CARM skin by StillWaterBased on the look of www.carm.org (Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry)My other skins are here:http://www.1001winamp
CARM skin by StillWater
Based on the look of www.carm.org (Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry)
My other skins are here:
http://www.1001winampskins.com/member_profile.html?author_id=13265
I made this skin for two reasons:
(1) I like the simple, minimalist design of www.carm.org, and had been wanting to make a simple, highly-functional skin. So I made one modelled on that site. I'm quite happy with it - I think it's a pretty nice-looking and (unlike most of my other skins) very easy to use skin.
(2) I recently found CARM to be a very useful site, for reasons mentioned below.
For years now, I'd wondered whether God existed, and hoped pretty hard that He didn't. Late in 2003, I finally got serious about it and put my aetheism to the test: I prayed - earnestly asking God (if He existed) to give my doubting, skeptical mind some clarity - I felt I could never be convinced of His existence by a human being - only God Himself could do that. I pledged that if He somehow revealed Himself to me, I would acknowledge Him as my Lord.
After praying, I wondered if anything would come of it. I didn't have to wait long. A few minutes later, an immense Energy starting pouring into me - one of the most physically intense experiences - and by far the most spiritually exhilarating - I'd ever had. It was the Holy Spirit pouring into me, cleansing and revitalising me.
I was on a high for weeks, and have since been amazed with how strongly and profoundly the Holy Spirit is changing me. Sometimes this change is met by me with jubilation, sometimes grudingly and with stubborness akin to a kid desparately trying to pull away as his parents try to get him into his first day of school. I always thought that "born-again Christian" was just a buzz-word, but I've now realised that's just what it is. Once you accept God, and He gives you the Holy Spirit, you hand over the reigns of your life, so to speak, over to Him and you start becoming a new person. But this time, the decision as to what sort of person you'll be is made by the One that created you, instead of by smart-arsed, egotistical, small-minded little you.
Anyway, once God had 'blown me away' by showing me that He existed, I was left scratching my head. I knew very little about Christianity, and had spent most of my life spurning it and thinking it to be incorrect, purely moralistic, aspiritual drivel - a cultural phenomenon and nothing more. Now, I realised that it was the Truth, and i realised how little - even for a man - I knew about that Truth. It was like I was placed, overnight, into a strange new land, and I desperately needed some kind of map! I knew for sure that God existed and that He had blessed me with the Holy Spirit, but as to the actual religion - the doctrines, the beliefs, the real nature of Jesus Christ, the Church, the schisms, and the differences of opinion in the various denominations, my intellect still had a million uncertain, doubting, skeptical questions about the whole thing.
I had a whole lot of learning and discovering to do. Reading books by John Stott and C.S. Lewis helped a lot, as well as reading the Bible, of course. www.carm.org helped me a lot too. It contains a wealth of information - tackling questions about just about any topic related to Christianity - conflicting religions, varying beliefs, seemingly contradictory passages in the Bible, seemingly 'hard-to-swallow' stuff like Noah's Ark and Creationism, and so on.
The section on evolution was particularly illuminating - I'd never suspected how flawed the theory of evolution was - even many aetheist scientists don't believe it - it just doesn't hold up. The fact that hardly any laymen nowadays doubt the theory of evolution is a beautiful example of how unquestioning and naive blind-faith affects not just religious people.
Reason (2) for making this skin is my little token of gratitude for this website - with its huge resource of information - being there when I craved just such a resource of information :)
Anyway, I hope you like the skin.
StillWater.
