Is Christianity Arrogant?

     If you believe a snake is about to bite me, and I don't think so, and you warn me, are you arrogant? Even if you are mistaken, it doesn't make you arrogant. You are just wrong, and people can be wrong with the most admirable of intentions. My appropriate response should be, "Thank you for caring!" 
     What if, instead of a snake-bite, you sincerely believe I am on a path to lifelong harm or even eternal damnation? To share that belief with me would be admirable and appreciated...even if you are mistaken (as I pray you would be).
     I enjoy reading "A Slice of Infinity" from RZIM. You might consider subscribing (go to THIS WEBSITE) so you will receive the daily "Slice." Some "Slices" you might call inspirational, others more apologetic. Today's "Slice" from Andy Bannister was a very straightforward and logical response to the accusation that Christians must be arrogant if they believe their message is true and share it with others. I've copied it in full for you here.  Enjoy!
     - Curt - 

Isn’t Christianity Arrogant?

One of the most common accusations flung at Christians is that they are arrogant. “How can you believe that you’re right and Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims—all the thousands of other religions—are wrong?” Isn’t it the height of arrogance to claim that Jesus is the way to God? A way, possibly. But the way?

This issue haunts many Christians and makes us reluctant to talk about our faith. We don’t want to appear arrogant, bigoted, or intolerant. This pluralistic view of religions thrives very easily in places like Canada or Europe where tolerance is valued above everything else. It’s very easy slip from the true claim—”all people have equal value”—to the false claim that “all ideas have equal merit.” But those are two very different ideas indeed.

Let’s take a brief look at the “all religions are essentially the same” idea. Suppose I say that I’ve just got into literature in a big way. This last year, I’ve read William Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf and Tolkien, but also Harry Potter and The Very Hungry Caterpillar—and I’ve concluded that every author is identical. Would you conclude that: (a) this is the most profound statement on literature you’ve ever heard? Or would you conclude (b) that I don’t have the first clue what I’m talking about? I suggest that you’d probably choose (b). Now, what about the statement “all religions are the same”? Doesn’t it likewise suggest that the person making it hasn’t actually looked into any of them? Because once you do, you realize it’s not that most religions are fundamentally the same with superficial differences but the reverse is the case: most religions have superficial similarities with fundamental differences.

A further problem with the idea that all religions are essentially the same is that it ignores a fundamental truth about reality: ideas have consequences. What you believe matters, because it will effect what you do. To claim that all religions are essentially the same is to say that it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you’re sincere—and this neglects the fact that you can believe something sincerely and be sincerely wrong. Hitler held his beliefs with sincerity—that doesn’t make them true.

However, truth, by its very nature, is exclusive. If it is true, as Christianity claims, that Jesus was crucified, died, and rose from the dead, then it is not true, as Islam claims, that Jesus never died in the first place and that somebody else was killed in his place. Both claims cannot be true. Truth is exclusive.

But just because truth is exclusive, that doesn’t make truth cold and uncaring. Truth for the Christian is personal. The Jesus who said “I am the only way” also said “I am the truth.” In other words, ultimate truth is not a set of propositions but a person. As the Bible says in 2 Timothy 2:12, “I know whom I have believed.” Not what I have believed or experienced but whom. Jesus Christ.

To ask why we think that Jesus Christ is the only way is to miss the point entirely. Jesus does not compete with anybody. Nobody else in history made the claims he did; nobody else in history claimed to be able to deal with the problems of the human heart like he did. Nobody else in history claimed, as he did, to be God with us. To say that we believe Jesus is the only way should have nothing to do with arrogance and everything to do with introducing people to him.

Andy Bannister is a member of the speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Toronto, Canada.

Tolerance & Diversity mean Intolerant & Undiverse

The term "tolerance" is being used to advocate intolerance of those who disagree with the advocates. The word "diversity" actually means conformity to someone else' standards.

How is it that these high-sounding ideas don't mean what the plain meaning of the words imply? Especially on college campuses?  I recently wrote to a young friend headed off to college that the advocates of diversity are really involved in a three-step strategy to change generally accepted values, not broaden what is accepted:

Step 1: My values are different from yours, and you need to open your mind to accept values that are different from yours. (After all, you surely don't think you are 100% right about everything!)
Step 2. Once my values (think homosexual behavior then marriage; abortion on demand,  sex-outside of marriage, pornography, easy divorce [because marriage is about making me happy], marijuana use, etc.) are accepted as normal, then conflicting values (like your Christian values) become socially unacceptable.
Step 3. The values that are socially unacceptable need to be outlawed, because no one should be able to "judge" others' acceptable values as "wrong" or bad! So let's make them--the actual practice of biblical Christianity, for instance--illegal.

