cool little video from a neat little website

http://www.marshillchurch.org/media/rebels-guide-to-joy/the-rebels-guide-to-joy-in-loneliness/william-cowper-bio

Sunday marked the beginning of a new season; I am now twenty-one and have been freed from the elementary limitations of my youthful days. No limits...no boundaries..only the world at my finger tips!
If only life were that freeing. It seems the older I get the more bound I become. The gravity of reality weighs down leaving me enslaved to so much. I find it ironic that the more I strive, the less fufilled I am. Like the child who tries so hard to reach the cookie jar only to have it tumble out of his grasp falling onto the floor in a million broken pieces. Its funny how the things that we desire and spend our whole lives trying to attain always break. We never can hold onto what we want fully intacted. Even when we seem to reach our goals, it seems that in the end the things that we fight for always unravel and fall apart leaving us empty handed in the end.

surprised by joy

Last week I read Surprised by Joy-Although it was not one of my favorite c.s. lewis books, his description of joy and his intellectual journey to Christianity is very interesting.
This is one of my favorite quotes:
"You will remember how, as a schoolboy, I had destroyed my religious life by a vicious subjectivism which made "realizations" the aim of prayer; turning away from God to seek states of mind, and trying to produce those states of mind by "maistry." With unbelievable folly I now proceeded to make exactly the same blunder in my imaginative life; or rather the same pair of blunders. The first was made at the very moment when I formulated the complaint that the "old thrill" was becoming rarer and rarer. For by that complaint I smuggled in the assumption that what I wanted was a "thrill" a state of my own mind. And there lies the deadly error. Only when your whole attention and desire are fixed on something else- whether a distant mountain, or the past, or the gods of Asgard- does the "thrill" arise. It is a byproduct. Its very existence presupposes that you desire not it but something other and outer. If by any perverse askesis or the use of any drug it could by produced from within, it would at once be seen to be of no value. For take away the object, and what, after all, would be left?- a whirl of images, a fluttering sensation in the diaphragm, a momentary abstraction. And who could want that? This, I say, is the first and deadly error, which appears on every level of life and is equally deadly on all, turning religion into a self-caressing luxury and love into auto- eroticism. And the second error is, having thus falsely made a state of mind your aim, to attempt to produce it. From the fading Northernness I ought to have drawn the conclusion that the Object, the Desirable, was further away, more external, less subjective, than even such a comparatively public and external thing as a system of mythology- had, in fact, only shone through that system. Instead, I concluded that it was a mood or state within myself which might turn up in any context. To "get it again" became my constant endeavor; while reading every poem, hearing every piece of music, going for every walk, I stood anxious sentinel at my own mind to watch whether the blessed moment was beginning and to endeavor to remain it if it did. Because I was still young and the whole world of beauty was opening before me, my own afficious obstructions were often swept aside and, startled into self- forgetfulness, I again tasted Joy. But far more often I frightened it away by my greedy impatience to snare it, and, even when it came, instantly destroyed it by introspection, and at all times vulgarized it by my false assumption about its nature. One thing, however, I learned, which has since saved me from many popular confusions of mind. I came to know by experience that it is not a disguise of sexual desire. Those who think that if adolescents were all provided with suitable mistresses we should soon hear no more of "immortal longings" are certainly wrong. I learned this mistake to be a mistake by the simple, if discreditable, processs of repeatedly making it. From the Northernness one could not easily have slid into erotic fantasies without noticing the difference; but when the world of Morris became the frequent medium of Joy, this transition became possible. It was quite easy to think that one desired those forests for the sake of their female inhabitants, the garden of Hesperus for the sake of his daughters, Hylas' river for the river of nymphs. I repeatedly followed that path- to the end. At the end one found pleasure; which immediately resulted in the discovery that pleasure (whether that pleasure or any other) was not what you had been looking for. No moral question was involved; I was at this time as nearly nonmoral onn that subject as a human creature can be. The frustration did not consist in finding a "lower" pleasure instead of a "higher." It was the irrelevance of the conclusion that marred it. The hounds had changed scent. One had caught the wrong quarry. You might as well offer a mutton chop to a man who is dying of thirst as offer sexual pleasure to the desire I am speaking of. I did not recoil from the erotic conclusion with chaste horror, exclaiming "no that!" My feelings could rather have been expressed in the words, "Quite. I see. But havent we wandered from the real point?" Joy is not a substitute for sex; sex is often a substitute for Joy. I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for Joy.
Such, then, was the state of my imaginative life; over against it stoof the life of my intellect. The two hemispheres of my mind were in the sharpest contrast. On the one side a many- islanded sea of poetry and myth; on the other a glib and shallow "rationalism." Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I though grim and meaningless. The exceptions were certain people (whom I loved and believed to be real) and nature herself. That is, nature as she appeared to the senses. I chewed endlessly on the problem: "How can it be so beautiful and also so cruel, wasteful and futile?" Hence at this time I could almost have said with Santayana, "All that is good is imaginary; all that is real is evil." In one sense nothing less like a "flight from reality" could be conceived. I was so far from wishful thinking that i hardly thought anything true unless it contradicted my wishes.
***
But a desire is turned not to itself but to its object. Not only that, but it owes all its character to its object. Erotic love is not like desire for food, nay, a love for one woman differs from a love for another woman in the very same way and the very same degree as the two women differ from one another. Even our desire for one wine differs in tone from our desire for another. Our intellectual desire (curiosity) to know the true answer to a question is quite different from our desire to find that one answer, rather than another, is true. The form of the desired is in the desire. It is the object which makes the desire harsh or sweet, coarse or choice, "high" or "low." It is the object that makes the desire itself desirable or hateful. I perceived (and this was a wonder of wonders) that just as I had been wrong in supposing that I really desired the Garden of the Hesperides, so also I had been equally wrong in supposing that I desired Joy itself. Joy itself, considered simply as an event in my mind, turned out to be of no value at all. All the value lay in that of which Joy was the desiring. And that object, quite clearly, was no state of my own mind or body at all. In a way, I had proved this by elimination. I had tried everything in my own mind and body; as it were, asking myself, "is it this you want? It is this?" Last of all I had asked Joy itself what I wanted; and labelling it "aesthetic experience," had pretended I could answer Yes. But that answer too had broken down. Inexorably Joy proclaim, "You want- I myself am you want of- something other, outside, not you not any state of you."

in moments like these...

There is nothing so depressing as being home on a saturday night in bed with the flu. Sweating, coughing, sniffling, with chills is a splendid mix of weekend fun. Covers off- covers on. Blankets off Blanket on.
And all I can think about are the two massive research papers im suppose to be writing that got me into this mess. Anxiety and cold weather are a sure mix to land you with a box of kleenex.
I have decided to spend the night listening to sermons- something I have rarely gotten the chance to do lately. Its sad how we get ourselves so worked up sometimes it brings us to a place were we cant do anything. I feel so useless but I guess it is in these moments of humility I realize it is through Him that I am strengthened in my weakness.

My saturday night looks very promising: a night of chewing Hume's essay "on miracles" only to spit it back out into some kind of pseudo analysis (with sublime's Santeria shouting in my headphones). And this is my life.
I wish I could find more contentment in the mundane everyday tasks of life instead of grasping for thoughts and concepts beyond my reach. One words rings over and over in my mind: introspective. I shall pick apart abstractly then methodically categorize into something that will help me cope and possibly entertain me.
My saturday night calamity: boredom.
I am so fast to judge others- to label them mindless and shallow. But I wonder...maybe there can be just as much destruction in just sitting around blogging. Unless I create my own manifesto and have plans to quickly dominate and implement it- my words are empty.
Life demands such a balance between doing and thinking. Unfortunately the latter plagues me.


I wish to feel "humanity"

"Bless those who persecute you.." Romans 12:14
Tonight as I was sitting down at church a high school girl who looked somewhat foreign came and sat by me. She introduced herself and quickly began sharing her story. She told me that her family had just recently moved to America from Egypt to escape persecution. Apparently in the last few years the persecution of Christians has drastically increased. "You know" she said " You Americans can change your religion every day, but in Egypt we die for our religion. If my family had stay in Egypt any longer my family and I would be dead. We have had friends who have been killed and one of my friends was kidnapped for two months- she was constantly raped- just because she was a Christian. You Americans are so lucky. Did you know that 80% of Egyptians are starving to death living in poverty ,( obvious seeing people starve to death on the streets was not uncommon for this girl) only 5% are middle class, and the last 15% own everything." "What?" I thought that Muslims were commanded to take care of the poor?" "Oh", she replied- only one day of the year" What a sick religion I thought to myself. "Isn't it beautiful" I told her "That christian put such a great emphasis on taking care of the needy?" He even went as far as to say that "true religion is this: that you take care of the orphans and widows." "yes" she replied and smiled as she slightly turned her head. "You know" she said " My family ...we would have died for Christ if we had to...we would have never denied Him."
What a beautiful and strong girl. How many families like this die everyday but we will never know their stories because their bodies will be burned and their ashes left sifted into the sand, but whose souls knew the richness of Christ- whose hearts were filled with joy,overwhelmed with such compassion that they even showed love to those torturing their children. What a testament to Americans- whose bodies will be nicely scented and stuffed like thanksgiving turkeys- bodies that are rotten from the worldly pleasures- whose souls are absolutely empty.

