The Case for Faith

We're doing a bookstudy at LCCF this term on The Case for Faith. Basically it's a book that compares the views of both Billy Graham and Charles Templeton. If you don't know, both of them spent their earlier years together spreading the Gospel until Templeton began questioning his faith and eventually converted to atheism. Anyway, we had just started the book and during our discussion today, this quote really struck me (I hadn't actually read the chapter was supposed to since I only got the book at fellowship tonight). Peep this:

"It's like that old Twilight Zone television show where a gang of bank robbers gets shot and one of them wakes up walking on fluffy clouds at the golden gate of the celestial city. A kindly white-robed man offers man everything he wants. But soon he's bored with the gold, since everything's free, and with the beautiful girls, who only laugh when he tried to hurt them, since he has a sadistic streak.
"So he summons the St. Peter figure. 'There must be some mistake.' 'No, we make no mistakes here.' 'Can't you send me back to earth?' 'Of course not, you're dead.' 'Well, then, I must belong with my friends in the Other Place. Send me there.' 'Oh, no, we can't do that. Rules, you know.' 'What is this place, anyway?' 'This is the place where you get everything you want.' 'But I thought I was supposed to like heaven.' 'Heaven? Who said anything about heaven? Heaven is the Other Place.' The point is that the world without suffering appears more like hell than heaven."
     - Strobel, Lee. The Case for Faith. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2000), p. 57.

Interesting approach to the area of apologetics that deals with the suffering in the world. Paraphrasing from later on in that chapter, "If you try to make a utopia, you only end up taking away freedom." Just some food for thought.