Quotable

Apr27

From a homeschooled student writing a research paper: “This complex topic was a lot less complex when I knew less about it.”

Someone else on another homeschooling blog mentioned “the cover of The Teaching Home magazine,” and I immediately remembered all those covers from the 1980’s of beautiful homeschooling families wearing matching pastel colored outfits and modest smiles. I also remembered this song by Rob and Cindy Shearer of Greenleaf Press, and I wish you could hear it sung. Classic.

Song Lyrics ‘On The Cover Of The Teaching Home’
(to the tune of The Cover of the Rolling Stone by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show)

Well, we started home schooling, didn’t waste time fooling
Heard the Moores had a name we should know.
Better late than early, we weren’t in any hurry
Kid was 18 months or so…
We went to all the seminars, we talked to all the stars
We had our stuff down really cold.
Now the kid’s gotten bigger and we want our picture
On the cover of the Teaching Home.

Chorus:
Teaching Home…. Wanna see my picture on the cover
Home…. Wanna buy five copies for my mother
Home…. Wanna see my smiling face
On the cover of the Teaching Home

Well, I told my bride about Mary Pride,
You know our family was just too small.
You can teach just one, but a dozen’s more fun.
We got desks up and down the hall.
We teach K thru 6, we know all the tricks,
Except for how to see each other alone.
Now the family’s gotten bigger and we want our picture
On the cover of the Teaching Home…

(Chorus)

We use Bob Jones, Abeka, and a video school,
We know every phonics song.
We teach from 9 to 5, we got a home enterprise.
What could we be doing wrong?
We got field trips booked until the end of June.
We’ve built a model to scale of Rome
We’re not gettin’ any richer and we want our picture
On the cover of the Teaching Home.

(chorus)
lyrics, copyright Rob & Cyndy Shearer, 1990.

If you remember the covers or the song or both, you’re definitely a veteran homeschooler.

I read this story of how an atheist came to faith in God and thought it was eminently sensible and believable: “I went home and decided that I was going to decide. I was going to either ask God to come into my life, or I was going to end the subject completely and never allow myself to consider the possibility of God again. I was tired of dealing with this decision. I was tired of thinking about it.”

Edges by Lena Roy

Apr25

Nominated for 2011 Cybil Awards, Young Adult Fiction category. Nominated by Maria Ciccone at The Serpentine Library.

This short YA novel, 162 pages, is a debut by Madeleine L’Engle’s granddaughter. Unfortunately, it’s way too post-modern, pagan, new-agey for me.

One of the teen characters says that her family back home is “super Christian–Jesus is the only way.” Then the girl, Tangerine, who is obviously from one of Those Families (she has six brothers), asks Luke, the protagonist of the novel, “That can’t be true, can it?”

“No, I don’t trust anybody who says there’s only one way,” answers Luke.

The book goes on to preach, via characters who are confused but honest (of course), that you make your own way, create your own reality. If you believe it, it’s true for you. Tangerine believes in God-in-Nature. Some of the other characters in the novel are recovering alcoholics, and they believe in “a Higher Power, whatever you conceive Him to be.” Another character with another odd name, Cinnamon, believes in shamans and in her own animal tattoos. Another, Jim, believes in kachina dolls that he carves out of wood. Luke is the unbeliever who just can’t wrap his head around any of this mystical nonsense until . . .

The setting is the best part of the novel, near Moab, Utah. Ms. Roy describes the landscape and its effect of the lives of the characters in vivid prose that made me ready for a road trip to the Southwest. “Mountains of sandstone overwhelmed them.” “The sun’s angle on the earth had deepened the color of the rocks to a dark watermelon.” “They watched the lightning rip through the sky and the rain pelt down on the barren earth, making puddles, splashing, changing to darker and darker shades of red, brown, gold.”

As for the New Age themes, same old, same old. And I’m stuck in that Jesus-is-the-only-way rut (thank God), so I couldn’t possibly understand. Actually, I understand, but I’m not buying. If I have to create my own reality, my own god, my own idol, then I am lost. What could I possibly create that is worthy of worship or powerful enough to dispense the grace and forgiveness I need to live and breathe and avoid despair?

In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had:
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human being, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
(Philippians 2:5-11)

I just don’t think kachina dolls or bear tats or even some vague Higher Power are going to cut it.

