Josh McDowell's Blog, page 31

Effectively Dialogue With Skeptics: Part 1

“Prove Your God Exists!”

When we Christians hear that, most of us start sweating. As if the entire weight of proving the truth of Christianity rests on our puny shoulders! But we also start sweating because we feel our egos to be on the line. To be a Christian, we’re told by skeptics, is to be feeble-minded, if not stupid.

Friends, let us collectively exhale a long, calming breath. Relax our clenched fists and jaws. And open our hearts. Now is not the time to be filled with righteous anger; to act as if a challenge to our faith demands that we charge into battle for Christ with a “take no prisoners” mindset.

Rather, let’s view a skeptic’s challenge with this perspective: that we’re simply stepping into a God-ordained opportunity to demonstrate to this person the grace and love of Christ.

We’re not answering a question, but a questioner, suggests Ravi Zacharias, a world-famous apologist known for the disarming, respectful manner in which he dialogues with skeptics. What should come through loud and clear, he stresses, is our love for people and God (which, incidentally, Jesus designated as the greatest commandment). Adds Zacharias, “A word in season can bring to fruit that which only God can nurture and nourish.”

Skeptics, he reminds us, won’t be open to hearing the Good News, if they don’t also see it in action.

In this post, let’s talk about why our attitude is critical when we’re interacting with critics. In next week’s post, Part 2, we’ll identify some of the questions skeptics tend to ask — which you, dear Christian, should learn how to answer.

How Could A Loving God Send a Good Person to Hell? 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 Science Disprove Miracles?

Photo by Quino Al

Science says the universe operates only within its natural laws. True or false?

Science says that when a person dies, they stay dead. So how do Christians find it possible to believe that Jesus rose after His death on the cross? Because of the supernatural — miraculous — component of His death. That singular, seemingly improbable event becomes a possibility for anyone open to the possibility that God does exist.

David Hume, a Scottish philosopher from the 18th century, strongly influenced modern skepticism and naturalism. He asserted that though humans are influenced primarily by feelings, reason will always weigh strongly against miracle. Anyone who believes in miracles, he added, is both gullible and biased by their religious beliefs. But another influential thinker, Augustine of Hippo, argued that miracles are made possible by hidden capacities in nature placed there by God. That nature itself partners with God to produce the miraculous. 

The Bible highlights numerous miracles performed by God, Jesus, and His disciples. Some Christian teachers assert that miracles no longer occur, that they ceased with the death of Christ’s last apostle. Yet those who have personally experienced or witnessed a true miracle know that God is still very much in the miracle business.

Should we be skeptical when we hear report of a miracle? Absolutely, as we humans are easily fooled. In the words of magician Justin Willman, right before he ran an experiment to see if two people could be convinced that they’d become invisible, “If the tiniest bit of evidence will make us believe the unbelievable, what would I have to show someone to make them believe the impossible?”

Great question. Let’s take a look at seven characteristics of true miracles.

~ Seven Characteristics of Miracles ~
Miracles Are Supernatural, Immediate Events

By definition, miracles are events produced by an infinite power. That there is some great, external agent who brings about the event in our natural world. In the Bible, miracles come from the hand of God; they are immediate, and they are always successful. When Jesus commanded the invalid to “Arise and take up your pallet and walk” for example, the man immediately became well (John 5:8). When Jesus told Lazarus to step out of his death tomb, Lazarus immediately shuffled forward in his burial cloth. When Jesus told demons to beat it, they reluctantly exited. When Jesus decided to walk on water, it immediately carried His weight. When Jesus told the stormy winds to cease their fury, they instantly calmed. Bottom line: God always accomplished what He intended to accomplish, for His glory.

Miracles Are Rare and Unpredictable Events

Miracles are exceptions to the normal rhythm of life. But that’s what makes them miraculous. There is no “magic” formula that produces a miracle. Mankind has no say in whether they happen, though the Bible tells us that our prayers reach God’s ears. God doesn’t grant a miracle because we’re “good enough” or “spiritual enough.” He doesn’t grant miracles because we’ve successfully bribed Him. Rather, he chooses when and where to supernaturally move in our natural world, according to His plans. To heal, or not to heal, much to our consternation, lies solely in His hand.

Miracles Hold No Contradictions

God always works within scientific natural law, in keeping with the world He created. Yet there is nothing logically contradictory about some events considered physically impossible. Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli put it this way: “A man walking through a wall (as Jesus did) is a miracle. A man both walking and not walking through a wall at the same time and in the same respect is a contradiction. God can perform miracles but not contradictions — not because His power is limited, but because contradictions are meaningless.”

