Today on Thinking Christian there is a post regarding “Defending the Church” which asks how Christians should respond to the challenge that the Christian church has quite a sordid past. The usual suspects like the crusades, inquisitions, and pedophile priests are mentioned. How should Christians respond to Christianity’s sordid past?

Already some worthwhile comments have been made to the original post; a comment from Tyler is, I think, on the right track:

The simple answer is that we don’t have to defend Christians, or so called Christians, or the church of the past, we defend Jesus Christ and the gospel, and say that if anyone claiming to be a Christian did not act in accordance with what the Scriptures teach then we don’t defend those actions, we simply believe in Jesus Christ and His Word and what He did on the cross and what He is doing in our lives today. (Tyler / Thinking Christian site)

Well said. But let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that all of the charges regarding misdeeds of Christians of the past and present are entirely accurate. What, exactly, does that prove about the truthfulness of the Christian faith? Absolutely nothing.

Atheists, Muslims, and Scientologists do bad things too, sometimes institutionally, and sometimes individually, but this doesn’t prove that these worldviews are wrong. Nor do past misdeeds of Christians (regarding which we should be deeply sorrowful and sorry) do not disprove the Christian faith. Such misdeeds, by Christians and all people, prove something about people: That we are sinners to the core and in need of God. But it proves nothing about the Christian faith itself, as I’ve previously commented.

Related reading: Good People? - What makes a person “good”? Is your definition of the word built upon a firm foundation, or is it floating in thin air?

As a Canadian, this news saddens me deeply:

In response to a series of controversies over abortion debates on Canadian campuses, the student government of York University in Toronto has tabled an outright ban on student clubs that are opposed to abortion.

Gilary Massa, vice-president external of the York Federation of Students, said student clubs will be free to discuss abortion in student space, as long as they do it “within a pro-choice realm,” and that all clubs will be investigated to ensure compliance. [Source: National Post]

Apparently everyone has the right to free speech … as long as it’s not the “wrong” speech. (See the link above for the full story of how this happened and the school administration’s response; Hat tip to the STR blog for noting this article.)

I’ve posted on abortion before, though it’s important to note that my objections to abortion are not due to “religious” reasons. The case against abortion (although of course also mandated biblically) is based on logic, science, and shared “common ground”. Unfortunately, the arguments in favor of the pro-life view often get lost during emotionally-charged debates on the subject.

For anyone who is interested in pro-life issues, two great websites are:

• Life Training Institute
• Stand to Reason’s Bioethics section

And two highly recommended books on the subject are:

• Pro-Life 101 A Step-by-Step Guide to Making Your Case Persuasively by Scott Klusendorf
• Common Ground Without Compromise by Stephen Wagner

This is not a trivial topic: Over one million abortions occur each month. This is 15x the number which perish from all STDs combined including HIV/AIDS. Something to think about, anyways … though not at York University, and perhaps soon not anywhere else in Canada either? From the same article:

Meanwhile, similar controversies are unfolding across Canada, with anti-abortion groups at Capilano College, the University of British Columbia-Okanagan, Lakehead University and Carleton University stripped of official club status and funding, at least once by fiat of a single member of student council. Some clubs have regained status, while others appealed their cases to human rights commissions.

Sorry that I haven’t been posting lately … that “real life” thing has started eating up most of my free time now that I’ve actually started working (still part-time at this point) with TruthMedia and serving actively at my church.

Lately though I’ve been trying to get back into reading more often, and the current book I’m working through is Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. It was recommended by a couple different blogs that I frequent (independently of eachother) so I figured I’d pick it up. It’s quite well written so far (I’m only about 20% done at this point) and I like the fact that it is sort of a reply to Dawkins/Harris/Dennet/Hitchens without actually being presented that way (as merely a rebuttal or defense). He brings a scholar’s mind and a pastor’s heart to his writing which helps to make it intellectually rigorous while at the same time compassionate and humble.

I recently also saw an interesting post about Tim Keller speaking at Google headquarters about his book. Apparently it was the largest turn out ever for a Google “Author Talk” event. Hopefully the talk will be posted on YouTube or something soon. Quote: “Weak faith in a strong object is infinitely better than strong faith in a weak object.” Check out the book if you haven’t already, it’s good stuff.

Update: The write-up by the various scholars is now available on the official Princeton university site along with a list of signing scholars here: Symposium on Afterlife and Burial Practices in Second Temple Judaism

Recently TIME Magazine reported on a conference held in Jerusalem to discuss (again) the Talpiot Tomb, aka the “Jesus Tomb”. In their story titled Jesus ‘Tomb’ Controversy Reopened, it implies strongly that the case on the Talpiot Tomb is still open, and that the chances that this really was Jesus’ tomb are quite plausible: “After three days of fierce debate, the experts remained deeply divided. Opinion among a panel of five experts ranged from “no way” to “very possible”.”

However, a post by the conference participants on the Duke University Religion Department blog (Update: See here also) clears up TIME’s muddle significantly for us. Besides citing a few of the reasons already covered ad nauseum that this is highly, highly unlikely (to the point of ridiculousness) to be Jesus’ tomb, the blog post also throws a bit more light on TIME’s “smoking gun”. TIME said:

There was a revelation of sorts. The widow of Joseph Gat, the chief archeologist of the 1980 excavation electrified the conference by saying: “My husband believed that this was Jesus’s tomb, but because of his experiences as a Holocaust survivor, he was worried about a backlash of anti-Semitism and he didn’t think he could say this.”

The scholars reply:

The smoking gun at the conference was the surprise appearance of Ruth Gat, the widow of the archaeologist who excavated the tomb in 1980 and died soon afterwards … However, Joseph Gat lacked the expertise to read the inscriptions. His supervisor and other members of the Israel Antiquities Authority believe that Gat could not have made such a statement in his lifetime since the inscriptions seem to have been deciphered only after he had passed away.

I have already written previously on the so-called Jesus Tomb here: The Jesus Tomb (now moved from a separate HTML page to a proper WP blog page) and another good resource is Gary Habermas’ The Lost Tomb of Jesus: A Response to the Discovery-Channel Documentary.

If you really need more information, Habermas also has a new book out on the subject: The Secret of the Talpiot Tomb: Unraveling the Mystery of the Jesus Family Tomb … but personally, I have better ways to spend my time than reading more about this nonsense.

[Thanks to this Christian Post article for the heads-up re the Duke University blog post.]