More Books for Zambia

Apr25

Back in January, I went public with a project I called Books for Zambia, an effort to collect books to place in the library of Kazembe Orphanage in Zambia. We collected a few books and sent them back to Zambia with Amy Morrow and her family in February when they were here in Houston for a brief visit. Amy and her husband Tom are the founders and directors of Kazembe Orphanage. Thank you to those of you who contributed books to send to Zambia back in January.

Now a small group from my church is planning a trip to Kazembe for the month of July, and I would like to send more books with them.

If you would be interested in helping with this project by providing any of the books (new, or used in good condition), please email me (sherryDOTearlyATgmailDOTcom) for more information. You can order any of the books from Amazon and have them sent to me. Or if you have one or more of the books on the wishlist in good condition or have your own source, just email me the titles of the books you would like to contribute, and I will give you my address to send them. Right now the plan is for a group from my church to go to Zambia in July and take the books that we have gathered with them.

Purchasing children’s books in Zambia is quite expensive, and the selection is limited. There are seventeen twenty-one children at the Kazembe orphanage now, ranging in age from infants to five years old. The plan is for the children to stay at the orphanage until they are grown, receive an education, and become a force for good and progress in Zambia. You can read more at this post on Amy’s blog. You would be welcome to post information about Books for Zambia or about Kazembe Orphanage on your blog or website. I can vouch for both the financial need of the orphanage and for the fiscal responsibility of the Morrows in spending your money wisely to care for these children.

More information on Kazembe Orphanage:
Kazembe Orphanage official website
Kazembe Orphanage on Facebook
Amy’s blog, Amy’s Assorted Adventures.
Videos of the orphanage at vimeo
Twitter page for Kazembe Orphanage
Please consider donating a book or two during the month of May.

Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah

Apr24

Someone, I can’t remember who, recommended this author to me. And I chose Firefly Lane to read because it looked to me as if it was her “break-out book,” the one that made her a best-selling author. I also found hat a lot of the book was set during the same time period when I grew up, so I was familiar with all of the pop culture references, and that fact made the reading a lot of fun for me.

Kate Mularkey and Tully Hart met in 1974 when the two girls were in eighth grade. (I was in eighth grade in 1970, so I’m only a few years older than these two friends.) The book chronicles the ups and down of their friendship over the years. Of course, their lives go in opposite directions, but they manage to stay friends through thick and thin. Well, almost. They remain friends until self-centered and impetuous Tully does something so outrageous and hurtful that Kate can’t bring herself to forgive or forget.

I’m pretty much with Kate on this one. I can’t believe that someone as insensitive as Tully is in the book would be able to sustain a friendship with anyone, or that anyone could be as understanding as Kate is throughout the book until the straw finally breaks the proverbial camel’s back. So my first question to you is a serious one: what would it take to break up a lifelong friendship? Do you have such a girlfriend relationship in your life? I don’t, and I’m sorry. I have some old friends that I’ve reconnected with via Facebook, but no one has been my “best friend” since high school or junior high or even college. I don’t really make friends easily, and even when I do, I have found that most of my close friendships have remained intense for several years until the two of us grew apart and moved on to other places and interests. If I really had a friend in my life who had been my close confidante since childhood, I suppose it would take a lot of betrayal to break that friendship. However, the stunt that Tully pulls in the book would do it. Curious?

Second question, which of these songs, Tully and Kate’s Soundtrack of Life, are songs that you recognize? For how many of them could you sing the lyrics from memory? I found this list at Kristin Hannah’s website, and I did think it was fun to revisit the musical past, both as I read and through this list.

