Attitudes

Have you ever noticed that one person with a sour attitude can poison an entire group while one person with a good attitude can create a positive atmosphere in any group with which they are associated?  Christians have every reason to carry a positive and redemptive attitude and should question themselves if they do not.

Attitudes are contagious.  Does your attitude help pass on what C. S. Lewis called the "good infection "?

The Importance of Christianity

"Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, is of infinite importance.  The only thing it cannot be is moderately important."  C.S. Lewis (b. 1898, England - d. 1963) Writer, Christian apologist.

Christian Short Film

I am not sure I actually understand what this short film is trying to convey, except that it may be speaking of what C. S. Lewis called “the good infection.”  The film is entitled Stalker and was made in 2007.

(Some videos will not play properly when you click on the triangle.  Instead,  click on the title line in the picture and the video will begin .  When the video is completed, close the You Tube pop-up window to return to this blog.)

 

Christian Intellectuals

“The minute you get a religion you stop thinking.  Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.”  Ray Bradbury (b. 1920, Illinois, USA – d. 2012)  Bradbury was a celebrated science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mystery writer.

I have to disagree with Ray.  Yes, there is a strong stream of anti-intellectualism loose in the world today and it has infected many within the Christian community, but faith does not equal empty-headedness.  Jesus Himself told us that it should not.

“Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” Matthew 22:37

The Apostle Luke praised the Bereans  “These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” Acts 17:11

Without expressing approval or disapproval of what any of them have taught or said, here is a short list of modern persons who would qualify as Christian intellectuals: John Piper, N.T. Wright, Francis Schaeffer, Dietrich Boenhoffer, D.A. Carson, C.S. Lewis, Pope Benedict XVI, Pope John Paul II, Ravi Zacharias, Dinesh D’Souza, Francis Collins, John Lennox, Karl Barth, etc.

The Paradox of Belonging to Jesus

"When they are wholly His, they will be more themselves than ever."  C. S. Lewis

The Meaning of Life

"... the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs.  If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time.  God became Man for no other purpose.  It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose.  It says in the Bible that the whole universe was made for Christ and that everything is to be gathered together in Him."  C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952.

The Good Infection

Blogger has a statistics package which enables its members to learn information about the viewing history of their blogs.  We can see the number of total page views, the browsers being used, the operating systems being used, and the number of visits from each country.  We can also see the originating search pages and search terms, but we cannot identify a particular visitor.

Since the statistics feature was added to Saints on the Loose! in May of 2010,  there have been 6460 visits to the blog by persons from sixty-eight different countries.  The top ten countries and their numbers of visits are: the United States (3026), Russia (419), the Netherlands (351), Germany (331), Denmark (264), Slovenia (258), the United Kingdom (186), Canada (177), the Ukraine (103), and Israel (94).

By browsers: Internet Explorer (59%), Firefox (19%), Safari (10%), Opera (8%), Chrome (1%).  Java, NSB, Jakarta Commons Http Client, Translate Google, and Netscape each were used by <1% of the viewers.

By operating systems: Windows (86%), MacIntosh (11%), Unix (1%).  iPhones, Blackberries, iPads, Linux, iPods, mobile devices, and Microsoft Windows were each used by <1% of viewers.

Interestingly, at least two of the visitors to this blog have come from pornographic sites.  I can imagine their surprise.  I can only hope that they became infected while they were here.

C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, spoke of the "good infection."  Jesus was/is fully God and fully man.   Through him "we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ. ... One of our own race has this new life: if we get close to Him we shall catch it from Him."

Let us pray that our visitors from the pornographic sites were touched by Jesus while they were here.  Once He touches you, He keeps coming back to touch you again.

Sense

"He has room for people with very little sense, but He wants every one to use what sense they have."
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity