'76 Blog

  (CCU Student) It was months ago, way back in May of this year, that Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan by CIA operatives. But I keep thinking about the moral and spiritual questions posed by all the jubilation over this man's death. When citizens of the United States found out bin Laden had been assassinated, they celebrated. Baseball games were stopped because everyone was cheering. People started cheering in the grocery store or just where they were when they received the news.  Some say people were out of line for celebrating a death, and others say they were celebrating because the man responsible for so many deaths is now dead. Which one is right? Many people said they were celebrating for those who died because of Osama bin Laden. Yes, the attacks of 9/11 were ten years ago, but in some people’s hearts, it is still raw. Knowing that the coordinator of their loved ones death is dead is reason enough to celebrate. They are celebrating that he cannot hurt or kill anymore people, and that others will not go through what they have experienced. I believe that people do have the right to celebrate Osama’s death. Although I was not close to someone who died in the 9/11 attacks, I will still celebrate that he cannot bring any more pain to our country. Why can’t people be happy for those who needed closure on 9/11?  There is the debate that the operatives should not have shot him, and instead  captured him. However, Osama did have a gun and hostages, and the operatives did what they thought was necessary. If I was an operative, I would think through the pros and cons of shooting him, and made the necessary choice. The pros of shooting this man who has destroyed our country outweigh the cons. The pros would be: 1) We do not want to jeopardize losing him; 2) He has hostages and a gun; 3) We have waited too long to find him; 4) He won’t come peacefully, which might in turn result of him killing his hostages; and 5) If we do capture him will we have others raid and try to free him. Overall, I believe that it was too risky to not shoot him. The cons would be: 1) People will be happy we have him captive, and some would be glad that he had not been shot right away; 2) He can have a trial. All together, I think they made the right choice. They respected the Muslim countries' wishes of burying him there, which shows that our operatives do care about those countries' traditions.       The other side of this debate is that people say we, as Christians, should not be celebrating that Osama bin Laden went to hell. I disagree with this argument because the majority of people are not celebrating that he went to hell but that he is gone from this world. According to ABC News, citizens of the United States who claim to be Christian are around 83 percent. How many of that 83 percent talk about hell from the Bible? They don’t! They use it as a swearing term and do not care to admit that there is a real hell. They may say that they are a Christian, but they do not live the real lifestyle of Christianity. Therefore, I believe this side is wrong in that we are celebrating a life going to hell.     

(Centennial Fellow) Once while working as an assistant city editor on a metropolitan newspaper, I made the discovery that while talent is a great blessing, it's often character that counts most at the end of the day.   An important story would bounce into sight and I would assign it to a brilliant reporter while overlooking an arrogance handicap, sometimes regretting the decision. The next time I might hand the banner opportunity to a more humble, diligent, eager, helpful reporter perhaps lacking razzle-dazzle ability and rejoice in the outcome.   That paper was in Denver. I went there at a time when the Denver Broncos were headed for their first Super Bowl, and the city was flipped out over the team's Orange Crush defense even to the point of painting houses orange. I myself had many orange moments that season, though I left paint alone.   I now live outside Denver, up the mountains a bit, and am naturally enough caught up in the saga of Tim Tebow, a man of character. He's also a man of controversy, of faith and of miracle wins on the football field. It has been something to watch.   This rookie quarterback has led the Broncos to a series of last-minute, improbable, comeback victories, reversed a losing season and put his team at the head of its division. Inspiring other players to top-notch performances, he is a never-give-up, upbeat leader. Still, he has sometimes been awful in passing the ball and has infuriated not a few with his open praise of Jesus Christ and a kneeling prayer position imitated worldwide.   He's not really very good, some people say. Yes, he runs the ball well, but that is not what quarterbacks are for, they tell us. They seem to think it little excuse for his sorry passing stats that fumble-thumb receivers should have caught some on-the-mark throws. They wonder where he hides out for the first three quarters of so many games and they tell you luck has been amazingly in his corner. Then they come to religion.   Some consider it very nearly an NFL disqualification that he openly prays at games. Sports really ought to get rid of all the God talk, it is said by many reflecting what seems to me the most anti-religious period in my life. Some wear it as a badge of superiority that they hate the church of their childhood. I repeatedly have encountered those whose boasted tolerance does not extend to Christians they think of as hypocritical, judgmental, mean-spirited, anti-science throwbacks to an age of superstitious malevolence.   The critics are not that smart. Most of these I've run into suppose all Christians subscribe to some straw-man version of a faith a world's distance from the one I know that never ceases preaching love. They can recite faults of 500 and more years ago without grasping any of the immeasurable good.   But then listen to me sounding snappish. That is not what the faith is about. So now listen to the always-self-effacing Tebow on being sacked by someone who then knelt gleefully in the Tebow prayer posture.   "He was probably just having fun and was excited he made a good play and had a sack," Tebow told an interviewer. "And good for him."   I ran across the quote in a Wall Street Journal piece that also reminded us of how Tebow has dedicated himself to charitable activities that have included visiting with a young leukemia victim and saying his name on TV to boost his spirits.   I briefly met Tebow and will share my intuitive conviction that he is genuine.    Concerning his public piety, please note that while Tebow thinks believing produces positive results, he also says God does not fix ballgames. His prayers are part of a joy much like that of the early Christians. It just can't help bubbling up.   He's a matter of national debate now. That's fine. The cynics are probably just having fun. As for his sports future, I make no predictions except to say I believe character will out.   Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado and a Centennial Institute Fellow.