The end of the line is not a more diverse society, but one that conforms to a new, licentious, vulgar, un-disciplined, anti-Christian set of rules.

As my readers know, I am always interested in the political implications of these things. Liberal politicians embrace these theories of "tolerance" and "diversity" because it furthers their ends of centralized control, i.e. socialism. People who live this way (in bondage to their own flesh, as the apostle Paul described it) become less able to support themselves and more dependent on government. (read "Brave New World")

Eric Metaxes writes HERE about how this is playing out in real life on American college campuses:
.

Proponents say that, in the name of anti-discrimination, colleges must discriminate against Christian groups that seek to maintain their identity and mission—even though these groups welcome anyone to join. Such is the ironic state of “tolerance” in 21st-century America.

I urge you to read his complete Break Point commentary HERE.

Amazing Disappearing Act! All evidence of IRS corruption...

From Tuesday's Patriot Post. How naive can we be?

The Dog Ate Lois Lerner's Homework

The latest twist in the investigation of former IRS official Lois Lerner and the IRS's persecution of tax-exempt Tea Party groups took another troubling turn Friday when the agency claimed Lerner's emails went missing. We're supposed to believe a mysterious computer crash wiped out the vast majority of Lerner's emails covering the period in question -- January 2009 to April 2011 -- while not affecting stored communications for any other time frame, or for any other member of her division, or in the agency as a whole. The odds of such a misfortune taking place without the aid of corrupt individuals looking to obstruct justice are virtually impossible.
Remember when Richard Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, accidently deleted 18 minutes of Oval Office tapes related to the Watergate scandal? Nobody believe that was accidental, either. And as Fox News analyst Charles Krauthammer reminds us, "[T]he second article of impeachment for Richard Nixon was the abuse of the IRS to pursue political enemies. This is a high crime. This is not a triviality."
IT professionals repeat the mantra "email is forever." That's particularly the case in any large organization like a corporation or a government agency. Norman Cillo, a former program manager for Microsoft, told The Blaze that government email servers have built-in redundancies, and there is always more than one server in operation. Each server has swappable disk drives that can be removed if they fail, and all email servers use tape backups that can be referred to if the server and the disk drives crash all at once.
Even if Lerner's own computer crashed, it would have no effect on the emails she has sent or received because the emails would be stored on the server, not on her computer. And if it was the server that crashed, why were only Lerner's emails affected, and not any of those sent or received by thousands of other IRS employees? Even then, Cillo explained, the emails could be retrieved because there are backup systems that prevent them from being lost forever, unless someone deliberately flushed them out of the system.
Darrell Issa, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman and head of the IRS tax-exempt investigation, was incredulous. "Do they really expect the American people to believe that, after having withheld these emails for a year, they're just now realizing the most critical time period is missing?" No wonder the announcement was buried in an unrelated letter from the IRS to two senators.
The loss of Lerner's emails further complicates an investigation already stymied by lack of cooperation from the IRS and foot dragging by the Justice Department. Attorney General Eric Holder has done nothing to move the investigation forward, and under questioning from the House committee, acting deputy U.S. AG David O'Neil admitted having no idea how many prosecutors were working on the case. Now the case moves along a tangent, because investigators have to deal with "missing" emails.
This new level of the investigation should focus on the procedures the IRS uses to secure its data. What was the timeline for the supposed crash, its discovery, and the handling of the data that was lost? Who is in charge of the servers and the data recovery? Why did the required redundancies fail to restore lost data?
This is textbook obfuscation by the IRS, and by the Obama White House in general. The media sycophants who run interference for the president are quick to point out that rogue elements in the IRS are responsible, not Obama. When we look at the long list of this administration's scandals, according to this logic, we are left to assume rogue elements exist in the IRS, the ATF, the State Department, the NSA, Veterans Affairs, the EPA, the Justice Department and so on. With so many corrupt individuals in all these executive-level agencies, at what point does Obama ultimately become responsible? Or when does he admit maybe big government isn't always the answer?
Andrew McCarthy of National Review points out presidential accountability was a very specific element written into the Constitution. One leader of the executive branch, a president, rather than a committee, is vested with a lot of power. "The president is responsible for all the officials and agencies delegated to wield the power the Constitution vests only in him," McCarthy writes. Our president seems to think he remains above responsibility and, even more laughably, above reproach.
In his 2009 Arizona State University commencement address, Obama noted that the university had denied him an honorary degree and "joked" that "President [Michael] Crowe and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS." His joke is less funny than ever.

