Misquoting Jesus: Reviewed

I am still working through the book but I thought I'd take the time to go through some of what I have read and my thoughts on this interesting book.

Introduction
I really liked how Erhman begins: with himself. He tells the audience where he comes from and what things in his life had lead him to the point he is at now. I like this because it gives us a chance to see some of the presuppositions a person comes to the table with, which is important because everyone comes to the table with some presuppositions that can negatively or positively influence one's arguments.
One of the interesting things you will find out about Dr. Ehrman is that he became a "born-again" Christian after hearing the Gospel from a guy named Bruce as a sophomore in High school. He recalls that he had always felt an 'emptiness' as a teen, but when he had his 'born-again' experience, he felt as if the emptiness was filled. Read what he has to say:

"There was a kind of loneliness associated with being a teenager; but, of course, I didn't realize that it was part of being a teenager--I thought there must be something missing."
"Bruce was a completely winsome personality--younger than our parents but older and more experienced than we--with a powerful message, that the void we felt inside (we were teenagers! All of us felt a void!) was from not having Christ in our hearts." p.3

For me, this is very telling. I always find it strange when someone makes a universal statement ike that. I'm 22 and I can recall my feelings as a teenager and I don't once recalling a sense of "loneliness" nor "a void." in my life; and by all accounts I should have. I'm from a family of divorce. My parents split when I was young enough to not truly realize what was going on, but old enough to realize something was wrong. But hey, maybe I'm just the exception to the rule, I can accept that, but maybe there's something to the loneliness teenagers feel. Maybe as we get older, we try to fill that void with things and they work for a little while and then we have to find something new. Americans are infamous for this mentality. I think C.S. Lewis said it best:

“A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing."

More to come later!!

In View of God's Mercy...

So I had a long, but very awesome day yesterday. I met with the amazing Tori Lane in the morning at the Crosspoint House on George Mason's campus. We were meeting to walk around the campus and try to get a feel of the people there. First off, I have to say the campus "feel" is quite different from JMU. When one walks around JMU's campus, you can't help but notice that about 8/10 people wear some sort of JMU clothing: hoodie, shirt, pants, hats, jersey, bracelet, backpack, etc. As Tori and I walked around the campus, we would have be lucky to see more than maybe 7 out of the 500 students we must have passed by wearing some sort of GMU apparel. Part of the reason for that is the sheer amount of student who don't live on campus. There are 34,714 students who attend the school, but a very large amount do not live on campus. Another contributing factor to the seeming lack of identity that the students have with GMU is it's location in Fairfax. Fairfax is a hustle and bustle and it's identity overrides the GMU presence. In a place like JMU, Harrsionburg IS JMU. H-burg becomes a virtual ghost town when the students leave in the summer. Not Fairfax though. Another thing that caught us was the very high diversity of ethnicities present on campus. This made us pretty excited, because we both came from schools that seemed pretty whit bread. Diversity is a great thing!

Now, with all of this in mind, why were we there? Both Tori and I have caught the vision of God brought to us by Mike Bradley to reach the George Mason Campus for our Savior. We want to disciple, create community, serve and give students the tools necessary to be a thriving participant in the body of Christ through local churches both in college and after college. Romans 12 says this:

"Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will."

In view of our saving, loving, just, mighty, patient, incomparable God and all that He has done, we cannot help but go out telling and teaching others of Him. I will keep all of you updated on this thing as it gets moving and going. I'm pumped, aren't you?

A New Direction

God has been doing some awesome stuff in my life the past few months. My internship at Manassas Baptist has been just awesome and I have learned so much there. Unfortunately, it looks like I will not be there much longer. Leaving that church will be hard, especially because I have developed relationships with the kids. But God is leading, and I know that the only thing I can do is follow because I want to be with Him every step of the way. So, that leads me to some other updates.

A couple of weeks ago, I e-mailed a pastor (Dave Waters of Sunset Hills Baptist in Alexandria) asking him if their church needed help with their youth group (I had heard that they were looking for a part-time youth guy). He e-mail me back with, "We have things covered." I e-mailed back with "ok! God speed!" (these e-mails were longer and more detailed, but those are the basics). A couple of days later, I received an e-mail from this pastor again, saying that he wanted to meet and have lunch. So, we met and things went really well. I turns out that although they were kinda set, they are a bit unsure about the future. So we talked and got to know each other (for only three hours). He told me that if in praying about this He feels that God is wanting us to move forward, we will. The next morning, I got an e-mail saying "let's move forward."
Amy and I had dinner with Pastor Waters and his wife. It was a great meeting. Afterwards, Amy seemed fairly excited about this job. For me, that was a good confirmation. I felt that God was leading us this way, but to see Amy get excited is always a good sign! Later that week, I got another e-mail saying that we should take the next step and I will be meeting with Sunset Hills deacons next Thursday. I am very excited about all of this, but I need all of your prayers! Pray that I continue to focus on God's leading and that I honor Him every step of the way.
There are some other things that are moving as well. In talking with Pastor Bradley during marriage counseling, I have learned about a new ministry starting up on George Mason's campus. Most of this is still in the works and I think some aspects will be a struggle, but God will provide. Please pray for this ministry and for everyone involved in it. I will talk about it more later.

Now, on to some things I will be covering in upcoming posts. I just started reading Bart Ehrman's book "Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why" and I want to go through this book on the blog, so be on the look out for my thoughts on the Introduction, coming sometime next week!