The Case For Christ - A Review of Lee Strobel's Book

Lee Strobel is a well known and highly respected reporter, who has written many books about why Christians should continue to believe in Jesus Christ as their saviour and as authentic.

In my view, his case for Christ book has to rank among the best on the subject of the authenticity of Christ. His book outlines the failings of much serious research work over two recent decades to get a clearer picture of Christ beyond what was known thirty years after his death and carefully vested for inclusion in the New Testament over the century afterward.

The reader will find that Strobel's book is extremely well written and its conclusion very clear, namely that Jesus Christ lived and rose from the dead in a way that we would today regard as supernatural. The Christian story is of a miracle, a series of supernatural events that cannot be explained away by recent research. On the contrary, much of current work on the historicity of Christ that seeks to present an alternative view to that presented in the early days of Christianity fails on almost every count.

One is given such wonderfully presented information by Strobel as to conclude that it is worth every one's time to begin reading the Bible, if they have in the past failed to do so, because what Jesus says and does may indeed be supernatural and unique in the history of mankind.

Read Strobel's book and judge for yourself. I think he makes mincemeat of many weaker and falser claims by those wishing to destroy Christian faith.

Why the Present World Financial Crisis is an Opportunity

President Obama and world leaders came through yesterday and presented a wonderful opportunity for the young people to develop a new world order with a soundly based future that properly takes into account the numerous failings of excessive or rampant market growth.

My own research suggests that companies, and the human beings that drive them forward, are by-and-large opportunistic or paranoiac copy cats. Life is a competitive race in which people are likely to neglect the needs of others and they charge forwards to higher and higher levels of pleasure and satisfaction. Fear, as well as, fervour and lust are at the base of aggressive behaviour.

By change from competition towards competitive cooperation or cooperative competition, we can move closer towards more ideal forms of market and social development that recognizes our basic desires, but at the same time curbs our worst appetites. That is what communities and community communications could be designed to achieve. It would be much better for religions and companies to recognize that they cannot be overall winners. Organizations need to come to terms with living in a cooperative but still competitive environment. When governments recognize this, organizations can recognize this and eventually the people within the organizations can recognize this. It means that we need to have a human bill of rights that all governments, all organizations and all human being can be held to task on.

Once we have reached the goal of cooperative competition between human beings, we can expand our bills of rights to include all living creatures. There is room enough for every living creature once we get cooperation as a norm between human beings.

The Evolving World Economy

A consequence of the mistakes made in the financial sectors of New York and London would seem to me to be that their time of dominion is rapidly entering a new phase. If Britain and America engage in meaningful reforms of the financial structures, there might be hope of their lasting well into the future, however, the force of old habits and prior commitments to financing long term goals with short term money does not auger well for their futures.

The winners in our financial crisis should be those that can think into the longer term, not the thieves of our futures. There has to be a way for governments to redirect thinking towards long term views that build in low risk approaches to financing. It would better to have slower growth that is well founded in innovation and good judgment than to have inflationary growth that rushes into the future faster and faster as it heads towards a poor or tragic outcome.

What is Natural?

At a time when we see and hear so much about Charles Darwin and his wonderful life researching and discovering the origin of species, it is quite natural that one should ask what is natural. Well, we could say that what is in the past is natural. How far does that take us? Most would probably think that it does not take us very far. Can one say that what is in the future is natural? As one goes through this process of considering what is natural, one gets closer to the idea that there are some things that go well beyond the natural. Is it fair to add all these new things that we discover in the future to our category of natural. I have my doubts.

My inclination is to reject this notion of natural and think of the world as being supernatural. The category of supernatural for me at least includes what is natural and then adds to it. I don't think all the past was natural. One has only to ask what came before the past and one has no answer. What existed before the big bang and why was there a big bang? Its not satisfactory to me to say that everything after the big bang was/is/will be natural. My view is that all this stuff we see around us includes the natural universe plus a very large supernatural universe. Its not that I have any proof, but I am not going to wait forever thinking that this is all there is, or ever was. That would seem to me to be rather silly.