The Hollow Men
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.
Alas!Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us — if at all — not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer –
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate roseOf death’s twilight kingdom
The hope onlyOf empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pearPrickly pear prickly pearHere we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
and the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
T.S. Eliot

We sit in the mud... and reach for the stars.
Ivan Turgenev

Walking to the bus this morning was beautiful. It was cold and the sun was coming up. Like I was having some freakin existential experience..unexplainable. Somehow I ended up in the park. The truth is that after my first class I decided it skip my other ones..something I rarely do but I knew if I had to hear anymore about nathaniel hawthorne I would vomit in my mouth. What a joke. All he did was frolic around rome with his sissy buddies talking about art trying to create ethical dilemmas like he was some kind of philosopher. I ended up on the bench watching the sun beam through the trees. Watching the leaves take their last breath before winter. I just wanted to lay there forever. Its funny to think about how we grow through cycles. Seasons and years. Time and space. Yet somehow it all just starts running together as if it just mushes becoming undefinable. Today happens again tomorrow like yesterday: and here we go again. Year by year. Thought by Thought. Everything the same but in different packages. All of it so beyond us yet we act like we somehow comprehend it- knowing the alternative would be insanity/ As if we are little children knowing our punishment is coming so we curl up with are hands over our heads trying to drown out the reality pouring down around us.
The other day one of my philosophy professors said "why do we all think everyone would go bad if we did away with morals? We havent always had "morality"
I almost fell off my seat when she said this.
I can just see her now in the jungles of the amazon trying to rationalize with the cannibals.
It made me think about this old russian film I watched a few years ago. It was about this young woman who fell in love with this man, and he was really fond of her but he thought he would corrupt her and such so he cut things off. A few years later he saw her at this grand party and realized that she was married to some hotshot duke. He instantly became infatuated with her and did everything in his power to get her in bed/ Of course, it was evident that she admired her husband but was still crazy in love with this guy. I remember this beautiful scene where they are both ice skating. They are in russia surrounded by snow. The beautiful woman starts skating around and the guy just stands there staring at her and you know at that moment he would give his life to be with her. The movie ends with her sitting down and him on his knees before her begging her to love him. Up until this point its obvious that she loves him back and everyone thinks they are going to get back together. But the end really surprised me : she started crying with him- you could tell she was in a lot of pain- but she told him that she made a commitment to her husband and would never dishonor him. And then the movie ended. It sounds kind of depressing...and trust me it was...but the point was that morality should dictate our decisions. The point was that regardless of how bad the woman thought she wanted the man, it was more important for her to honor her husband and I think anyone who saw this movie would be proud of her because deep down your greatly admired her.
There is something deep inside of us that wants morality- that wants boundaries. How is the married woman who goes around screwing any man she sees any different from an animal?
I dont think my professor really had any idea of what she was talking about. Its ironic how some of the most educated people are the most ignorant. It seems like they just sit around drinking cocktails discussing how they are going to stop world hunger in their ivory towers while in the meantime their are people down bellow in the gutters begging for food.
I just wondered as I sat on that green bench: what keeps driving us into such deep denial about the world around us?

