3PM Different gut ecosystems

New research on the sorts of microorganisms you have in your intestinal tract has made a pretty significant breakthrough. German researchers have basically found that, despite the terrific variety of intestinal microbes, every person they studied falls into one of three different gut ecosystems or “gut types” just like they have blood types. These don’t seem to be ethnic or genetic in any way, nor related to gender or weight or age or health. But instead, they seem to be acquired very early in life based, perhaps, on which sort first come to inhabit the infant. In any case, the impact of this discovery means that there may be interactions with certain drugs that make various courses of treatment better or worse. It may help explain why different patients can have such different success rates or effects with the same course of treatment. It also means that the way we use antibiotics, which tend to try to kill off everything, may be changing significantly. The difficulty of studying this stuff is immese, since there are about 10 times as many microbes living inside of us as even our entire bodies have in cells.

2PM Obama the secret Muslim?

Do you remember how until recently it was popular for some people to express the idea that President Obama is secretly a Muslim radical who wants to cooperate with bringing sharia law into the United States? Well, I haven’t heard that in the past week and a half. I wonder if we’ve finally heard the last of the “secret Muslim conspiracy” folks now that Obama has killed the leader of the radical Muslim world, Osama bin Laden.

“Oh, that’s just his extremely clever way of throwing you off the scent, by killing one of his own.” You know the funny thing about conspiracy theories is that no amount of evidence can ever overcome them. The less evidence of them, the more well-crafted they are. And the more evidence against them, the more savvy you have to be to not be befuddled by all those made-up facts.

“No, he really is a Muslim, just a more moderate one who disagrees with bin Laden’s method of advancing Islam.” Oh, so the “real” Obama we all need to be terrified of is the one who hates radical terrorists and acts to protect us from them as a ploy to make us more safe and trust him; the sort of Muslim we’re always saying needs to stand up and reject forcibly the violent perversions of his religion? You’re right. I’m so scared now I can barely type.

Theological Tuesday--"King's Cross"

In his most recent book, “King’s Cross,” Tim Keller tells the story of the Gospel through the entire Book of Mark. Since I almost never do book reviews, I thought it might be an interesting experiment to try it tonight. As always, your calls and comments are highly encouraged.

CC--Christianese 17e: Gospel (part 5 of ?)

--As we noticed yesterday, the fact that there are several “Gospels” in the New Testament written by different authors, containing (somewhat) different accounts and styles is not at all inconsistent with the idea that there is still just one Gospel.
--It just means that one Gospel embodies itself uniquely and will be narrated differently in the life of each different believer.
--And as a result, we all have a gospel to share, namely the account of how God has transformed us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
--Whereas Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the official Gospels, they are really four different official versions of the single Gospel.
--Our own stories and perspectives are also gospels, they just aren’t as reliable and sure as the ones in the Bible.
--The big difference between what we share with others and what the “official” Gospels share is that their content has been validated and authenticated to a degree that we say it is reliable or inerrant.
--Nevertheless, since each of our lives are unique, the one Gospel played out in our lives will produce as many gospels as there are Christians.
--And the gospel according to Saint Andrew (me, not the actual New Testament figure) is still a true account of the Gospel, just not one you should ever put as much weight on as the one we have in the Bible.
--Hence, the real question isn’t why there are four instead of one, but why there are only four instead of millions. And the only reason is because those others aren’t considered as reliable or secure as these. But truly speaking, each of us has a gospel to tell, or else there’s a real problem with our claim to be Christian.
--But this raises the question of false gospels and the difference between a false gospel and an unofficial gospel.
--Each of us has an unofficial gospel to tell, but some people have in history tried to tell actually false gospels.
--We’ll see what this means tomorrow.