Sex Change Trumps Veteran Care

While his VA administrators devoid of integrity make true American heroes wait months for critical care so they can claim handsome bonuses based on their fraud, our current administration has decided that taxpayers must cover the cost of sex change surgery. It seems too far-fetched to be true, but really, you can't make up bizarre enough stories about the direction President Obama is leading.
The generous freedom we have in this country permits Americans to disfigure their bodies if they wish. You see it every day in public! But this is another example of a law that says they are not merely free to do it, but now are free to force you and me to do it for them by paying the bill. Tony Perkins  wrote about it today. Here is his column, with a few highlights I have added.
Curt
 **********************

(Sex) Change We Can Believe In?

Taxpayer-funded sex changes: They aren’t just for traitors and illegal immigrants anymore! While the rest of the media was racing from story to story over the weekend, HHS quietly tried to disguise the reversal of a 33-year-old coverage ban on gender reassignment surgery. In a 48-hour span that saw the resignation of the VA chief and the potentially illegal release of five top Taliban terrorists, taxpayer-sponsored genital reconstruction almost seems tame by comparison. Every week, the competition for most scandalous decision gets stiffer, as evidenced by this story – which, under any other circumstances, would be front-page news. Instead, it’s just another sign of an administration wildly out of control – and out of excuses – for its taxpayer-funded extremism.
After Friday, HHS has ruled that it’s “no longer reasonable” to expect older Americans to pay for their own sexual reassignments. Instead, it now recognizes the surgery as a “medically necessary” and “effective” treatment for people who can’t come to grips with their own biological gender. Like Denee Mallon. The 74-year-old Army veteran was the driving force behind the change, even going so far as to sue HHS for the benefit – which, according to some estimates, could run as much as $50,000 a procedure. (And we wonder why America is more than $17 trillion in debt?)
The policy, which private insurers are certain to imitate, gives patients the right to petition Medicare to cover their operations. Despite the sky-high costs and an even higher controversy quotient, the Obama administration believes it’s the taxpayers' responsibility to cover an elective body enhancement that may only elevate the mental and physical risks for people suffering from gender confusion. If the government will pay for this, why not plastic surgery for people who don’t feel as old as their age? As if people couldn’t be more disgusted, the double standard remains.
While President Obama is busy financing senior sex changes, wounded veterans are dying for lack of medical care. If you want a snapshot of this administration’s priorities, that’s it. Making matters worse, the move only paves the way for gender reassignment surgeries to be a routinely covered benefit – like abortion. This is exactly what FRC warned about when ObamaCare was passed. In the 2,000-plus pages of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, there are literally 4,156 issues left to the administration’s discretion. (Or indiscretion, as this case would imply.) People everywhere are realizing – too late – that those issues include outrages like contraception mandates and politically correct surgeries that no Congress would have approved.
That’s why the health care law is so dangerous. It empowers the government to practice politics – instead of empowering others to practice medicine. Americans are free to disfigure their bodies – but they aren’t free to ask taxpayers to foot the bill.

Believe What We Want To?

The following Slice of Infinity came from RZIM on May 21. It struck such a cord with me I wanted to share it.  It brings to mind one of my favorite quotes, with my daughter's translation:

"Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt." - Julius Caesar

(Nearly always men willingly believe that which they want.)

You can believe whatever you want to, but that doesn't make it true. So many people, it seems, choose their "religion" or what to believe:

• not based on what is true, but based on what is comfortable
• not based on the evidence, but based on what they want to do 
• not based on objective analysis of the source material, but however they must to reach the outcome that pleases them
• not based on transcendent reality, but on what they "can live with"

God help us all...that includes me...not to be so shallow and short-sighted in our thinking about God and our eternal destiny that we would attempt to conform Him to our image, instead of conforming our thinking to His example provided through His Son. 

 ********************************************************************

The Detective and the Theory 

If you want to investigate whether Sherlock Holmes was a real or fictional person, you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet. His “biography” is as easy to find as Winston Churchill’s (and there seems to be some fact/fiction confusion on both counts).(1) Between the years of 1887 and 1927, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote prolifically of the famous detective known for his heightened skills of observation and eccentric personality. Holmes was both memorable and beloved—and entirely fictional. It is a strange irony indeed that there are a great number of people who would claim the clues suggest otherwise. As Holmes himself once said, “The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.”

The process of gathering and interpreting information is never ending. From childhood we learn patterns of life around us and create theories on how it all works and how we must live. Not knowing whether it is insufficient data or fast truth, children readily form theories. For instance, pans on the stove burn fingers. This is one theory a child might conclude having learned the hard way. But as data becomes more sufficient, a child’s theories are readily adjusted—namely, certain parts of a pan on a hot stove burn fingers. Though memory of the sting may last, there seems an unconscious acknowledgment that their theories are the means to understanding and relating to the world. This is very different then theorizing the end they might want, need, or hope to be true.