The Dino Andreadis Story

A solitary figure stood on a dark, deserted hilltop, high above the City of Angels. Overhead, a myriad of stars twinkled in the beautiful night shy as the blazing neon lights below beckoned intensely... I was the lone figure on the Los Angeles hilltop. It was 1978. I was 19 and at last I stood on the threshold of my dream becoming a reality. The dream had gripped me since boyhood - that of becoming a Hollywood actor. Grasping for the slightest chance to make a connection in the movie industry, I visited the posh Woodland Hills mansion of movie actor Telly Savalas, known especially for his TV series "Kojak". Being a Greek like myself, I was certain Telly would be my link with Tinsel Town's big league. Every nerve ending in my body was tensed with a strange mixture of energetic excitement and fear as I knocked on the massive door of the Savalas home. In a few moments the door to fame and fortune would be opened wide. The door swept open with expensive ease. "Good evening. My name is Dino Andreadis. Is Mr. Savalas in?" In spite of my jolting nerves, I managed to sound cool and collected. "This is it!" I told myself. "My ticket to the stars!" The stranger standing in the brightly lit doorway stared at me for several seconds, then he laughed. As the ornate door was slammed in my face a few moments later, all I could hear was the stranger's laugh as he looked at my shocked face, and told me that Telly hadn't lived there for at least ten years! My fascination with show biz went back to my childhood when, at the age of four, I was already a fan of the fabulous Chubby Checker. Once, during a trip on a cruise ship with my parents, I heard the dinner orchestra strike up a familiar Checker tune. Before my parents knew what had happened, I bolted onto the dance floor to a round of applause. That night I stole the show. In my teens I lived for the dynamic night life of Montreal. Entertainment paid good money. I was earning about $400 a week and that was quite a bit of cash for a seventeen year old back in 1976. One day my vice principal told me I should consider going to Hollywood. The idea caught hold of me with a passion. With high hopes and nearly empty pockets, I arrived in Hollywood in 1978. In a morass of eight million people I began to pound the pavement earnestly along with thousands of other hopefuls.....in search of stardom. Each night I returned home to my tiny, humble apartment with tired swollen feet and not a break in sight. Every night as I went to sleep, I looked up at the ceiling crying out to an unknown God, "If You're up there someplace, please help me!" As long as I can remember, I always had a longing for truth. I didn't go to church and I didn't know God, but as I cried out night after night to the lonely ceiling in my L.A. apartment, I was crying out for help, for truth, for reality. There was something missing in my life......perhaps stardom was the key that would fill the void. Several long months passed. Still no hope of a breakthrough. I decided to sneak promotion photos under the doors of casting directors at the major film studios. Out of the blue, my telephone rang. My hearty pounded with inexpressible excitement. It was the casting director of a major studio. He wanted to see me. At last! We met for a forty five minute interview, which is a long interview in Hollywood. The man wanted to meet me again later that evening. I could hardly contain the thrill inside of me at this dynamic turn of events. At precisely 8:00 p.m. a white Mercedes sports coupe arrived to pick me up. The casting director took me out to a popular night spot. After fifteen minutes with him, I began to feel uneasy. I couldn't explain it. But I was not totally naive about the lifestyles of people in the entertainment world. Bluntly, I asked the man what he wanted from me. With sickening horror, I realized I was face-to-face with the Hollywood casting couch. The casting director said that he would give me part in his next film if I paid the price.......sexual compromise. Much later, I discovered just how many are willing to pay that price of the chance at stardom. I asked the casting director to take me home immediately. What he was asking me was out of the question. Then an acting tryout came through from NBC studios. A script arrived by messenger. What a sensational feeling! A chance to do Harvey Korman's lines on the Carol Burnett show! Arriving at the studio, I saw Tom Snyder finishing a show on my left. Further on, I saw Bob Hope finishing a Christmas special. I couldn't believe it! Suddenly my knees began to shake. I stood in front of a monstrosity of a camera and heard the director say "Action!" I froze. Not a line of my memory work came to mind. I ran out of the studio, terrified and embarrassed, a scared 20 year old kid. Yet a windfall of calls began pouring in after that! My dream was unfolding father than I would keep up with! Experienced actors were utterly amazed when I told them about the calls I was getting. Finally a major breakthrough. An offer came in from the casting director at 20th Century Fox for a part in a series. There was one slight hitch. The director said hewanted to hire me but he couldn't. "What?! Why not?" I exclaimed. "Because you are Canadian," he said. "Canadian? What do you mean, 'I'm Canadian?' So is William Shatner. What does it matter if I am Canadian?" The problem was simple. I was an illegal alien. I couldn't be hired for a legal job in the U.S. without a green card or working permit. "How do I get a green card?" I practically shouted. "I'll get one! I'll do anything!" "This has to be it!" I cried out to the ceiling and to my unknown God that night. How many hundreds of nights had I cried out like this? Not for a minute did I realize that in all of those heartrending cries, I was searching not for my dream of stardom ... I was searching for God. The next day I handed over $96 for a five minute appointment to a lawyer who presented me with two options for getting a green card. I could invest $65,000 in a business in the U.S. or I could marry an American girl. What could I do? I didn't have a quarter to buy a bag of candy! How could I invest in a business? There was only one option. I began to search for an American wife. The very next day, amazing as it seemed, I met a man who introduced me to a lady who would marry me to get me my green card. The fee was $500. I paid a deposit on the five hundred and two days later, I called to check the progress of the arrangements and I discovered that I had been had. The woman and her "business manager" had disappeared. Frantic to get my green card, I began combing the L.A. night clubs in search of a woman who would marry me. A few days later, I met a beautiful young woman who told me that she had fallen instantly in love with me. When she heard about my dilemma, she said she was willing to marry me. In reality, I later realized that since she knew I was to be an actor, she just wanted to marry me to get a cut of the pie. Elated, I headed my way home and began making plans. Things were falling into place. A wife! A green card! An acting career! Then as I waited for the bus, a young man slipped a piece of paper into my hand. Perplexed I looked at the paper and saw words stare right up at me. "Jesus Christ is Coming Soon. Are You Ready?" The message pierced through my cluttered thoughts like a lightning bolt. I had heard about Jesus Christ. I had gone to church only when I had to .... sometimes at Christmas or Easter when my mother pulled me by the ears to go. But something told me, "This is the truth. I believe this!" Suddenly I felt confused. In my desperation to get home and put my thoughts in order, I jumped off at the wrong bus stop. Standing there was the same young man who had given me the tract. He mentioned he, too, had somehow landed at the wrong stop. Coincidence? Unannounced to me, it was providence. Discussing the "coincidence" we began walking together for a short distance. Theyoung man's name was David. I decided to invite him into my apartment for a cup ofcoffee. I had some questions about the tract to ask him. David began sharing the message of the Bible with me. He told me about God's love for me, and that God has a special plan for each person's life. Suddenly, I wanted David to get out of my apartment. I didn't want to hear anymore. "What's the matter," David asked. "You wanted me to tell you these things!" "Yes, David, I did. I know I can't live the way I would have to live if I gave my life to Jesus Christ as you're encouraging me to do. I know if I did that, I'd have to give it all to Him. There's too much at stake in my life right now. I can't do it. Get out! Get out!" David left. The next morning at ten, I had an appointment with my bride-to-be. I pushed thoughts of David and his message about Jesus Christ out of my mind. It was nine o'clock and there was a knock at the door. I thought my bride-to-be was early. A kindly, tall, black lady stood at the door. She introduced herself as David's pastor, and said that he told her about him. "When he told me about you, I felt compelled to pray for you throughout the night. Dino do not do whatever you are about to do," she said, and with that she turned and left. I was flabbergasted, and for the first time a real holy fear came over me. Somehow I felt a warning in my heart to do as she said. I did not realize it at the time, but God had led this woman to my place at the right time. If she had not come, I would have married this woman I hardly knew and God's plan for my life would have been shattered. When my bride-to-be arrived an hour later, I told her I couldn't go through with our plans. Deep inside, I had always wanted to marry and build a life with a special person. To marry now and divorce three months later suddenly seemed like such a sham. Hurt and angry, the young woman cried, "Dino! What about your green card! Don't throw everything away! Don't be crazy!" "Go! Just go!" I told her. "Dino, you have a television series in the palm of your hand!" I told her I was sorry and asked her to leave. However, the next day I decided I was letting go of the chance of a lifetime. It is amazing how when God does something in our lives how quickly we forget about it. All of a sudden, I had to find a wife again. All of my convictions of the day before were forgotten. I called up an old girlfriend whom I had dated in Montreal, at the time living in Wisconsin. When I explained my situation and the need for a green card, she said she would be willing to marry me. We made our hasty plans. The day she was to arrive, I had a strange feeling she wouldn't show up. I placed a call to her home in Wisconsin. Sure enough. "Dino, I can't explain it, but I just couldn't go through with it." My plans were falling like a row of dominoes. In my anguish, despair and confusion, Iturned to reading the Bible David had given me ... searching for answers ... any thread ofdirection to show me what to do. I began to read the Word of God and something was happening inside of me. I foundmyself not just reading, but soaking and immersing myself in the Word. The words spokelife, and I was reading day and night, not being able to put it down. I realized that I needed more than stardom to fill the emptiness in my life. It was then that I asked Jesus to be my personal Savior. I didn't understand it, but God was breaking the walls of pride in my life so I could open my heart and draw close to Him. One day, I sensed a quiet urging within me. "Go and preach the Gospel on the corner of Western and Wilshire." I thought I must be going crazy! Then God's Holy Spirit prompted me again. But how could I go preach in Hollywood at 1:30 in the afternoon? Nonetheless, I followed the prompting in my heart and off I went. "Shut up you idiot" "You're out of date!" The insults flew fast and thick as I went on the corner of Western and Wilshire and preached the Gospel. People laughed and jeered. "God, what do You have me doing this for? What's the purpose in all of this? Show me!" I cried silently. Then it happened. A man came up to me. Humbly, he asked me to tell him more about Jesus. As I began talking about the Bible's message of salvation, hope and new life in Jesus Christ, the man got on his knees right in from of me and asked Jesus to be his Lord and Savior. I was so excited, that I asked him if he wanted to be baptized because I had read that in the Bible. He said yes, and so I took him home and baptized him in the bathtub of my apartment! Walking the streets of L.A. and the skid row areas, I began to share the Gospel, dayafter day. But I hadn't forgotten abut my quest to become an actor. Even though I wasserving God, I still wanted to pursue my long held dream of stardom. A call came through for a part requiring a six-foot two inch blonde guy with blue eyes. I'm five-foot nine, with brown eyes. I had a new agent and I quickly phoned him asking why they would be calling me when I didn't even fit the description of the part. They had torn up the script and put in my characteristics. It simply does happen for unknowns like me. You see as God does things in a person's life, you can be sure the enemy is right behind trying to trick, trap and ensnare. And so, with this new offer, the things of God began to diminish in my life. Hollywood began to consume me again. I stopped reading the Bible and praying. It was the first sign of Christian back-sliding but I knew nothing about falling away from God. Instead of praying and seeking God I became desperate and really wanted to know if I was going to make it in Hollywood. So I decided to see a fortune teller near my home. I needed some answers again and had forgotten all that God had done for me. As I entered the fortune teller's, I was greeting by terrible, hideous screaming. "GETOUT OF HERE!!!" I couldn't understand why the woman was screaming at me. I had never seen her in my life. Trying to make some sense of the situation, I drew closer. She raised her hands in front of her face, pulling away from me, unable to even look at me and screamed andbellowed even louder: "GET OUT OF HERE!!" I high tailed it out of the fortune teller's completely baffled. I had no clue what hadhappened. When I got home the Lord lead me to a scripture I had never seen before in Psalm 91:11 "For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways." I was amazed! What the fortune teller had actually seen even though I did not see it were angels protecting me, and all the demons within her were screaming. Although I was going my own way, doing my own thing, God in His mercy was protecting me, not because of my goodness, because there was none, but because of His goodness. Something deep within me still wanted God's way and I know that He saw that and rescued me from my own follies. About this time I had an unusual experience. Before I went to sleep one night, I sawsomething that I will never forget. In a vision, I saw a man preaching the Gospel, withpeople all around him. As he preached the Gospel, in the midst of his preaching, I heard a loud sound like a trumpet and above me in the clouds, I saw Jesus, clothed in a white robe, His face brighter than sunlight. Suddenly, we were all rising up to meet Jesus together in the air. Shaken and startled, I opened my Bible and read these words which I had never readbefore: "for the Lord Himself will come down from heaven with a mighty shout and with the sour stirring cry of the archangel and the great trumpet call of God. And the believers who are dead will be the first to rise to meet the Lord. Then we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and remain with him forever. So comfort and encourage each other with this news" (1Thessalonians 4:16-18). Everything began to make sense to me, as though the pieces of a puzzle were beingfitted carefully into place in my mind. I recalled the tract from David and the conviction of its words when I had read it. From that point on, my desire to preach the Gospel wasrenewed. Once I went to the skid row area of Hollywood. It is a sad, pathetic gathering of destitute, homeless people. Jesus had made himself so real to me. I felt that I had to preach the love of Jesus to others. I began preaching wherever I went. People were giving their lives to Christ as I shared. Another call for a screen test. I had no green card, but the studio was willing to sponsor me. Another thing that doesn't happen for nobodies in Hollywood. The enemy was trying his best to keep me as far away from God as possible pursuing my own interests and desires. Then, in a large studio, filled with a group of attractive women, one lady spontaneously asked me: "What so you think of common law marriage - modern marriage? Prompted by the Holy Spirit, I began preaching the Gospel to those women. I realized only later what I had done. I was preaching in a Hollywood studio! I can't remember what I had said, but within minutes, most of them had tears running down their faces as God's conviction took hold of their hearts. One woman was so convicted she ran out of the studio. Being young in God, I thought I hurt her feelings and ran after her. "You didn't hurt my feelings," she said. "You see I once served God whole heartedly, but I backslid to become an actress." That same woman I was able to lead back to the Lord and bring her to church. The battle was strong in my life for wanting Hollywood, but I finally got down on my knees and put all of my life into God's hands. I realized that I had to give God everything. Hollywood was not fulfilling me although it looked promising. I realized that when I was after my own pursuits and out of the will of God I was the most empty. That's when I realized I had to surrender everything to the Lord, as hard as it was to give up Hollywood. I realized that as the Bible says, I cannot serve two masters. I called my agent and asked him to tear up all of my files for acting roles. "Don't call me anymore," I said. The chapter was closed, and the quest was ended. I felt God's direction to let go of my Hollywood quest once and for all and to return back home to Montreal. I ended up working in my mother's boutique as I took time to sort out what God wanted me to do with my life. A terrible salesman because I was more concerned about sharing the gospel withcustomers than selling, I soon found out that God had other plans. Before long, it wasbecoming more like a church than a boutique. I had such a compulsion to share the gospel, and in the church I was attending they reserved the front row every Sunday for the people I brought off the streets. It was then that I was told by a pastor that I had a tremendous call on my life and should go to Bible College. Bible College? How could I do it? I had cheated all my way through high school. With the help of the Lord and spending the first 2 weeks in Bible College on my knees for His help, I graduated with Honors and was chosen the Baccalaureate Speaker. I beganpastoring in a church in Montreal, and later was involved in full time evangelism inMontreal. Reaching for the stars hadn't brought the fulfillment I'd been seeking so long. But finding Jesus Christ, knowing and serving Him with all my heart brought me to the fulfillment of my quest for true happiness. God has given me the greatest life there is. The wife that I sought, God so sovereignty brought her into my life in 1986, and together we serve the One who created the stars!

