Sterling Griggs

This evening I turned on the Windows media player on my computer as I putted around the house and played with my kids. As I browsed through the many CD's that I have ripped, I came across a couple of them that really took me back. The first was from a band called Elijah's Cry . They are now called Midday but when I first heard them and got their CD they were still Elijah's Cry. I first heard them on a Frontliners mission trip to Kansas City in the summer of 2004. They were the band for the week and they simply brought it. They aren't big - you probably have never heard of them - but they were a bunch of college-age guys who were committed to honoring the Lord and producing music that did the same. The other band is called Broken Vessels , and they were the band at a Frontliners mission trip that my church helped host in the summer of 2005. These guys were quiet by nature, but in the short amount of time that I spent with them I grew to love them. They also were...

Just recently diabetes in 13 adult patients was treated - and cured - by using stem cells. Admittedly, when I read the title to that article ( click here to read it ) I thought to myself, "My goodness, they finally got embryonic stem cells to work." But it didnt' take long for me to learn that it wasn't embryonic stem cells that did the curing. In fact, this study pushed the notion that embryonic stem cells may not be as critical as many in the medical community believe they really are. So what did cure these patients? It was their own adult stem cells which were coaxed into performing new functions. No need to go to battle over whether or not embryo's that are frozen can be used in research. In this case, a "miracle" happened, one that the researchers never saw coming because they can't see the forest for the trees. Someone asked me today what I would choose to do with those existing embryos that are just sitting there. My response was that...

With Easter only a few days away, it's only appropriate to sift around Easter eggs, bunnies, and other completely "un-Easterish" things to discuss what the message of Easter truly is. I was delighted to hear my kindergarten-age daughter tell me in great detail that Easter is all about the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus (although she still confessed to really liking all the candy that comes with the Easter season). But let me cut to the chase and say this about Easter: Christianity itself stands and falls on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There are countless theories abounding as to what really happened to the body of Jesus. James Cameron recently claimed that he found evidence of the bones of Jesus, and if that is the case then there is no resurrection. The "Gnostic Gospels" as they are called debunk the idea that Jesus really rose from the grave physically but claim that instead it was a spiritual resurrection. They believe that all matter,...

Two women in Sudan have recently been sentenced to death by stoning after they admitted to having adulterous affairs ( click here to read the story ). One woman, Saadiayh al-Fadel, who has an 18-month-old dauther, confessed that the child was conceived by another man after her husband deserted her. Both the woman and her child are now being held in a prison in the city of Wad Medani. I have been to Wad Medani and stayed there overnight with a family of Christians. In that city my visit was cut short because the "secret police" did not think it wise for me and my party to stay in the city any longer at the home of known Christians. The other woman in the story, Umounah Daldoum, also confessed to adultery and she too was convicted and sentenced to die by stoning. What about the men with whom these women commmited adultery with? The man who helped conceive al-Fadel's daughter was brought before the court but he "publicly dissociated himself from the act" and ...

I've been thinking about the concept of truth lately and whether or not we can truly know that there is such a thing as truth. A basic understanding of truth would be that there is a standard of right and wrong, of acceptable and unacceptable. And if we agree that the concept of truth is valid, can truth be relative or does it have to be absolute? In order to answer these questions, we first must think about where truth comes from: Does man determine truth? If so, then who was the man who set the standard? What if I don't agree with him, does that make me wrong or him? Is man qualified to set a standard for right and wrong? The answer to that is no. Does society/culture determine truth? In America we have ruled that smoking marijuana is illegal and immoral but what about in countries where it isn't illegal? Also, we have so many disagreements over what's acceptable/unacceptable in America that our culture(or any culture) can't be trusted to point us to a ...

A woman in Boston sought to have an abortion in April 2004 but the attempt was not done properly. In July of 2004 she went to another doctor who at the time couldn't detect that she was pregnant, even thought her fetus was now 20 weeks old. So, she carried on with her life on the assumption that she wasn't pregnant anymore. The only problem is that in September of that same year, when she went to the hospital with pelvic pain, she found out that she was still pregnant. In December of 2004 this woman had a baby girl. Now she is suing her doctors because she claimed that she wanted an abortion in the first place because she couldn't afford to raise a child. In her lawsuit, she is suing for damages as well as the costs of raising her child. This legal case will likely raise lots of eyebrows and so far all of the attention has been on the woman who wanted the abortion and the doctors who failed her. But maybe the attention should be on the fact that pregnancy, if left u...

After all of the hype surrounding James Cameron's "amazing" discovery of what he believed were the ossuaries (bone boxes) of Jesus and His family, I was anxiously waiting the special to air on Discovery Channel that would give us the full skinny on the truth. However when I watched it, the only thing I learned is that your personal biases can take you a long way. Two figures from the documentary stood out to me from the beginning. The first was Simcha Jacobovichi, a documentary film maker. He hovered all over the place, looking over the ossuaries as if he were an expert and giving his opinion about everything. The only problem is, he looked really silly doing so. The guy isn't an expert in these matters, yet he made sure that his face was seen over and over again. What finally did it for me was when Mr. Jacobovichi challenged an archeological expert to a sort of "duel" when it came to what names were or weren't accurate on ancient ossuaries. His t...