Mere Mortals

C.S. Lewis on the people around us:

"The ... burden of my neighbour's glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly temped to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal."

— "The Weight of Glory"

Using the JW Bible to Prove the Deity of Christ

We all know Jehovah's Witnesses (JW) don't believe in the deity of Christ; they believe he was created. And we all know they made their own version of the Bible — the New World Translation (NWT) — to carefully remove anything that might suggest otherwise — verses such as John 1:1.

They missed a spot.

Here is John 1:3 in their own NWT:

All things came into existence through him, and apart from him not even one thing came into existence.

Do you see it? Everything that came into existence did so through him. Everything. So Jesus didn't "come into existence."

What do we do with this? Ask a JW to read this verse from his Bible. On a piece of paper, draw a box. Label it like the one below.*
Ask the JW to put an X where Christ should go. He'll want to put in in the box of thing that were made. But the verse says Christ made everything that was made, so he can't have been made.

He'll want to say it means "everything else" that was made. But that's not what the text says. Don't let him do it. Remind him, "apart from him not even one thing came into existence."

Push him on this for as long as you can. It's unlikely he's going to fall on his knees and declare Jesus is God right there — he might, but probably not.

What we're hoping for, though, is that this will stick with him, bug him, work at him. If he sees the inconsistency here, he might begin to see it elsewhere. And one day he really may fall on his knees and declare Jesus is God.

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*I wish I could take credit for this; I can't — I read it somewhere. I wish I could credit that source; I can't — I can't find it. But I want to openly acknowledge that I didn't come up with this.

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Related:
Was the Cross Just?

Waving Bye-bye

I told you we are trying to adopt some kids. The best way for us to do that involved getting licensed for foster care even though we — especially I — are constitutionally ill-equipped for that.

We weren't licensed a week when we got the call: "Can you keep a baby girl for a few days?"

A few days turned into a month. A month of too little sleep (especially in the beginning), no free time, and a lot of money spent caring for a tiny tyrant. A tyrant who wants to eat every two hours, demands to be held constantly, and pees every fifteen minutes.

A beautiful tiny tyrant with big eyes, a sweet smile, and little brown hands that wrap around your heart as easily as your finger.

She left today, three weeks late and 18 years early.

I am definitely not cut out for this.