This is how I have felt this week ^

Only two comments:
Philosophy is vain
Christ is the end of all ends- He is it.

camp

Back to writing.

(Sol and Claire)

Camp was a blast. Its always fun to be surrounded by people completely different from you. All my roomies and other staff concluded from the vast amount of books engulfing my bed and my crazy conversations that I am in fact a nerd. I will miss bad hair days that no hat could cover, giving tours of the camp at the beginning of camp informing the kids of important information like "dont pick up the red yellow and black snakes", jumping into muddy pits, and hiding in the woods making animal noises for the kiddos. But even more I will miss getting excited with Rachel about politics, playing the piano with james, shopping with my friend from germany franziska while discussing Nazism, friend from kenya sam who we all enjoyed playing songs while watching to bright night sky, my sweet roomies, my bff laura, sitting around the table with my intellectual comrades beau and stephen, long talks with janice, nights in zach's tree house, but most of all I will miss my irish friend claire who showed me that regardless of cultural barriers our God is the same and works in many of the same ways. ( I will also miss her OCD habits such as counting her 12 pens next to her bed every night before she went to bed.)

"Eros will have naked bodies;

Friendship naked personalities." c.s. lewis

I have always been afraid I might become one of those zealous Christians. You know - the kid at the mall wearing the black t- shirt that reads "death" passing out one- two- three steps of how to simply to convert to Christianity with a sketchy picture of a hell and then a crucifix ( like the ones in walmart on the candles). Something about it isn't appealing.
How skewed it has become- how tarnished such a beautiful thing has become bastardized. From the dusty shelves of a theologian's library to the empty rhetoric of a politician, it seems the definition, the purpose of this 'religion' has been lost.
And so the search begins. The longing for completion. The cry for redemption.
"God where are you?" Becomes the unanswered question repeatedly asked whether it be a silent murmur at night as we look blankly at the ceiling, or a scream from the depth of our hearts on our knees.

But how breath taking- how marvelous- when He does meet with us.

God is right in front of us. If we would only open our eyes we would find him waiting to meet with us. And how intoxicating when we do! The love that pours out of my heart in the presence of God is such a testimony not only to myself but to those around me of the supernatural effect of his power. How true the words of St. Augustine were when he wrote "Our hearts were made for you O Lord and they are restless until they rest in you"
Whether in the eyes of strangers passing by, an old hymn, or even through the beauty of nature, we will find more and more that we are surrounded by a majestic God who is waiting to penetrate our souls.

"Then you with call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.
You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. "- Jeremiah 29:12-13

Doubt and the Vain Search for Certainty

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2007/04/03/foreman.francis.collins.intv.cnn