2+3+4PM Osama bin Laden

Great article in the New York Times last week helped me clarify some of my thinking about the effects and aftermath of the killing of Osama bin Laden. Basically, he said there are four areas or questions left over afterwards:

How will this affect the Arab uprisings? Probably in a very positive way since now the “alternative narrative” of bin Laden about the Islamic takeover of the Middle East through theocracy has been shattered. Not only because he is dead, but because he died in a million-dollar mansion rather than some obscure cave and he was heavily edited to be marketed as strong and competent rather than aged and weak. The myth was destroyed along with the man. This means that peace-seeking democracy-lovers in those areas are less hindered by the extremists whose cause has been dealt a heavy blow symbolically.

How will this affect the war in Afghanistan? It offers a way out that appeals both to liberals and conservatives opposed to the ongoing war because now that bin Laden is dead, the original purpose of the war is at least ostensibly achieved. It remains to be seen what Obama does with it, but he could start drawing down potentially.

How will this affect terrorism itself? Al Queda grew tremendously under bin Laden, who was an innovator and a highly effective organizer. What was once quite impotent before 9/11 has really developed over time. Although he is gone, many of the major players who came into the cause because of him remain and it’s not clear the long-term effect. But I would say that the movement itself is seriously weakened, probably not compared to pre 9/11, but compared to 2011 with bin Laden still alive. And at this point, that’s the only real comparison we can make.

How will this affect relations with the Muslim world? Remains to be seen as the protests unfold and as we interact with them on new (and old) issues. But if peaceful elements in the uprisings gain strength and we can support new democracies and stifle old dictatorships even as terrorism wanes because of the death of man and myth, there’s at least hope for significantly better years ahead.

Ethics: Should College athletes be paid?

Each year, the NCAA earns a massive pile of money from college athletics, primarily from the men’s basketball tournament and football. And truth be told, most of these athletes in the better athletic programs at least there might be a career ahead of them in professional sports. But they are absolutely prohibited from making any revenue off any aspect of their college performances by the NCAA rules. So the question is whether this arrangement is proper and fair to the athletes themselves, who seem to be producing the product which is earning all this money but aren’t receiving anything from it whatsoever. I recently watched a fascinating piece on the subject on PBS's Frontline, and thought it well worth discussing.

Resources:
Money and March Madness (PBS)
Should college athletes get paid? (National Review)
The madness of not paying college athletes (Huff Po)
A plan to pay college athletes (USA Today)

CC--Christianese 17d: Gospel (part 4 of ?)

--The first four books of the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) are commonly referred to as “The Gospels.”
--But if the Gospel is a single thing God did in history, why are there four Gospels in the Bible?
--It’s a great question, which is further complicated by the fact that the first three (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are all very similar in narrative content to each other and therefore called the “Synoptic Gospels” (for synopsis), whereas the Gospel of John is radically different from them in style and content.
--That being said, what’s the same in them is the fundamental message of God come in the flesh to live perfectly, die unjustly, and be resurrected from the dead for our salvation.
--But still, there’s this question about which Gospel is “the real one.” And the answer is that they all are.
--See if, as Christians believe, the Gospel is really God’s sweeping plan for personal, moral, and community restoration, then it’s going to look a little different in the life of each person and community and also sound a little bit different as they describe it to others.
--That’s not because it isn’t a single thing. It’s because that’s exactly how God works to take that single thing and use it in and through each of us to bring a nearly infinite variety of lives into conformity with His intended purpose.
--And sometimes, our language can be a bit misleading about this.
--For instance, linguistically, it’s probably not ideal to say, “The Gospel of Mark.”
--Instead, if we were willing to take the time to do so, we should really say, “The Gospel of Jesus Christ as understood and told by Saint Mark.”
--And once you say it that way, you should immediately see that every single one of us who has encountered Christ has a gospel of our own to tell, or what Christians sometimes call a testimony or witness.

2+3+4PM Mother's Day history

Anna Marie Jarvis is the reason we have a national Mother’s Day in America. When she was a young girl, her own mother (Ann Jarvis) had worked tirelessly for a time when mothers would have a day paying tribute to all the unrecognized hard work moms do. This work paid off to some degree with local ceremonies and limited recognition. When her mom passed away on the second Sunday in May, 1905, she started working to make Mother’s Day happen, which it did two years later in 1907 with the support of the wealthy John Wanamaker. The movement grew rapidly until it was made official with a proclamation of President Wilson on May 9, 1914, the purpose of which was to fly the American flag in support of American mothers, particularly those who had lost sons in war. This is painfully ironic since the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, which started World War 1 (The Great War) happened just over one month later on June 28, 1914.

