2013 A.D.:  Does Jesus Shine Light into the Minds of Men?

  In a world where there are multiple choices of religion to adhere to and follow, and we obviously live in such a world, it is nice to have assurances that you are going in the right direction.  Faith - at least a little bit of faith - is a necessity, though.  We are not given any 100% concrete assurance as to which religion to follow.  If it was 100% certain that a religion was the correct one, and it promised eternity in hell to unrepentant evil doers, then most of the evil doers would probably bide their time as best they could until they got to their reward in the good place.  Maybe that is why some room for doubt is always left........so that the regular and willful evil doers will declare their nature through their deeds?  Scripture says, at any rate, that without faith it is impossible to please God, and despite all of the evidence that Jesus is exactly Who and What He claimed, there is some need for faith if you follow Jesus. He does not seem to give us constant 100% assurances that we are on the right path, though thankfully He gives us some indications at some times.  That's just my opinion at this time, anyway. 

  But I believe that it is useful and rewarding to consider different topics or data points that seem to show that there is something special about following Jesus, something not offered to the followers of other religions.  And there are a great many such topics and data points which point to Jesus as the real thing, as being what He told us that He was:  our only possible Redeemer and the actual Son of God placed into the flesh of a human.

  So, here following is yet another such point, I believe.  Scripture tells us that the words of God are like light shining into our minds, or light that shows us a path for our feet.  So, why not ask the question:  does it seem like Christians have had an extra-large portion of light shined into their thoughts?  Have they discovered, pioneered, invented, and led the way far above their weight class?  Well, it is one of those topics that cannot fully be divorced from the subjective.  To be absolutely even handed and arbitrary when judging such a thing is, I admit, probably not a possibility.  But, for what it's worth, I found a list of one person's picks for the '100 most influential persons of all time', and it placed the religion of each person beside their name.  Christians from various Christian denominations made up about 75% of the list of 100 people.  So, on that person's list, I might look at it and deduce that Jesus does shine light into the minds of His followers.  Of course, it's quite possible that what is viewed as 'progress' or 'achievement' on that list is not viewed that way by God the Father, or by Jesus or the Holy Spirit. 

  But maybe it's worth a moment of your time to look at the list.  It is claimed to be excerpted from a book by Michael Hart called "The 100:  A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons In History".  I found it at www.adherents.com/adh_influ.html  If you are guessing that he is a complete Christian partisan you might be interested to know that he ranked Mohammed in the #1 position, based on his being both a religious and a political leadership figure.  He ranked Jesus as #3.  I am far from persuaded to agree with that, but it suggested to me that he may have attempted to assemble a fair and defensible list using his own criteria. 

 The main thing I think Christians might find useful for their faith is seeing just how many of the world's greatest scientists and scientific innovators (the ones chosen for this list, anyway) were Christian or raised as Christian.  Here are just a few for you to consider:

Gutenberg - Printing Press - Catholic

Pasteur - Antiseptic and Bacteriological Discoveries - Raised as a Catholic

Copernicus - Astronomy - Catholic

Newton - Physics - Raised as an Anglican

Watt - Steam Engine - Presbyterian (said to be only nominally observant in later life)

Faraday - Physics/Electrical Production - Sandemanian, a simple form of Christianity

Maxwell - Electro Magnetics - Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist.  Devout believer.

Orville and Wilbur Wright - Flight - United Brethren

Dalton - Dalton's partial pressure gas laws - Quaker

Leeuwenhoek - Microscopic Studies - Dutch Reformed

Planck - Thermodynamics, Nuclear - Lutheran

Harvey - Human Blood Circulation/Anatomy - Anglican

  So, that names a few of science's greatest and most well-known contributors.  Though some got knocked off of the Christian path towards Deism, and some were raised in a more Christian manner than they practiced in later life, it can be said of all of them that they were heavily influenced and/or much steeped in Jesus' teachings, then went on to pioneer in the discovery of God's creations, methods, and/or God's active laws for ordering His creation.  And the list does not stop here.  I merely grabbed a few prominent names to show you quickly. 

  I think that we Christians ought to be able to make mention of these 'achievers' to our friends that are 'dyed in the wool' science fans.  Real science is the study of what God did and how He did it, though the scientific community of our day would have it be much different than that, essentially trying to assert that Science has disproven God and Jesus, showing them to be frauds and myth.  Yet, again and again, it was the followers of Jesus that found the paths that led to advancement of truer and deeper understanding of the Creation.  It has been to Christian seekers that those doors have so often been opened; not to Christians exclusively by any means, but to Christians in disproportionate numbers to the fraction of Earth's population that they constituted.  And that counts!!  Of course it counts!!  It suggests good things about Christianity, I think.   

  God shines light into the minds of men.  Let's face it...all knowledge, all truth, was a possession of God's before the first thing was ever created.  The Jew, the Muslim, and the Christian essentially agree on who is God the Father.  But those who believe in Jesus have been led to discover new things in proportions far beyond their fraction of the world population.  There might be several reasons for that, but one reason might be that they adhere to the truth:  Jesus is the Son of God and the Only Redeemer of Man!  It's not dogmatic babble if the evidence in favor of it exceeds that for all other faiths by a great margin, and I believe that one of Christianity's greatest strengths is that no matter where you look for evidence that it is the truth, you find more and more and more.  And no matter how far science advances, new things keep coming to the surface suggesting that there was a Supreme Planner, and that Jesus of Nazareth was central to His plan.  That's powerful suggestive evidence!!