Josh McDowell's Blog, page 29

Can Science Explain Morality?

 

 

Original post by Sean McDowell here. Used with permission.

 

Human beings have a universal belief in right and wrong. As C.S. Lewis has observed, moral codes from cultures throughout world history vary over what specific behavior they consider moral, but there is an underlying agreement that objective moral values and duties exists.

As my father and I state in the introduction of the updated Evidence that Demands a Verdict, any adequate worldview must be able to explain this feature of reality.

 

Science and Morality

In his book The Moral Landscape, atheist Sam Harris claims science can provide a basis for objective morality. But in his recent book Stealing from God, my friend Frank Turek has written a piercing response:

Science might be able to tell you if an action may hurt someone—like giving a man cyanide will kill him—but science can’t tell you whether or not you ought to hurt someone. Who said it’s wrong to hurt people? Sam Harris? Is his nature the standard of good? 

In other words, science is a descriptive discipline, but morality is a prescriptive discipline.

Science can describe how things work, but it can never tell us how we ought to behave.

Another popular explanation for morality is evolution.

 

Evolution and Morality

A few years ago, I participated in a public debate on the question of God and morality. My opponent argued that evolution explains morality better than God. But this explanation also fails too. Frank Beckwith and Greg Koukl offer two reasons:

First, evolution doesn’t explain what it’s meant to explain. It can only account for preprogrammed behavior, not moral choices. Moral choices, by their nature, are made by free agents. They are not determined by internal mechanics.

Second, the Darwinist explanation reduces morality to mere descriptions of behavior. The morality that evolution needs to account for, however, entails much more than conduct. Minimally, it involves motive and intent as well. Both are nonphysical elements that can’t, even in principle, evolve in a Darwinian sense.

Further, this assessment of morality, being descriptive only, ignores the most important moral question of all: Why should I be moral tomorrow? Evolution cannot answer that question. Morality dictates what future behavior ought to be. Darwinism can only attempt to describe why humans acted in a certain way in the past.

Science and evolution simply cannot adequately explain the origin of right and wrong. They are both incapable of offering a robust account for why humans have moral obligations.

And yet theism offers a much more natural explanation. Think about it: Valuable human beings don’t come from purposeless, random processes in nature.

Rather, they come from a personal, good God. God Himself is the source for right and wrong, and we ought to follow His guidance because He is the one who created us.

Even those who don’t believe in God, still believe in objective morality, because the moral law is written on their hearts (See Romans 2:14-16). Belief in objective morality is ultimately inescapable.

Science can explain many things. But it will never be able to adequately account for morality.

To explain real right and wrong we need a source beyond human efforts – namely, God.

 

 

Sean McDowell, Ph.D. is a professor of Christian Apologetics at Biola University, best-selling author, popular speaker, part-time high school teacher, and the Resident Scholar for Summit Ministries, California. Follow him on Twitter: @sean_mcdowell and his blog: seanmcdowell.org.

 

 

 Frank Turek, Stealing from God (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2014), 100.

 Greg Koukl and Francis Beckwith, Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1998), 164.

 

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Journey Together

Welcome, friends! We’re so excited to launch a new blog series called Journey Together ! We’re thrilled to have you join us!

Life! So full of questions and fears! You know it’s ok to have doubts, right? And to ask questions — even of God?

As humans, we have an insatiable thirst for knowledge and understanding that we daily try to fill. We want to understand our surroundings, our experiences, and the mysteries of life. We also want to enjoy life — and to live fully, with purpose. Deep down we yearn to be amazing people, right?

But how do we get there? Can we really know and trust that God exists and cares? Can we trust that what He says is true? And that when we apply His standards to our lives, we really can live our best life possible?

Let’s journey together and find out! My team of bloggers and I would like to walk with you through a year-long journey … a quest, really, of discovery … together. Think of it as a treasure adventure!

We’ll start at the beginning. And we’ll do so without using a lot of deep church lingo. We’ll dig into subjects that our founder and President, Josh McDowell, has researched and taught for decades, as well as stories from other people that will help us to make sense of life, so that we can live fully — and effectively encourage and share our faith with others.

Here’s a preview of our weekly blog lineup:

Belief Basics (January – April)

Our journey will begin before the compilation of our modern Bible. In our next blog post, for example, Josh shares why he finds it so emotional to hold a centuries-old Torah scroll in his hands. Each week, as we journey through historical facts, we will determine whether our belief in Christ has merit, and why we should allow our Christian beliefs to influence every aspect of our lives.