Interestingly, the earliest Mother’s Day movements were closely associated with not only the desire to recognize the work of moms but the values of moms, most specifically the opposition to alcohol (or the temperance movement), pacifism, and social activism regarding sanitation, infant mortality, health care for the poor and food safety.

Also interestingly, considering this history, the modern commercialization of Mother’s Day so horrified and offended Anna Marie Jarvis so badly that she spent the rest of her life and most of her money fighting the practice. For instance, she opposed greeting cards because they showed an uncreative laziness compared to writing a personal letter. She also found that the emphasis on commercial aspects tended to crowd out a sincere reflection on the values of motherhood in peace, restraint, self-control, dignity, etc.

According to an excellent article on the subject: “The shift of the underlying basis for holiday from activist to consumerist probably was a result of the official holiday's emphasis on the individual mother's role within the private realm of the home and family, as opposed to the role of women in the public realm to improve their communities. As noted by others, the subtle but significant relocation of the apostrophe from "mothers'" to "mother's" helped to sap the holiday of its symbolic potential to commemorate women's collective efforts to promote peace.”

CC--Christianese 17c: Gospel (part 3 of ?)

--It’s not an overstatement to say that for Christians, the key facts of the universe are the Trinity and the Gospel. If you want to explain anything else, including everything in the Bible, you must start with these two concepts in mind.
--One might say that the Trinity reveals God’s Nature, whereas the Gospel reveals His Character, although this distinction starts to look less clear since the love entailed by understanding the Trinity is a Character issue and the Incarnation and Crucifixion elements of the Gospel so clearly presuppose the Trinity. So separating them is not at all easy and may even be a mistake.
--Still, why is the Gospel so vital?
--Well, one reason is the Bible declares it to be a source of such ongoing fascination that even angels yearn to look at it or into it.
--1 Peter 1:12--It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you, in these things which now have been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven--things into which angels long to look.
--So, what are the aspects or implications of this Gospel that so fascinate?
--Suffice it to say that if it is in fact this wonderful and rich a thing, we’re not going to reveal very much of it in these little segments.
--So, instead, I’m going to focus on what the Gospel accomplishes, because this alone should help show the enormity of the project’s ambitions as a plan for humanity.
--First, the Gospel has a legal aspect, whereby hell-bound people are made to have right standing with God. This is referred to as atonement and justification.
--Second, the Gospel has a moral aspect, whereby people are conformed ethically to the character of God. This is referred to as sanctification.
--Third, the Gospel has a social aspect, whereby communities of people are renewed to the ideal God intended for them. This is referred to as community reformation or social justice.
--So the fact of what God has done entails good news for us personally, morally, and socially, all of which are vital aspects of God’s sweeping plan for rescuing humanity from itself.
--Now, if that doesn’t fascinate you, I don’t know what would.

4PM Seaweed and terrorism.

This fascinating article explains why seaweed may be of vital strategic interest to the war on terror. In the Philippines, lack of financial opportunity has made some areas ripe recruiting grounds for local militant factions, but this has been remedied in recent decades by the emergence of seaweed harvesting, a profitable enough endeavor to make young men think they have a real future in non-violence. But with competition from China and Indonesia, lack of money due to the global credit crunch, and failure of the government to continue support funds, the decline in the Philippines’s seaweed market threatens to reopen those areas to more effective terrorist recruitment.

3PM Higgs boson discovered

Okay, I will be the first to admit that I don’t really understand what all this is about, but apparently the people at the Large Hadron Collider which (as far as we know) hasn’t yet created any Earth-destroying black holes (and reconstructed us afterwards on the other side…) have actually discovered a long-theorized particle to explain why matter has mass: the Higgs boson. The finding isn’t yet confirmed, but if it turns out to be true, well, in my opinion, it’s not even really all that clear that the discovery would…wait for it…matter very much.

