Phil Yancey thinks Christians have done a pretty good job of making disciples of all nations lol

In short, [Jesus] was elevating human agency so that his followers would do the work of God, just as he had done.

. . . It’s up to you now, he said in effect.

Jesus had healed diseases, cast out demons, and brought comfort and solace to the poor, the oppressed, and the suffering—but only in one small corner of the Roman empire. Now he was setting loose his followers to take that same message to Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth.

Two thousand years later, 3 billion people around the world identify as followers of Jesus. The message he brought has spread to Europe, Asia, and every other continent. 

The chance of that spread without the jolting event we celebrate as Easter is vanishingly small. Before his resurrection, Jesus’ few followers were denying him and hiding from the temple police. Even afterward, Thomas doubted until he saw proof in flesh and scars. But as they came to understand what had happened in the Resurrection, the disciples were able to glimpse Jesus’ cosmic view.

Here.

Apart from the dubious assertion that Jesus embraced human agency, let's just look at the numbers.

Are the chances of Christianity's growth to 3 billion "vanishingly small" without the resurrection?

One estimate of the global Christian population in 1800 puts it at about 204 million, growing to 2.7 billion by 2025. Not that far off from Phil Yancey's 3 billion. He is rounding up, obviously.

The rate of growth? 1,227%.

How about for Islam, though, over the same period?

2,067%.

Hindus have grown by a respectable 922%. 

And the Sikhs by 1,567%.

Meanwhile more than 7 BILLION people have died globally from 1850 to 2022.

If "it's up to you now", are those deaths on them, many of whom never heard the gospel?

These things boggle the mind, but not Phil Yancey's, who has been writing books since 1976.

Cosmic Cowboy 1978

 

 

America's amusing smorgasbord of religious, social, and political beliefs according to Real Clear, ranked, annotated

Percent who believe in, believe that, say that, are, et cetera, per Real Clear Opinion Research, here:

 

Religious freedom is a fundamental human right 93.8 (this idea was foreign to ancient Israel, Greece, Rome, Christian Europe, and the era of the Muslim conquests, to name just a few)

 

God 85.4 (name not indicated)

Heaven 84.7 (John Lennon most hurt)

Healthcare is a fundamental human right 83.7 (the propaganda of the ObamaCare era worked)

Miracles 83.0 (Justin Amash fooled the people 5 times, Peter Meijer only once)

"In God We Trust" 83.0 ("In Fiat Money We Trust" was too long)

Jesus is God or Son of God 80.3 (thanks to not being aborted by the Holy Virgin Mary)

 

Hell 72.4 (San Francisco, New York City, Portland, et cetera)

The Devil 70.3 (yeah baby, drugs, sex, and rock and roll)

 

A woman and her doctor should get to decide whether to have an abortion 63.4 (vaccination highly recommended)

Ghosts 61.4 (unstated whether they are tiny baby ghosts or not)

 

Aliens 56.9 (oddly explains the southern border)

God is male 50.0 (Jesus is shocked, shocked, I tell you)

 

Reincarnation 47.7 (belief in Hinduism is dead last 0.5% ha ha ha ha ha, see below)

Witches 45.8 (strongly believed in Michigan methinks)

Prejudice against Jews is a very serious problem in the US 42.6 (because the Jews run everything)

 

2020 Joe Biden 38.6 (voting by mail multiple times or in person not specified)

Protestant 36.3 (prejudice problem 17.3)

2020 Donald Trump 34.6 (not everything deserves a comment)

Democrat Party 33.6

Republican Party 32.8

 

Never attend religious service 29.2 (makes sense given these results)

Prejudice against Muslims is a very serious problem in the US 29.1 (because of what they did on Oct 7)

God is neither male nor female 27.5 (0.9% of respondents also neither male nor female)

2020 didn't vote 24.8 (thank God) 

Catholic 22.0 (prejudice problem 14.9)

Independent party 21.4

 

Attend religious service once a week 19.5 (as good as it gets for category)

No religion 19.4

Prejudice against Evangelical Christians is a very serious problem in the US 17.3

Prejudice against Hindus is a very serious problem in the US 16.2 (but, but reincarnation)

Prejudice against atheists is a very serious problem in the US 15.7

Prejudice against Catholics is a very serious problem in the US 14.9

God is female 14.1

Not registered to vote 12.1

Atheist 3.8 (prejudice problem 15.7)

Agnostic 3.7

Other religion 3.3

Islamic 3.2 (prejudice problem 29.1)

Mormon 2.9

2020 voted for other 2.0

Judaism 1.9 (prejudice problem 42.6)

Buddhist 1.6

Orthodox 1.3 (Rod Dreher)

Hindu 0.5 (prejudice problem 16.2)

 

People clearly believe that some groups, to paraphrase Barack Obama in 2012 about the Danes, the Dutch, the Norwegians, the Irish, and the Filipinos, seem to get punched far out of proportion with their weight in the culture. 

 

Results discussed here, where this is surely wrong, leaving out the little word "not" in a crucial spot at the end:

Most Americans also remain deeply respectful of the country’s religious roots. A strong majority of respondents – 83% – believe the phrase “In God we trust” should remain on U.S. currency and coins, compared to 17% who back the phrase’s removal.

“Republicans felt more strongly that the phrase should remain compared to Democrats, with 91% believing the phrase should [not] be removed, compared to 78% of Democrats,” Kimball said.     

In 2011 former Republican Justin Amash (MI-3) joined eight Democrats to vote against "In God We Trust", which in his first term was a sign of things to come in his last.