Dancing Queen
Daydream Believer
Stairway to Heaven
Taking Care of Business
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road–Elton John. One of my daughters really likes Elton John. I can’t decide if that’s good or disturbing
American Pie– Don Maclean. I once spent a goodly part of a summer analyzing the lyrics of this song with my friend, Julia.
Don’t Give Up on Us – David Soul. Wow, that’s a blast from the past. Does anyone remember David Soul as Hutch? Or even before that as one of the brothers along with Bobby Sherman on Here Come the Brides? I’m really dating myself, but my friend and I used to play Here Come the Brides and argue over who got to marry Bobby Sherman.
Thank God I’m a Country Boy – John Denver–I loved John Denver, and I can still listen to him if I’m in the right mood.
Shout!
Brick House
Twistin’ the Night Away
Louie, Louie Hate this song.
Here we start getting into the 80’s and the disco era, I’m guessing. I quit listening to pop music in about 1980.
Love is a Battlefield
Jessie’s Girl
Purple Rain– Prince
You Can’t Always Get What You Want– Rolling Stones. Everyone knows the Rolling Stones, even if they’re not to my taste.
Call Me– Blondie
Sweet Dreams (are made of this)
Do You Really Want to Hurt Me
Here Comes the Bride
Crazy for You– Madonna
I’m Every Woman– Whitney Houston
Hey Little Girl is Your Daddy Home– Springsteen
Desperado– Eagles This one seems out of place. Desperado is vintage 70’s, and the eagles were another favorite band of mine as a teen and as a college student. I can sing every word of this song.
A Moment Like This– Kelly Clarkson
Didn’t We Almost Have it All – Whitney Houston. I remember this one, but don’t know why.
Papa Don’t Preach– Madonna. No Madonna in my life ever, ever, ever.
Bohemian Rhapsody– Queen. I only know this song because my children were introduced to it via Glee.
Linda Ronstadt. Who didn’t listen to Linda Ronstadt back in the day?
You’ve Got a Friend James Taylor, of course. Sweet baby James. And Carly Simon. And Carole King. Those were the days.
One Sweet Day

In spite of some incidents in the book of sexual promiscuity (Tully, of course) that I could have done without, I liked the story well enough that I may try another of Ms. Hannah’s books someday. It’s chick lit, but not bad for a beach read or a spring fling.

Resurrection Sunday: He Is Risen Indeed!

Apr23

I thought I had already linked to or embedded this video from Easter last year, but I don’t see it anywhere. Enjoy, and celebrate the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

On April 4, 2010, over 1,300 young people, all of them members of Faith Church celebrated Resurrection Sunday in Budapest, Hungary.

Music: Ferenc Balogh Jr.
Lyrics: Shelly Matos, based on the Hungarian text by Tamas Pajor (Tompage)
Producer: Ákos Nemes
Art Producer: Tamás Pajor (Tompage)

After the Leaves Fall by Nicole Baart

Apr22

I began to exist in a tension between wanting and not wanting–waiting for something I couldn’t even pin down in my most naked and honest moments. Waiting for a balance where I neither ached nor forgot, regretted nor accepted. Waiting for my heart to be light again yet fearing the implications of that same lightness. I suppose I waited for peace–an end to my own personal warfare. . . . Grandma and I stood hand in hand until the graveyard was empty and the rain had all but ceased to fall. Her lips moved faintly, and I knew she was whispering prayers for me. I couldn’t join her –I had forgotten how; the ability to pray had slipped out of my soul like the dirt had tumbled from my fingers. I wasn’t angry at God or anything–that would have been far too cliched. He just seemed irrelevant.

The narrator of this novel makes this self-observation in the aftermath of her father’s death, and in fact, our protagonist/narrator, Julia, is not only self-observant, but also somewhat self-absorbed. She has excuses: her mother was completely selfish and deserted the family emotionally long before she left them physically. Her beloved father dies after a long, painful illness at the beginning of the novel when Julia is only fifteen years old. Julia feels abandoned and rejected. However, she has a loving grandmother who picks up the slack and prays for her and teaches her to love God. So why is Julia such a mess?

She sees God as irrelevant. There’s an epidemic of that attitude going around. Is God irrelevant? Unconnected? Peripheral to my life and decisions at best? Sometimes I would have to admit that I, too, see God as an afterthought, or more accurately don’t see Him as central, vital, the source of all that makes life worthwhile.

By the end of the book, Julia has sown her wild oats, made some serious mistakes, looked for love in all the wrong places, and she’s in need of a God who loves and forgives and gives second chances. The resolution isn’t neat and tidy; Julia doesn’t have a Damascus road, five-star, turn-around conversion experience. It’s more as if the prodigal daughter comes home and realizes that her grandmother has always loved her and that God may not be so irrelevant after all.

Saturday Review of Books: April 23, 2011

Apr22

“Knowing that I loved my books, he furnished me, From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.”~William Shakespeare, The Tempest

April 23 is, of course, the near-birthday of William Shakespeare, that dramatist, poet, actor, and brilliant thinker who gave us Romeo, Juliet, Falstaff, Hamlet, Macbeth, the forest of Arden, Puck, Bottom the weaver, Dogberry, Mustardseed, Moth, Ophelia, Prospero, faint-hearted, cold-blooded, foul play, a sorry sight, in a pickle, in the twinkling of an eye, full circle, night owl, short shrift, star-crossed lovers, a method in my madness, to be or not to be, brave new world, eyeball, skim milk, neither rhyme nor reason, strange bedfellows, one fell swoop, winter of our discontent, and much, much more.