2PM I’m a bad jedi.

In my excitement and enthusiasm over Cinquo de Mayo and the National Day of Prayer, I completely forgot about that other, far more important annual celebration: Star Wars Day! Given the iconic expression from the classic movie series, “May the Force be with you,” Lucasites everywhere have dubbed the 4^th of May the unofficial Star Wars Day. And I missed it! So sad, but not for the reason my wife would give.

Various Current Events

If the NFL players win (Roger Goodell/WSJ)
DADT law firm punts on defense (WSJ)
Firm won’t defend DADT (NYT)
Obama’s NDOP proclamation (White House)
Almost half of Detroit functionally illiterate (CBS)
Raise taxes but not rates (NYT)
AZ law protecting academic religious freedom (ADF)
Read the bill
4 questions he leaves behind (NYT)
Brewer vetoes another guns bill (AZR)

CC--Christianese 17b: Gospel (part 2 of ?)

--As we noticed yesterday, the term gospel literally means good news. And this is in fact why some people have preferred to refer to The Gospel as The Good News.
--What’s so important to notice about this concept of the Gospel as good news is that it’s very different from being “good advice.”
--Good advice would be a set of instructions about how to live, and although the Gospel certainly entails advice and instruction, that’s not the basic nature of what the term means.
--So, when we talk about what the Gospel is, we are talking specifically about what the news or announcement is.
--Interestingly, although Christians seem to disagree about virtually anything else in our religion, the one thing you don’t usually find much disagreement over is the basic fact of what the Gospel story tells.
--People may disagree with the historical accuracy of the news, but the key elements of the news are pretty well settled.
--The Gospel is the basic story of the whole world in nine key steps: creation, fall, separation, incarnation, perfection, crucifixion, resurrection, reconciliation, and judgment.
--Or, to put things in more commonly heard terms: God made us, but sin separates us from God. Nevertheless, God loves us and sent Jesus to die for us so that anyone who accepts Him may be restored to God and have life everlasting.

--Now, as you can plainly see, the news carries with it some pretty obvious response implications.
--The news is that the King of the universe has returned and offered us the chance to join His side again. “The revolution has begun,” you could say, “and the end is certain.” The only question is which side you’ll be on.
--In this sense, the Good News demands a response, but that response isn’t primarily a set of behaviors, it’s an oath of loyalty. Will you pledge allegiance to God through Jesus or will you stay silent and remain loyal to the true rebels following Satan.

Wacky Wednesday: Churches Shouldn’t Celebrate Mother’s Day

Note: Before reading the following arguments, please understand that they are not what I believe. On Wednesdays, I deliberately argue for wrong ideas, challenging my listeners to call and defend the obvious right answer, which is usually far harder than one would expect. This is a summary of what Wacky Andrew will be arguing, not a representation of what real Andrew believes.

--Where do you see this in the Bible?
--The purpose of Sunday service is to worship God, not mothers.
--This is another very commercial holiday.
--There’s something particularly weird about how Protestants so meticulously avoid worshipping Mary, but then give Fathers barely any mention on Father’s Day and go bonkers over moms in May.
--It’s historically recent.
--Is this cultural or is this Christian?
--The almost rabid emphasis on Mother’s Day by the culture should be a warning sign to us.
--What effect does this celebration have on the groups of people it so specifically discourages: Widows, Single people who want to be married, Married women who cannot have children, Married women whose husbands refuse to have children (or more children), Married men whose wives refuse to have children (or more children), Mothers who have lost children, Children who have lost their mothers, and Children who have fractured relationships with their mothers?
--The last thing in the world a Christian worship service should do is alienate and upset the people who come to be comforted in their faith.
--Doesn’t Jesus specifically warn us against this sort of thing? Matthew 10:37 "He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.
--Jesus deliberately sought to include those women who literally had no identity in the culture of His day: singles. Why are we doing the opposite?
--Jesus rather outrageously even one time rejected His own mother in Mark 3:31-35.

