Are we all we can be for God? What keeps us from being all we can be? What do we do with others, or ourselves, when we think we are being weak? Should we love them or judge them, and should we love or judge ourselves?

This Christian religion is difficult to grasp when all is said and done. Oh sure, we can cut it down to the most basic elements: John 3:16 is one of the most famous Bible verses because, as the bible scholars say, it states what this religion is all about: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” This is simple: Believe in Jesus and live forever with Him in paradise. In another Bible verse, Matthew 22:37, and repeated in Mark 12:30-33, someone asks Jesus what the most important commandment is, and He replies to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. He then says that a second commandment is as important as the first: Love your neighbors as yourself. Again, it’s simple: Love God, Love your neighbors, love yourself.

Yet the Bible is made up of 66 books, and we’ve only covered a few verses. Things don’t really remain that simple. In fact, if you really get into it, it can get rather complicated. If you ever read CS Lewis’ non-fiction writings, you’d know what I mean. Consider, for instance, that I used the word “religion” twice in the above paragraph. I’m actually uncomfortable using that word, and many true Christians would take offense. That’s because we really don’t feel like Christianity is a religion, but more of a belief, or better yet, a relationship.

How about our belief in Jesus saving us? At church and our Sunday night group, we’ve been going over the book of James, and guess what it says in James 2:19-20? “You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God. Good for you! Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror. How foolish! Can’t you see that faith without good deeds is useless?” (NLT) Basically what James, Jesus’ brother, is saying here, is that faith without good deeds is a dead faith and that if you proclaim Jesus with your mouth but don’t follow it up with good deeds, then you don’t truly believe and are not truly Christian. “Just as the body is dead without breath, so also faith is dead without good works.” (James 2:26). Listen to Jesus’ words from Luke 13:24-27: “Work hard to enter the narrow door to God’s Kingdom, for many will try to enter but will fail. When the master of the house has locked the door, it will be too late. You will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Lord, open the door for us!’ But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’ Then you will say, ‘But we ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’ And he will reply, ‘I tell you, I don’t know you or where you come from. Get away from me, all you who do evil.’” This would seem to say that some people who fully expect to spend eternity in heaven with Jesus will be shocked when they are turned away, with Jesus saying he does not know them. Some of my co-workers who are so light in their faith that I wouldn’t even know they were Christian if I went strictly by their lifestyles would seem to fall into this category, but then, parts of the Bible say I’m not supposed to judge them. Still others were taking these passages to mean that believing in Jesus is not enough, and that you can earn your way into heaven by doing good works. Wrong! What these passages are saying is that you are saved by God’s grace, and once saved, your actions will follow suit, and that if they don’t, then you were not really saved anyway because you do not really believe.

You see how confusing it can start to become the more you get into the word?

I revealed above that Jesus wants us to “love our neighbor as ourselves.” Yet even this simple directive can become complicated quite quickly. How are we supposed to feel about those we go to war with? How are we to feel about capital punishment? If we had the chance to kill Hitler before he rose to power, when he was just an innocent infant, would we do it? It seems with this directive to “love our neighbor as ourselves” that God wants us to “be a friend of the world.” What, then, are we to make of this quote from James 4:4: “Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.”? The answer, of course, is to be enough of a friend to save others and steer them towards God, but without condoning or engaging in sin. If you’re going to save strippers and prostitutes, we can’t A) shun them or B) do what they do. We must reach out to them, and that requires a certain amount of understanding and compassion. As the pastor of my church said recently, the key to understanding what God wants from us is to choose humility, and to humble ourselves before the Lord, for He is ultimate greatness and love and compassion, and we are like specs of dust in His presence, yet He still loves us with a love that is as big as He is, and He desires our friendship.

These questions we ask may be answered the more we get into God’s word and the more we get to know Jesus, yet the fact that they pop up and need addressing shows how complicated it can become. Putting faith in Jesus Christ is only the first step on a long road, a road littered with lots of twists and turns…and questions.