Miracles Are More Than Astonishing and Glorify God

Who doesn’t love a magic shows? A magician’s slight of hand mesmerizes us, delighting us with the seemingly impossible. But though a magician can perform an astonishing act, he or she can’t perform a supernatural event outside of natural means. Willman, for example, didn’t really make those two people invisible. When God performs a miracle, our minds are legitimately blown. When a 110-pound woman finds the strength to lift a car off of her child, is that a miracle? Science says no, that perhaps a huge spike in adrenaline produces momentary super strength. But could the reality be that God sent an angel to assist her?

Miracles Aren’t Testable By Scientific Means

True miracles can’t be tested via scientific inquiry, as they lack predictive value and can’t be replicated. Still, Science can’t exclude the possibility that God does unprecedented things. As Augustine wrote, “For Him, ‘nature’ is what He does.”

The usual argument against miracles, adds Oxford mathematician John Lennox, is that they go against the natural laws that Science has discovered. Lennox disagrees. Science proceeds on an assumption of cause and effect, he agrees, but its natural laws are not, themselves, causal. “No billiard balls have ever been set in motion by Newton’s Laws of Motion,” adds Lennox. “People wielding billiard cues set billiard balls in motion. But Newton’s Laws of Motion will describe the way in which a billiard ball moves once its set in motion.”

In his article posted to PhilosophyTalk.org, John Perry asks, “Should a sane, rational person ever believe in miracles?” No, he replies, unless you’ve ruled out all the non-miraculous first. My question: How far does one have to go to meet that requirement?

Suppose, adds Perry, that “I see you walking across the water — just like Jesus. There are no hidden walkways lurking below the surface. You’re not wearing inflatable shoes. You’re not being supported by gossamer rope tied to a helicopter. You haven’t learned to wiggle your toes rapidly enough to keep you afloat. Shouldn’t I conclude that the laws of physics have been locally suspended and we’ve got a genuine miracle on our hands?”

No, says Perry, because it’s more likely that we’ve still missed some other scientific alternative. “Look,” he asserts, “as soon as one is tempted to think he’s witnessed a miracle, he should stop and think again.”

Why is that?

Perry’s holdout: the “highly improbable” yet supposedly “possible” suggestion by scientists that the water molecules could, “completely by accident,” collect under our feet as we walk, bonding together strongly enough to form a kind of traveling bridge. “So maybe you can walk on water,” writes Terry, “but there are no miracles.”

Wait, what? An accidental, highly improbable traveling bridge of water doesn’t seem miraculous?

Perry may be among those who believe that the Bible story of the Red Sea’s parting, which allowed the Israelites to flea from Egypt’s fast approaching army, was due to a strong wind, not the hand of God. So, then, it was mere coincidence that the parted sea walls snapped shut, to drown Pharaoh’s army, only after the last Israelite stepped safely out of the water? Perhaps, except that the event happened just as God said it would.

In describing existence as an “open system,” Lennox adds that the natural laws serve to describe what Science has so far observed to happen, which become the basis for future prediction. But these man-made laws, he asserts, can’t “forbid God from feeding a new event into nature.” If God is the designer of the system, He can’t be held its prisoner.

Just because we hunt for a natural explanation doesn’t mean God wasn’t involved! It is flawed thinking to assume that because a miracle is unprecedented, its probability must be zero. 

Scientific observation can make miracles very improbable, agrees Lennox. But we have to stop pretending that Science isn’t handicapped by its inability to definitively prove theory — including the origin of the universe. Science claims evolution to be “fact” — when, in truth, is it merely its best current guess. Neo-Darwinian Evolution remains theory falsified by evidence, as a writer on EvolutionNews.com puts it — despite the scientific community adamantly asserting otherwise.

~ To Believe or Not to Believe ~

“Perhaps the universe is a pretty dull place,” posted a commenter anonymously on Perry’s post. “But, as a realist, I find that somehow comforting.”

I get his point, truly. The comforting makes us feel somewhat in control of things. But my response would be to simply ask, “What is it that keeps you from being open to acknowledging the miraculous?” 

Deep minds, such as Lennox and Richard Dawkins, continue to debate the existence of God. Dawkins says Science disproves the existence of God, whereas Lennox views Science to be a reflection of God’s nature. Skeptics, atheists, realists, and others who want God exiled from reasonable thought have personal reasons for their position. But it’s not from knowing with full certainty that God is just myth. And to use the excuse that they can’t believe until God is proven with 100 percent certainty is a flimsy argument. Closing our minds to the miraculous doesn’t in any way negate its existence.

For Christians, the basis for believing in the miraculous goes back to the biblical conception of God. Says the very first verse of the Bible, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). “If He has the ability to do this,” writes Abigail Biggs, “then a virgin birth, walking on water, feeding 5,000 people with a few loaves and fish, and the other biblical miracles become not only possible but expected.”

Hume argued that it is always more rational to disbelieve the testimony of a miracle than to believe in the miracle. But if there really is a God who created the world and designed its laws, He showed His ultimate mastery by raising His Son.