Belief Affects Our Relationships (May – July)

What we believe at our core affects everything about us, from our self-image and self-worth to the relationships we have with others. In an increasingly secular world, we desperately need a Christ-based perspective when it comes parenting and marriage.

Belief Affects Our Morals (Aug – Nov)

Whether we’re struggling with issues related to tolerance, religion, morality, sexuality, or love, our belief structure decidedly influences our choices and how we respond to culture.

A Life of Freedom (Nov – Dec)

Life is hard, but we can live fully — and in freedom. Let’s experience the wholeness and solutions to be found in living as God asks of us. Let’s live lives fueled by strength of character, purpose, and meaning!

As we journey together this year, we’ll keep asking and answering these four questions:

“Why am I here?”
“What is truth?”
“Why should I believe this truth?”
“How does this truth affect my everyday life?”

This is going to be fun! We’re thrilled you’re taking this journey with us! Feel free to contact us, at any time, with questions you might have about the content we cover!

Christina (Chrissy) Hleboff Gordon is Josh McDowell Ministry’s Social Media and Digital Marketing Manager. She lives in the Dallas area with her husband and four kids and enjoys all sorts of adventure.

Our next post: Josh shares his emotional response to the Lodz Scroll here!

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Is Being Good Enough to Get to Heaven?

 

 

Original post by Sean McDowell here. Used with permission.

 

Some time ago, I had an in-depth discussion with a college student about the morality of hell. Even though I provided every philosophical and theological justification I could muster, he simply couldn’t accept that a loving and just God would send anyone to hell.

After about an hour of conversation, it finally dawned on me. His primary problem was that he believed in the essential goodness of mankind. From his perspective, hell seemed like total overkill for basically good people who commit a few small indiscretions.

In one sense, he’s right. If hell were the consequence for small missteps, it would seem remarkably unjust. However, in The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis has rightly observed, “When we say that we are bad, the ‘wrath’ of God seems a barbarous doctrine; as soon as we perceive our badness, it appears inevitable, a mere corollary from God’s goodness.”

 

Human Nature in the Bible

The Bible has a very stark view of human nature (Ps. 14:3; Rom 7:18; Titus 1:15; Mark 7:20-23). While human beings are the most valuable creation of a loving God, we have utterly rebelled against our Creator. We are deeply affected by sin. In his Systematic Theology, Wayne Grudem explains:

“It is not just that some parts of us are sinful and others are pure. Rather, every part of our being is affected by sin—our intellects, our emotions and desires, our hearts (the center of our desires and decision-making processes), our goals and motives, and even our physical bodies.”

Thus, from a biblical perspective, God doesn’t send good people to hell; there is no such thing as a good person. And that includes you and me.

 

Human Nature in History

This depiction of human nature can be confirmed by looking at the history of humanity. My colleague Clay Jones has spent decades studying the problem of evil. He closely examined the evil perpetrated in the twentieth century by Nazis in Germany, communists in Russia, China, and Cambodia, the Japanese in World War II, and other nations including Turkey, Pakistan, Uganda, Sudan, and the United States. After immersing himself in these human tragedies, Jones concluded:

One day I was reading The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang, in the course of reading about one sickening rape or torture or murder after another, suddenly I was struck by the fact that horrendous evil is human and that most books on theodicy didn’t go far enough. Those who do genocide are not inhuman monsters—they’re all too human. They are precisely human. Genocide is what the race of Adam does.

Human fallenness makes the gospel powerful: we can only appreciate the extent of the work of Christ when we understand the evil and corruption we and the world truly contain. This does not mean unbelievers cannot do some good in society—of course they can! However, sin has separated us so deeply from God that we have no power to save ourselves apart from God’s grace (Eph. 2:1, 2).

 

Why Jesus Came

This is why Jesus came, and this is ultimately what we are celebrating this Christmas season. Although Jesus was (and is) fully God, he humbled himself to take on human flesh (Phil. 2:5–7) and experience the death that humans deserve. As a result, we can experience forgiveness for our sins and come to know God personally (John 17:1–5). Jesus explains:

“For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

So, is it enough to be a “good” person? It’s true that many people may live outwardly good lives, but for Jesus evil is a matter of the heart. According to Jesus no one is good (Mark 10:18). Anyone who honestly reflects upon his life, and sincerely probes his heart, knows that this is true. Our only hope is found in Jesus Christ, the one mediator between God and man (1 Tim. 2:5).