(Centennial Fellow)  It was the worst news I could get as an atheist: my agnostic wife had decided to become a Christian. Two words shot through my mind. The first was an expletive; the second was “divorce.”  I thought she was going to turn into a self-righteous holy roller. But over the following months, I was intrigued by the positive changes in her character and values. Finally, I decided to take my journalism and legal training (I was legal editor of the Chicago Tribune) and systematically investigate whether there was any credibility to Christianity.Maybe, I figured, I could extricate her from this cult.I quickly determined that the alleged resurrection of Jesus was the key. Anyone can claim to be divine, but if Jesus backed up his claim by returning from the dead, then that was awfully good evidence he was telling the truth.For nearly two years, I explored the minutia of the historical data on whether Easter was myth or reality. I didn’t merely accept the New Testament at face value; I was determined only to consider facts that were well-supported historically. As my investigation unfolded, my atheism began to buckle.Was Jesus really executed? In my opinion, the evidence is so strong that even atheist historian Gerd Lüdemann said his death by crucifixion was “indisputable.”Was Jesus’ tomb empty? Scholar William Lane Craig points out that its location was known to Christians and non-Christians alike. So if it hadn’t been empty, it would have been impossible for a movement founded on the resurrection to have exploded into existence in the same city where Jesus had been publicly executed just a few weeks before.Besides, even Jesus’ opponents implicitly admitted the tomb was vacant by saying that his body had been stolen. But nobody had a motive for taking the body, especially the disciples. They wouldn’t have been willing to die brutal martyrs’ deaths if they knew this was all a lie.Did anyone see Jesus alive again? I have identified at least eight ancient sources, both inside and outside the New Testament, that in my view confirm the apostles’ conviction that they encountered the resurrected Christ. Repeatedly, these sources stood strong when I tried to discredit them.Could these encounters have been hallucinations? No way, experts told me. Hallucinations occur in individual brains, like dreams, yet, according to the Bible, Jesus appeared to groups of people on three different occasions – including 500 at once!Was this some other sort of vision, perhaps prompted by the apostles’ grief over their leader’s execution? This wouldn’t explain the dramatic conversion of Saul, an opponent of Christians, or James, the once-skeptical half-brother of Jesus.Neither was primed for a vision, yet each saw the risen Jesus and later died proclaiming he had appeared to him. Besides, if these were visions, the body would still have been in the tomb.Was the resurrection simply the recasting of ancient mythology, akin to the fanciful tales of Osiris or Mithras? If you want to see a historian laugh out loud, bring up that kind of pop-culture nonsense.One by one, my objections evaporated. I read books by skeptics, but their counter-arguments crumbled under the weight of the historical data. No wonder atheists so often come up short in scholarly debates over the resurrection.In the end, after I had thoroughly investigated the matter, I reached an unexpected conclusion: it would actually take more faith to maintain my atheism than to become a follower of Jesus.And that’s why I’m now celebrating my 30th Easter as a Christian. Not because of wishful thinking, the fear of death, or the need for a psychological crutch, but because of the facts.Lee Strobel wrote “The Case for Easter: Journalist Investigates the Evidence for the Resurrection“; his first novel, “The Ambition,” releases May 17.  He lives in Castle Rock, Colorado, and is a Centennial Institute Fellow.  This article is reprinted from the Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy Blog.