A neighbor of ours who claims to be Christian has been trying to justify her belief and her church with my mom lately. It’s a liberal church that supports the liberal agenda of accepting all people regardless of their lack of Christian morality, and one that seems to question our place as Christians among all the other religions of the world, and to question the exclusionary doctrine of Jesus saying He is the only way. They’ve got our neighbor questioning the existence of hell. My uncle had previously put similar questions to me, and truthfully, I pondered them. But in the end, the choice I’ve made is to believe in Jesus and the Christian Bible. If my neighbor feels like she has to justify her beliefs and her church to Mom, then perhaps there’s something there tugging at her that makes her feel the need to justify them. She wouldn’t feel this need if she were satisfied with it, would she?

All the people I work with are at wildly different levels; from non-believers to people toying with it to those who think they are Christian but really aren’t since they hold the same views as the rest of this world, to those who are a bit more committed in following Christ. Even getting past all of them and getting closer to people who are more devoutly committed, such as the people who attend our church and my small church groups, they sometimes still tend to have their heads turned by the liberal mindset of this world. Some of them have made statements they were spoon-fed by the liberals about the war, using some of the most simple and basic arguments the liberals try to foster upon the unthinking public, like “there were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq,” “What ties did Iraq have with Al Quada?”, “It’s a war for oil,” and “Why are we in Afghanistan and Iraq when there are worse things going on in places like Iran and North Korea?” Some of their minds have been turned on occasion by the liberal left as they spout all the stuff their brains have been filled with concerning the liberals’ hatred of President Bush. Some of them have started spouting some of this simplistic anti-war rhetoric like a programmed computer.

But part of what makes all of this so complicated and intricate is simply this: After all I’ve just written and all I know about Christianity and the other world religions and politics and the difference between liberals and conservatives, I still have to question everything, because even after all of this, I must stop for a moment and ask: Are any of these more liberal Christians in my small groups at least partly right? And what about those liberal churches that support things like homosexuality: I know they are wrong to say God approves of gay relationships, but are we conservative Christians too unforgiving and stringent, so much so that we are pushing these sinners who God loves closer to the fires of hell? In this light, there is only one Person you can turn to. I’ll bet you can guess who it is.

Every December, we seem to watch a glut of Christmas movies, and despite the fact that I’ve named many of them as favorite movies in my journal, such as The Chronicles of Narnia, The Polar Express, and A Christmas Story, there’s still a whole bunch I haven’t, such as National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, It’s a Wonderful Life, Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Elf, or even a new one I saw for the first time called Surviving Christmas. I liked them all, even Surviving Christmas, yet it should be noted these movies are listed in order of best to worst (and if you take exception to the fact that I picked National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation over It’s a Wonderful Life or How the Grinch Stole Christmas over Elf, keep in mind that this is 2006, not 1946, and that the way I’ve placed them on this list is still somewhat debatable).

The Nativity Story is definitely another Christmas movie for the plus column. Despite some negative publicity about Hollywood trying to cash in on the Christian crowd with product designed for them, or the fact that the actress playing the virgin Mary, Keisha Castle-Hughes, was a pregnant teen in real life and was not invited to be part of the marketing campaign, The Nativity Story still stands as quite a remarkable movie, and definitely one of the best Christmas movies I’ve seen. When Hollywood decides to put its mind to it (and its money, and its writers and special effects and cinematographers) I’m actually amazed that they can still make a movie that glorifies God. And why not? Sometimes God works in mysterious ways. If this movie reaches at least one person with the message that Jesus is the Christ, the Savior of mankind, and thereby saves that person’s soul, then it will all be worth it, regardless of some of this negative publicity.

