Links, etc.

From this post:

Lent reminds me to have a healthy amount of awe for one of the greatest mysteries ever seen: that the human animal, who should know of nothing other than the material world at hand, has from the beginning held on to this perplexing notion that what he needs and wants cannot be found in the only world he's ever seen. Almost every culture throughout history, separated by time and space, has come up with this idea. I always wrote that off when I was an atheist, assuming that people just needed stories about fantasy worlds to make themselves feel better. But now that I have discovered God's existence, I get it. This idea won't die because the thirst we feel deep in our souls is real, and the material world offers us only saltwater to quench it. Looking outside the material world, finding God, is to finally find the pure water that fully satisfies the aching thirst.

Lent reminds me not that all the status and comforts and possessions I've pursued are necessarily bad, but that there is Something infinitely better. To quote C.S. Lewis: "All that we call human history -- money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery -- [is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy."

Also, I am thinking of, at some point, either publically or not, comparing two posts (or series of posts): one for atheists on interacting with Christians, and one for Christians on interacting with atheists. Should be interesting.