And so we begin...

Welcome to the If Jesus Went Hot Tubbing Project Blog.

This blog is managed by Luke Holzmann and Jason Ackerman

First, a bit of history: Luke and I (Jason) met in college and our similar experiences and ideologies in a number of areas drew us together. The subject of dating systems was one major area (though we won't get into that here) and another was our common struggle with Lust. This prompted many (usually late night) discussions on what lust was, how to deal with it, and how to treat girls in uplifting ways generally. And honestly we never seemed to figure it out. The "solutions" we heard in church or chapel or books didn't work for long, and after awhile we just kinda shelved the subject while we waited for a better idea to come along.

Now fast forward a couple years. Luke graduated and married, and I left school to go work at a Christian youth camp. In November '06 when my Dad passed away, Luke got on a plane instantly to come be with me for awhile. I picked Luke up at the airport, and drove up to Camp to get more pictures for a memorial slide show we were putting together. So it was a short roadtrip of sorts, and gave us between 8-10 hours riding in my truck to talk and catch up. During that time we discussed where our current thoughts on lust had gone in the last couple years, and Luke had some fascinating new ideas. As we drove through the deep forest roads and bounced these ideas around, a larger and more encompassing philosophy/worldview on the subject developed. We had significant progress on the questions of What is Lust? What is Beauty? How did the Fall change Beauty in the human form? Why hasn't the Church's approach to Lust worked? And at one point, while working out this new approach, we realized "We've never heard anything like this!" So we started the outline that became the foundation for a new book that we are coauthoring.

This blog is dedicated to giving you, our friends and readers, a glimpse into the development of our ideas as we write the book currently known as If Jesus Went Hot Tubbing. Major project updates and segments of the book in-progress will be posted here. You are also welcome to join our Google Group forum to discuss the book and its related topics. If you totally agree with us or think we're absolutely off our rockers, please come tell us! Feedback and discussion are what the forums are all about.

Luke and I are both very excited. We don't know where this will end up going but we feel these ideas are important and need to be heard. Thanks for your interest in our project, we'd be very interested in your comments.