Resources
Mother’s Day worship? (Christianity Today)
2nd biggest retail holiday (National Retail Foundation)
Should we celebrate Mother’s Day? (Sermon)
Con: Should Christians celebrate Mother’s Day (Blog)
Pro: Should Christians celebrate? (RCOG)
Pro: Sermon for Mother’s Day (Robert Bowman)

CC--Christianese 17a: Gospel (part 1 of ?)

--Literally, the term comes from the Old English “god-spell” which we would spell “good-spell,” meaning good news or glad tidings.
--This English term is itself a translation of the Greek term “euangelion,” meaning good news.
--So, the term itself means an announcement of some momentous and wonderful development or fact.
--This is why people sometimes talk about the Gospel as being “the good news” or being news in any sense.
--News, as such, is the sort of thing you announce or recount to others, and in this case, it’s news of an event or fact that changes everything.
--So, what is that news?
--First, God created everything perfect in the beginning.
--Second, mankind sinned (disobeyed God) and lost their ability to please Him and be with Him.
--Third, nothing they/we can do on our own will ever work to reestablish our status with God.
--Fourth, because only God can solve this problem, He came to live in the flesh as Jesus Christ.
--Fifth, that God-man lived a perfect life of sin-free obedience and devotion to God’s perfect plan.
--Sixth, being unjustly tried and found guilty despite being perfectly sin-free, Jesus allowed Himself to be killed on a cross outside Jerusalem.
--Seventh, after three days in a tomb, God raised Jesus from the dead (the Resurrection) as evidence that He was satisfied with the sacrifice Jesus had offered in dying in our place.
--Eighth, if anyone wants to be reconciled to God by way of this sacrifice, they may accept Him as their Lord and Savior.
--Ninth, Jesus’s own resurrection testifies that when the day of God’s judgment comes, we will stand before God and be accepted and live forever with Him in a resurrected body.
--In the shortest, yet most complete sense, that’s the Gospel.

3+4PM Cinquo de Mayo

If non-Irish can celebrate St. Patrick’s day and be “with the Irish” or “pretend Irish” for a day, then the non-racist thing to do is to also celebrate Cinquo de Mayo tomorrow and be “with the Mexicans” or even be “pretend Mexican” for a day, right? Look as Christians, our duty is to reach out in love to the stranger and the alien, and I can’t think of a better, simpler, more logically consistent way to do that than by treating this particular holiday similarly with that for St. Patrick’s Day. Post your suggestions for how to do it well.

2PM Goldfish racing?

A bar in Tacoma, WA recently caved to the radical animal rights group, PETA, who complained that the weekly goldfish-racing they held was an unacceptable hardship on the fish. On Tuesdays, Bar patrons would place goldfish in an 8-foot trough of water and then use water pistols to scare the fish into swimming to the other end faster than the other guy. The owner of the bar said the event was “really, really popular,” but PETA says the, “loud noises and bright lights” terrify the goldfish. One great irony of this story is that they bar was using “feeder fish” that are normally bought to be fed to other fish, so in a sense, they were actually practicing a form of animal liberation.

But in a sudden resurgence of creativity and general fun, the bar reintroduced the races this last week, only now patrons blow onto the water with straws rather than blasting at the fish with squirt guns. I don’t know whether this terrifies the fish any less, but I know I really wish I lived in Tacoma for at least one Tuesday. Then again, I found a local bar that does this right here in Phoenix!

Theological Tuesday--Trinity Questions

For about two weeks, the Christian Concepts were focused entirely on the Trinity. In thinking more about this doctrine, I have some questions that I think would be interesting to discuss. For instance, how are the three Persons of the Trinity different from each other? Or are they different, other than in the sense that they are three? What I mean is something like this. If God the Father is omnipotent, then God the Son can’t also be omnipotent, can He? If you have two omnipotences, that would seem to be a problem. This raises the question of whether each of the three (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) are each individually perfect/complete/sufficient/omni-whatever, or are they only these things when taken altogether as a unity? Also, a question came up in a personal discussion recently of whether the Father is superior to the Son (and where does the Holy Spirit fit in here, anyhow) or whether they are equal in authority or even equal in their “share” of the Godhead? I will say in advance that I’m not sure of my own answers to these questions, so I thought it might be worth discussing.