George MacDonald, the 19th-century Scots preacher and writer whom C. S. Lewis hailed as "my master," left us not only a shelf of wonderful sermons and novels, but also a little book of devotional verses, one for each day of the year, which he called Diary of an Old Soul.  I keep it with my Bible and usually read that morning's verse to start my devotions.  His entry for yesterday, February 3, is one of my favorites: Back still it comes to this: there was a manWho said, "I am the truth, the life, the way:" --Shall I pass on, or shall I stop and hear? --"Come to the Father but by me none can:"What then is this? am I not also oneOf those who live in fatherless dismay?I stand, I look, I listen, I draw near. The Scripture quoted is, of course, John 14:6.  But in MacDonald's hesitancy and self-questioning, I hear the echo of Pontius Pilate's anguished words in Matthew 27:22, "What then shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?" What will each and every human being make of Jesus and do about him?  That is the supreme, inescapable issue for everyone on earth, once he or she has heard of this person "who is called Christ," this man who said, "I am the truth."  No one in the world, if honest with himself, can deny that existence is haunted with fatherless dismay unless he has come to the Father by the one and only way, Jesus. In my work at the higher altitudes of worldly pride and power, the intense arena of politics, media, and business, I find it especially interesting that even such biblical potentates as Pilate in the gospels, Governor Felix in Acts 24, and King Agrippa in Acts 26, all felt their complacency shaken by this lowly carpenter with his quiet but relentless authority. Here at Centennial Institute are some extra copies of Diary of an Old Soul that I am glad to share with friends.  Email me if you'd like one as a gift.  There is a Christliness in MacDonald's writing that gets under your skin.

Eric Metaxas gave a talk on his book "Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy" on Tuesday night at the John Paul II Center here in Denver. An overflow crowd of over 300 people showed, including Bill Armstrong, the President of CCU, John Andrews, the head of the Centennial Institute, Charles Chaput, the Bishop of the Arch Diocese of Denver, as well as a representation of Orthodox Priests and others. Metaxas was funny, profound, and made many points that hit home!  It is clear to me that the relation of Bonhoeffer to the German church in the 1930s, which accommodated the growing evil of Hitler with rationalizations and willful blindness, is the SAME relationship WE have to our secular society! Our secular government treats the growing evil of the vicious totalitarian Salafist Islam with the same politically correct rationalizations and willful blindness!   Many churches indulge in the same moral relativist reluctance to name and stand up to evil, glossing over everything with the bland "loving forgiving God" that requires nothing of us: what Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace"! It's clear to me that we in the Counter Jihad are called to follow in Bonhoeffer's footsteps in his uncompromising stand against the growing evil and to work to defeat it.  Bonhoeffer's prominent family had many Jewish friends. He was aware of the (then secret) "Final Solution" in progress, and helped Jewish friends and their families escape, as well as participating in the plot to kill Hitler. He was hanged by the Gestapo three weeks before the end of the war. Interesting: one man stood up and demanded to know how Bonhoeffer, as a Christian, could countenance the killing of Hitler?  The answer was superb: "was it right for David to kill Goliath?"  The question was a perfect example of the formalist church rationalizing its inaction in the face of evil. Two books highly recommended:  "Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy" by Eric Metaxas. "The Cost of Discipleship" by Bonhoeffer himself

(CCU Faculty) Good morning from the People's Republic of China.  It is the beginning of 2011 here--it's still the old year in the states.  And since many a pundit is arguing that the future of the world is here it seems like a good idea to be writing my first blog of the year from this location. China is, indeed, booming.  the signs of growth are everywhere: endless office and apartment buildings being built to the sky.  Bustling, booming cities.  Brand, spanking new airports built to impress the world.  Recently the airport in Beijing jumped to number 2 in the world in terms of passenger traffic with Shanghai at number 11 and Guangzhou--where I am--coming in at number 21.  And the spirit of the people is aggressive yet friendly.  When I speak in classes at Peizheng University I am no foreign devil--I am treated like a rock star.  I have had my picture taken scores of times.  Everyone wants a photo.  I told my wife that I must be better looking than I thought.  She told me to stop deluding myself.  Students and faculty are fascinated by America.  But they are very, very proud of China and thrilled with her new place in the world. And what a significant place it is.  Mallory Factor argues in this morning's New York Daily News that the man of the decade should be...Deng Xiapeng, the architect of modern China.  I couldn't agree more.  Deng repudiated the murderous legacy of Mao, liberalized China's economy, and brought several hundred million people out of poverty through the principles of free market economics.  I never thought I would see the day when the leaders of China should be brought in to lecture the President of the United States on how to produce economic growth.  But that day has come. China is determining the course of the world in other ways.  By itself, it has buried the entire global warming nonsense machine.  The only way the purported threat of greenhouse gases can be mitigated is if China goes along.  And guess what?  China hasn't the slightest intention of reducing her carbon footprint.  Quite the contrary.  She is increasing it as fast as she possibly can.  In George Will's column yesterday he speaks of the expansion of China's coal-burning electric plants.  China has significant deposits of domestic coal but not enough for her exploding energy needs.  So just last year China became a net importer of coal.  And guess where much of it comes from?  Thunder Basin, Wyoming.  If you live in Colorado and see all those coal trains spiraling out all over the western United States you now know that some of that product is headed for mainland China, now the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases.  If global warming is going to kill us then you may as well prepare to die.  China has no intention of slowing down her economic growth to please the sensibilities of the rich lawyers in the Sierra Club. But the biggest news--and this is always the biggest news--is what is happening in China spiritually.  And here I am limited to what I can report so I will speak in generalities.  The spiritual hunger in this land is ferocious.  People want to know about the Bible.  They want to know about the Savior the Bible speaks of.  They want to know how to live better lives.  They want to find purpose in the midst of all the economic mayhem.  And guess where the answers are?  Yes, in the faith of the followers of the simple carpenter from Galilee.  It is no great risk to say that China now has more believers than any country in the world.  And that growth is only accelerating.  In Romans 1:16 Paul says that the "Gospel is the power of God unto salvation...."  It is the greatest power ever known.  It has the power to change hearts.  And I am happy to declare on this New Year's day that it is changing hearts in China by the millions.  So the critics of the faith can wring their hands all they want.  This is one revolution they can never stop.

