A recent Newsweek article suggests that Americans are more Hindu than Christian in their worldviews. I guess this shouldn’t be a surprise. Hinduism is essentially a pluralistic religion, so as the West migrates toward pluralism, its religious views will be more and more compatible with Hinduism—regardless of the fact that the average Joe knows nothing about the nuts and bolts of Hinduism and thinks “dharma” is the business venture behind the mysterious island in the TV drama, LOST.

“Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston University, has long framed the American propensity for ‘the divine-deli-cafeteria religion’ as ‘very much in the spirit of Hinduism. You’re not picking and choosing from different religions, because they’re all the same,’ he says. ‘It isn’t about orthodoxy. It’s about whatever works. If going to yoga works, great—and if going to Catholic mass works, great. And if going to Catholic mass plus the yoga plus the Buddhist retreat works, that’s great, too.’”

The problem is not that this divine deli exists—it always has. The problem is that the church has decided to sell its products at the same deli. Unfortunately, our “product” is too costly, the flavor is not always appealing to the palate and the rewards of “using” the product are often not realized until the death of the user.

Grace is so big and so undeserved.

While I was walking the dog last night, I listened to a message on John 5, in which Jesus healed a crippled man by the pool of Bethesda. Along with the fact that Jesus performed this miracle on the Sabbath (and instructed the man to carry his bed on the Sabbath), the story highlights the absolute helplessness of the man’s condition. The man did absolutely nothing to receive his healing. In fact, the man didn’t even recognize that Jesus was a healer until it was “too late”—while he was busy complaining to Jesus about not having anyone to put him in the pool, Jesus healed him!

Contrast that with this little video clip, in which “Prophetess” Christina Glenn, soon to be the third wife of “Bishop” Thomas Wesley Weeks III, informs her listeners that the loudness of their screaming will determine the size of the miracle they get.

I picked up Hugh Ross’s Creation as Science several years ago and haven’t bothered to read it until recently. Ross is an astronomer, an evangelical and the founder of Reasons to Believe, a ministry whose mission is to “show that science and faith are, and always will be, allies, not enemies.”

If you believe in a 6,000-year-old earth and that creation occurred in seven 24-hour days, the book may challenge your worldview. (Ross effectively argues for a 13.73 billion-year-old universe that began with a God-initiated Big Bang.) He also takes on classic evolutionists, traditional creationists and IDers as well, in a tone that is both respectful to those with whom he disagrees and reverent toward Scripture.

The most amazing effect of the book, though, is that I have found myself utterly amazed at God. The profound size and age of the universe and infinitesimal conditions that are required for life on this unique planet make not believing in God a joke. Ross spends almost no time defending the existence of God—he merely lays out the facts, and it becomes obvious.

Here’s just one item that will blow your mind:

“… Astronomers determine that the entire observable universe contains at least 200 billion galaxies. These galaxies contain an estimated average of 200 billion stars each. The total number of stars in these galaxies, then, is 40 billion trillion. The unobserved dwarf galaxies would contribute an estimated additional 10 billion trillion. Thus, the total number of stars in the observable universe adds up to about 50 billion trillion.”

Yeah, my mind can handle that just fine, but what about this?

“One reason the universe must be so massive is that life requires it. The density of protons and neutrons determines how much of the universe’s hydrogen fuses into heavier elements. With a slightly lower density (producing fewer than about 50 billion trillion observable stars), nuclear fusion would be less productive and at no time in cosmic history (either in the big bang or in stars) would elements heavier than helium be produced. Or, if the density were slightly higher (producing more than about 50 billion trillion observable stars), nuclear fusion would be so productive that only heavier-than-iron elements would exist. Either way, life-essential elements such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorous would be too scarce or nonexistent.”

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” – Romans 1:20