My sister got me a movie called End of the Spear for Christmas, and it was a powerful movie as well, telling the true story of a group of Christians who were brutally butchered by the Waodani tribe in the Amazon jungles. Later, the Waodani man who murdered the leader became a believer and even, amazingly, developed a friendship with the man’s grown son. After marveling at the compelling story and acting (and it was a very well put together movie), my sister discovered that the man who played both the murdered Christian leader and his grown son, Chad Allen, is apparently in real life, a homosexual supporting many gay causes.  (I'd include the html, but it takes you to a gay site, of course.)  Perhaps that may be why the people who released this film, 20^th Century Fox and Every Tribe Entertainment, seem to have downplayed him in the marketing. The DVD for it doesn’t have his picture anywhere on it, on the front or the back, though they show several pictures of the Waodani and the man’s wife and son. My point is, does it really matter when all is said and done? Does the fact that Chad Allen is gay or that Keisha Castle-Hughes is a pregnant teen out of wedlock change the overall message of these movies? Not at all. In fact, you have to do a certain amount of research to even know such things about these actors. A normal person going to a theater, picking these movies off a video shelf, or ordering them over a cable or satellite service doesn’t necessarily know all the background information, and doesn’t need to know it. In fact, it’s better if they don’t.

As far as Christian product goes, I’d put The Nativity Story up against just about any of them. Despite the fact that this is pure Hollywood merchandise, it manages, through expert use of all the elements of film, to rise above that moniker to become art. I mean, even Michelangelo had to please his patrons, yet still managed to make some stunning classics. Art doesn’t have to be just product simply because business and money are part of the schematics.

On a side-note, being a confirmed Trekkie (something I’m not always wholly proud of), I’m glad to see that some Star Trek actors can make a career for themselves outside of that typecasting sci-fi show. That’s Alexander Siddig, Dr. Bashir from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, who keeps showing up as the Angel Gabriel (and, I might add, he’s also on the new season of 24). I’m sure my family was thoroughly embarrassed when I just had to lean over in the movie theater and tell them, “Hey, that’s Dr. Bashir!”

“Mr. Schwartz, we don’t have that kind of medicine,” the doctor told Sherwood Schwartz, creator of Gilligan’s Island, proving that Alan Hale was a generous man who loved people and children.  In real life, he used his celebrity to play a part bigger than his character.

In Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lechter called Clarice after his escape and said he wouldn’t be paying her a visit because, as he explained, the world was better with her in it. Although I could say the same thing about a lot of people, I’d also have to say it about some of the cast from Gilligan’s Island. You heard me. I’m talking about that show the critics have always loved to rake over the coals as being completely trivial and ultimately unimportant (and most people on this website would do the same, for in fact, this show and these actors really have nothing to do with securing financial portfolios or making a political commitment). Yet this show, and some of these actors, had merit. They cared about the world in a different way because they really cared about people. They understood, as Tina Louise and the critics on the whole did not, the appeal of Gilligan’s Island, the wholly positive force it was and could be, and the good to which it could be put. It was innocent, from a world gone by, something you can’t say about today’s sitcoms. Gilligan’s Island was mirth and laughter, and that’s all it ever had to be in order for it and its cast to work their healing magic upon the world. It always amazes me the way critics could praise the likes of Charlie Chaplin and The Marx Brothers and yet rake Gilligan’s Island over the coals. Could it be they just don’t get it? Could it be they don’t like humor after all, and liked Chaplin just for some of the social issues some of his short silent movies addressed? I’m not even saying Gilligan’s Island is completely devoid of such things, yet what about humor for the sake of humor? What about Gilligan and Skipper falling all over themselves as they try to use hammocks? Is there value in that? The answer? You bet. Just listen to this story from Sherwood Schwartz about Alan Hale, Jr., which he relates in the commentary track for the original pilot episode:

"Alan Hale was such a warm, wonderful man, and I used to go with him to Children’s Hospital where I have a dedicated room there… But these guys, particularly Alan Hale, well, I’d go there with him and since…most of the kids are pretty sick, you couldn’t gather them around in one place, so we’d go room by room and just visit the kids. And… we went to a room where there was a kid that had just come from recovery having a kidney removed for some medical reason… and the doctor said, “Okay, he’s coming around now…” And his eyes opened and he looked down at the base of the bed and…he saw Alan Hale - he was always dressed just like this - and he said, “Skipper?” and I said to myself I think he thought he died and went to Gilligan’s Island. And this kid smiled, ‘cause then Alan Hale said to him, “The Skipper’s here with you son, and everything is going to be okay now.” And the doctor said, “Mr. Schwartz... we don’t have that kind of medicine. He has now put this boy a day or two ahead of his recovery, just by being here and talking to him.” And the kid was now asleep with a big smile on his face. Performers should understand how important they are, whether it’s sports figures or whatever they are."