Doubt and the Vain Search for Certainty
by Alister McGrath


Deep within all of us lies a longing for absolute security, to be able to know with absolute certainty. We feel that we should be absolutely sure of everything that we believe. Surely, we feel, we ought to be able to prove everything that we believe.
Yet absolute certainty is actually reserved for a very small class of beliefs. What sort of beliefs? Well, for example, things that are self-evident or capable of being logically demonstrated by propositions. Christianity does not concern logical propositions or self-evident truths (such as “2 + 2 = 4,” or “the whole is greater than the part”). Both of these are certainly true. We may be able to know such truths with absolute certainty—but what is their relevance to life? Realizing that “the whole is greater than the part” isn’t going to turn your life inside out! Knowing that two and two equal four isn’t going to tell you anything much about the meaning of life. It won’t excite you. Frankly, the sort of things that you can know with absolute certainty are actually not that important.
The things in life that really matter cannot be proven with certainty—whether they are ethical values (such as respect for human life), social attitudes (such as democracy) or religious beliefs (such as Christianity). “There is no philosopher in the world so great but he believes a million things on the faith of other people and accepts a great many more truths than he demonstrates,” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville. Richard Rorty, probably the greatest American philosopher of the twentieth century, makes this point well, when he points out that “if anyone really believed that the worth of a theory depends on its philosophical grounding, then indeed they would be dubious about physics, or democracy, until relativism in respect to philosophical theories had been overcome. Fortunately, almost nobody believes anything of the sort.” His point? That we can commit ourselves to the great worldviews of our time without having to wait for absolute proof—a proof which, by the very nature of things, is never going to happen.
The British nineteenth-century poet Lord Tennyson made this point rather nicely in his poem The Ancient Sage:
For nothing worthy proving can be proven,
Nor yet disproven; wherefore thou be wise,
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt.
The beliefs which are really important in life concern such things as whether there is a God and what he is like, or the mystery of human nature and destiny. These—and a whole host of other important beliefs—have two basic features. In the first place, they are relevant to life. They matter, in that they affect the way in which we think, live, hope and act. In the second place, they cannot be proved (or disproved) with total certainty. By their very nature, they make claims that cannot be proved with certainty. At best, we may hope to know them as probably true. There will always be an element of doubt in any statement which goes beyond the world of logic and self-evident propositions. Christianity shares this situation. It is not unique in this respect: an atheist or Marxist is confronted with precisely the same dilemma, as we well see in the next chapter. Anyone who wants to talk about the meaning of life has to make statements which rest on faith, not absolute certainty. Anyway, God isn’t a proposition—he’s a person!
We cannot see God; we cannot touch him; we cannot demand that he give a public demonstration of his existence or character. We know of God only through faith. Yet the human mind wants more. “Give us a sign! Prove it!” It is an age-old problem. Those who heard Jesus’ teaching wanted a sign (Matthew 12:38)—something which would confirm his authority, which would convince them beyond any doubt.
To believe in God demands an act of faith—as does the decision not to believe in him. Neither is based upon absolute certainty, nor can they be. To accept Jesus demands a leap of faith—but so does the decision to reject him. To accept Christianity demands faith—and so does the decision to reject it. Both rest upon faith, in that nobody can prove with absolute certainty that Jesus is the Son of God, the risen saviour of humanity—just as nobody can prove with absolute certainty that he is not. The decision, whatever it may be, rests upon faith. There is an element of doubt in each case. Every attitude to Jesus—except the decision not to have any attitude at all!—rests upon faith, not certainty. Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservations—a trust in a God who has shown himself worthy of that trust. To use a Trinitarian framework: God the Father makes those promises; God the Son confirms them in his words and deeds; and the Holy Spirit reassures us of their reliability, and seals those promises within our heart.
These points are reflected in the American writer Sheldon Vanauken’s account of his mental wrestling before his conversion at Oxford. He found himself caught in a dilemma over the role of proof in faith, which many others have experienced.
There is a gap between the probable and the proved. How was I to cross it? If I were to stake my whole life on the risen Christ, I wanted proof. I wanted certainty. I wanted to see him eat a bit of fish. I wanted letters of fire across the sky. I got none of these ... It was a question of whether I was to accept him—or reject him. My God! There was a gap behind me as well! Perhaps the leap to acceptance was a horrifying gamble—but what of the leap to rejection? There might be no certainty that Christ was God—but, by God, there was no certainty that he was not. This was not to be borne. I could not reject Jesus. There was only one thing to do once I had seen the gap behind me. I turned away from it, and flung myself over the gap towards Jesus.
There is indeed a leap of faith involved in Christianity—but it is not an irrational leap into the dark. The Christian experience is that of being caught safely by a loving and living God, whose arms await us as we leap. Martin Luther put this rather well: “Faith is a free surrender and a joyous wager on the unseen, untried and unknown goodness of God.”
All outlooks on life, all theories of the meaning of human existence, rest upon faith, in that they cannot be proved with absolute certainty. But this doesn’t mean that they’re all equally probable or plausible! Let’s take three theories of the significance of Jesus to illustrate this point.
1. We have been redeemed from sin by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
2. Jesus and his disciples were actually the advance guard of a Martian invasion force, who mistook earth for the planet Venus on account of a navigation error.
3. Jesus was not really a person, but was really a hallucinogenic mushroom.
Although none of these can be proved or disproved with absolute certainty, it will be obvious that they cannot all be taken with quite the same degree of seriousness!
Let’s be quite clear: Nobody can prove Christianity with total certainty. But that’s not really a problem. The big questions concern the reliability of its historical foundations, its internal consistency, its rationality, its power to convert, and its relevance to human existence. As C. S. Lewis stressed in Mere Christianity, Christianity has exceptionally fine credentials on all counts. Look into them. You can totally commit yourself to the gospel in full confidence, as a powerful, credible and profoundly satisfying answer to the mystery of human existence. Faith is basically the resolve to live our lives on the assumption that certain things are true and trustworthy, in the confident assurance that they are true and trustworthy, and that one day we shall know with absolute certainty that they are true and trustworthy.
A superficial faith is a vulnerable faith
Superficiality is a curse of our age. The demand for instant satisfaction leads to superficial personal relationships and a superficial Christian faith. Many students discover Christianity for the first time while at college or university. This discovery very often happens alongside other important events like leaving the parental home, falling in love, or gaining independence of thought and action. As a result, initial emphasis very often falls on the emotional and experiential aspects of Christianity. There is nothing wrong with this! Christianity has abundant resources for those who wish to place emphasis on the role of experience in the life of faith. But there is more to faith than that.
Faith has three main elements. In the first place, it is trust in God. It is a confidence in the trustworthiness, fidelity and reliability of God. It is about rejoicing in his presence and power, being open to his prompting and guidance through prayer, and experiencing the motivation and comfort of the Holy Spirit. It is a deep sense of longing to be close to God, of wanting to praise his name, of being aware of his presence. In many ways, this aspect of Christian faith is like being in love with someone: you want to be with them, enjoying their presence and feeling secure with them. It concerns the heart, rather than the head; it is emotional, rather than intellectual. It is the powerhouse of Christian life, keeping us going through the difficult times and exciting us during the good times.
The difficulty is that all too many people seem to get no further than this stage. Their faith can easily become nothing more than emotion. It can become superficial, lacking any real depth. It seems shallow. It has not really taken root, and is very vulnerable. Yet faith can only flourish when it sinks deep roots. There is more to faith than emotion, experience and feelings, however important they may be to you. Christianity isn’t just about experiencing God—it’s about sticking to God. A mature faith is something secure, something that you can rely on. If your faith is not deeply rooted, you will be tempted to find security in something else, only to find that this alternative will fail you (Matthew 7:24–27).
In the second place, faith is understanding more about God, Jesus Christ and human nature and destiny. By its very nature, faith seeks understanding. It seeks to take root in our minds, as we think through the implications of our experience of the risen Christ. To become a Christian is to encounter the reality of God; to become a disciple is to allow this encounter to shape the way in which we think—and act.
For in the third place, faith is obedience. Paul speaks of the “obedience that comes from faith” (Romans 1:5) making the point that faith must express itself in the way we act. “Faith is kept alive in us, and gathers strength, from practice more than speculation” (Joseph Addison). Or, as the Oxford writer W. H. Griffith-Thomas put it, nicely linking these together:
[Faith] commences with the conviction of the mind based on adequate evidence; it continues in the confidence of the heart or emotions based on conviction, and it is crowned in the consent of the will, by means of which the conviction and confidence are expressed in conduct.
And it’s at this point that doubt can come in, simply because you have allowed your faith to be shallow. The New Testament often compares faith to a growing plant—a very helpful model to which we shall return frequently in this book. It is very easy to uproot a plant in its early stages of growth; once it has laid down roots, however, it is much harder to dislodge it. By failing to allow their faith to take root, some Christians make themselves very vulnerable to doubt. They haven’t thought about their faith. For example, someone may raise a question about the historical evidence for the existence of Jesus. They don’t know the answer. So doubts begin to creep in—often quite needless doubts, it must be said.
If this happens to you, view it in the right way. The gospel isn’t an illusion that is shown up for what it really is by hard questions—like the emperor’s clothes in the famous story by Hans Christian Andersen. The fact that you haven’t been able to give adequate answers to some person’s questions or objections to your faith doesn’t mean that Christianity falls to pieces the moment people start asking hard questions! It doesn’t mean that you’ve committed some kind of intellectual suicide by becoming a Christian. It shouldn’t mean that your confidence and trust in the gospel collapse, like a deflating balloon, just because someone asked you a question you couldn’t answer. It does, however, mean that you haven’t thought these things through.
Your faith is real—but it is not mature. It may be a little shallow and superficial. But—and this matters enormously!—faith can grow, and it strengthens as it grows. It needs to take root, and grow into a strong, vibrant plant. The problem often lies not in the gospel, but in the nature and depth of your response to it. You have allowed the gospel to capture your imagination, but not your mind. Your faith is shallow, when it should be—and can be—profound. Your failure here ought to be a challenge to you to go away and read more deeply about these matters, or talk them over with other more experienced Christians. In addition to helping you deepen your understanding of these things, doing this will enable you to be more helpful to those interested in learning about Christianity.
This doesn’t mean that you should try harder to believe, as if it were by wishing harder that difficulties disappear. This idea of “faith in faith” won’t get you very far. You should see doubt as pointing to your faith being based on weak foundations. It is those foundations which need attention. A superficial faith is a vulnerable faith, easily (and needlessly) upset when confronted with questions or criticism.
Faith is like reinforced concrete. Concrete which is reinforced with a steel framework is able to stand far greater stress and strain than concrete on its own. Experience which is reinforced with understanding will not crumble easily under pressure. Again, faith is like the flesh and bones of a human body. Just as the human skeleton supports the flesh, giving it shape and strength, so understanding supports and gives shape to Christian experience. Without the skeleton, the human body would collapse into a floppy mass. Without flesh, a skeleton is lifeless, hollow and empty; without the skeleton, flesh lacks shape, form and support. Both flesh and bones are needed if the body is to grow and to function properly. Faith needs the vitality of experience if it is to live – and the support of understanding if it is to survive. So reinforce your faith with understanding.
Doubt in Other Worldviews: The Case of Atheism
In the previous chapter, I made an important point that needs to be explored much more thoroughly. Christians tend to think that doubt is a problem for them alone. But it’s not. It’s a problem for any worldview—whether Jewish or Islamic, atheist or religious. Appreciating this point is essential to seeing doubt in its proper perspective. As I used to be an atheist myself, I am going to explore the place of doubt within atheism.
Most people—including, it has to be said, many atheists themselves!—have the rather simple idea that atheism is about fact, whereas Christianity is about faith. Their ideas are factual; those of Christians are unproven. But it’s not like that. Let me explain by asking a question: can I prove with certainty that there is a God? The short answer is “no.” If you have time to study the history of the philosophical arguments for the existence of God, you’ll know that they are suggestive, but not conclusive. It’s pretty much the universal consensus within philosophy that rational argument does not settle the question of God’s existence, one way or the other. The atheist philosopher Kai Nielsen makes this point clearly when he writes: “To show that an argument is invalid or unsound is not to show that the conclusion of the argument is false . . . All the proofs of God’s existence may fail, but it still may be the case that God exists.” Argument is not going to settle this question, one way or the other. And that means that the outcome is uncertain for the atheist.
Now let’s pause here, because you need to appreciate something important. Christians often tend to see only one side of that statement: that nobody can rationally prove that God exists. But can you see that there is another side to it? That nobody can disprove that God exists? The Christian who believes in God thus does so as a matter of faith. But can you see that the atheist has to do the same? That her belief that there is no God is exactly that—a belief! Because she cannot prove that there is no God, her atheism is also a faith.
Atheists don’t like this argument, but it is correct. The simple fact is that when anyone starts making statements about the meaning of life, the existence of God, or whether there is life after death, they are making statements of faith. You can’t prove, either by rational argument or by scientific investigation, what life is all about. Whether you are Christian or atheist, you share the same problem. It’s essential that you appreciate that it’s not just Christians that make these statements as a matter of faith. And because they make these statements as a matter of faith, they are just as vulnerable to doubt as anyone else—Christians included. We’re all in the same situation.
Let’s explore this a little further, by looking at two important issues: atheist arguments for the non-existence of God, and so-called “scientific atheism,” which holds that science disproves God’s existence. Both, as we shall discover, are hopeless overstatements of the real situation.
Atheist arguments against the existence of God
Atheists often tell Christians that their faith is infantile. It’s just fine for the minds of impressionable young children, but laughable in the case of adults. We’ve grown up now, and need to move on. Why should we believe things that can’t be scientifically proved? Faith in God, many atheists argue, is just like believing in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. When you grow up, you grow out of it. And if you don’t, then you are either mentally retarded or intellectually dishonest.
But this is just rhetoric—the attempt to discredit a belief by heaping ridicule upon in. In fact, it is this argument itself that is childish. If this simplistic argument has any plausibility, it requires a real analogy between God and Santa Claus to exist—which it clearly does not. There is no serious evidence that people regard God, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy as belonging to the same category. I stopped believing in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy when I was about six years old. After being an atheist for some years, I discovered God when I was eighteen, and have never regarded this as some kind of infantile regression. As I noticed while researching my book The Twilight of Atheism, a large number of people come to believe in God in later life—when they are “grown up.” I have yet to meet anyone who came to believe in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy late in life! So let’s leave this sort of nonsense behind, and look at a more serious argument, often advanced by atheists.
The most sophisticated atheist arguments against God date from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and are found in the writings of Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud. Although they are slightly different, there is a common structure to each. Here it is, set out step by step.
1. There is no God.
2. But some people believe in God.
3. Since there is no God, this must be the result of some kind of delusion or wishful thinking.
4. People believe in God because they want to. Their faith is just a wish-fulfilment.
5. So faith in God is just a human invention, corresponding to a human need. (Atheists differ over how this need arises: Marx puts it down to social alienation and Freud to psychological forces).
Atheists regularly use these arguments against Christians, as I have found out in university debates. Their faith often rests heavily on this kind of argument. But let’s look at this argument in more detail. On closer examination, it turns out to be as full of holes as Swiss cheese. There are three major points that need to be made.
1. The argument is circular. It presupposes that there is no God. Step (5) depends on step (1). If there was a God, then there would be no delusion, would there? It proves nothing, except that atheism is logically self-sufficient. And so is just about every worldview. The important question is: how well does it relate to the real world? The argument merely restates its presuppositions as its conclusions.
2. It is logically flawed. It is certainly true that nothing exists just because I want it to. I might long to have a pile of hundred dollar bills beside me, so that I could pay off some of my debts. But wanting something doesn’t make it happen! We can all agree on that, I think. But—and it is a very big “but”—it does not follow that, because I want something, it cannot exist. Do you see this point? Imagine a man who has fallen overboard from a ship. He wants there to be a helicopter to rescue him. So helicopters can’t exist, because he wants them to? Or the specific helicopter that is already on its way to rescue him cannot exist, because he needs it? Or imagine that you feel very thirsty. You need a drink of water. So water can’t exist, because you want it? Or the specific glass of water that you are about to drink cannot exist, because you need it just then? It just doesn’t follow. As C. S. Lewis so often pointed out, it looks as if God has made us in such a way that we long for him—and then go on to find him! The desire for God originates from God—and eventually leads to God! So much for the logic of the argument against God.
3. The argument works just as well against atheism. This is a devastating point. The atheist’s argument goes like this: you want there to be a God. So you invent him. Your religious views are invented to correspond to what you want. But this line of argument works just as well against atheism. Imagine an extermination camp commandant during the Second World War. Would there not be excellent reasons for supposing that he might hope that God does not exist, given what might await him on the day of judgment? And might not his atheism itself be a wish-fulfillment? And as cultural historians have pointed out for many years, based on their analysis of European history from about 1780 to 1980, people often reject the idea of God because they long for autonomy—the right to do what they please, without any interference from God. They don’t need to worry about divine judgment. They reject belief in God because it suits them. That’s what they want. But that doesn’t mean that this is the way things really are.
This point was made superbly by the Polish philosopher and writer Czeslaw Milosz, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980. Parodying the old Marxist idea that religion was the “opium of the people,” he remarked that a new opium had taken its place—rejection of belief in God on account of its implications for our ultimate accountability. “A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death—the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.”
Atheism thus depends on a core belief that it cannot verify. Do you see the importance of this point? Atheists live out their lives on the basis of the belief that there is no God, believing that this is right, but not being able to prove it conclusively. Hardly surprisingly, atheists have tried to buttress their beliefs in other ways. One of them is to appeal to the natural sciences. These, we are told with great confidence by atheists, have disproved belief in God. But is this really the case?
The inconclusive case of scientific atheism
The twentieth century has seen many atheist scientists insist that science has eliminated belief in God. The Oxford zoologist and atheist propagandist Richard Dawkins is a good example of this kind of writer. His simplistic overstatements are regularly criticized by other scientists as representing a serious abuse of the scientific method. The simple truth is that the natural sciences neither prove nor disprove the existence of God. So either we have to give up this discussion as meaningless, or we settle it on other grounds.
You will have no problem finding writers who talk about the “limitless powers of science” to explain things, or who argue that only scientific knowledge can be taken seriously. Here is the British atheist writer Bertrand Russell on this point: “Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.” Yet this is a ludicrous overstatement. First, it is not actually a scientific statement, so it disqualifies itself as being true knowledge! Yet more seriously, it would mean that we can never answer questions about the meaning of life, even from an atheist perspective—something that Russell seems to overlook.
Yet science has its limits. That’s no criticism of science, by the way – just a recognition of its boundaries. Within those boundaries, it is highly competent. But outside them, it cannot deliver the simple answers that some hoped for. Sir Peter Medawar, who won a Nobel Prize for Medicine for his discovery of acquired immunological tolerance, was well aware of the limits of science. His words deserve to be pondered:
The existence of a limit to science is, however, made clear by its inability to answer childlike elementary questions having to do with first and last things—questions such as “How did everything begin?’; ‘What are we all here for?’; ‘What is the point of living?’
The point is clear: science is wonderful when it comes to discovering the chemical structure of planetary atmospheres, the cause of cancer, or finding a cure for blood poisoning. But can it tell us why we are here? Or whether there is a God or not? No. It has its limits. And those who insist—quite wrongly—that science demands or necessitates or proves atheism have some serious explaining to do. Let’s hear Sir Peter again:
There is no quicker way for a scientist to bring discredit upon himself and upon his profession than roundly to declare—particularly when no declaration of any kind is called for—that science knows, or soon will know, the answers to all questions worth asking, and that questions which do not admit a scientific answer are in some way non-questions or ‘pseudo-questions’ that only simpletons ask and only the gullible profess to be able to answer.
Let’s be clear about this. It is perfectly possible to interpret the natural sciences in atheist, theistic and agnostic ways. The sciences can be “spun” in ways making them support disbelief in God, belief in God, or scepticism. But the sciences demand none of these interpretations. Stephen Jay Gould, widely regarded as America’s greatest evolutionary biologist before his recent death from cancer, was no religious believer. But he was adamant that his own religious scepticism could not be derived from the sciences.
To say it for all my colleagues and for the umpteenth million time (from college bull sessions to learned treatises): science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God’s possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can’t comment on it as scientists.
Gould rightly insists that science can work only with naturalistic explanations; it can neither affirm nor deny the existence of God. And those who argue that it disproves God have just lost the plot, imposing their atheism on a neutral science.
God is simply not an empirical hypothesis which can be checked out by the scientific method. As Stephen Jay Gould and others have insisted, the natural sciences are not capable of adjudicating, negatively or positively, on the God-question. It lies beyond their legitimate scope. There is simply no logically watertight means of arguing from observation of the world to the existence, or non-existence of God. This has not stopped people from doing so, as a casual survey of writings on both sides of the question indicates. But it does mean that these “arguments” are suggestive, and nothing more. The grand idea that atheism is the only option for a thinking person has long since passed away, being displaced by a growing awareness of the limitations placed on human knowledge, and an increased expectation of humility in the advocation of religious choices.
Two major surveys of the religious beliefs of scientists, carried out at the beginning and end of the twentieth century, bear witness to a highly significant trend. One of the most widely held beliefs within atheist circles has been that, as the beliefs and practices of the “scientific” worldview became increasingly accepted within western culture, the number of practicing scientists with any form of religious beliefs would dwindle to the point of insignificance. A survey of the religious views of scientists, undertaken in 1916, showed that about 40% of scientists had some form of personal religious beliefs. At the time, this was regarded as shocking, even scandalous. The survey was repeated in 1996, and showed no significant reduction in the proportion of scientists holding such beliefs, seriously challenging the popular notion of the relentless erosion of religious faith within the profession. The survey cuts the ground from under those who argued that the natural sciences are necessarily atheistic. Forty percent of those questioned had active religious beliefs, 40% had none (and can thus legitimately be regarded as atheist), and 20% were agnostic.
The stereotype of the necessarily atheist scientist lingers on in western culture at the dawn of the third millennium. It has its uses, and continues to surface in the rehashed myths of the intellectual superiority of atheism over its rivals. The truth, as might be expected, is far more complex and considerably more interesting.
The point of these reflections is obvious. Any worldview—atheist, Islamic, Jewish, Christian or whatever—ultimately depends on assumptions that cannot be proved. Every house is built on foundations, and the foundations of worldviews are not ultimately capable of being proved in every respect. Everyone who believes anything significant or worthwhile about the meaning of life does so as a matter of faith. We’re all in the same boat. And once you realize this, doubt seems a very different matter. It’s not a specifically Christian problem—it’s a universal human problem. And that helps to set it in its proper perspective.

Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again. Willa Cather
(or are they?)

It astonishes me how much time I can spend in my room reading and writing. I really do like to be by myself.
Last summer I went to a party and although I hate big social gatherings, I was unusually talkative and comfortable at this certain event. At one point this girl came up to me that I had never met in my life looking somewhat confused and exclaimed "I read an article that you wrote and I absolutely loved it, but I must say that I have been watching you for awhile and you are nothing like I imagined...I thought that you would be a silent introvert with glasses shyly sitting in the corner...but boy was I wrong..you are outgoing and funny! I was a little shocked at her comment and thought to myself...yes, but that's how I really feel! A strange experience but nonetheless made me think.

Its ironic how we portray ourselves in certain ways that are so disconnected from our thoughts and feelings. I feel like to a certain degree it is necessary that I portray myself differently. If everyone was to go around vomiting their whole beings on others, we would overwhelm and misunderstand each other. But how beautiful when we do connect and comprehend the "whole" of someone. I guess there is some purpose in learning how to be shallow in order to communicate on a certain level (such as parties) but why is it that I feel like thats it? As if the shallow conversation should be the means to a deep friendship, and yet your left to find that the surface is not the means but only the end? Quick fixes and simply answers are what we demand! Cheap conversations. Cheap thoughts. Cheap relationships. Why dont I struggle for the best? Why dont I strive for perfection? Why dont I suffer for depth?


