Deepak Chopra on Jesus

This is over a year old, but Time magazine interviewed New Age guru Deepak Chopra about a novel he wrote on Jesus’ life.  It’s tremendously sad and misinformed (that is, the interview, but I’m sure the novel takes the cake).  Here’s a few of the more interesting questions and answers:

You write “making [Jesus] the one and only son of God leaves the rest of humankind stranded.”

Because we end up worshipping the messenger instead of the message and excluding all the theologies that existed before Jesus was born.

But it’s also the one thing that inspires Christ’s most fervent followers: that Jesus was God’s only son, who died for them and so took away sin. Isn’t your premise of an acquired godhood heretical to orthodox Christians?

It may be. Fundamentalist Christians always quote Jesus in the Gospel of John saying “I am the way. I am the life. Nobody comes into the kingdom of heaven except through me.” But what does Jesus mean by “I”?” In his language, Aramaic, the word is translated as “the I within the I.” So he may be speaking about himself as a universal spirit. In that case he can’t be squeezed into a body or the span of a lifetime.

Read the whole thing.

Happy Veteran’s Day

Happy Veteran’s Day.  Thanks to all who have served our great country and fought for freedom at home and abroad.  You are appreciated more than you realize.

I’ll be out of town for the next week.  Blogs will be at a minimum.  Thanks to all of you who read.  It’s a blessing and quite humbling.

The Berlin Wall Came Down 20 Years Ago Today

Jesus Keeps Pursuing, Even When We are Ignorant

Many people have interpreted Jesus’ interaction with the woman at the well as a model for personal evangelism for Christians.  That’s one way of looking at it, I guess.  Perhaps more significantly, however, we can look at this episode to see how we are like the woman, and how Jesus is our great Pursuer.  This passage shows us our immense need to constantly come to the Fountain of life and drink.

In John 4:4, it says that Jesus “had to pass through Samaria.”  He didn’t do this because it was the shortest route, but because he had an appointment.  He had an appointment with a woman who needed to be pursued — a woman who needed to be saved.

Notice the conversation in verses 7-25.  The woman is continually plagued by a lack of spiritual fiber in her bones.  She can’t handle spiritual realities.  She’s blind.  She’s ignorant.  She’s only able to think in terms of things she can see and touch:

• She thinks Jesus can’t give her water because he doesn’t have a bucket (v. 11).
• She thinks Jesus gives water so she won’t have to come to draw from this particular well anymore (v. 15).
• She avoids her sin by starting a debate about where people should worship (vv. 19-20).

If we are honest with ourselves, we are the woman.  Even the disciples didn’t always digest deep, spiritual realities (e.g. John 4:33).  We continually need the great, pursuing Savior to tear away the blinders of spiritual ignorance and give us knowledge of himself.

Where do you see yourself in this woman?  Where are you ignorant of Jesus’ pursuit of you?  How will you respond?

America’s Ugliest Export

Here’s a video from Christianity Today about the prosperity gospel in Africa.

(If you are viewing this in a feed reader, you may have to click through to the blog to see the video.)

(HT: Justin Taylor)

Jesus’ Resurrection Has Implications for Your Life

A few decades ago, a lot of scholarly research was dedicated to finding the answer to the question, “Did Jesus really rise from the dead?”  Now, it seems as if everyone in this postmodern, relative society is not asking, “Did he?” but rather, “So what?”

Let’s answer this practically: If a man died from a brutal execution — so much so that his body and face were hardly recognizable as human — and then rose from the dead with a healed and restored body, then this man must be more than just a man.  “So what?” you ask.  Well, if he is more than a man, then he must be loved, honored, and obeyed for who he is, namely God himself.

What do you love, honor, and obey?  Money?  Sex?  Relationships?  Food?  Praise of man?  Hollywood?  Sports?  Status?  Technology?  Cars?  Children?  Body image?  Knowledge?  Religion?  Yourself?

If these things died, would they rise from the dead like Jesus did?

I doubt it.

Pro-Choicers Ignore 2nd Grade Science Lesson

Abortion and Artemis: The Damning Desire of Lust for Wealth

FoxNews reports that a Planned Parenthood worker in Texas quit after seeing an ultrasound of a baby being aborted.  Here’s a snippet:

Abby Johnson, 29, used to escort women from their cars to the clinic in the eight years she volunteered and worked for Planned Parenthood in Bryan, Texas. But she says she knew it was time to leave after she watched a fetus “crumple” as it was vacuumed out of a patient’s uterus in September.

The most intriguing part of this article was when Johnson described the driving force behind the clinic’s abortions:

“Every meeting that we had was, ‘We don’t have enough money, we don’t have enough money — we’ve got to keep these abortions coming’…It’s a very lucrative business and that’s why they want to increase numbers.”

Immediately, Acts 19:21-41 came to my mind.  Paul had been preaching the gospel in Ephesus, and he was preaching against the goddess Artemis, the Greek deity of hunting and fertility, who later became associated with wealth and prosperity.

Some Ephesians were angry at Paul, who “persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying that gods made with hands are not god” (v. 26).  What was the driving force of their anger at Paul and zeal for this goddess?  Verses 24-25 tell us the answer:

For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business to the craftsmen.  These he gathered together, with the workmen in similar trades, and said, “Men, you know that from this business we have our wealth.”

Just like the Ephesian silversmiths, the Planned Parenthood workers acquired their wealth from a god (i.e. abortion) they made with their own hands.  In a word, they were greedy. Greed and abortion, like Artemis, are idols.  And when the idol of greed is threatened, the result is either repentance  toward Jesus or rage, chaos, hatred, and only more idolatry and greed.

The lust for wealth is a damning desire.  Truly “those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction” (1 Tim. 6:9).

If the Bible Says it Once, It’s True

Some Christians believe in annihilationism, that is, that those who do not receive Jesus will not suffer in  hell, but will actually cease to exist.

But Matthew 25:46, plain as day, says that people will be punished forever if they are not saved.  It would be hard to reconcile annihilationism with these words of Jesus.  In his Systematic Theology, Wayne Grudem wrote, “The Bible only needs to say something once for it to be true.”

Eternal punishment in hell is a terrible doctrine, indeed.  But if the Bible teaches it, then we must believe it, and hard as this seems, learn to love it in a God-honoring, Christ-exalting, non-vengeful way.

Father, Long Before Creation

This is one of my favorite hymns. It was originally a Chinese hymn, and it was translated by Francis P. Jones.  It was most recently re-recorded by Matthew Smith on the Beams of Heaven: Indelible Grace IV project.

*               *               *

Translated by Francis P. Jones
Music and Chorus by Andrew Osenga

Father, long before creation
Thou hadst chosen us in love,
And that love so deep, so moving,
Draws us close to Christ above.
Still it keeps us, still it keeps us
Firmly fixed in Christ alone.

Though the world may change its fashion,
Yet our God is e’er the same;
His compassion and His covenant
Through all ages will remain.
God’s own children,
God’s own children
Must forever praise His name.

God’s compassion is my story,
Is my boasting all the day;
Mercy free and never failing
Moves my will, directs my way.
God so loved us,
God so loved us
That His only Son He gave.

Loving Father now before Thee
We will ever praise Thy love,
And our songs will sound unceasing
‘Til we reach our home above,
Giving glory,
giving glory
To our God and to the

Giving glory,
giving glory
To our God and to the Lamb.