israel seems cool.

"Faith makes a virtue out of 'not thinking.'"

that's a quote from "religulous." a documentary by bill maher.

it's good. really good.

i'm an analytical person, so i'm constantly walking this line between "intellect" and "faith."

i believe in Jesus Christ. there are a lot of elements of my faith that don't make sense. a virgin birth. the holy spirit. resurrections. He's coming back and He's going to beat the devil, and oh yeah...i also believe there's a devil.

but i do think there are a lot of things about Christianity that do make sense, and can be explained.

so it makes me really sad when i see people like bill maher interviewing Christians, and those Christians don't know how to answer his questions. and some of them i would have trouble answering too. we should be able to express our faith intelligently. it is not glorifying to God to look stupid simply because we rely 100% on faith, and don't study Christ on an intellectual level.

there are times when we'll look stupid to "the world." we will. i'm ok with that.

but there are other times when we don't have to. God is fascinating. anything that can be learned...i want to learn it. i want to defend my faith, and speak of how mesmerizing He is. He's captivating when He asks me to trust Him in my heart, when i can't see where He's taking me. but He's also captivating when i read Scripture and understand it with my mind.

ultimately, Christ brings people to the Father on His own. He doesn't need our intellect, and He doesn't even need our faith. that's amazing too. He gives faith to sinful creatures who are too depraved to believe in Him. but He also gives understanding. and i don't think it's good when either one of those things are thrown out the window. i think it's important to know how to answer questions, to "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have." (1 Peter 3:15)

when i think of giving an answer to someone who asks the reason for what i believe...i don't think of saying "well, i just have faith." or "God's ways are higher than ours, some things you just can't understand." i think people asking questions are looking for more than that. sometimes that's the only answer you can give...because God is bigger than us. but not always.

in the opening scene, he's asking these guys some tough questions. one gets mad and says "i don't like where this is going, if you're going to start insulting my God, we've got a problem." and bill says "i'm just asking questions."

people need to be able to ask questions, and get honest answers. we have to be secure enough in our faith to be able to say "hmm. that's interesting, i'm not sure. i'll look into that with you."

i'm rambling...

here's one of his questions/thoughts that i don't know the answer to:

there were world religions on the scene before Judaism and Christianity, and they have the same basic story...man born to a virgin, grows up and dies, comes back from the dead, saves the world. isn't Christianity just stealing that story? why do we believe our version is right, but the other ones aren't?