This is the print version From Steve Meikle of New Zealand

Subject: your site

Sat 12/29/2007

Ma'am,

I only yesterday discovered your site when a friend of mine sent me your piece refuting obsessive legalism concerning the real pronouncing of the name of Jesus. Your piece confirmed what I have known for many years, that when names translate they alter to fit what can be pronounced, thus my own given name Stephen is in Spanish, Estevan, in Maori, Tipene, in Russian Stepan. Thus Jesus is simply the biblical name Yeshua as pronounced by a non Hebrew speaker, as you pointed out. More disturbing is the Hebrew Roots agenda behind this phenomenon. Mr. Rood, who I had never heard of until I found him referred to in your site, appears to flatly deny the divinity of God the Son, and this seems to be the enticement of an over interest in Hebrew Roots

I read with approval your rejection of that pornographic blood fest the Passion of the The Christ. As one of the press reviewers you cite says he wished he had never seen the film I stand encouraged in my refusal to see the thing. When it came out I closely studied the analyses produced by many people in the net. Also one of my best friends warned me that though he thought the movie "useful" that I would be traumatized and haunted by it. It seems to me that desiring to see such things is voyeuristic. If God saw fit to draw a veil of darkness over the land for the three worst hours of the ordeal, so that men could not see, who are we to seek to pierce this darkness to gawp at what transacted between the Father and The Son at that time.

To be honest I never forgave Gibson his botchup of history as he did in Braveheart, so I have not seen any of his since, and determine to stay that way

I rejected C S Lewis some years ago.

I read the Narnia stories nearly thirty years ago, so had forgotten some of the heretical details that appears in them, but I did think it awfully odd that when tempted to deny the presence of an oveworld when underground in "The Silver Chair" Puddleglum may say to the tempter "you may very well be right, but it is better to believe in him than you even if he is not real". Though I paraphrase from memory I think this accurate. I wrote a piece on this called "An Atheist Peeks Out". Are you interested in seeing it.

Of course the belief that all good people of all religions will be saved is pure heresy. I knew this when I read these stories as a new convert in 1978. But what drove me to despair was his book Mere Christianity

If it is a doubtful enterprise to find theology in fiction I think his Mere Christianity is proof enough he knew neither his subject nor his Lord. His advice to SHOVE THEM BACK (ie unbelieving thoughts) is both carnal striving and as legalism, the very royal road to apostasy as St Paul rebuked in the Galatians. And his dictum that as children grow by pretending so do we grow spiritual by the same, is preposterous. These two drove me to despair and only now am I able to repent of the delusions these were.

What helped dethrone the Don for me was in part A N Wilson's biography.

I am a keen writer and punster. I wrote this on Lewis' given name

MEDITATION ON A FAMOUS NAME

CS is well named

He would call CLEAVE-ing to christ
That CLEAVE -ing of will from feeling
He did in fear of his own heart

Thus was he STAPLE-d to Law
With twin spikes
Of fear - which is unbelief
And self righteousness
Driven through his own soul

This leaven of pharisees,
Might be a STAPLE of many
But is no
Heavenly Food

For the GREAT - est DIVORCE
Was not that he wrote about
Rather it was that he practised,
And has enjoined upon us,

As This PILGRIM, though reborn
Has REGRESS - ed to the
Errors of his youth
Claptrap in
Puritania

His Hoof might not
Be CLOVEN
But his doctrine served
Him whose was,
For which Father of Lies
Was it who first said
In Heavenly clime
Let's Pretend?

For Tho he would be
King of his flesh
in dominination
Of repression,
He was in
Such dishonesty
No CLOVIS (whence the name LEWIS)
The frank

O Jack!
Why sought you not Jesus
earlier instead
of later

Only one Joy
might you have lost
not both,
And a GRIEF might have
Been OBSERVED
Rather than a
Despair publicized.

O what a pity
You sought
Christ-i-an -ity,
Instead of the Christ
YES,
HIM!

You have my permission to publish on your site, if you are so minded, anything I send you as long as my author's name is clearly appended.

yours in Christ

Steve Meikle

Christchurch

New Zealand

All Scriptures from the KJB