Daly Focus Blog
By Pat Fitzpatrick
As a young teacher in Atlanta, I developed a mentoring friendship with a colleague who taught Old and New Testament survey. George was a master of the English language like none other I have ever met, which was made even more impressive by the fact that English was the sixth or seventh language that he had mastered in his forty-five years on earth.
I often reflect on a conversation he and I had in the school’s dining hall in the late 1980’s.
Author Lee Strobel is a skeptic by nature. As legal editor for the Chicago Tribune for many years, he was trained not to accept anyone’s word at face value. Every fact was confirmed by at least two sources before it was printed. They even hung a sign in their newsroom which said, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”
Lee’s skepticism eventually became cynicism … and then atheism. “If there is no God,” he reasoned, “if there is no heaven, and no ultimate accountability, then the most logical way for me to live is as a hedonist, someone who only pursues pleasure.” And that’s what he did.
The essence of our Christian faith rests on the reality of Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead on Easter Sunday.
Although C.S. Lewis is often credited with the succinct summary that Jesus Christ was either a liar, lunatic or Lord, it was the Scottish Christian preacher “Rabbi” John Duncan who once observed in 1859:
“Christ either [1] deceived mankind by conscious fraud, or [2] He was Himself deluded and self-deceived, or [3] He was Divine. There is no getting out of this trilemma.
Charles Dickens got it exactly right in the opening sentences of A Tale of Two Cities. He said, “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness.”
Those iconic words were written over 150 years ago. They could have been written this morning. Or 1,000 years ago.
Civilizations rise and fall, but every generation faces the same fundamental paradoxes: Love and hate.
Do you and your family find yourselves watching more movies and television these days?
If so, please don’t forget to check out Focus on the Family’s new streaming service, Focus@Home.We’re adding new content every day, including some wonderful special material for Easter from our friend Ray Vander Laan, perhaps best known for his teaching in our rich and meaningful series, That the World May Know.
We’ve also added The Truth Project, our award-winning Christian worldview series from Dr.
Several years ago, when video stores were still around, Jean and I went looking for a movie that told the story of Easter. We couldn’t find the title we were looking for on the shelf, so we asked the young lady behind the counter if another copy was available.
When she heard the word “Easter,” she pointed us to
several kids’ videos that had something to do with decorating eggs. We said,
“No, we’re looking for a video about the real story of Easter, the death and
Resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Judging by the confused look on her face, she
had no idea what we were talking about.
Easter is Sunday.
For many, this holiday doesn’t mean much – except mountains of chocolate and cute bunny rabbits. But for the sick, the poor, the brokenhearted, and those who realize they’re captive to sin (Isaiah 61:1), Easter is about so much more. It’s about the good news that death and sin have been conquered through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The empty tomb is the foundation upon which all of Christianity rests. In 1 Corinthians 15:17, the Apostle Paul said, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.”
For centuries, skeptics have argued that faith in Christ’s resurrection is nothing more than a blind step into thin air.
Monday’s fire at the famed cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris riveted the world, as television outlets broke into regularly scheduled programing to show the devastation unfold in real time.
As my friend and former Focus board member Dr. Al Mohler reflected, “What burned was not just a tremendous loss to architecture, it was a tremendous loss to western civilization, and it points to an even greater loss: A spiritual loss that came before the architectural loss.”
Dr.
Jim Daly is a husband, father and President of Focus on the Family and host of its National Radio Hall of Fame broadcast. His blog, Daly Focus, is full of timely commentary and wisdom designed to help you navigate and understand today’s culture. His latest book is Marriage Done Right.