*This article was adapted from the updated and expanded Evidence that Demands a Verdict.

 

 

Sean McDowell, Ph.D. is a professor of Christian Apologetics at Biola University, best-selling author, popular speaker, part-time high school teacher, and the Resident Scholar for Summit Ministries, California. Follow him on Twitter: @sean_mcdowell and his blog: seanmcdowell.org.

 

 Clay Jones, Why Does God Allow Evil? (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 2016), 48.

 

 

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Is Christianity A Copycat Religion? Quick VIDEO

Original post by Sean McDowell here. Used with permission.

Sean McDowell, Ph.D. is a professor of Christian Apologetics at Biola University, best-selling author, popular speaker, part-time high school teacher, and the Resident Scholar for Summit Ministries, California. Follow him on Twitter: @sean_mcdowell and his blog: seanmcdowell.org.

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3 Failed Naturalistic Attempts at Explaining Consciousness

 

 

Original post by Sean McDowell here. Used with permission.

 

The existence and reality of consciousness present one of the most pressing challenges to metaphysical naturalism (the view that only physical things exist). In naturalism, everything that exists should be describable in physical terminology, including properties such as weight, size, and location.

But we all experience certain subjective aspects of the world that resist such explanation.

In his book Mind & Cosmos, Atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel explains why consciousness poses such an intractable problem for naturalism:

Consciousness is the most conspicuous obstacle to a comprehensive naturalism that relies only on the resources of physical science. The existence of consciousness seems to imply that the physical description of the universe, in spite of its richness and explanatory power, is only part of the truth, and that the natural order is far less austere than it would be if physics and chemistry accounted for everything. If we take this problem seriously, and follow out its implications, it threatens to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture. Yet it is very difficult to imagine a viable alternative (p. 35).

Naturalists have offered a variety of explanations for consciousness. In the introduction to the updated Evidence that Demands a Verdict, my father and I offer responses to three of the most common ones:

 

Naturalistic Attempt #1: Behaviorism:
Essentially, behaviorists reduce mental attributes to some observable behavior.

Nagel offers a cogent response:

It is certainly true that mental phenomena have behavioral manifestations, which supply our main evidence for them in other creatures. Yet all these theories seem insufficient as analyses of the mental because they leave out something essential that lies beyond the externally observable grounds for attributing mental states to others, namely, the aspect of mental phenomena that is evidence from first-person, inner point of view of the conscious subject: for example, the way sugar tastes to you or the way red looks or anger feels, each of which seems to be something more than the behavioral responses and discriminatory capacities that these experiences explain. Behaviorism leaves out the inner mental state itself. (p. 38)

 

Naturalistic Attempt #2: Evolution:
On this view, consciousness emerges from the process of natural selection, acting upon random mutation, and offers survival advantages to species.

In The Mysterious Flame, Philosopher Colin McGinn explains why evolution fails to explain consciousness:

But in the case of consciousness the Darwinian explanation does not tell us what we need to know, for the simple reason that it is unclear how matter can be so organized as to create a conscious being. The problem is in the raw materials. It looks as if with consciousness a new kind of reality has been injected into the universe, instead of just a recombination of the old realities. Even if minds showed no hint of design, the same old problem would exist: How can mere matter originate consciousness? How did evolution convert the water of biological tissue into the wine of consciousness?

 

Naturalistic Attempt #3: Identity:
This approach claims the mind and brain are simply two different terms that refer to the same physical reality.

But the problem with this attempt is that physical objects have different properties than mental objects. Mental objects do not have extension in space, weight, or location. And unlike mental states, physical objects cannot be of or about anything. They just are. Therefore, mental states are not identical to physical states.

 

Consciousness as Evidence for God

There are other naturalistic attempts to explain consciousness, but the reality is that naturalism has no plausible way to explain the emergence of mental properties.

And yet the existence of consciousness makes sense within the theistic worldview. If God is a supremely conscious being, and he has created us, then it makes perfect sense for human beings to be conscious agents who experience the world. God has both the power and incentive to create conscious beings.

The existence of consciousness does not prove God’s existence. But it is undeniable feature of reality that fits a lot more naturally into the theistic worldview.