CC--Christianese 16: Christ/Messiah

~The transliteration of the Greek “Christos,” literally, anointed one.
~So, Christ is the English version of the Greek translated term for Moshiach.
~So, although most people know this, many others mistakenly think of Christ as simply Jesus’s last name.
~It’s not a name, it’s a title, like President or Secretary.
~To make things more clear in our English way of saying, we might perhaps say, “Messiah Jesus” or “Christ Jesus”
~The Hebrew is Moshiac, which we know in English as Messiah. It means a deliverer or leader or redeemer.
~Literally, anyone anointed with oil would be a messiah or christ.
~We call Jesus “the” Christ because He is the most significant anointed one, but there were other anointed ones before Him: David, Saul, Aaron, etc.
~In the Old Testament, three categories of person were called to be anointed: priests, prophets, and kings.
~Since Jesus fulfills all three offices, one might say He is the tri-Christ, yet another reason for calling Him “the” Christ.
~The reason for the X in X-Mas is because X is the Greek letter Chi, which is the first letter in the Greek spelling of Christ. Hence X-Mas is actually just shorthand for Christmas, not a secularism or an X-out of Christ’s name.

4PM “Don’t go to Bay Area Fellowship.” --Satan

A Corpus Christi megachurch has started a new advertising campaign in which billboards around town have Satan quoted as saying, “Don’t go to Bay Area Fellowship.” I must be honest, this is probably the most brilliant and simple device for promoting the Christian message I can imagine. Instead of telling people what to do or telling them what the Bible says they need to do, take the actions which they already do that certainly fit what Satan would want for their lives and simply put the command to do them in his mouth. I can envision an entire series.

“Go ahead, enjoy the pornography.” --Satan.

“Be sure to tailgate that guy who cut you off.” --Satan.

“Don’t give your money to the poor. It’s your money, isn’t it?” --Satan

“You should definitely live together before marriage.” --Satan

The psychological effect of reversing the commands is pure genius because American’s hate to be told what to do (thus playing on their rebelliousness), but more directly making them think about how what they already do (just like everyone else already does) is actively working for the plans of the evil one.

3PM Superman renounces American citizenship?

I’m normally a wait-and-see sort of guy, so I’m cautious about this, but in Action Comics #900 (out now), Superman apparently becomes fed up with having his own personal actions confused with official US policy and finds his nationality too confining for his cosmopolitan support of all of humanity. After siding with Middle Eastern protesters, he announces his intention to go to the United Nations and renounce his citizenship so as to become more of a global hero. The authors deny he actually does so in the issue and assert that the end of the storyline may surprise people, but the idea certainly raised my eyebrows given the strong historic identification between Superman and Americanism and American ideals. I guess I can see how this sort of idea could work out. But there’s just something profoundly distasteful about the most American DC hero even threatening to do this. (Marvel’s Captain America did go incognito during Watergate in the 1970’s.) One of the beautiful thing about Superman was that he fit America and our ideals so well, making them seem strong by his association. And if comic books are a historically pro-American form of propaganda read by young boys, well, what’s wrong with that? And having the Man of Steel give up his US citizenship is a meaningful (and negative) symbolic action. And if he’s anything, Superman is certainly a symbol.

2PM “Devil’s advocate.”

Having used the phrase “Devil’s Advocate” numerous times in my life, both as an ordinary person and also as someone who loves debate, I was surprised to learn the origin of its meaning yesterday when doing some research on the Catholic process of canonization. Because the point of this process is to decide whether someone can be officially known as being a saint (residing in heaven), evidence of various kinds must be introduced in their favor. (This doesn’t make them a saint, it only seeks to recognize whether they are one.) Well, since supporters might put all sorts of good words in for someone, Pope Sixtus V created the office of “Promoter of the Faith” in 1587, with the purpose of being the lawyer who tries to argue against canonizing someone just to be sure the evidence is sound. This person’s role became known popularly as “Devil’s Advocate” because he argued against “God’s Advocate” the lawyer promoting canonization.