 

 

George Harrison was a would be follower of Hindu fundamentalist A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada: All the answers are in the Bhagavad Gita

The video is here.

These restrictions are required of all initiates:

No illicit sex

No intoxication

No meat-eating

No gambling.

Baba Ramdev, the face of yoga, ayurvedic products and patriotic nationalism in India, is poor in name only

From the story here:

It might seem like an impossible arrangement—observing an oath of poverty while also being one of India’s top entrepreneurs. ...

Ramdev’s home is on the outskirts of the city—in a walled garden he shares with bees, butterflies, and armed security guards. I entered the estate through two huge gates with golden lion-head door knockers, and drove down a brick path toward a complex of tidy white buildings. Ramdev received me in a comfortable parlor, with an ample porch and several couches and armchairs. “Nowhere in our religious books and scriptures is it written that a sanyasi should be a mendicant,” he said, referring to the kind of beggars I’d seen along the Ganges. ...

Stuart Ray Sarbacker, a professor of comparative religion at Oregon State University who’s studied Ramdev’s career, calls him “the most prominent face of yoga in the entire nation.”

More evidence religion is inherently violent: Hindu fundamentalists are killing more and more people suspected of eating cows, especially Muslims

Story here.

After eating human brains, what's next, Reza Aslan arguing practitioners of ritual cannibalism should be free to practice their religion in the US?

Take, eat, this is my brain . . .

Story here.

Don't read the story if you're eating lunch right now, I'm about to lose mine.

The hubbub isn't about what it should be about, the cannibalism, but about the purported caricature of Hinduism implied by Aslan's documentary.

The guy should be arrested and put away for participating, but hey, he's inviolable because he's a Muslim.

Hindus invoke Shiva to help Trump win election: "Only Donald Trump can save humanity"

The story is here.

However consequential Jesus has been for human history, zeal for Muhammad's message and its success have been at least comparable

From a follower of NT Wright, here:

"The real Jesus must have been . . . consequential. Jesus left such an impact on the early Christians that they were willing to suffer and die for their testimony that he’d risen from the dead. A failed prophet or revolutionary might have attracted lasting admiration at best, but what could’ve happened to make devout monotheistic Jews worship this man after his death?"

For a false prophet in the opinion of Christians, Muhammad's message has built quite a following in the world despite being a younger religion in the history of humankind. It's laughable not to notice how successfully Islam has revolutionized vast swaths of the globe despite having no divine man who rose from the dead to worship, and how many have died in the cause of pressing its case on an unbelieving world in the past and in our own time, through war and through martyrdom. 

Worldwide the 1.6 billion adherents of Islam face Mecca five times a day in something more than "lasting admiration", and now equal more than 70% of the global Christian population, while Hinduism's practitioners equal another 50%. Together the Muslims and Hindus outnumber the followers of Christ by over 20%.

Consider how many Muslims have martyred themselves in suicide bombings just in the period since 1982, as tracked by the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, here. There are in excess of 4,600 cases. Compare that with the number of Christians martyred until the time of Constantine, which my late teacher Robert M. Grant in a seminar on the apologists back in the day once put at no more than 5,000.  

Why Did God Create The World?

It is one of those odd sweeping questions of idealistic youth which I've never really outgrown.

Today I cannot remember what caused the original fascination with the question. During college I think it might have gained some momentum from the ideas of the creation theologians of Europe whom Bo Reicke once told me about. I've still got those books . . . in a box somewhere. I'll have to dig them out and look at them again.

I do remember thinking at the time that an appropriate theological answer had to be "love," but every time I discussed this with serious people, the discussion, I think by mutual perception, always ended up feeling kind of, well, corny! 

The trouble was I couldn't exactly nail down any sources which propounded that answer, nor could I really point to a fully worked out history of the idea. I dabbled with it for a while, and like so many ideas and enthusiasms of youth, it ceased to preoccupy my attention eventually.

And then I happened to read this today and all that came flooding back. The selection finally gives me an historical fix on the problem, from an essay on the trinitarian theology of Jonathan Edwards, by one Daniel M. Harrell, here:

The infinite happiness of God in community generates a delight that cannot be contained (for then God would be less happy, a logical impossibility). God's love radiates outward, emanating forth like a fountain. Edwards preached:

There is in heaven this fountain of love, this eternal three in one, set open without any obstacle to hinder access to it. There this glorious God is manifested and shines forth in full glory, in beams of love; there the fountain overflows in streams and rivers of love and delight, enough for all to drink at, and to swim in, yea, so as to overflow the world as it were with a deluge of love.

It was this unhindered, radiating deluge of love that resulted in creation. Trinitarian love is manifest in the interrelatedness of creation—nothing exists in pure independence. Trinitarian love is manifest in redemption that ushers saints into participation in God's overflowing happiness, a happiness that extends infinitely into eternity.

As it turns out, Edwards was also responsible for another aspect of Christian theological thinking which prepared the way for the psychological-social interpretation of the Christian life as "relational," a concept derived directly from his conception of the trinity and necessarily following from it. It is uncanny how in Edwards' conception of the trinity the only begotten son of God is a kind of perfect projection of the infinitely perfect thoughts of the father, which conception has an interesting bearing on what people mean when they say they have a personal relationship with Jesus. Is he not also a projection of our own minds, mediated by the thoughts we have of him, absorbed through the Bible?

In retrospect it's no wonder that the interdisciplinary department in which I studied religion so long ago with experts in Hinduism, Confucianism, Judaism and Islam failed me on this one. The Great Awakening wasn't exactly their forte.

Looks like I have some work cut out for me. At least I know where to start.

(originally posted June 2011)