Religion

Hmmm….

See if you can pick which is worse between the following pairs: a traffic jam or an ice cream cone, a root canal or a three day weekend, chickenpox or Super Bowl tickets. Fairly easy, right?

But Sam Harris can’t always pick between such obvious options….

All of us look at our world and wish a few things didn’t exist. For example, most sane people agree there should be no hunger or war. We’d love to live in a world without cancer. But our world contains the things many of us do not like.

Even atheist Thomas Nagel wishes the world didn’t contain something, or Someone….

As Americans, we’re sometimes confused – or shocked – by laws from other countries. Foreign cultures may prohibit what clothes can be worn, who can vote, who can marry, and so on.

But the strangest laws in human history came from ancient Geneva, a religious city like no other.

Theodosius had a plan. He wanted all the people of his empire to worship the one true God revealed in the Bible. A noble endeavor, for sure. But there was one fatal flaw in the emperor’s strategy:

Those he couldn’t lead to Jesus…he would send to Jesus!

Julian had a problem: Christianity was taking over his empire. But dealing with that problem highlighted an even bigger one: his authority as Emperor wasn’t sufficient to rid his land of Christians.

His military might was simply no match for their humility and sacrificial nature.

Christianity seems strange to those who stand outside its number, partly because of the bold claims it makes about the most important facets of life. This reality isn’t restricted to our modern era; for almost 2,000 years, Christianity’s claims and practices have been misunderstood.

The misunderstandings begin with what Christianity is even called.

In the summer of 2013, religious scholar, Dr. Reza Aslan, released a controversial book about Jesus entitled Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. It caused quite a stir in the media, and not just because Aslan is a practicing Muslim.

The controversy actually revolves around a confession he made in an interview.