How should Christians react to Osama Bin Laden’s death?

Our country has obviously passed a significant historical marker with the death of Osama bin Laden. But if you’ve seen any of the reaction coverage, some people have been celebrating like it’s a party since last night. Others, however, aren’t so sure we should be celebrating anyone’s death, even if he deserved it as richly as bin Laden did. These conflicts are more serious among Christians, and online, I’ve seen everything from “assassination is unchristian” to “Osama bin Laden, rot in hell.” So, in addition to talking about things like the ethics of assassination and the implications for the war on terror, I thought we should try to get a grip on the most Biblical way for Christians to process this news.

CC--Christianese 15: Resurrection

~One of the crucial distinctive Christian beliefs is in the resurrection of the dead.

~This means that every person who has ever lived will be brought back to life for the final judgment of God and then their eternal destiny.

~The precursor to this, of course, was the resurrection of Jesus after the Crucifixion, which we celebrate at Easter. An additional precursor to this was the resurrection (temporarily, anyhow) of a number of other deceased believers at the time of Jesus’s own death.
~The basic idea is simple. First, you will be returned to your body in such a way that you will be recognizable and that you will know it is your body.
~Second, that body will be tremendously improved over this one insofar as it will be perfect physically since liberated from the natural effects of a sinful world and (if Jesus’s own resurrected body is any indicator) will be capable of some amazing things (walking through doors, changing or hiding appearance, perhaps flight).
~One thing we do not know for certain is all the details of how that body will match our current one such as apparent age, deformities, weight, etc. We know that Jesus’s own body retained His Crucifixion scars, but beyond this we can’t say for sure.
~The reason this doctrine is so vital is because we believe our bodies are integral parts of who we are. A person’s soul without his body is not a complete human any more than a person’s body without his soul is a complete human.
~So the “real you” is you in your body. That’s why, for instance, many other philosophies that say the body is a prison or a limit or a problem are really heresies denying that God made us embodied as the pinnacle of His creation.
~It’s also why reincarnation is an idea Christians must reject. Coming back in a different body would mean coming back as an entirely different person.
~Also, remember that Jesus is embodied and retains His body, therefore having a body is a permanent and wonderful reality for humans.

4PM Pope John Paul II beatified

On the same day in history that Osama Bin Laden was finally killed, 1.5 million people flooded St. Peter’s Basilica for the Catholic Church’s beatification of yet another, far more influential and significant man: Pope John Paul II. For those (like me) not of the Catholic persuasion, beatification means the official certification that it is worthy of belief that a Catholic was saved and has entered heaven. There is one final step before a person may be added officially to the list of saints, called canonization. This is the fastest beatification of anyone in history. He was instrumental in the fall of communism, and is widely believed to have been one of the most significant popes in history, only the fourth to be referred to regularly by the title “the Great” and the first since Nicholas (858-867AD)

3PM King James Bible 400 years old today

I know everyone is talking about the death of Osama Bin Laden, and rightly so, but I thought it was important to take a moment to observe an historical event of far greater human significance than the death of one mass murderer. On May 2, 1611, the Authorized Version or the King James Bible was first published. Even if you think (as I do) that newer translations are better, particularly for today, it’s impossible to argue that another Bible translation has had anything like the impact of this one on history and the dissemination of the Scriptures into the hands of ordinary Christians.

2PM Quote

“The only graceful way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can’t ignore it, top it; if you can’t top it, laugh at it; if you can’t laugh at it, it’s probably deserved.”

Essayist Russell Lynes

As true and funny and even charming as this is, it gets almost everything wrong. The Christian responds to an insult by first checking to see if it might be true and laughing at it. Topping it is never an issue. Ignoring it might be the right choice, depending. But most of all, because our value comes from God choosing us and loving us, we don’t mind our flaws being exposed, and we even consider it a great service.