SatReviewbuttonIf you’re not familiar with and linking to and perusing the Saturday Review of Books here at Semicolon, you’re missing out. Here’s how it usually works. Find a review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week of a book you were reading or a book you’ve read. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can just write your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

1. Hope (The Heart Mender by Andy Andrews)
2. Carina @ Reading Through Life (Dearly Devoted Dexter)
3. Carina @ Reading Through Life (Heart of Deception)
4. Carina @ Reading Through Life (Gotcha!)
5. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (A Lesson in Secrets)
6. SuziQoregon @ Whimpulsive (Guilt by Association)
7. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Fathers, Mothers, Sisters, Brothers)
8. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (26 Fairmount Ave.)
9. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Nathan Coulter)
10. Farrar @ I Capture the Rowhouse (A Tale Dark and Grimm)
11. violet (Paradise Valley)
12. Beth@Weavings (Irish Country Courtship)
13. Collateral Bloggage (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone)
14. Donovan @ Where Pen Meets Paper (Work in the Spirit)
15. Zee @ Notes from the North (One Was A Soldier)
16. Zee @ Notes from the North (The Wee Free Men)
17. Anne (You Never Stop Being a Parent)
18. Yvann (One Day)
19. Yvann (In Search of the Rose Notes)
20. Yvann (Starter for Ten)
21. FleurFisher (The Other Half Lives)		 22. FleurFisher (The Novel in the Viola)
23. FleurFisher (Taken at the Flood)
24. Across the Page (“Fidelity”)
25. Across the Page (The Next Story)
26. BookBelle (The Four Ms. Bradwells)
27. SmallWorld Reads (March by Geraldine Brooks)
28. SmallWorld Reads (Murder on the Orient Express)
29. Alice@Supratentorial(The Panic Virus)
30. Sarah Reads Too Much (The Girls Guide to Homelessness)
31. Sarah Reads Too Much (The Coffins of Little Hope)
32. Word Lily (The Priest’s Graveyard)
33. Beth S. @ A Foodie Bibliophile in Wanderlust (Racing in the Rain)
34. Girl Detective (The Death of Adam by Marilynne Robinson)
35. Girl Detective (Riddley Walker)
36. Girl Detective (What Was She Thinking [Notes on a Scandal])
37. S. Krishna (The Dog Park Club)
38. S. Krishna (The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship)
39. S. Krishna (Now You See Her)
40. S. Krishna (Rescue)
41. S. Krishna (An Atlas of Impossible Longing)
42. S. Krishna (Dressmaker of Khair Khana)		 43. S. Krishna (Elizabeth I)
44. Colleen at Books in the City (My One and Only)
45. Colleen at Books in the City (Secret Daughter)
46. Darren @ Bart’s Bookshelf (Awaken)
47. Debbie Rodgers – Exurbanis.com (Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks)
48. Debbie Rodgers – Exurbanis.com (The Mark of the Lion)
49. Diary of an Eccentric (The Poets Laureate Anthology)
50. Diary of an Eccentric (Miss Hildreth Wore Brown)
51. Diary of an Eccentric (Things We Didn’t See Coming)
52. Beckie@ByThe Book (The DMZ)
53. Beckie@ByTheBook (Another Dawn)
54. Beckie@ByTheBook (The Strange Man)
55. Beckie@ByTheBook (Jacques and Cleo, Cat Detectives series)
56. Bookwormans (Little Dorrit)
57. melydia (Harvesting the Heart)
58. melydia (Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
59. melydia (Lodestone #1: The Sea of Storms)
60. melydia (Creative, Inc.)
61. Gina @ Bookscount (Lipstick Jungle)
62. Gina @ Bookscount (The Midwife’s Confession)
63. SmallWorld Reads (Pride and Prejudice)

Powered by… Mister Linky’s Magical Widgets.