“A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes - and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent."  Those words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Christian prisoner and eventual martyr in Hitler's Germany, were the concluding line in remarks at a world religions panel on Dec. 10 by Ryan Murphy, CCU Assistant Professor of Christian Thought.  Addressing a convocation of faculty and staff two weeks before Christmas, Murphy pointed out that Advent is unique for the same reason Christianity itself is.  His talk began this way: One question we were each asked to address was: “What is the most serious misunderstanding of you by outsiders?”  It would have to be that Christianity is yet another variant of religion.... Why?  Because in Christianity we have a fundamentally different assessment of the human condition.  That’s what sets Christianity apart.   The assessment is not that vice is ignorance (as per the classical conception, Plato, etc.); it is not that we have corrupted our revelation, lost knowledge of God, and we required simply a better prophet, a more sound revelation, as per Islam, or Joseph Smith). What’s unique, is that Christianity posits that humankind is unable to bridge the gap between ourselves and God – not just ignorant of how, in which case further instruction would be necessary;  Not just unwilling, in which case a helpful example would be called for.   Unable.  In which case, if this gap is to be bridged, it will be bridged by God himself.    This is Anselm’s conviction – Man owes a debt he cannot pay, God wishes to pay a debt he does not owe – the elegant divine solution?  The God-Man.  God incarnate in the person of Christ, reconciling the world to himself.   Read the full text here. Ryan Murphy - This I Believe - 121010  And have a blessed Christmas, a liberating time in the highest and holiest sense of that word, a passage through that door of ultimate freedom of which Bonhoeffer wrote and Murphy spoke.      

Centennial Institute assisted Bill Armstrong, president of Colorado Christian University, in presenting a world religions panel for a half-day workshop of all CCU faculty and staff at the Lakewood campus on Friday, Dec. 10.  With a theme of "This I Believe," thought-leaders of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and atheism offered summations of their faith and sparred amicably with each other in response to audience questions. The panel was one in a series of CCU Strategic Objectives Workshops, designed to help everyone in the community stay on track with the institution's 13 core values, spelled out here.  John Andrews, Centennial Institute director, said that three of those in particular would be served by the Dec. 10 program, including: *  Be seekers of truth  *  Honor Christ and share the love of Christ on campus and around the world;  *  Teach students to trust the Bible, live holy lives, and be evangelists.  The panel was moderated by Dr. Sid Buzzell, Dean of the CCU School of Theology.  The panelists were Rabbi Hillel Goldberg, editor of the Intermountain Jewish News; Ryan Murphy, CCU Assistant Professor of Christian Thought; Imam Karim Abuzaid of the Colorado Muslim Society; and Dan Barker, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation in Madison, Wisconsin. For the opening round of comments, each panelist was asked to address some or all of the following questions: 1- What core beliefs define your overall faith or worldview? 2- What variations of belief characterize the major subgroups? 3- What is the most serious misunderstanding of you by outsiders? 4- What collective self-criticism could be made by you and fellow believers? 5- What is the most important ongoing contribution of your belief system to mankind's wellbeing? 6- Is your belief system more in coexistence, competition, or conflict with other systems? Ryan Murphy's position statement comparing and contrasting Christianity with the other three belief systems will be posted here in full, next week.  A complete video record of the program will be up on CCU.edu in January 2011. Below: CCU's Murphy, atheist Barker, and Rabbi Goldberg listen as Imam Abuzaid states, "We eagerly await the second coming of Jesus, who will return as a Muslim."

