Recently the Christian worship song "Shout to the Lord" was performed twice on the popular TV show American Idol. The first time the lyrics were changed to remove Jesus' name for the song, while the second time the song was performed as it was originally written. See the performance below:

I do not usually watch the show, but other blogs suggest that the majority of the eight finalists are not Christians, although there have been many overtly Christian participants in the past (including winners Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Carrie Underwood, and Jordin Sparks).

What do you think about performing Christian songs on a secular TV show? Was the move to perform the song (censored and/or uncensored) by the show's producers appropriate? There seems to be something at least a little ironic about performing a worship song on a show dedicated to making an "idol" out of someone …

Courtesy Mission Bay Community Church

Get beyond the eggs and rabbits this Easter:

• Is Good Friday really good? How is the death of a man on a cross "good"?
• Did the resurrection actually happen? Dr Gary Habermas' minimal facts argument.
• Good People What does it mean to be 'essentially good'? And do you qualify?

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.]

Is a person a Christian merely because they have been born into a Christian family? Of course, the thoughtful answer is no, even though a person may subconsciously subsume some surface-level measure of their parents' faith, yet never allow it to make any deeper impact on their life. And then people wonder why have never experienced this "faith" thing!

Rev Victor Shepherd notes in his excellent recent book Do you love me? And other questions Jesus asks:

Christians of every generation are slow to hear that God has no grandchildren. God certainly has children: We become God's children as we seize Jesus Christ in faith and vow never to let go. Grandchildren, however, are those who try to ride the coattails of their parents' faith, sooner or later to find that what they assumed to be possible – faith at arm's length, faith secondhand, faith on the cheap -isn't possible.

If you today are wondering if you have been living as a grandchild, and not a child of God, I implore you to please take a moment to consider what it means to be living a Spirit-filled life! It may be the most important few minutes of the rest of your life!