 

 

Sean McDowell, Ph.D. is a professor of Christian Apologetics at Biola University, best-selling author, popular speaker, part-time high school teacher, and the Resident Scholar for Summit Ministries, California. Follow him on Twitter: @sean_mcdowell and his blog: seanmcdowell.org.

 

 

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Why Does God Allow Natural Evil? Quick VIDEO

Original post by Sean McDowell here. Used with permission.

Sean McDowell, Ph.D. is a professor of Christian Apologetics at Biola University, best-selling author, popular speaker, part-time high school teacher, and the Resident Scholar for Summit Ministries, California. Follow him on Twitter: @sean_mcdowell and his blog: seanmcdowell.org.

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I Thank God for My Doubts: A Personal Reflection

 

 

Original post by Sean McDowell here. Used with permission.

 

It might sound crazy, but I can honestly say that I thank God for my doubts.

It’s not that I always appreciate having doubts. Sometimes doubts can be a burden. But even so, I realize something deeper about the reason God has for my doubts. Let me explain.

I am a consistent doubter. I doubt almost everything including purchases, beliefs, and my daily choices. It is simply the way I am wired (and probably also the result of having a father who constantly challenged me to think). To be honest, sometimes the doubts can seem crushing. So, why would I thank God for them?

The answer is simple: It’s doubts that drive me to seek truth.

That’s right, doubts drive me to read, study, think, question, and constantly try to uncover what is true. It bothers me to not know something, and I tirelessly try to uncover truth about it.

Without my doubts, I doubt (yes, pun intended) that I would have written a 300+ page academic book on the Fate of the Apostles or helped my father update his classic book Evidence that Demands A Verdict, which is 800 pages. I certainly am motivated to create resources that genuinely help people, but so much of my own drive comes from my personal doubts and skepticism. I want to be confident about what I believe.

A few years ago, I was lamenting that God didn’t give me more faith. I have a pastor friend who clearly has the gift of faith. He’s always optimistic about his family, faith, and church. No matter how dim things get, he’ll constantly say, “Don’t worry. God is in control. He’s got this.”

Yet, as much as I believe him, I still find myself thinking, “But how do you really know? What if God has other plans? Are you sure?” I just can’t help it. I question things. But why? Ultimately, I think there are two reasons.

First, as I mentioned above, doubts motivate me to study, research, learn, and go deeper in my understanding.

If it were not such a skeptic, I would probably never spend so much time trying to learn and educate other believers. If you have a weakness, have you ever considered how God may have a deeper purpose for it?

Second, and perhaps most important, my doubts drive me to rest in God’s grace rather than my own understanding.

When doubts plague me, and I can’t resolve something in my mind, I am driven to God for his mercy. Jude 1:22 says to “have mercy on those who doubt.” And I often think of the powerful words spoken by the Apostle Paul, when he reflected on his own weakness: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).

God uses our weaknesses to draw us into deeper relationship with Him and for greater personal sanctification.

In fact, God seems to enjoy using our weaknesses and shortcoming, so that He gets the glory. These are life-changing truths for which I rarely doubt.

 

 

Sean McDowell, Ph.D. is a professor of Christian Apologetics at Biola University, best-selling author, popular speaker, part-time high school teacher, and the Resident Scholar for Summit Ministries, California. Follow him on Twitter: @sean_mcdowell and his blog: seanmcdowell.org.

 

 

 

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Should Christians Practice Apologetics?

At Josh McDowell Ministry, we focus a great deal on Christian Apologetics. In other words, we work hard to defend Christianity, providing reasons to help people confidently believe in Jesus and the Christian message.

In another one of my articles, I sought to defend the biblical case for apologetics. Peter, Apollos, Paul and Jesus all modeled or spoke about apologetics at some level in a positive light. This provides plenty of reason for Christians to be engaged in that kind of work. However, there are still some objections against the practice of Christian apologetics which are worth mentioning. Although I reject these objections, they often contain valid concerns which any Christian apologist should bear in mind. Because of this, I encourage all of my readers to work through these points no matter where you stand on this issue. I will address three different concerns. Here they are:

1. “You don’t need to defend God.”

