claim to divinity, said: “You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Resurrection: …

Progress: …

Testimonies: …

My experience: Finally, as a forgiven sinner, I testify to an imperfect yet growing sense of God’s peace, presence, and provision since receiving Christ more than a quarter-century ago. Despite occasional setbacks, my faith has deepened and strengthened, whatever life brings.

And that includes the angry rantings of atheists.

OK, so even the Reader’s Digest version was a little long for The God Blog. But his full explanations are worth a read.

I’m not a fan of the suicide bombers who consider themselves servants of Allah and the Palestinian cause. But Khaled Abu Toameh, he’s the kind of Palestinian freedom fighter I can get behind (his mother was Palestinian, his father an Israeli Arab). Why? Because Abu Toameh is a journalist like me, only he reports on the inner workings and scandals of Fatah and Hamas. Better yet, he writes for the Jerusalem Post.

When I was in Israel last summer and saw his name in the paper, I wondered how he could possibly stay alive. Sunday, I heard Abu Toameh speak at a conference at B’nai David-Judea, and was blown away by his candid assessment of the pathetic peace process—really, political theater—that is leading two wildly unpopular leaders, Olmert and Abbas, to an upcoming summit at Annapolis. (More on that later today.)

“People often ask me, ‘What went wrong with you? When did you change? Are you a Zionist Arab? You started out working for the PLO, now you’re writing for a Jewish paper,’” said Abu Toameh, who began his career as a journalist for the party of Yasser Arafat. “I find it sad that as an Arab Muslim I have to work for a Jewish newspaper because that is the only place that will publish my stories freely.”

Julio Cesar Rodriguez says he stole from the rich, gave to the poor and got caught because he didn’t cover his face when he tried to knock over the San Fernando Citibank.

Prosecutors charged the 32-year-old Arleta man with 14 counts of robbery and attempted robbery Tuesday in a string of bank jobs dating back to 2004. Though his arraignment was delayed until later this month, police said he has admitted his guilt and cooperated with the investigation.

The Los Angeles Police Department alleges Rodriguez snatched close to half a million bucks out of bank vaults throughout the northeast San Fernando Valley. When Detective Ursula Guillory of the Robbery-Homicide Division asked what he did with the proceeds, Rodriguez offered a shocking answer.

“He said, ‘I spent a little on myself, then I went down to Skid Row and handed it out,’” Guillory said. “He went on to tell us about all the rest of the robberies.”

She’d been tracking him for months, based on DNA evidence obtained from the scarf he used to cover his face in an earlier robbery in Van Nuys. He’d scribbled lines from the Book of Mormon inside alluding to 1st Nephi 3:7. Guillory asked him about the passage, and he said he belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“Now I’ve got a bank-robbing, Mormon Robin Hood,” she said. “He was very cooperative and said he wanted to be responsible. He said, ‘I don’t want to waste your time, detective.’”

 

That’s the top of an article in today’s LA Daily News by the always excellent Brent Hopkins. A contributer to the It’s A Crime blog, Brent sent me this note when I told him I liked his story:

Now I’m not an expert in all the tenets of the Mormon faith, but I’m guessing that “don’t rob banks” fits somewhere in between “don’t drink coffee”, “don’t smoke cigarettes” and “spread the word of the Joseph Smith and/or the Lord.”