A Christian society condemns the torture of Jews during the Holocaust while worshiping a God who intends for Jews to be tortured for all of eternity.

Is there something wrong with this picture?

"We live in an age in which most people believe that mere words- "Jesus," "Allah," "Ram" - can mean the difference between eternal torment and bliss everlasting. Considering the stakes here, it is not surprising that many of us occasionally find it necessary to murder other human beings for using the wrong magic words, or the right ones for the wrong reasons. How can any person presume to know that this is the way the universe works? Because it says so in our holy books. How do we know that our holy books are free from error? Because the books themselves say so. Epistemological black holes of this sort are fast draining the light from our world...Because most religions offer no valid mechanism by which their core beliefs can be tested and revised, each new generation of believers is condemned to inherit the superstitions and tribal hatreds of its predecessors....The point is that most of what we currently hold sacred is not sacred for any reason other than that it was thought sacred yesterday. Surely, if we could create the world anew, the practice of organizing our lives around untestable propositions found in ancient literature-to say nothing of killing and dying for them- would be impossible to justify. What stops us from finding it impossible now?"

-Sam Harris

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Fallen

"God has been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at the once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down." - C.S Lewis, A Grief Observed

I'm not a Mac user, and the only Apple product I own is an old iPod. However, I can't seem to escape Steve Jobs quotes this week with his recent passing, and this one in particular inspired me. It was from a speech he gave at a Stanford commencement a few years ago, and can't seem to describe my life more perfectly right now...

"Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.”

I know I dreamed you a sin and a lie

I have my freedom

But I don't have much time

Faith has been broken

Tears must be cried

Let's do some living before we die.

Wild horses couldn't drag me away

Wild, wild horses,

we'll ride them someday

Honesty We Don't Hear On Sunday Morning

God had to send his son to rescue men

From wrongs committed way back when

On the day we ate from God's tree of sin

And sent ourselves to eternal hell again and again

But we never stop and say

Perhaps this was a cruel joke to play

Why would a loving God put the tree on their path that day?

Like a father who throws his naive children in harms way

Or a sadistic psychopath, preparing for his prey.

And from this we still suffer, everyday.

A Room Called Remember

The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming. But again and again we avoid the long thoughts...we cling to the present out of wariness of the past. And why not, after all? We get confused. We need such escape as we can find. But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need- not all the time surely, but from time to time- to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as part of the present,

where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember. The room where, with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have

lived. -Frederick Buechner