Comforting Words
"But the Lord is the true God, the living God, the eternal king."
-Jeremiah 10:10
"Jesus said to her. "I am the resurrection and the life.
Those who believe in me will have life even if they die. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.""
-John 11:25-26
"God loved the world so much that he gave us his one and only Son so that whoever believes in him may not be lost, but have eternal life."
-John 3:16
"Brothers and sisters, think about the things that are good and worthy of praise. Think about the things that are true and honorable and righ and pure and beautiful and respected." -Phillippians 4:8
"If anyone belongs to Christ, there is a new creation. The old things ahve gone: everthing is made new!" -2 Corinthians 5:17
"Now you who are not Jewish are not foreigners or strangers any longer, but are citizens together with God's holy people. You belong to God's family."
-Ephesians 2:19
"You also are like living stones, so let yourselves be used to build a spiritual temple - to be holy priests who offer spiritual sacrifices to God. He will accept those sacrifices through Jesus Christ."
-1 Peter 2:5
"Faith means being sure of the things we hope for and knowing that something is real even if we do not see it." -Hebrews 11:1
"God did not give us a spirit that makes us afraid but of a spirit of power and love and self-control."
-2 Timothy 1:7
Discover: Second Story
I am slowly reading through the rest of the February Issue and I found another article that provoked some thought. It's
The Discover Interview: Francis Collins (Interviewed by David Ewing Duncan). He is an American geneticist that is "
raising eyebrowns by talking openly about his faith, as a true believer in stem cell research and as a devout Christian".
Here is a small excerpt from the piece (pages 44-47, 75.)
Duncan: A devoted Christian, Collins defends evolution and embryonic stem cell research. He dismisses religious extremists and scientist-atheists as equally shrill and believes that both sides push their beliefs on a public who prefers that science and religion remain separate.
Collins: "You use the tools of science to understand how nature works, but you also recognize that there are things outside of nature, namely God, for which the tools of science are not well designed to derive truth. The middle-ground position [between the view that there is only science and the idea that an intelligent being directs human affairs] is that there is more than one way to find truth, and a fully formed effort to try to answer the most imporant questions wouldn not limit you to the kidns of questions that science can answer, especially the eternal one: Why are we all here, anyway?"
Here is something that could be interesting for those who are unsure about their view on abortion:
Duncan: Do you believe that personhood begins at conception?
Collins: You mean, is that when we get a soul? Now we're into theology, and it's an area where science isn't really going to give you an answer. The only thing that science can say is that whatever line you draw between the fusion of sperm and eff and the birth of the baby is somewhat arbitrary. On the other hand, that doesn't prove that the soul exists right at the moment of fusion. Identical twins do not have the same soul, yet they started out as the same union of sperm and egg.
The issue of religion in today's society...
Duncan: Doesn't Scripture sometimes explicitly contradict science?
Collins: I don't find any troubling examples of that in the Bible, as long as you recognize that the point of Scripture was not to teach science.
Duncan: And yet people have been burned at the stake over this issue.
Collins: Before we start trashing religion, we should recognize that religion down through history has been misused by lots of people in terrible ways. But it's also done some profoundly good things. What has atheism done to help people? The worst examples of human carnage in the 20th century came from the atheist regimes of Stalin and mao. The principles of faith are generally altruistic, gentle, and loving. The problem is when someone takes those principles and twists them to suit their own purposes - that was the Inquistion, and that is the suicide bombers.
Thoughts, anyone?
Hannah.
Updated: Finally.
I was reading Discover Magazine, a scientific journal today and I found an interesting article. I thought it might bring up some good discussion...This is an excerpt from the February 2007 issue of Discover. The title of the article is Blinded By Science and is written by Bruno Maddox (presumably an atheist)."For the record, I have even less patience now for the creationist agenda...because I now suspect that they don't really believe the falsehoods with which they are trying to flood the world. But at the same time I got the clear impression that they don't have any choice. I thought I was going to meet people who love God and therefore hate science. What I found instead were people who love God but who have at least a pretty serious crush on science as well, and thus find themselves in the...nightmare of waking up every day and trying to believe in both. They will - they must - spend their lives, and brains, trying to think of ways that patently false ideas can be made to seem, if not actually true, at least not quite so patently false. It is, I fear, a doomed exercise, but it's a heroic one as well, it pains me to admit....Day after day [creationist scientists] beat on, boats against the current of truth, borne back ceaselessly into being just completely, utterly wrong."