Perhaps you have heard it said against apologetics: “God is a lion. You don’t need to defend a lion. Just open the cage!” The idea is that the God doesn’t need our help. He doesn’t need a lawyer or an attorney. This illustration originated from the great preacher Charles Spurgeon. In one of his sermons from 1986, he writes:

A great many learned men are defending the gospel; no doubt it is a very proper and right thing to do, yet I always notice that, when there are most books of that kind, it is because the gospel itself is not being preached. Suppose a number of persons were to take it into their heads that they had to defend a lion, a full-grown king of beasts! There he is in the cage, and here come all the soldiers of the army to fight for him. Well, I should suggest to them, if they would not object, and feel that it was humbling to them, that they should kindly stand back, and open the door, and let the lion out! (1)

Unfortunately, this quote is sometimes presented without the first sentence. Spurgeon is not opposed to defending the gospel; he says that “it is a very proper and right thing to do.” His concern in when apologetics is used in replacement of the proclamation of the Gospel, which, by the way, is very very bad! Apologetics is meant to serve the Gospel; it does not exist for its own sake. If your apologetics does not move toward the proclamation of the Gospel, you better think long and hard about what you are trying to use it for!

Regardless of what Spurgeon thought of these matters, isn’t it still true that God doesn’t need our help defending Him? Certainly. In fact, it could be said that God doesn’t need us to open up His cage, either! It could even be said that God doesn’t need us at all! But it’s plain in Scripture that God has chosen to create us to and to use us to proclaim His Gospel (2 Tim. 4:2) and to demolish arguments against God (2 Cor. 10:5). So it’s not like apologetics, in itself, is some idea foreign to the Gospel, distracting us from what God is trying to do. Apologetics, through human agency, was in God’s program all along!

2. “You can’t argue a person into Christianity.”

I agree. Apologetics was never meant to argue a person into Christianity. If you think that apologetics can be used to argue people into Christianity, then you are misusing apologetics and it won’t work. Again, apologetics is meant to serve the Gospel. If you are familiar with Josh McDowell’s story coming to faith in Christ, you know how he tried to disprove Christianity but ended up being faced is an overwhelming supply of evidence in favor of the Christian faith. However, Josh will tell you that apologetics didn’t save him. It didn’t get him onto the other side of the cross. It simply cleared the way.

I am happy to submit that apologetics is not the only path by which God reveals Himself to the unsaved. Take a look at the different salvation stories of the New Testament. For some people, all it took was to simply look at Jesus and to marvel at His saving power (the second criminal on the cross, Luke 23:39-43). For others, they came to believe when scripture was explained to them (Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, Acts 8:27-38). Others became followers after being persuaded through the work of apologetics (Paul in the synagogues, Acts 17:1-4). Others came to faith after witnessing divine miracles (Pentecost, Acts 2). Most of these stories include a presentation of the Gospel, which is so important. All of them include the work of God who showed up and opened their hearts, which is absolutely imperative! So, apologetics is not everything. But it is something. As evangelists, our tool belt should be equipped with every tool God has given us. Apologetics is one of those tools, and it must find its proper place within God’s action to seek and save the lost.

3. “Apologetics ruins faith.”

One of the concerns about apologetics, particularly when it is presented among fellow Christians, is that it is antithetical to faith. If you know why you believe something, what is the point of faith? Why is faith even needed if we are convinced in our minds that something is true?

This objection against apologetics seems to understand “faith” as a blind faith, a non-intellectual acceptance of Biblical data where we embrace the truth of God without any good reason for doing so. Proponents of this objection may cite Hebrews 11:1 which speaks of faith as a “conviction of things not seen.” The worry is that once we introduce reasons for embracing God’s truth, faith is lost and replaced by reason.

It is true that Hebrews 11:1 defines faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” but this is not blind faith at all. Just keep reading! Multiple examples of faith are presented to us. “By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark” (v. 7). “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going” (v. 8). “By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin” (v. 23-24). In these examples, faith is belief in action. It is a forward-looking trust in God and a posture of obedience. Faith looks like something! Since apologetics doesn’t do that for us, it does not disrupt faith. Further, if you look up the word “conviction” from the phrase “conviction of things not seen” in our best Biblical Greek dictionaries, you will find that it is understood as “the act of presenting evidence for the truth of something” (BDAG) or “the evidence, normally based on argument or discussion, as to the truth or reality of something” (Louw and Nida). So you cannot argue that faith is blind using Hebrews 11:1.