I wholeheartedly agree, and it’s something many celebrities don’t quite understand or have time for. It’s something Tina Louise and the negative critics of Gilligan’s Island have never understood. The jury’s out on Natalie Schaffer and Jim Backus because I haven’t researched it, but there’s no question that these other four understand – Alan Hale, Bob Denver, Dawn Wells, and Russell Johnson. Russell Johnson wrote a book about the magic of this show, and I’ve heard stories about Bob Denver and Dawn Wells traveling the country bringing joy to their fans in much a similar fashion. They all understand the power of celebrity to bring people together in love and heal not just sick individuals, but a sick nation. They understand that if there’s any kind of a purpose at all for something like Gilligan’s Island, it is something of this nature, to bring love and laughter to the world. All the hate talk in the world, for however correct it may be, will never do that. Only love and laughter can, and that’s why I’m not at all ashamed to have people like these Gilligan’s Island cast-members on this list of role models alongside most of the well-meaning, politically motivated and even admirable haters-of-the-left over on Townhall.com. In the end, what these actors did matters just as much in some cases because it’s not always about all the wars and the liberals or the conservatives being right or wrong. It’s really about love, and perhaps laughter is a big part of that, more than we even realize. It’s the reason Ann Coulter is a personal favorite, and one of the most popular conservative writers. Along with all of her jaw-dropping facts, she peppers her writing with humor. A lot of other writers here are so serious, and they’ve got good reason to be, but I tend towards the ones that make me laugh out loud. True, Coulter's humor is extremely biting, but still, perhaps if the world had a bit more mirth and laughter, if we took the time to see the humor in the events of the world, we wouldn’t be in such a diabolical mess right now.  Even when talking about the most serious of subjects, Ann Coulter still manages it.

Despite my penchant for falling right in line with the conservative right, I am not a politician. Although I admire all the pundits collected on Townhall.com, and even have my own blog here, I have noticed some differences I have to the majority of commentators and bloggers on this site. There’s a lot of hate here, and I’m not even saying it’s without good reason or that I am above it. I’m way over on the right, and personally, I know it’s hard to find anything to love about the left. What’s really sickening is how the left present themselves as so tolerant and full of love, yet being on the right, I know we’ve all experienced their hate as well. They can dish out hate with the best of them and not even blink. Like them, we too can hate, and do hate. Sure, it’s justified, but hate is hate, and I’m right in there up to my elbows, same as everybody else.

I’m similar to the people on this website in many respects, and yes, I even admire them. I see the moral decay of our culture just like they do, the same decay the liberal left wrap their arms around with love and acceptance. I don’t think most of the things the left stands for are good for this, or any, society. There are limits, and those limits are not relative to an individual or situation. Moral limits are absolute and God imposed. I believe in this unreservedly, and it is the main reason I am a conservative, and to a lesser degree, a republican. Of course, I’m a Christian first and foremost. Not that I can’t appreciate other religions and points of view though – in fact, some of my favorite writers collected here are Jewish, like Michael Medved and Jeff Jacoby, who fight for my right to be Christian and who see me and my kind as sort of spiritual brothers, for in fact, we are. Christians, after all, have, and believe in, both the Old and the New Testaments, and the Old Testament is the Jewish Bible! Both Christians and Jews have this belief in common. The Christian Messiah, Jesus Christ, was born a Jew, and His Bible was the one read by Jews then and today. The Jews even know their Bible talks about a Messiah who will one day deliver them – they just don’t all agree that it’s Jesus. But we at least have the Old Testament in common, and the conservative Jews on this website see the world and this nation in the same shades of sleaze and corruption that I do. According to scripture, the Jews are God’s chosen people, after all, and I am living proof that not all Christians are anti-Semitic. I will never have a breakdown like Gibson did because that is not a part of my past or upbringing like it was for him. I don’t blame Israel for everything and I don’t hate them the way the rest of the world does right now. Their Bible is our Bible too (at least part of it).

