Legacy Youth Ministry Resources

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Metric Hoax

Wisdom According the Bible, it's the fool that believes everything he hears. A few years ago a 9th grade science teacher in Toledo, Ohio told his students that the USA was switching to a metric time system. Students could send their watches and calendars to the state capital to be converted. Clocks would have 10 hours of 100 minutes. Each year would have 10 months. July and August would be dropped and students with birthdays then would have them cancelled, reducing the summer vacation to 20 days. (From newspaper source) Now, imagine that you?re in the class. What questions could you ask to see if the teacher is shooting straight with you? (If they fail to think of these questions, mention: Where can I read more on this? What is the name of the government agency? Hey, if each day had 10 hours of 100 minutes each, then each day would have 1,000 minutes instead of 60x24=1440 minutes. After a few days, we would be going to school at night instead of during the day!) Interested in how the actual class responded? The teacher just wanted to teach his students to think for themselves. So mid week, the teacher admitted that he was fibbing. But not before some parents had called in to ask when the metric time would begin! Not even one student objected or asked questions. No one sat down with a pencil and figured out that it couldn't work.

"Heaven's Gate" Cult

Bible, Absolutes I hear experts train bankers to detect counterfeit money by thoroughly acquainting them with the real money. They master what authentic money feels like, how the fine detail looks, etc. Because the more they know the look and feel of the real thing, the more likely they are to spot a forgery when it comes along. So, the best way to spot lies and inaccuracies is to familiarize ourselves with the truth. And the best place to find it, in its most undiluted form, is in God?s holy Word. In case you haven?t noticed, we're growing up in the middle of a knowledge revolution. More information has been produced in the past 30 years than in the previous 5000. Now the amount of information available in the world?s libraries and computers doubles every 5 to 8 years. (Reader?s Digest, July ?85, and Michael J. McCarthy, Mastering the Information Age, from tape series) Yet, in the midst of the knowledge revolution, we seem to have a wisdom deficit. It?s like people can?t distinguish the truth from the lies, the wacky from the wise. For example, In March, 1997, 39 people committed mass suicide. They were all members of a New Age cult called ?Heaven?s Gate,? which taught that people could rise to a ?Level Beyond Human? by riding a spaceship into the heavens. ?What a senseless tragedy?? most people would say. ?If only they had been educated enough to know better.? But that?s the catch. Some of them were educated. LaDonna was a successful 37-year-old computer programming whiz and outstanding violinist. Margaret was so brilliant that she graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in three years with a triple major in math, German and computer science. (USA TODAY, March 31, 1997, p. 2A) As we said last week, sometimes it?s not enough to be smart and educated. Who remembers what we said about how bankers are trained to spot counterfeit money? If these people had known God?s truth, they could have spotted the lie. If you aren?t grounded in God?s Word, your boat?s adrift without a sail, and you could end up anywhere. That?s why we?re discussing where God fits into our search for wisdom. (Written by Steve Miller, Copyright Feb., 2003)

Brilliant, Yet Savage

Wisdom, Absolutes Some people seem to think that the sole answer to youth?s problems is: ?Get a good education.? But education alone isn't enough. Let me tell you about a guy named Ted. You'd think that Ted had a bright future. He was so brilliant that he was able to skip two grades, graduate from Harvard University (one of the top schools in the world), and win a prize for his doctoral thesis. So it was no surprise that he landed a job teaching math at prestigious Berkeley University. But before you take him on as a role model of wisdom seeking, hear out the rest of the story. He became famous in 1996, not as a Math whiz, but when detectives discovered that he had been mailing pipe bombs to people over a period of 18 years, wounding 23 people and killing three. His full name is Ted Kaczynski, the infamous ?Unabomber." (Newsweek, April 22, 1996, "Blood Brother," by Evan Thomas, pp. 28ff.) "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight." (Prov. 3:5,6; cr. 3:7,8)

Plato on Certainty

Plato on Certainty Absolutes, Bible Even the best and brightest philosophers can't find absolute truth in the things that matter in life (purpose in life, right and wrong) without any word from God Himself about these matters. Here's how Plato confessed his inability to find certain truth, as he put it to Socrates: "I dare say that you, Socrates, feel as I do, how very hard or almost impossible is the attainment of any certainty about questions such as these in the present life. And yet I should deem him a coward who would not prove what is said about them to the uttermost, or whose heart failed him before he had examined them on every side. And he should persevere until he has achieved one of two things: either he should discover, or be taught the truth about them, or, if this is impossible, we would have him take the best and most irrefragable of human theories, and let this be the raft upon which he sails through life -- not without risk, as I admit, if he cannot find some word of God which will more surely and safely carry him." (Italics mine. Plato, speaking to Socrates, in Phaedo. 85. Jowett's trans. I. 463. Found in Wilbur Smith, Therefore Stand, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, 1974, p. 239)