To be clear, I think apologetics can disrupt our walk with God if we are not careful. Sometimes we think ourselves pious if we can win an argument, but we don’t even have a prayer life and we read the Bible as a textbook to be mastered rather than as the word of God meant to cut us to the soul and discern the thoughts and attitudes of our hearts (Heb 4:12). We may hide ourselves in apologetics rather than in God, and we may wield apologetics as a way to attain a worldly form of power. None of these things are good, but this the misuse of apologetics. In fact, almost any form of Christian spirituality can used to “manage” God rather than to help us draw near to Him. Let us strive to avoid these temptations as we peruse our life with God!

(1) C. H. Spurgeon, “Christ and His Co-Workers,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 42 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1896), 256.

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Why Doesn’t God Answer My Prayers? Quick VIDEO

Original post by Sean McDowell here. Used with permission.

Sean McDowell, Ph.D. is a professor of Christian Apologetics at Biola University, best-selling author, popular speaker, part-time high school teacher, and the Resident Scholar for Summit Ministries, California. Follow him on Twitter: @sean_mcdowell and his blog: seanmcdowell.org.

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Does Christian Hypocrisy Undermine the Reasonability of the Faith?

 

 

Original post by Sean McDowell here. Used with permission.

 

Christian hypocrisy has done massive damage to the Christian faith.

According to author and social critic Os Guinness, the challenge of hypocrisy is second only to the problem of suffering and evil, and is one of the main reasons people duck the challenge of the gospel.

Hypocrisy is such a massive challenge, says Guinness, because Christians are called to be God’s witnesses to the world (Isa. 43:10; John 3:28):

 

“In other words, before we are asked to preach, proclaim or try to persuade people of the claims of Jesus and his Father, we are asked simply to be witnesses for him—to provide an honest and factual account of what we have seen and heard objectively, and what we ourselves have experienced (‘Once I was blind, but now I can see’)—and to live lives that support what we say.”

 

It is tempting for Christians to respond by pointing out the hypocrisy in other people and worldviews.

For instance, the voices of tolerance and inclusiveness are often remarkably intolerant and non-inclusive of people with traditional values. Such hypocrisy should be rightly pointed out. But this doesn’t get Christians off the hook. After all, James said, “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22).

Christians are called to a higher standard. Whether we like it or not, people will judge the truthfulness of Christianity by the lives of its adherents.

As with the charge that the church has caused injustice in the world, Christians should first look inside and see if there is any merit to this claim. Have we been hypocritical in any way? Have our lives betrayed our principles? Have we contributed to this narrative?

Rather than blame others, we need to take an honest look inside, identify our own hypocrisy, repent of it, and then admit our shortcomings.
As for the claim itself, it is an example of a “genetic fallacy,” which is a claim that is dismissed because of some perceived fault in its origin (its genesis).

Guinness explains,

 

There is an important difference between the source of a truth claim and the standard by which it should be assessed. It is therefore wrong to reject a claim just because of the character and condition of its source. . . . The issue is always truth, and truth is not a matter of where someone is “coming from” or how oddly or shabbily they have behaved in the past before making the claim. . . . If the Christian faith is true, it would still be true even if no one believed it, or if all who did were hypocrites; and if it is false, would still be false even if everyone believed it and there was no apparent hypocrisy in their behavior (196).

 

If you are upset about hypocrisy in the church, then you are in good company—Jesus felt the same way.

Jesus criticized the Pharisees for their religious hypocrisy, calling them blind guides, snakes, and even killers of the prophets (Matt. 23). He condemned them for not practicing what they preached. If hypocrisy troubles you, then you’re on the side of Jesus.

If you are not a believer, and have been dismissing Christianity because of the failure of Christians, I am sorry that Christians have let you down. But Jesus never will. Maybe it’s time to consider the message of Christ himself.

Have you considered the evidence that he is actually God in human flesh? If Jesus is not God, then Christianity is certainly false. But if he is God, then everything changes. That’s why Jesus said that the most important question is, “Who do you say that I am?” (Mark 8:29).

 

Sean McDowell, Ph.D. is a professor of Christian Apologetics at Biola University, best-selling author, popular speaker, part-time high school teacher, and the Resident Scholar for Summit Ministries, California. Follow him on Twitter: @sean_mcdowell and his blog: seanmcdowell.org.

 

 Os Guinness, Fool’s Talk (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2015), 188.

 

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