I’m not always proud of my hate. If you had read my journals, or some of it that I’ve shared here, you’d know I’ve said some pretty mean things, same as just about everybody else here (mean but true) and I still can’t stand the likes of Howard Stern and Rosie O’Donnell. I see the people on this website as my spiritual and philosophical brothers and sisters in the fight to keep morality from dying. My world view is the same as theirs, for the most part. Yet I am not a politician, and not in love with politics. I don’t have to agree with all that is posted here, nor am I supposed to. Bill O’Reilly often has to point out that he’s an independent instead of a conservative republican, and Glen Beck’s ad for his radio show states “Not right or left; right or wrong.” In fact, I can look upon the whole of it and find the hatred I see here, even in me, distasteful. I hate to sound like a Madonna song or a bleeding heart liberal, and I mean this in a completely different context than they do, but “love makes the world go round.” It is only love that can save us, and not the love liberals have for everything immoral (because, let’s face it, they don’t love everything, or they wouldn’t hate Ann Coulter so much). I’m talking about plain old love; the kind a man has for his wife, if they really have a loving relationship; the kind parents can have for their children, if it’s real and not tainted. I’m talking about the kind of love God has for us, and the kind we can have for Him if we are truly His followers.

As Bronco quarterback Darrent Williams was brutally gunned down in a drive by shooting in the wee first hours of the New Year, Colorado was in the national news for another reason as well: Snow, and lots of it! This is Friday, January 5, 2007 as I write this, and it snowed again today – a lot. It’s the third big snow we’ve had in as many weeks here in Colorado. The snow from the first two back to back storms over Christmas and New Years hasn’t melted yet, and this fresh cold, white powder is covering all the old stuff. The roads, especially the side roads, are a mass of old and new snow, ice, and deteriorating blacktop.

Have you ever seen The Soup on E! Entertainment Television? I can keep up on all the entertainment news and have a good laugh at the same time. Okay, so first Brad was married to Jennifer, and then he dumped her for Angelina. Then Britany dumped Kevin, Reese dumped Ryan, and Hillary dumped Chad. And now, after being dumped by Brad, Jennifer moved on and developed a relationship with Vince. She even starred in a movie with him, called The Break Up. And guess what? They broke up. Darn! I really thought they were going to last!

Two people who didn’t love each other – ever – were Rosie and Donald. It goes something like this: Donald came to the aid of some Beauty Queen for some horrible, immoral thing, and said we should give her a second chance. Then Rosie opened her incredibly big, opinionated mouth and said The Donald should never have done that. This little nymphet doesn’t deserve a second chance, Queen Rosie dictated. The Donald shot back, calling Rosie a big mouthed, butt-ugly lesbian bully, and those were some of the nicer things he said. It’s only taken off from there. Barbara Walters, as disgusted as she is by Rosie, has come out in favor of her big cash cow (the one time Rosie doesn’t mind being called a big cow!), sending a message to the entire nation that the only thing that really matters are the ratings for The View. Who cares that she’s raking Christians and conservatives over the coals. Make no bones about it, Hollywood actually likes her raking Christians and conservatives over the coals, even when she’s doing it from drunken Danny DeVito’s lap (blame George Clooney for that one as well), and there’s apparently enough liberals across the country who hang on every word of this hypocritical gossiper with the big fat chip on her big fat shoulder to make The View a huge smash daytime hit. The media treats the Rosie/Donald feud as a cute diversion, coming down hard on The Donald and patting poor Rosie on the back, so of course there’s no liberal slant in the media. This proves it.