Tough Questions and Real Life Stories

Apr22

This weekend, Easter weekend, a lot of people are thinking about Jesus, and Christianity, and Truth. I followed a link in a John Piper tweet and found this website out of the U.K. called Christianity Explored. The site includes a section called Tough Questions in which real people give preliminary answers for questions such as:

You can’t trust the Bible, can you?
Wasn’t Jesus just a great teacher?
Doesn’t becoming a Christian mean becoming boring?
Hasn’t science shown that Christianity is wrong?
If there is a God, why does He allow suffering?
Why bother with church?
Isn’t believing in the resurrection ridiculous?
How can a loving God send anyone to hell?
Why are Christians so old-fashioned about sex?
Aren’t all religions essentially the same?

I say “preliminary answers” because for each of the above questions there is four minute video of a Christian giving a real introduction to the Christian response to that particular issue. Of course, four minutes isn’t a lot of time to answer most of the complicated and serious questions that people have, so the website goes on to provide further resources, reading suggestions, and more in-depth answers to the questions. Also, the website, Christianity Explored, has a series of short stories of real life Christians telling about how they came to believe in Jesus Christ. And there’s a course that you can sign up for called (no surprise) Christianity Explored, and you can also read the book of Mark, one of the first biographies of Jesus, for yourself.

At the risk of sounding totally frivolous about a serious subject, I must say that you should be careful about watching these videos. Many of the speakers are British, and anything presented with that kind of oh-so-English accent is bound to sound erudite and indisputable. Just sayin’.

I can’t think of a better way to spend at least part of your Easter weekend than to explore the claims of Christ and of his followers. And if you’re an easily impressed American like me, enjoy the accents.

Christians Meet the World: Adventuring in Faith

Apr20

I’ve been reading a string of adventure, world travel, conversion memoirs in which common themes of caring for orphans, reuniting and dividing families, and surviving tragedy, kept reiterating.

First, I read Mary Beth Chapman’s Choosing To See, about the commitment of her and her husband, singer Steven Curtis Chapman, to adopt three girls from China, and also about the tragic death of one of those girls, Maria, in a car accident. Ms. Chapman is about as real as I would imagine anyone could be in writing about her battles with clinical depression, even before the adoptions, and about her struggle to make some kind of sense or gain some peace in the midst of a seemingly senseless tragedy. the story itself is powerful enough to overcome any deficiencies in the writing, and I was amazed and heartened to see God at work in the Chapmans’ story in spite of the suffering that they have endured. The foundation that the Chapmans started, Show Hope, is involved with orphan care and adoption aid around the world.

Next, I read a very different sort of book, set in a very different part of the world: Son of Hamas by Mosab Hasan Yousef. The Middle East, and the Palestinian Authority in particular, are very difficult parts of the world, and it makes sense that a memoir set in that violent and conflict-ridden area would leave some questions in my mind as I read it. Son of Hamas is the story of the oldest son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, one of the founders of the Palestinian/Muslim organization, Hamas. Over the course of events in the book, Mosab Yousef becomes his father’s bodyguard and security detail while at the same time working for the Israeli security service, Shin Bet. He rationalizes this double life by telling himself that he is saving lives by informing on the terrorist activities and secrets that he is privy to knowing, but the strain becomes too much as he is also involved in a Christian Bible study and becomes convinced of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

While I was able to rejoice in Mr. Yousef’s conversion to Christianity and his eventual resignation from both Hamas activities and from his spying assignments for the Israeli Shin bet, I also took seriously Yousef’s admonition in the afterword of his book:

“So if you meet me on the street, please don’t ask for advice or what I think this or that scripture verse means, because you’re probably already way ahead of me. Instead of looking at me as a spiritual trophy, pray for me, that I will grow in my faith and that I won’t step on too many toes as I learn to dance with the bridegroom.”

The third memoir I read has a very different feel to it. Little Princes by Conor Grennan is the story of Nepalese children in an orphanage in Katmandu who were thought to be orphans but who were discovered to be mostly children who had been taken from their parents under false pretenses and abandoned or enslaved in the capital city of Katmandu. Grennan tells the story from his (American) point of view and shares some personal details of his own life, but he keeps the focus on the children. After stumbling into his work with the orphanage with less than pure motives (he wants to impress the women with his altruism), Grennan learns to care about the children and begins an organization dedicated to the goal of reuniting the trafficked children of Nepal with their families. You can read more about Conor Grennan’s non-profit organization Next Generation Nepal at the website.

