Mike Schellman

At the heart of Western culture lies a mistaken assumption: our belief in permanence, the ironic persistence of which endures—despite life's relentless attempt to beat it out of us." Change is an ever-present reality in our lives, yet we can never seem to accept it. We design elaborate schemes to stabilize favorable circumstances, only to be surprised when they fail. And yet, we try again. Why do we so obstinately refuse to accept that permanence in this life is a myth? The watershed moment in our culture came in Ancient Greece, when the insights of one man, Heraclitus, were overshadowed by those of another: Plato. Plato taught that our physical world is merely a shadow of a higher realm of ideal forms—perfect and unchanging. He believed that the changes we witness every day in people and things are just material objects moving toward or away from these ideal forms. The adoption of this belief instilled in Western thought a longing for a nebulous ideal called perfection and, w

Paul's death comes after the end of the Bible, so we can't be sure.  One tradition says he was beheaded in Rome and the last we hear of him in the Bible is during his imprisonment in Rome. But he did have plans to eventually go to Spain and some say he was released and eventually made that missionary journey as well and died in Rome later during another imprisonment. This would mean that his appeal to Caesar as a Roman citizen was ultimately successful. This is not unlikely especially when you consider his behavior in the Roman prison when it collapsed and during the shipwreck. Paul and his companions could have taken the opportunity to be free, but they said stayed saving the lives of their captors. Paul's actions might have been seen not as a guilty man, but an honorable kne seeking the vindication only Caesar could offer to his reputation.  And history is rarely as neat and tidy as we would like it to be.  Everyone agrees that Paul was beheaded in Rome, and the  New Test