Other happenings include a Taco Bell E.Coli outbreak – 58 cases in 6 states as of the first week of December – which was traced back to green onions. Meanwhile, scientists found evidence that Mars has water, which I’m sure they’ll use to prove that there’s life there on Mars. Perhaps we all came from there.

Things are going just great across the nation, by the way. The Democrats now dominate the House and Senate, and how long till we can finally cut and run from Iraq? Not long now with Nancy Pelosi running things.

Speaking of Iraq, it looks like Saddam Hussein is now dead, following on the heels of James Brown and Gerald Ford. (Isn’t it interesting how these presidents are so revered when they die? They aren’t treated that way when they’re alive, except by people in their own political party. Until his funeral, the most normal people knew about him was that he was accident prone and started the career of Chevy Chase.) After we got done with Saddam, letting him have his say during his long trial that lasted for months and months and months, the Iraqis hung him within hours. It appears they know how to treat bloodthirsty dictators more than this sickening, politically correct nation of peaceniks. I mean, just what do Jane Fonda and Barbara Streisand think of all this? Those Iraqis are animals! And what of all their peace loving friends over in the Islamic Taliban, all those wonderful, compassionate Muslims who stand against the warmongers in Israel just like the American left? Why, they stand against those vicious Iraqis who took their violent revenge upon that poor soul Saddam Hussein. I think – I don’t know, but I think – that Rosie probably shed a tear for him. I can picture it now. She would say, and her cronies would agree, that any death is horrible – Saddam, Hitler, Mussolini, Napoleon, Kim Jong Il, Hugo Chavez – you name it. Can’t we all just live in peace?

This is something the liberals can’t quite understand, but I’ll quote Herbert Lom from The Dead Zone, when Christopher Walken’s character asked him if he could go back in time, would he kill Hitler. Lom’s character Sam Weizak said, “I’m a man of medicine. I’m expected to save lives and ease suffering. I love people. Therefore, I would have not choice but to kill the son of a b****.” Why can’t the liberals see that to save the lives of innocents, some madmen must die?

Perhaps I’m not as intelligent as I sometimes think (sometimes I feel brilliant, and sometimes I feel as dumb as a bag of rocks). Not that I necessarily want to be that intelligent. I prefer to be wise. But I would like a better memory. Sometimes things seem to just slide right out of my head as soon as I hear them. Why does Ann Coulter get to be blessed with a photographic memory while I’m stuck with a mind that leaves me feeling like Giovanni Ribisi’s retarded character from The Other Sister most days?

You see, I “read” Mere Christianity. Well, actually I listened to the abridged book on tape that was read by Michael York while I hung Christmas lights. It was a fabulous book, and I knew I’d like it. There were moments while I was up on the roof cleaning the gutters and hanging the Christmas lights where I just sat and listened and marveled at the genius of C.S. Lewis. (Perhaps that’s the difference between us: I can’t picture Anne doing this.) Now, just a little over a month later, I find that I am quite wanting as I sit and try to recall the book and why I like it so much.

The reason I like it (and this has nothing to do with my horrid memory) is in its wisdom. This lays out, in the most intelligent of arguments, the reason for having faith in Jesus Christ and the Christian doctrine. C.S. Lewis delves into all aspects of this religion and explains what it means in relation to other belief systems, whether other religions or science. The reason this book is so great is that, if ever anyone needed a reason for why I and others believe in Christ as we do, this book is basically the first and last word on that subject. I could not spell it out as well as C.S. Lewis does here, and he made me see my faith in a new light, supported by his very intelligent arguments. Not only does it spell it all out quite clearly but it makes the case for Christians whose faith is not what it should be. Lewis attempts to tell readers what Christianity is and means, not just for those who don’t believe, but for those who do, and yet don’t quite understand the entire nature of the thing. In this respect, it can help to get those who’ve fallen away from God’s path back on the right road.

Not that it isn’t slow going! Since Lewis is literally a genius, it may take some time for some of his arguments to sink in. I myself have to listen and really think about it for it to have any meaning. Oh, Lewis helps by summing up most of his arguments in the book before moving on to new studies in Christian thought, and I’m grateful for these recaps, but it’s still a lot to mentally chew on, comprehend, and fully understand all at once. This is why I believe there is no “secret to life” or “secret to the meaning of the universe.” I actually believe the meaning of existence is right before our eyes, in one instance simple and yet so complex that we can’t mentally hold all the pieces together at once to really understand it all. The best we can hope for is to understand only bits and pieces at a time. The same thing applies here. Lewis juggles with all the right concepts, and each part of this sheds light on the meaning of it all, yet it’s difficult to take it all in and comprehend it all at once.

Of course, some people are better at that then others – the kind who are experts at chess and can see the game 10 or more moves ahead in all the possible combinations. I can’t, and so must muddle through this book and life one concept at a time, struggling to connect different facts and truths I might have heard or read before. The thing I really like about this book is simply this: C.S. Lewis is a brilliant Christian who came to Christ when he tried to prove that God doesn’t exist.

The liberal left often portrays Christians as indoctrinated fools, and in many instances, they’re right. A lot of Christians are indoctrinated fools. I may even be one of them. But C.S. Lewis is not. In C.S. Lewis, and this book, we have a genius who lays out a brilliant argument for why one should believe in Christianity. An educated elitist over on the left may be able to get the last word on this soft spoken writer (I never claimed to be a great debater), yet C.S. Lewis and his book are not so easy to slam, and that’s because he is so highly intelligent.

Say what you will about indoctrinated idiots using Christianity as a crutch, but if you actually read the bible, you would find that Jesus Christ, as presented here, and no matter what else you think he may be, was brilliant and intelligent and wise, beyond all other men, and even non-Christians would have to agree that if he was merely a man, he belongs on the short list of the greatest thinkers of all time. I mean, even Muslims and atheistic scientists can see the intelligence and wisdom of Jesus’ thought and philosophy as presented in the Bible. Others in the Bible as it is written, such as St. Paul, also have wisdom in their arguments and apologetic discourses. Yet if there is any problem associated with this, it is that unbelievers don’t trust the Bible is accurate and was written by true prophets. They see it as ancient writings passed down and altered over the centuries, particularly since even Christian scholars agree that most Bible books were written decades or even centuries after the events they supposedly document. How accurate can they be? Yet believing in the legitimacy of the Bible has really not been anything more than an act of faith. Even accurate, historical, archeological proofs aren’t enough to bridge the gap between fact and faith. Let me put it this way: John F. Kennedy existed, and if they uncover new archeological evidence on him 2,000 years from now, that doesn’t necessarily validate everything that everybody has ever written about him. Belief in the truth accuracy of the Bible, however well proven and documented through archeological evidence it may or may not be, is still just a faith. There was no doubt that Jesus, as portrayed in the Bible, was a brilliant teacher and philosopher, but doubters would question whether the Jesus as portrayed in the modern Christian Bible (or any of the older ones either) is all that accurate. They would question whether some of the writings about Him were imbued or altered to give an inaccurate overall picture of who He was and what He said. Trust me, I know. I’ve had these kinds of arguments.

So when we come to someone like C.S. Lewis, it is infinitely more factual. You don’t have to believe to know that Lewis wrote every word himself, and even if he had help, bouncing ideas off of his friends in the “Inklings” or instance, his arguments were still accurate and have not been embellished over time. For non-believers, that should lend a whole new credence to the doctrines of the Christian faith, and therefore bring the Bible more into focus and even help to validate the claim that Jesus was more than just a man or that the Bible is the word of God, regardless of the human middlemen God used.

So you have problems with the Christian faith? Then read this book and then refute its claims and invalidate my religion. You better know what you’re doing, though, and it better be more than just, “I don’t agree, and Lewis is a simpleton” as some critics who are obviously less intelligent than Lewis try to do. In fact, you better be able to prove it. Go on. I dare you. I double dare you. I double dog dare you!