If Scripture is authoritative, it should guide not only religion on Sundays, but politics, economics, and academics the other six days of the week.  That's the premise of the Saint Louis Statement, a position paper issued by some friends of mine.  They were concerned about the many Christian schools and churches that buy into relativist, collectivist, and leftist ideas in disregard of biblical teachings to the contrary.  We can all think of examples. (Colorado Christian University, sponsor of this blog, thankfully is not one of them; not in the least.)  The statement, entitled "The Bible, the Republic, the Economy, and the Academy," is posted here.  Those of us already listed as signers welcome comments and discussion, as well as anyone wishing to add his or her signature. 

As the confirmation hearings for nominee Elena Kagan begin this week, we again return to the question of how Supreme Court justices should interpret the Constitution.  Central to this inquiry is the approach that justices take towards both the text and the fundamental principles which undergird our Constitution.  There has been a long-running debate concerning this among varying judicial philosophies, one that in many ways mirrors current tensions among the Christian church.  The recent phenomenon of the emergent church movement provides us with a striking similarity to the approach taken by many of our nation’s modern/activist judges. A very attractive approach in our modern culture comes to the following conclusion: When I no longer like the orthodoxy, I’m in favor of changing it.  The temptation to question and challenge orthodoxy is indeed strong; in fact, our nature drives us to it.  The history of religion finds numerous cases when those who were dissatisfied sought to overturn longstanding truths in favor of new ideas that “better suited” the circumstances of the day.  Typically, what happens is that when we find orthodoxy no longer convenient, we seek to replace it by crafting something new, rather than align ourselves with it.  More often, this is done through clever reinterpretations of the original. In recent years, such a group has been increasing in their influence among the church.  This group, commonly referred as the “emergent church” has intentionally remained elusive in declaring their doctrine.  Yet among many in the movement, there are significant challenges to the fundamental orthodoxy of Christianity: through faith in Christ alone is the sole means of salvation.   These revisionists are denying the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, the reality of Hell, and the very nature of the Gospel.  The emergent movement comes out of frustration that the 21st Century church doesn’t fit well within a 21st Century mindset.  For instance, it is indeed uncomfortable to think about eternal damnation in Hell.  What to do? Remove this threat from religion.  Or, it does indeed seem arrogant that Christ is the sole route to salvation.  What to do? Open it up to other alternatives.  Many in the emergent church movement are doing just these things. Of course, this tendency to contradict the orthodoxy is not limited to religion.  There are great similarities in the causes, methods, and desired ends of the “emergent” movement toward a “living Constitution.” Justice William Brennan, in a 1985 speech at the Georgetown University School of Law, laid out his view of constitutional interpretation.  “Like every text worth reading, it is not crystalline.  The phrasing is broad and the limitations of its provisions are not clearly marked.  It majestic generalities and ennobling pronouncements are both luminous and obscure.  This ambiguity of course calls forth interpretation, the interaction of reader and text.”  Brennan concluded that the text of the Constitution was less important than his own desired ends of “justice.”  When discussing the issue of capital punishment, Brennan, a longtime opponent, concluded that the Constitution was incompatible with state-sanctioned executions.  Where did he find this?  He certainly could not have concluded that capital punishment conflicted with the 8th Amendment concerning cruel and unusual punishment, as the authors of the amendment certainly had no such opinion.  Looking to other portions of the Constitution, there is clear evidence that execution is permissible.  Both the 5th and 14th Amendments permit its usage.  The requirement that no person “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” presupposes that when a person has been guaranteed due process, then capital punishment may indeed be used. Brennan is forced to ignore both the mind of the authors and the clear meaning of the text.  Simply to state that the text is ambiguous, Brennan seeks to give himself permission to interpret it however he sees fit.  What Brennan challenged is the very concept of rule of law and the principles of limited government.  He does this through the activist and “living constitution” approach to judicial review.  The Supreme Court Justice, under our model of constitutionalism, is not entitled to “make the law what they want it to be.”  Rather, they are to apply the law as it was intended.  It is fine that Justice Brennan disliked the usage of capital punishment.  It is absurd to conclude that it violates the text and/or the fundamental precepts of the Constitution. What we need are justices who recognize the truth and value of the orthodoxy and who have a commitment to uphold it.