 

This blog post highlights Josh and Sean McDowell’s recently revised apologetics classic, Evidence That Demands a Verdict. We are certain this fully updated and expanded resource will be an effective evangelism tool for you, and strengthen your faith by answering the toughest questions tossed to you by skeptics. Know what you know, because it’s true. But share this truth with LOVE!

If you’d like to start from the first blog post in this series, click here: Apologetics: Apologizing for Believing in God?.

 

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What is the Most Powerful Evidence for the Christian Faith?

 

 

 

Original post by Sean McDowell here. Used with permission.

 

For the past three years I have been helping my father update his classic book Evidence that Demands a Verdict. There is no doubt that the evidence for Christianity has grown substantially since the book first released in 1972.

Since I have been working on this book people have been increasingly asking me, “What do you think is the most powerful evidence for the Christian faith?”

While I do think the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, the textual evidence for the reliability of the Bible, and the scientific evidence for a designer are persuasive, these are not the most powerful evidences.

So, what is it? At the beginning of Evidence, my father and I are clear that we believe there is a more powerful apologetic—

a clear, simple presentation of the claims of Christ and who he is, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Here is how my father explains it in the introduction:

For my (Josh’s) philosophical apologetics course at Talbot Theological Seminary, everyone had to write a paper on “The Best Defense of Christianity.” I found myself constantly putting it off and avoiding writing it, not because I didn’t have the material but because I felt I was at odds with what the professor was expecting (an expectation based on the ream of my lecture notes from his class).

Finally, I decided to voice my convictions. I began my paper with the sentence, “Some people say the best offense is a good defense, but I say to you that the best defense is a good offense.” I proceeded by explaining that I felt the best defense of Christianity is a “clear, simple presentation of the claims of Christ and who he is, in the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Then I wrote out the “Four Spiritual Laws” and recorded my testimony of how, on December 19, 1959, at 8:30 p.m., during my second year at the university, I placed my trust in Christ as Savior and Lord. I concluded the paper with a presentation of the evidence for the resurrection.

The professor must have agreed with my approach that the best defense of Christianity is a clear and compelling presentation of the gospel, for he gave me an A.

William Tyndale was right in saying that “a ploughboy with the Bible would know more of God that the most learned ecclesiastic who ignored it.”

In other words, an Arkansas farm boy sharing the gospel can be more effective in the long run than a Harvard scholar with his intellectual arguments.

 

Although it may surprise some people, since my father is known for presenting “evidences” for the faith, he has always lived by this principle. I have seen him present the evidence for Christianity on countless occasions, but his goal is always to bring it back to the gospel.

After all, it is the gospel that has the power to set people free.

We hope you enjoy the updated Evidence. But just remember: It’s not the evidence alone that changes lives.

Apologetics is one critical tool God can use to draw people to Him. We are to be ready with an answer for our faith (see 1 Peter 3:15).

But when it is all said and done, the most powerful apologetic is a clear and compelling presentation of the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit.

 

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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The Power of Grace-Filled Parenting

Perhaps you know this first-hand: parenting children to make right moral choices can be really tough.

You tell your kids the dos and don’ts — which you’ve put in place to guide and protect them — then watch in dismay when they choose to disobey. You sigh because you know what’s coming: you have to determine how best to discipline your kids without them adopting a defensive, rebellious attitude. “But everybody else’s parents let them do it!” they cry. “Or you’re just being mean. You don’t love me!”

Oy! What parent doesn’t cringe at hearing those words, as they recall memories of their saying the very words to their own parents? The easy route, of course, is to give in. But because we really do love our kids, we must set and enforce the rules and expectations we have for them. It’s a sad thing when parents give in simply because they’re worn out by the struggle of parenting a willful child. Let’s face it, this parenting stuff isn’t easy, even when you’re giving it your all.

Now a grandparent, Josh McDowell understands the challenge of raising kids in an increasingly secular world. In his new book, Set Free to Choose Right, Josh highlights some of the tough parenting issues through the use of two fictional parents, Brad and Audrey. Among other parenting issues, Brad and Audrey are struggling with how to get their teen son Jayden to understand the negative ramifications of his use of pornography. Brad and Audrey make some missteps in interacting with Jayden, but eventually succeed in opening his eyes to the consequences of a porn addiction.

Their secret to doing so? By clearly, and consistently interacting with Jayden without condemnation or shaming. In other words, they employ grace-filled parenting.

Readers of Set Free to Choose Right gain practical wisdom by watching how Brad and Audrey handle this issue, which can be applied to numerous other temptations enticing kids today. To succeed, Brad and Audrey first had to face some issues in their own thinking. Let’s look at those in a bit more detail.

Your child’s “who” isn’t determined by his or her “do” — just as your occasional missteps don’t define you. By parenting with grace, you can help your children to move past their bad choices, so they don’t cart them along as baggage into adulthood. 