And this is where I feel defeated. Instead of fighting my mundane reality I have given up and instead live in my memories. Like an old flickering movie, I would rather dwell on esoteric moments then press on through "life." As if I should try and squeeze all I could out of them. But the problem with memories is that they are distorted reality. Although they maybe enjoyable, they are merely what we want to remember excluding the whole reality of the experience.

So I will continue with the mundane. I will strive out of the old and into the new. And as difficult as it maybe, I will search for hidden pearls and maybe discover an ounce of depth.

"To be alive is to be broken. And to be broken is to stand in need of grace." - Brennan Manning

I am going to backtrack and write about this last semester.

This is somewhat intense maybe but we are all flawed and its through our weaknesses that we really live-through our brokenness that we grow.

Vivid flashbacks.
"Caroline what do you want- do you want it to be your choice or not?" A voice replied as i ranted about my internal battle. For weeks I had been struggling with this small question. Do I have free will? For some reason it had eaten away at me almost paralyzing me in my thoughts. It had built a wall and enslaved me. I had become obsessed with an unanswered question. No solution. No answers. Hours and hours passed as I tried to work through this puzzle with unfitted pieces. Lying in my bed...staring at my fan...around and around...it went...like my thoughts...like my emotions.

A few months before I briefly met someone - a fellow lover of philosophy- and a peculiar conversation had haunted me ever since. We were discussing the paradox and struggle of faith and reason. I commented " It's hard to find a balance between intellectual rebellion and intellectual apathy." A pause. I did not have to explain myself. "You know," he replied "most people never find the balance." -

Growing up church there were certain standards I was expected to uphold (something like): "dont go to bars- dont hang out around bad boys who will want to de-flower you- and keep your panties on!" But besides that there wasnt much accountability.
I spiraled into a black hole. I wanted to figure out everything. Yes - man's greatest struggle- wanting to attain complete sovereignty over ourselves- desiring to be our own god. Typing this out i realize how strange this must seem, but i cant even begin to explain how self- destructive I became in this battle- I would go through days where it would completely take over my life leaving me dazed and depressed. Unfortunately I thought that thinking about the solution to my over-arching problem would lead me to a solution but it- of course- only made it worse.
After school one day I spent the afternoon reading a philosophical book and in the story the main character began to have a mental breakdown as a result of hours struggling with unanswered questions. Later that night I called my mom terrified. Now, I was not having a nervous breakdown but it was as if I realized the danger of my desire.
This struggle ripped me to pieces and left me completely broken. My "thinking" was done in vain and had delivered its full substance of "nothing." My mind had led me into a kind of intellectual suicide. Praise God that in this darkness He delivered me. Its ironic that some of the most destructive habits are the hidden ones inside dwelling deep within us waiting to be cleansed.


"Oh man! Take heed of what the dark midnight says:I slept, I slept- from deep dreams I awoke:The world is deep- and more profound than daywould have thought.Profound in her pain-Pleasure- more profound than pain of heart,Woe speaks; pass on.But all pleasure seeks eternity-a deep and profound eternity."- Friedrich Nietzsche

missionary in africa

In 1985 Clarence Duncan arrived in Africa as missionary to the solidly Muslim people called the Yao who live mainly in Tanzania, Mozambique, and Malawi. When he settled in his village, he called for a meeting with the elders. After the pleasantries the chief asked him his name. Clarence replied, "Mr. Clarence."
The council looked at each other for a moment and then the chief asked, "Why are you here?"
Again Clarence simply said, "I want to tell your people about Isa Al Mahsi (Jesus the Messiah)."
A couple months later, when the chief decided he could trust Clarence, he said, "Do you know why we allowed you to stay?"
Clarence said, "I never thought about it."
"Twenty-one years ago a very old Yao man came to our village and called for a meeting as you did. When we asked him his name, this Yao man said, 'Mr. Clarence'—which isn't an African name at all! When we asked him why he came, he said, 'I want to tell your people about Isa Al Mahsi.' These were your very words. Twenty-one years ago Mr. Clarence led four of our villagers to follow Jesus. So we ran them out of the village. And we killed Mr. Clarence. The reason we allowed you to stay was we were afraid."
That was 1985. Two years ago on a January morning 24 Muslim elders approached Clarence Duncan's house. After a meal the leader sat in the middle of the room and said that they had come to ask questions about Christianity. Clarence said fine but that he would only answer them by reading from the Bible so they would know he did not invent the answers. So he gave each of them a Bible in the trade language. The first question was, "Why do you Christians say that there are three gods?"
Clarence said the answer was found in Deuteronomy 6:4 and gave them the page: "Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God. The Lord is one!" And he mentioned that Isa (Jesus) said this very thing in Mark 12:29.
The questioning went on till five in the afternoon. When all had left, the leader, Sheik Abu Bakr, stayed and asked if he could see Clarence in a week.
When they met Abu asked if Clarence knew why they came to see him last week. Clarence said he assumed it was to ask questions. But Abu said, "No, it was because the Christian church is growing so fast we knew we had to kill you. We had consulted for three days and prepared our magic. You were to be struck dumb when we asked questions, then fall on the ground paralyzed and then die. But when you kept talking, and even stood up and moved around, we knew you had a stronger Spirit and gave up."
Then Abu said, "I want to become a Christian." And he told an amazing story.
"When I was a teenager, in our village we were not Muslim people and we were not Christian. We were Achewa people with our own religion. Behind our village was a hill where I would often go to pray.
"One day I was on that hill praying. Suddenly all around me was a blinding light. Out of this light I saw a big hand coming toward me holding an open book. I looked at the book and saw writing on the page. A Voice told me to read. I protested that I could not read, never having been to school. The Voice again told me to read. So I did. And suddenly the book and the hand disappeared.
"I ran back to my village and all the people were looking for me, thinking I had died on that hill! They asked about a fire they had seen up there. When I told them the story, they laughed at me saying, You can't read!
"Someone got a book and I began to read! Then people came from all around to find out more about what happened and asked questions. The Muslim authorities found out about me and I was trained in the ways of Islam. Soon all or our village became Muslim. For 15 years I was the greatest debater against the Christians."
He paused and then said, "You remember when I asked you the first question about why Christians believe in three gods? Your answer was Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 4."
"That's right," Clarence said.
Sheik Abu Bakr looked Clarence Duncan in the eye and said, "That was the same passage that this Voice on the mountain showed me. At that moment I knew that the God you were talking about was the True God!"
"Then why did you keep asking me all those questions the whole day?"
"Because," he smiled, "I wanted all these Muslim leaders to know what the Christians believe and I wanted them to hear it from you. The whole day I pretended unbelief so that I could ask more questions. Now I want to become a Christian."

"There is nothing that makes us love a person so much as praying for him." - William Law
I picked up my phone only to hear a defeated voice on the other line. It was my dear friend Lyndsey. " Caroline- I just dont know what to do anymore- she just steals and does drugs and now she is in jail for meth." At this point I really didnt have any words of wisdom for my friend- I had never been in her situation..."just keep on loving her and pray" were the only words it seemed i could come up with. "Well I am going to go pick her up in a few days so hopefully she will have time to reflect on her life."
As I hung up the phone I thought about Lyndsey's own story. Although she had never made any trips to jail, she had had her fun with drugs before. But then everything changed.
I remember the first time she described to me the moment in which she was saved. "I prayed and was overcome with this amazing feeling- my eyes were opened up and I saw everything in a completely new light" and it was in that moment she found freedom.

About a week later Lyndsey called me again. "caroline I picked up my friend and you will never guess what happened..." She continued to explain to me that something profound had happened to her while she was in jail. It was if she had come alive and in a way i guess she had. After years and years of trying to get her friend to read her bible for some reason a passion inside her was
ignited and she couldnt keep her hands off the pages of this book she had before perceived to be so boring. As Lyndsey's friend handed her back her bible Lyndsey noticed little notes her friend had taken on verses she had read. Lyndsey was flabbergasted. What had happened to her?

