Russell Stewart:
<<Exactly. And Christianity clearly has not changed that, despite
having 2,000 years in which to do so.>>
But the CURATIVE power of the Gospel is an undeniable historical fact! There
are countless, COUNTLESS, testimonies of former "bastards" whose lives have
been unalterably changed for the good. And that is something that you cannot
challenge.
You can't challenge the fact that Raul Ruiz was going to blow his entire
family away when he, holding the shotgun in his hand, accidentally heard a
Christian message on TV and INSTANTLY changed. You can't challenge the fact
that for the last twenty years he has given himself to the good of his
community. So what are you going to say? His transformation from a "bastard"
never happened? It did happen, and it happened because of the Gospel message.
You can't challenge the fact that millions testify to similar transformations.
Was Chuck Colson a bastard when he worked for Nixon? He doesn't deny it. So
what happened to make him turn his life over to visiting prisoners for two
decades now, the ones society has forgotten?
Do you deny the good done by Albert Schweitzer? Mother Teresa? How about the
former drug addict and wife beater who attends my church, who is now working
to get other people off drugs? Multiply his example by thousands, in churches
all across America, and indeed the world. And EVERY one of them will tell you
that it was the Gospel that turned them around.
So you can't say that Christianity does not change a person for good, and has
for 2,000 years. Oh sure, you can question the objective validity of their
religion, as you've been doing. But you CANNOT question their changed lives
DUE to that religion. Even if Christianity is a gigantic fiction, it has
changed more lives for the good than any other system, ever.
How many stories out there do we have of the transforming power of atheism?
Materialism? Where are the great books describing the beauty of turning away
from God? Bertrand Russell, H. G. Wells, Voltaire, all of the notable atheists
I have found wrote about the dark despair of their world views--and most left
tattered personal lives in their wake.
No, history shows clearly that there has only been one answer to the "bastard"
in all of us. It isn't atheism. It isn't humanism. It isn't intellectualism.
It isn't even Oprah's Book Club.
It is the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter who was Christ.
Jim