Tuesday High-5 (November 18th)

Every Tuesday (well, almost every Tuesday) I will repost 5 interesting articles that I found in the previous week. Enjoy.

How a French Atheist Became a Theologian: As we finish off our Questioning Christianity series, it is interesting to hear stories like this of how God draws people to Himself.

Atheism Helps My Faith: Speaking of Atheism, here are some reflections from a Church planter in Vancouver on how discussions with atheist friends helps sharpen his faith.

Rocky Mountain Nights: Grouse and Cypress are open and many of you are thinking mountains. This is a great time-lapse shot of some of the most beautiful mountain views of the Rockies (no skiing though)

The Bible is a Book Like Any Other: In our L.E.A.D. class on Sunday we looked at our understanding of the Bible. One thing I forgot to mention, the Bible is a book like any other that we learned to read in High School English class.

What is the Church: Finally, from my own blog, the introduction to a series I'm beginning on the nature, purpose and mission of the Church in our culture.

Reflecting on "Interstellar"

After watching "Interstellar" last night I appreciated these thoughts from Scott Redd.

On prayer

When you read the Psalms, they are replete with statements that we would never catch ourselves saying to God. They admit to anger with God, a hatred of others and an utter despair. But few of us pray like that ... and that lack of authenticity may be killing our prayer life.

Here are a few articles I came across today regarding prayer.

Is Politeness Killing Your Prayer Life? - “Christians in North America are generally polite pray-ers. We tend to pray correct, respectful words that we think God wants to hear. But let’s be honest, many of our prayers are tentative, repetitive, and somewhat boring.”

Praying the Psalms - "1)The Psalms teach us to pray through imitation and response. 2) The Psalms take us deep into our own hearts 1,000 times faster than we would ever go if left to ourselves. 3) Most importantly, the Psalms force us to deal with God as he is, not as we wish he was.

The School of Prayer - "Is there any area of the Christian life in which we feel more inadequate than in prayer? Is there any area of the Christian life that exposes greater feelings of helplessness and shame? I know some true prayer warriors, people who dedicate themselves to hours and hours of prayer, yet even they confess to knowing so little about it and having so little confidence in what they do and what they pray."

Do camels prove the Bible is wrong?

In keeping with last Sunday's message regarding the reliability of the Bible, I was reminded about a resent report suggesting that archeological evidence suggests that camels were not even domesticated around the time that the Genesis narrative suggests they were in common use. Below is an excerpt from a Bible archeology post debunking that claim:

Dr. Erez Ben-Yosef and Dr. Lidar Sapir-Hen of Tel Aviv University's Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures have used radiocarbon dating in an attempt to pinpoint the time when domesticated camels arrived in the southern Levant, pushing the standard estimate from the 12th down to the 10th century BC. The findings, published recently in the journal Tel Aviv, are being used to argue that camels were first used in the mining operations near the end of the 10th century BC. They state that this is the first evidence of domesticated camels in ancient Israel. Such proclamations erroneously extrapolate the findings of the research far beyond what the actual data proves. In reality, there is abundant evidence that the Bible's mention of camels as early as the time of Abraham is contextually and historically accurate. In this article, TM Kennedy demonstrates the accuracy of the biblical texts in their historical setting as it pertains to camels.

Read the full article here. You may also be interested in this article.