In the dark, he carries a bag to the garbage. Oh, but he's picking through the garbage for things to add to his bag. And he's very thin. He looks unhealthy. He's probably homeless and probably on drugs. He doesn't see the man come up behind him, but the man speaks to him. Before clubbing him in the back of the head. This is the first of several murders the man will commit.
Thus begins an interesting new project from apologists and police detectives J Warner Wallace (of Cold-Case Christianity fame) and his son Jimmy Wallace called Case Files: Murder and Meaning. Why are apologists writing crime fiction? Well, crime is what they know. But fiction, that has been used for centuries to ask the big questions.
It's popular to claim that Christ's story is just a myth, borrowed from myths, and even the first Christians didn't think it all really happened. No one really believed Hercules actually lived. The stories of Adonis and Osiris were to have happened "in the age of legends" or, as we would put it today, "once upon a time." It's silly, they say, for modern Christians to think the gospels recount actual historical events.
It's important for us as Christians to be able to explain why those claims are entirely wrong. Christ's resurrection didn't occur "once upon a time." It was the most important day in history.
There's something puzzling in the scriptures. Sometimes our salvation is spoken of in the past tense, sometimes present tense, and sometimes as future. Isn't that contradictory? How can that all be true?
Some deal with this by proposing that the past refers to our justification, the present to sanctification, and the future to glorification. In some passages, that seems to work. In others it doesn't. Let's look at a way to read those other passages and see if it clears things up.
There are 10 types of people: Those who understand binary and those who don't. OK, sorry, nerd joke. How about this one:
There are two types of people: Those who put people into groups, and those who don't. That's kind of a joke, kind of not. Sometimes it's good to see people as "just people". Dividing everyone into "us" and "them" usually ends badly for "them". But if we fail to see important distinctions, we can fail to give people what they really need.
I want to look at 12 types of people that we can find in our lives and what they need from us.
I'm staring fifty in the face. I am a reluctant member of the pain-of-the-day club. Tinnitus has been my constant companion for many years. Yet I wake up at the drop of a pin. While getting older isn't optional, getting wiser is, so it's worth asking whether I've learned anything in the years the Lord's given me to travel this earth that's made the trip worthwhile.