Sad to say, although I believe after reading the books that all three of these authors are sincere in their beliefs and truthful in telling their respective stories, I can’t vouch for any of them personally. And in light of the recent revelations about Greg Mortenson and his immensely popular book Three Cups of Tea an the organization that he directs, Central Asia Institute, any book of this sort, especially Grennan’s which takes place in the same general area of the world, is bound to come under some scrutiny. Such scrutiny and due diligence is good, but a lack of compassion and charitable giving and general skepticism used to justify stinginess and apathy are not good and not right. We must give our money and our compassion wisely, but also generously.

Further information and links related to these books and to Mortenson’s CAI:
60 Minutes report on inaccuracies in Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea
Central Asia Institute website
Greg Mortenson’s response to 60 Minutes’ questions
John Krakauer: Three Cups of Deceit, How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way
Conor Grennan’s non-profit organization Next Generation Nepal.
Conor Grennan’s blog
Conor Grennan on Condemning Greg Mortenson and a Thousand Little Girls
Son of Hamas blog
Son of Hamas book website
Show Hope foundation
Maria’s Big House of Hope Orphan Care center
Mary Beth Chapman’s website
Steven Curtis Chapman official site

By the way, by grouping these reviews and links together, I don’t mean to imply in any way that all or any of the books are inaccurate or filled with lies just because one book, Three Cups of Tea, has been accused of containing falsehoods. I read these books in succession, and then I read the news reports on the issues with Mortenson’s story. And I, of course, wondered. The fiasco surrounding Three Cups of Tea and Mortenson’s Central Asia Institute should be a strong warning to all memoirists, especially those involved in fund-raising, to be scrupulously honest in their story-telling. Mr. Mortenson’s looseness with the truth has hurt more people than just himself and more organizations than just CAI.

Why Jesus?

Apr19

I was talking to a young man of my acquaintance last week, and we were discussing a friend of his who was dealing with lots of problems, mostly of her own making. I said something like, “Well, you know that ultimately she needs Jesus.” I knew that this young man says he believes in a Creator God, and he prays sometimes. However, he says he’s just not convinced that he has any need for or any faith in “all that Christian stuff.”

And, sure enough, he asked me: “Why Jesus?” Why can’t we just get by with a belief in a Higher Power or God or whatever you want to call Him without having to believe everything that the Bible says about Him? Why do we need to bring Jesus and all the Christian baggage into the equation?

Now I have answers to that question, and I gave the young man a brief response, which was all he wanted or was ready to hear. However, I’ve been thinking about his query, and I thought I’d ask some people I trust or admire to answer in their own words. It’s not a bad question to contemplate as we approach Resurrection Sunday and the celebration of the culmination of Jesus’ ministry and work here on earth.

I asked: If someone asked you, why Jesus? Why isn’t it enough to just believe in God? Why are Christianity and Jesus necessary? How would you answer?

Jared Wilson, pastor and author: God reveals himself to us in Christ (John 14). So to reject Christ is to reject God. God is triune; any denial is acceptance of not-God.

Mitali Perkins, author: A loving God doesn’t make sense in a suffering world without the cross.

Martin Luther: “Either sin is with you, lying on your shoulders, or it is lying on Christ, the Lamb of God. Now if it is lying on your back, you are lost; but if it is resting on Christ, you are free, and you will be saved.”

R.C. Sproul, pastor and teacher: “There is a God who is altogether holy, who is perfectly just, and who declares that he is going to judge the world and hold every human being accountable for their life. As a perfectly holy and just God, he requires from each one of us a life of perfect obedience and of perfect justness. If there is such a God and if you have lived a life of perfect justness and obedience—that is, if you’re perfect — then you certainly don’t need Jesus. You don’t need a Savior because only unjust people have a problem.”

I would add: Apart from Christ, how do you know what God you are praying to or acknowledging? Who is your God? A remote implacable Muslim God? Or a capricious and fallible Zeus? An impersonal “watchmaker” god? The unknown God (Acts 17:23)? Jesus is God’s final and highest revelation of Himself to a fallen, but beloved world. For God, the true one God revealed in Christ, so loved the world, you and me, that He gave His only begotten Son, Jesus, that whosoever believes, trusts, has faith in, Him shall not die but have everlasting, forever, abundant, quality life.

Today and every day as we live toward the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection and eventually toward His second coming to judge the world, I wish you Jesus.

If you have answers or questions to add to this discussion, please feel free to comment.