We consider the progression of idol worship from the Old Testament to the time of Jesus - to today. We also consider a man I met who collected restored classic cars and another man who owned a wall of expensive guitars, but who could no longer play them because he had developed a disability. We consider that question of how we end up like our idols: blind, deaf, and spiritually lifeless.

My mother believed in miracles - and when I was born very sick, she baptized me herself, because at the time, the Catholic Church taught that unbaptized babies that died went to Limbo. We look at the miracles of Jesus, and how the Synoptic Gospels refer to them as "deeds of power", while John refers to them as "signs". We see that there is a very deep reason why John does this - and we consider how this reveals the very theological nature of the Gospel of John.

I once spend four hours in the middle of the night with a man who was dying from COPD. A nurse had called me so that he would not die alone. I heard his last words. We look at the final words of Jesus as he was dying, which vary from Gospel to Gospel - significantly. We consider this: Were some of the Gospel authors wrong about Jesus' last words on the cross? Or were their goals something other than the obvious? Were they trying to communicate some greater truth? We consider the bigger issue: what do we mean when we say that the Bible is indeed the truth?

When I was an academic, I was exposed to a lot of anti-Christian diatribe. Christians, I was told, are corrupt, selfish, and use their faith as a political weapon. We look at the story of King Josiah in the Bible and how some think that he manipulated parts of Scripture, of our Old Testament, to suit his political purposes. We then consider what would happen, what our planet would be like if all political leaders everywhere truly lived like Christ. We also consider what our obligation is as truly sincere believers.

I once spent time with a couple who had just lost their only, very young child, their daughter. Like many other people who have lost loved ones, they asked about Heaven. We take a survey of Heaven, looking at the current Evangelical interpretation, and then stepping back and walking through time, from the 100's A.D. to the Middle Ages, to the Renaissance, and to the emergence of the "Social Gospel". Our goal is to see what Scripture tells us about the nature of Heaven, and to consider the highly varied interpretations of Heaven that have emerged from the minds of Christian Theologians. Then we ask the question: What does it all mean?

Our conventional notion of Hell is not necessarily what we would derive from reading the New Testament. We look at three somewhat different theories about the nature of Hell - all of them reasonably backed up by the Bible. We also look at my father's father, who ran off when my father was a tiny boy. My father never found his father, although he sought him out his entire life. We see how this relates to the third of the three theories of Hell: Annihilationism, Eternal Punishment, and Restorationism. We also consider why the Bible might deliberately be ambiguous about the nature of Hell.

The apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas gives us stories about the boy Jesus from the age of 5 to 12 - and it portrays him as precocious at best, and perhaps even evil-minded at worst, as Jesus struggles to understand his powers and his identity. These stories have been widely read since the second century, and ancient manuscripts have been found in many languages. We look at what these stories are, and what they tell us about what ancient Christians thought of the child Jesus. We see what this means for us today, as people raising children, and as adults who, like the apocryphal version of the child Jesus, always have room to grow.

There is a Christian community on the outskirts of Cairo, up in the mountains, that is built into a huge cave. The people are called the "Garbage People" by the general population of Cairo because they scratch out a living collecting garbage by hand and sorting it into recyclables. We consider the Gospel of Mark - written by the man who founded the church that became the Coptic Christian Church in Egypt. We consider persecution - faced by the Garbage People - and we consider the need to be giving, faithful people.