How can someone with such knowledge turn such a blind eye to all the information - all the proof - of God and Jesus. How can a journalist and scientist blatantly refuse to acknowledge that maybe, somewhere, God does exist? Is it our fault as Christians that this man, Bruno Maddox, has not been saved?
What are your thoughts?
Hannah.
Bible Basics
Recently my eyes were opened to something that was so shocking to me, I didn't even remember that it existed.
When I was younger, of course when people asked me my religion I said "Christian". I went to church with my grandfather every time I was in Moncton! It wasn't untill pretty recently in my life that I discovered an entire other world of religion.
So I decided to post about some "Bible Basics" to try to encourage some of those people who may be confused about their faith, or people who have never really discovered anything about the religion they were brought up in. Here goes.
The Bible is divided into two halves, one called the
New Testament and the other called the
Old Testament. The New Testament is all about Jesus and His time spent here on earth. The Old Testament (which we share with the Jewish faith) talks all about God and His amazing powers and feats.
The Bible is also divided into
books. They can be short or long, with one or more
chapters. Within a chapter is a
verse.
Okay, this can get pretty confusing, so here's an example.
The first book of the Bible is called Genesis. If you wanted to know what Genesis said in its first chapter, and the first verse of that chapter (the first words in the Bible), then you would write it like this : Genesis 1:1
Genesis, chapter 2, verse 17 would be Genesis 2:17.
There are many different translations of the Bible. Since the Bible was written so long ago, no one spoke English. So we had to translate the Bible from these old languages. Many different people and groups have printed their own translations over the years. The "standard" old translation (it's also TC's favourite) is called King James Version (KJV). Some other popular ones are New International Version (NIV), New King James (NKJV), and The Message (that one can sometimes be considered controversial, as it is mostly paraphrased).
So here's an example of one verse in some different translations:
Jerimiah 10:10
New International Version:
But the LORD is the true God;
he is the living God, the eternal King.
When he is angry, the earth trembles;
the nations cannot endure his wrath.
The Message:
But God is the real thing—
the living God, the eternal King.
When he's angry, Earth shakes.
Yes, and the godless nations quake.
King James Version:
But the LORD is the true God, he is the living God, and an everlasting king: at his wrath the earth shall tremble, and the nations shall not be able to abide his indignation.
As you can see, they all say the same thing in a slightly different way. The entire reasoning for different translations is to make it easier for people to understand and really comprehend what God is trying to tell them through scripture.
(Scripture is another way to say "the Bible")
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the first books in the New Testament. Collectively they are called the "Gospels". I would suggest that if you want to start reading the Bible that you start off with the gospels, then move on to a later book in the New Testament like Acts, Romans or Revelation. After you could try an Old Testament book like Genesis or Psalms.
If you have any questions, make sure you leave a comment and I will do my best to try to answer them, and if I can't I'll make sure to point you towards someone who can.
All the best in your Bible endeavours.
Hannah.
2007
It's almost 2007 people. That means we have to post on here more. Maybe we need a little publicity on this. So more people will read it other than just Hannah and myself. After all, a sandbox of any kind puts a little pep in your step! I'll be talking you y'all later then!Bye!
Love Meags
Would You Rather...
Hey all! I thought it was definatly time for an update, and I have the perfect opportunity to get everybody involved! (Okay, I'm usually not this perky, and I have no idea what is wrong with me.)
I just bought this book called "More Would You Rather...?" by Doug Fields. It sounds really interesting and I thought it would be fun. (And yes, I really did pay money for this book.)
Here's a little exerpt from the intro...
Some questions in this book will inspire candid comments about normally guarded feelings...launch into a deeper follow-up question. Don't let your students off the hook too easily. There are no right or wrong answers to these questions.I thought I should post one or two "Would you rather?"s every few days and let everyone share their opinions. Don't forget to articulate why you chose each answer, and feel free to ask other people follow-up questions too. Some of these can get pretty deep, but a lot are just a bunch of fun.
Oh, and yeah, I'm gonna comment on my own post cause I love these questions! :)
No. 2:
Be kissed by your mom in public or yelled at by your dad in private?
No. 26:
Live during Jesus' time or be alive when Jesus returns?
Hannah