Strangely, the temptation Sherlock Holmes speaks of—forming theories upon insufficient data—seems to grow with age. As the questions we seek answers for become more difficult, so the ante for interpreting accurately increases as we grow older. And yet, as adults we are often less willing to adjust our theories. The biases we bring into investigating often prevent us from recognizing data as insufficient or tampered with. We also more readily remember the sting of being burned and hold on to it in our interpretation, so that even to some of life’s deepest questions we are responding with predisposed theories. For instance, God cannot exist because if God did exist my mother wouldn’t have died so young, or tsunamis and hurricanes wouldn’t kill people, or I wouldn’t still be struggling with my finances. How would we respond to a child who insisted that if broccoli were good for her, it would taste like candy?

In one of his essays, F.W. Boreham writes of his grade school difficulties with geography class.  When the teacher spoke of life in a far-off land, he found himself drifting off to scenes in that land and remaining there long after they had switched to another destination. One day, catching him in the midst of a daydream, the teacher called on Boreham and asked, “What part of the world are we studying?” Recognizing a fellow student in distress, a friend scribbled the correct rejoinder on the paper beside them.  ”Java is the answer,” said Boreham. “Good,” the teacher noted, “Now tell me, what was the question?”

When the theories we hold as answers become the end and not the means to understanding, we eventually lose sight of the question. “If God exists,” we essentially ask, “why wouldn’t God be like the God I want to believe in?” or “why wouldn’t God be revealed in the way that I need God to be revealed?” We unreasonably hold the answers without realizing the questions we are even asking. “I maintained that God did not exist,” noted C.S. Lewis of his years as an atheist, “I was also very angry with God for not existing.” There are answers we cling to without admitting the question we have asked is faulty.

I believe the clues of a creative and personal God are all around us. I am convinced that Christ’s vicarious humanity is unique in its ability to change and transform lives. I also know the desperation of clinging to the answers that keep us from really seeing the evidence. But this is not seeing. “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 we are without excuse” (Romans 1:20). Will we investigate the evidence of God with a mind to see what is really there? Perhaps there is indeed something to the call of Jesus to receive the kingdom of God like a little child.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.


(1) “Fact & Fiction: Churchill Seen as Fake, Sherlock Holmes as Real-life Detective,” USA Today, February 4, 2008.

"You have to behave the way we tell you to"

Maybe it’s weird that we sometimes think of people in terms of comparisons between groups. I have been lately.  I mean, consider terrorists and Democrats.

One group doesn’t offer any useful information on how to build a nation. They take exception to American exceptionalism, and are bound and determined to bring our nation down to the level of every other nation: mediocre, less productive, less successful, lower standards of living, bound up by superstition contrary to factual evidence. This group pays lip-service to concepts like job creation or the economy, but they don't actually provide jobs in any private sector, only in the "sector" that is controlling other people.

They want to be in control of your life and mine. This group tells us, "You have to behave the way we tell you to," and they will punish us if we don’t. People around the country are learning just how they have to behave in order to not be punished. Just ask photographer Elaine Huguenin, and florist Barronelle Stutzman, and the owners of Conestoga Wood and Hobby Lobby.

And the other group? They are terrorists.
 

The parallels came to mind as I considered recent remarks from our eloquent Secretary of State John “I served in 'nam” Kerry, as reported in the Patriot Post:

Secretary of State John Kerry offered some withering criticism for terrorists. "I have seen this scourge of terror across the planet, and so have you," he intoned. "They don't offer anything except violence. They don't offer a health care plan, they don't offer schools. They don't tell you how to build a nation, they don't talk about how they will provide jobs. They just tell people, 'You have to behave the way we tell you to,' and they will punish you if you don't." Bombings, shootings, running planes into buildings -- that's nothing. Terrorists don't offer a health care plan. Funny he should mention health care, though, since Democrats used the very tactics he described to force people to sign up for ObamaCare. But, Kerry said next, "Our responsibility and the world's responsibility is to stand up against that kind if nihilism." 

Now that’s telling ‘em John! Got those terrorists really worried I bet.

Why can’t he just admit it? If you don’t place extreme value on liberty—that is, the least necessary governing of individuals’ lives—for all, then what you think is OK simply depends on how you think people should behave.

Whether you’re a terrorist or a modern liberal.