Truman Just Tells the Truth

Truman Just Tells the Truth Truth, Absolutes I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell. -- Harry Truman

Copleston Debates Russell

Absolutes, Evidence Copleston Debates Russell When brilliant Christian Frederick Coppleston debated atheist Bertrand Russell, the latter found difficulty reconciling his philosophy with his personal ethics. As Copleston relates the exchange, Russell said, "I find myself in a dilemma. On the one hand I certainly want to condemn the Nazi's behavior towards the Jews as wrong in itself. On the other hand my ethical theory does not allow me to say this." Russell had the statement taken out before it went on the air, because it obviously made him look poorly. (Written by Steve Miller, copyright May, 2003. Sources: Frederick Copleston, Memoirs of a Philosopher, Sheed and Ward, 1993, Kansas City, MO)

Copleston Finds Truth in Bible

Evidence, Bible, Absolutes Copleston Finds Truth in Bible Frederick Copleston was one of the greatest authorities on philosophy who ever lived. Along with many other books, he wrote the most comprehensive, most respected history of philosophy in existence. Its massive 17 volumes of microscopic print in paperback have been called "one of the enduring intellectual achievements of the twentieth century" - George Weigel He understood the great philosophers and their writings perhaps better than anyone. After setting apart his brilliant mind to single-minded devotion to philosophical study for almost seven decades, what did he conclude about religion? Fortunately, he let us know his religious convictions and told us about his inner thoughts in his autobiography, published in 1993, a year before his death at age 83. In his early years he was attracted to the great philosophical systems, yet, over time he "became very much less optimistic in regard to philosophy's competence to deliver the goods?." (44) He became convinced that, unless God reveals Himself, we search for ultimate meaning and truth in vain. In the introduction to his History of Philosophy, speaking of man's search for the True and the Good, Coppleston says, "The ease with which mistakes are made, the fact that personal temperament, education and other apparently "fortuitous" circumstances may so often lead the thinker up an intellectual cul-de-sac, the fact that we are not pure intelligence, but that the processes of our minds may frequently be influenced by extraneous factors, doubtless shows the need for religious Revelation; but that should not cause us to despair altogether of human speculation nor make us despise the bona-fide attempts of past thinkers to attain Truth."(A History of Philosophy, Volume 1, Greece & Rome, Part 1, Frederick Copleston, S.J. Volume 1, Part 1, p. 21) At the age of ___ Copleston was ordained a Jesuit Priest (a.k.a. The Society of Jesus) and remained one throughout his life. He continued his study of philosophy because he felt it was God's will for his life. Along the way, he debated the famous atheist Bertrand Russell and logical positivist A.J. Ayer. Here are some comments about his personal faith as written in his autobiography, published a year before his death: ? "my dialogue with anti-religious philosophy has not led me either to discard or to belittle Christian faith in God. On the contrary, it seems to me to have contributed, in the long run, to a clearer appreciation of the spirit of the Christian religion and of the orientation of divine self-revelation to promoting a way of life, a life of active love, of overcoming alienation of the human person from other persons and from God, the two being aspects of one movement." (p. 222) ? "the only really important evaluation of one's life and work is God's evaluation." (p. 224) ? "After all, God did not reveal this or that truth simply to impart some more or less interesting information. Revelation was granted for salvation, to bring human beings to union with God; and Christ is recorded as saying that he came that human beings might have life - and might have it more abundantly." (p. 220, 221) (Written by Steve Miller, copyright May, 2003. Sources: Frederick Copleston, Memoirs of a Philosopher, Sheed and Ward, 1993, Kansas City, MO)

Hora on Unchanging Values

There is only one way to cope with life, namely, to find that system of values which is not subject to fashionable trends, which will never change, and will always bear good fruit in terms of bringing us peace and health and assurance, even in the midst of a very insecure world. (Dr. Thomas Hora, seminal thinker and pioneer researcher in Psychology and Psychotherapy)

Youth as a Raging Sea of Uncertainty

"I've always thought childhood was like an idyllic cruise on a luxury liner across a tranquil ocean, but when we cross that imaginary dateline into the teenage years, it's akin to being thrown overboard into a raging sea of uncertainty." (Author George Parker, PRNewswire, May 12, 2004)

Pitt on the Teen Years

"It's taking everything you've learned from your parents and school and finding out what works for you and what you have to offer. The important question is, what feels right for you?" (Actor Brad Pitt answering a question about what defines the teenage years, Teen People, August 2003, p. 112.)

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