The Everyday Club

12/15/10       CJ & Lindsey,    he - 30,  she - about 25
At a "Jason's Deli" in Chicago's South Loop, I asked a young couple if they had a few minutes to answer a few questions. "What about?" they asked. Ï'm from a church nearby and I ask different people about their spiritual beliefs" "That's funny, we were just talking about religion" CJ told me. He had been telling Lindsey about a friend of his who grew up going to a Christian church and had decided to research all the major religions and decide for himself what he wanted to believe. He decided to become Muslim. As it turned out, both CJ and Lindsey had this same attitude - that they would decide what they wanted to believe based on their own rational thought and research. CJ had once been an enthusiastic Methodist and Lindsey had grown up in an evangelical church. Both rejected their childhood faith and were attempting to construct their own belief systems. They were fellow teachers in the Chicago public schools, and both agreed that the more they had become educated the harder it was becoming to believe in God. They rejected biblical miracles as being unscientific - not realizing that this is what made them "miracles"in the first place! I talked enough about basic apologetics topics - such as evolution, origins, hypocrisy among church people, the claims of Jesus - to let them know there are reasonable answers to these questions. Then I let the law do its work to reveal their need for the forgiveness found only in Jesus. Lindsey seemed thoughtful, CJ returned back to his apologetics questions - a smokescreen I believe - to cover over the real issues he wasn't willing to face.