As Lyndsey was leaving with her friend she informed her that while she was in jail one of their close friends had died. Her friend turned to her and replied "but he didnt know...he didnt know! Her friend motioned to her bible..".no one told him!" Lyndsey he needed it!
What had gotten into her? God. It was if she had been intoxicated with him and couldnt rest until everyone around her knew. A few days ago she was a cold hard girl who lived only for meth- but now she had been so transformed by God's love that the thought of not getting to share it with her friend was devastating. But how God had saved her.She had been in her own hell and had experienced sweet salvation from that which had- oh so enslaved her.
Salvation is amazing.
How mind boggling. To be completely transformed and yet to still be the same you. How I wish everyone would desire it. God how I pray that everyone searching for truth would find You- that their eyes would be opened.
"That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. 11As the Scripture says, "Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame." romans 10:9-11

atheists and their fathers

Atheists and Their Fathers


Written by Kerby Anderson
Introduction
How does one become an atheist? Does a person's relationship with his earthly father affect his relationship with his heavenly Father? These are some of the questions we will explore in this article as we talk about the book Faith of the Fatherless by Paul Vitz.
Vitz is a psychologist who was an atheist himself until his late thirties. He began to wonder if psychology played a role in one's belief about God. After all, secular psychologists have been saying that a belief in God is really nothing more than infantile wish fulfillment. Dr. Vitz wondered if the shoe was on the other foot. Could it be that atheists are engaged in unconscious wish fulfillment?
After studying the lives of more than a dozen of the world's most influential atheists, Dr. Vitz discovered that they all had one thing in common: defective relationships with their fathers. The relationship was defective because the father was either dead, abusive, weak, or had abandoned the children. When he studied the lives of influential theists during those same historical time periods, he found they enjoyed a strong, loving relationship with a father (or a father substitute if the father was dead).
For example, Friedrich Nietzche lost his father (who was a pastor) before his fifth birthday. One biographer wrote that Nietzche was "passionately attached to his father, and the shock of losing him was profound." Dr. Vitz writes that Nietzche had a "strong, intellectually macho reaction against a dead, very Christian father." Friedrich Nietzche is best known as the philosopher who said, "God is dead." It certainly seems possible that his rejection of God and Christianity was a "rejection of the weakness of his father."
Contrast Nietzche with the life of Blaise Pascal. This famous mathematician and religious writer lived at a time in Paris when there was considerable skepticism about religion. He nevertheless wrote Les pensées (Thoughts), a powerful and imaginative defense of Christianity, which also attacked skepticism. Pascal's father, Etienne, was a wealthy judge and also an able mathematician. He was known as a good man with religious convictions. Pascal's mother died when he was three, so his father gave up his law practice and home-schooled Blaise and his sisters.
Here we are going to look at the correlation between our relationship with our earthly father and our heavenly Father. No matter what our family background, we are still responsible for the choices we make. Growing up in an unloving home does not excuse us from rejecting God, but it does explain why some people reject God. There may be a psychological component to their commitment to atheism.
Nietzche and Freud
Friedrich Nietzche is a philosopher who has influenced everyone from Adolph Hitler to the Columbine killers. His father was a Lutheran pastor who died of a brain disease before Nietzche's fifth birthday. He often spoke positively of his father and said his death was a great loss, which he never forgot. One biographer wrote that Nietzche was "passionately attached to his father, and the shock of losing him was profound."
It seems he associated the general weakness and sickness of his father with his father's Christianity. Nietzche's major criticism of Christianity was that it suffers from an absence, even a rejection, of "life force." The God Nietzche chose was Dionysius, a strong pagan expression of life force. It certainly seems possible that his rejection of God and Christianity was a "rejection of the weakness of his father."
Nietzche's own philosophy placed an emphasis on the "superman" along with a denigration of women. Yet his own search for masculinity was undermined by the domination of his childhood by his mother and female relatives in a Christian household. Dr. Vitz says, "It is not surprising, then, that for Nietzche Christian morality was something for women." He concludes that Nietzche had a "strong, intellectually macho reaction against a dead, very Christian father who was loved and admired but perceived as sickly and weak."
Sigmund Freud despised his Jewish father, who was a weak man unable to support his family. Freud later wrote in two letters that his father was a sexual pervert, and that the children suffered as a result. Dr. Vitz believes that Freud's Oedipus Complex (which placed hatred of the father at the center of his psychology) was an expression of "his strong unconscious hostility to and rejection of his own father." His father was involved in a form of reformed Judaism but was also a weak, passive man with sexual perversions. Freud's rejection of God and Judaism seems connected to his rejection of his father.
Both Nietzche and Freud demonstrate the relationship between our attitudes toward our earthly father and our heavenly Father. In both cases, there seems to be a psychological component to their commitment to atheism.
Russell and Hume
Bertrand Russell was one of the most famous atheists of the last century. Both of Russell's parents lived on the margin of radical politics. His father died when Bertrand Russell was four years old, and his mother died two years earlier. He was subsequently cared for by his rigidly puritanical grandmother, who was known as "Deadly Nightshade." She was by birth a Scottish Presbyterian, and by temperament a puritan.
Russell's daughter Katherine noted that his grandmother's joyless faith was "the only form of Christianity my father knew well." This ascetic faith taught that "the life of this world was no more than a gloomy testing ground for future bliss." She concluded, "My father threw this morbid belief out the window."
Dr. Vitz points out that Russell's only other parent figures were a string of nannies to whom he often grew quite attached. When one of the nannies left, the eleven-year-old Bertrand was "inconsolable." He soon discovered that the way out of his sadness was to retreat into the world of books.
After his early years of lost loves and later years of solitary living at home with tutors, Russell described himself in this way: "My most profound feelings have remained always solitary and have found in human things no companionship . . . . The sea, the stars, the night wind in waste places, mean more to me than even the human beings I love best, and I am conscious that human affection is to me at bottom an attempt to escape from the vain search for God."
Another famous atheist was David Hume. He was born into a prominent and affluent family. He seems to have been on good terms with his mother as well as his brother and sister. He was raised as a Scottish Presbyterian but gave up his faith and devoted most of his writing to the topic of religion.
Like the other atheists we have discussed, David Hume fits the pattern. His father died when he was two years old. Biographies of his life mention no relatives or family friends who could serve as father-figures. And David Hume is known as a man who had no religious beliefs and spent his life raising skeptical arguments against religion in any form.
Both Russell and Hume demonstrate the relationship between our attitudes toward our earthly father and our heavenly Father. In each case, there is a psychological component to their commitment to atheism.
Sartre, Voltaire, and Feuerbach
Jean-Paul Sartre was one of the most famous atheists of the last century. His father died when he was fifteen months old. He and his mother lived with his maternal grandparents as his mother cultivated a very intimate relationship with him. She concentrated her emotional energy on her son until she remarried when Sartre was twelve. This idyllic and Oedipal involvement came to an end, and Sartre strongly rejected his stepfather.
In those formative years, Sartre's real father died, his grandfather was cool and distant, and his stepfather took his beloved mother away from him. The adolescent Sartre concluded to himself, "You know what? God doesn't exist." Commentators note that Sartre obsessed with fatherhood all his life and never got over his fatherlessness. Dr. Vitz concludes that "his father's absence was such a painful reality that Jean-Paul spent a lifetime trying to deny the loss and build a philosophy in which the absence of a father and of God is the very starting place for the good or authentic life."
Another philosopher during the French Enlightenment disliked his father so much that he changed his name from Arouet to Voltaire. The two fought constantly. At one point Voltaire's father was so angry with his son for his interest in the world of letters rather than taking up a career in law that he "authorized having his son sent to prison or into exile in the West Indies." Voltaire was not a true atheist, but rather a deist who believed in an impersonal God. He was a strident critic of religion, especially Christianity with its understanding of a personal God.
Ludwig Feuerbach was a prominent German atheist who was born into a distinguished and gifted German family. His father was a prominent jurist who was difficult and undiplomatic with colleagues and family. The dramatic event in young Ludwig's life must have been his father's affair with the wife of one his father's friends. They lived together openly in another town, and she bore him a son. The affair began when Feuerbach was nine and lasted for nine years. His father publicly rejected his family, and years later Feuerbach rejected Christianity. One famous critic of religion said that Feuerbach was so hostile to Christianity that he would have been called the Antichrist if the world had ended then.
Each of these men once again illustrates the relationship between atheism and their fathers.
Burke and Wilberforce
British statesman Edmund Burke is considered by many as the founder of modern conservative political thought. He was partly raised by his grandfather and three affectionate uncles. He later wrote of his Uncle Garret, that he was "one of the very best men, I believe that ever lived, of the clearest integrity, the most genuine principles of religion and virtue."
His writings are in direct opposition to the radical principles of the French Revolution. One of his major criticisms of the French Revolution was its hostility to religion: "We are not converts of Rousseau; we are not the disciples of Voltaire; Helevetius has made no progress amongst us. Atheists are not our preachers." For Burke, God and religion were important pillars of a just and civil society.
William Wilberforce was an English statesman and abolitionist. His father died when he was nine years old, and he was sent to live with his aunt and uncle. He was extremely close to his uncle and to John Newton who was a frequent visitor to their home. Newton was a former slave trader who converted to Christ and wrote the famous hymn "Amazing Grace." Wilberforce first heard of the evils of slavery from Newton's stories and sermons, "even reverencing him as a parent when [he] was a child." Wilberforce was an evangelical Christian who went on to serve in parliament and was instrumental in abolishing the British slave trade.
As mentioned earlier, Blaise Pascal was a famous mathematician and religious writer. Pascal's father was a wealthy judge and also an able mathematician, known as a good man with religious convictions. Pascal's mother died when he was three, so his father gave up his law practice and home-schooled Blaise and his sisters. Pascal went on to powerfully present a Christian perspective at a time when there was considerable skepticism about religion in France.
I believe Paul Vitz provides an important look at atheists and theists in his book Faith of the Fatherless. The prominent atheists of the last few centuries all had defective relationships with their fathers while the theists enjoyed a strong, loving relationship with a father or a father substitute. This might be something to compassionately consider the next time you witness to an atheist.