Obama and the Voting Children

Is President Obama "presidential"? He treats the voting public like we are all a bunch of children. Maybe this speaks to the intellectual level of his average voter...which is a scary thought. Apparently the voters to whom his party appeals are largely adolescents in voting-age-bodies.

For someone educated at Harvard (allegedly...he still has not released the records has he?) and a University of Chicago Constitutional Law professor, you would think he would speak with eloquence and impeccable logic.

But you would be incorrect. George Will explains: 

"Anyone who has tried to engage a [child] in an argument probably recognizes the four basic teenage tropes, which also are the only arrows in Obama’s overrated rhetorical quiver."

I am embarrassed by many things Obama says and does. George Will captures why in this column (I pulled from Patriot Post and have just highlighted a few things for those of you who tend to skim) on...

The Adolescent President

By George Will · Apr. 24, 2014

Recently, Barack Obama – a Demosthenes determined to elevate our politics from coarseness to elegance; a Pericles sent to ameliorate our rhetorical impoverishment – spoke at the University of Michigan. He came to that very friendly venue – in 2012, he received 67 percent of the vote in Ann Arbor’s county – after visiting a local sandwich shop, where a muse must have whispered in the presidential ear. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., had recently released his budget, so Obama expressed his disapproval by calling it, for the benefit of his academic audience, a “meanwich” and a “stink burger.”
Try to imagine Franklin Roosevelt or Dwight Eisenhower or John Kennedy or Ronald Reagan talking like that. It is unimaginable that those grown-ups would resort to japes that fourth-graders would not consider sufficiently clever for use on a playground.
When Theodore Roosevelt was president, one of his good friends – he had been best man at TR’s 1886 wedding – was the British diplomat Cecil Spring Rice. So, when visitors to Washington wanted to learn about TR, they asked Rice about him, and Springie, as TR called him, would say: “You must always remember that the president is about 6.” Today’s president is older than that. But he talks like an arrested-development adolescent.
Anyone who has tried to engage a member of that age cohort in an argument probably recognizes the four basic teenage tropes, which also are the only arrows in Obama’s overrated rhetorical quiver. They were all employed by him last week when he went to the White House briefing room to exclaim, as he is wont to do, about the excellence of the Affordable Care Act.
First came the invocation of a straw man. Celebrating the ACA’s enrollment numbers, Obama, referring to Republicans, charged: “They said nobody would sign up.” Of course, no one said this. Obama often is what political philosopher Kenneth Minogue said of an adversary – “a pyromaniac in a field of straw men.”
Adolescents also try to truncate arguments by saying that nothing remains of any arguments against their arguments. Regarding the ACA, Obama said the debate is “settled” and “over.” Progressives also say the debate about catastrophic consequences of man-made climate change is “over,” so everyone should pipe down. And they say the debates about the efficacy of universal preschool, and the cost-benefit balance of a minimum wage increase, are over. Declaring an argument over is so much more restful than engaging with evidence.
A third rhetorical move by argumentative adolescents is to declare that there is nothing to argue about because everything is going along swimmingly. Seven times Obama asserted that the ACA is “working.” That is, however, uninformative because it is ambiguous. The ethanol program is “working” in the sense that it is being implemented as its misguided architects intended. Nevertheless, the program is a substantial net subtraction from the nation’s well-being. The same can be said of sugar import quotas, or agriculture subsidies generally, or many hundreds of other government programs that are, unfortunately, “working.”
Finally, the real discussion-stopper for the righteous – and there is no righteousness like an adolescent’s – is an assertion that has always been an Obama specialty. It is that there cannot be honorable and intelligent disagreement with him. So last week, less than two minutes after saying that the argument about the ACA “isn’t about me,” he said some important opposition to the ACA is about him, citing “states that have chosen not to expand Medicaid for no other reason than political spite.”
This, he said, must be spiteful because expanding Medicaid involves “zero cost to these states.” Well. The federal government does pay the full cost of expansion – for three years. After that, however, states will pay up to 10 percent of the expansion’s costs, which itself will be a large sum. And the 10 percent figure has not been graven on stone by the finger of God. It can be enlarged whenever Congress wants, as surely it will, to enable more federal spending by imposing more burdens on the states. Yet Obama, who aspired to tutor Washington about civility, is incapable of crediting opponents with other than base motives.
About one thing Obama was right, if contradictory. He said Americans want politicians to talk about other subjects – but that Democrats should campaign by celebrating the wondrousness of the ACA. This would be candid because it is what progressivism is – a top-down, continent-wide tissue of taxes, mandates and other coercions. Is the debate about it over? Not quite.
© 2014, Washington Post Writers Group