Brad and Aubrey have to see Jayden’s actions as being separate from his personhood.

One of the most powerful movie moments I’ve ever watched is a poignant scene between a father and his son in the movie Blood Diamond. The boy, previously kidnapped by a gang, was forced to do horrific acts of violence. “I know they made you do bad things,” says the father, as tears pour down his face. “But you are not a bad boy. I am your father, who loves you. And you will come home with me and be my son again.”

As parents, we must recognize that our children’s action are NOT a reflection on our character — just as our actions are not a reflection on theirs. And that sometimes our kids will do bad things, even if they don’t want or mean to. Loving with grace, then, is an intentional commitment to responding to our kids without judgment and anger. When we chose to not judge ourselves for the words and actions of our children, we are free to love them without judgement. “You’re a stupid kid!” then becomes “You have not made smart choices, but I am here to help you.”

An excellent parenting styles article, by Sarah Forbes on the Grace Under Pressure website, puts it this way: “Grace-filled parenting says, ‘I know it’s sometimes hard to obey. Sometimes, I struggle to obey and follow the authority over me. Let me help you practice obedience by training you.’”

Instead of condemning Jayden, his parents need to show that they identify with the pain that his wrong choice, if continued, will bring him.

What Jayden is doing is clearly detrimental to himself. But at the moment, Jayden can’t see any negative side of pornography. All he can see is the pleasure in it. But his parents clearly understand that an addiction to pornography will negatively affect Jayden’s view of sex and relationships. In her initial horror at finding Jayden watching online porn, Audrey tries to shame Jayden into feeling bad about his actions. Worse, she embarrasses her son in front of his dad.

Her goal: a quick fix that ensures no public embarrassment to herself. What would people think about her parenting abilities, after all, if they found out? Like many parents, Audrey’s immediate response has more to do with her saving face than it does with what’s motivating her son’s behavior. 

What Jayden needs is to feel his parent’s heartfelt pain and concern over the negative consequences he will face down the road. He needs to recognize that he has acted outside of God’s protection and provision, which saddens his parents because they recognize that his choices are going to bring him suffering.

We can create all the rules in the world for our kids. But unless they know that our rules our motivated by our love for them, they won’t be highly motivated to obey us. Initially, Jayden thinks his parents are overreacting and trying to apply old fashioned thinking to his life choices. But as Brad and Audrey demonstrate that their primary concern is that his behavior will hurt him, Jayden becomes more open to listening to them. He finally comes to understand that habitually watching porn will not only rewire and damage his brain, but distort his view of women and God’s gift of sex. The worst part is that it will bring a lot of baggage and false expectations into any future dating relationships, if not marriage.

Brad and Aubrey need to love Jayden with grace, which means making Jayden’s security, happiness, and welfare as important as their own, and not holding his mistakes against him.

That is what grace-filled parenting does; it stays focused on the child’s well-being, which includes accepting his or her mistakes. Mistakes, after all, is how we learn and grow.

I actually wince when I hear a parent hiss, “You’re embarrassing me!” Worse, if the hiss is accompanied by violence, say a slap or rough arm jerk, I actually get nauseas. Because I recognize that so much lasting damage is done to children when we communicate with them in anger.

Frustration at having to repeatedly deal with the same issue does get old. But we have to remember that parenting is a 24/7 commitment. Doing it right means leaning heavily on Christ, and following His grace-first example. We have to give our kids room to make mistakes. After all, we’re not perfect, either. “The graceless home requires kids to be good and gets angry and punishes them when they are bad,” writes author Tim Kimmel. “The grace-based home assumes kids will struggle with sin and helps them learn how to tap into God’s power to help them get stronger.

Adds Kimmel, “Grace understands that the only real solution for our children’s sin is the work of Christ on their behalf. . . .  Legalism uses outside forces to help children maintain their moral walk. Their strength is based on the environment they live in. Grace, on the other hand, sees the strength of children by what is inside them—more specifically, who is inside them.”

Forbes, in the same Grace Under Pressure article I mentioned earlier, puts it this way: “Grace-filled parenting says, ‘I’m going to love this child unconditionally – without him having to be good enough. Just like the father of the Prodigal Son, this child is always welcome back home. If the child rebels, I’ll be sad but not angry, knowing how many times I have rebelled against God and how much I’m undeserving of His unconditional love and acceptance. No matter what this child does, I’ll continue to be Jesus to him and love him back to Christ.’”

Brad and Aubrey need to recognize that Jayden is listening, and as such they have considerable influence on him — even if he acts like he doesn’t hear a word they say.

Love wrapped in grace empowers kids to look at rules in a fresh and positive way. As we all know, most kids don’t naturally consider the rules they’re given to be in their best interest. Rather, they see rules as restrictions on their freedom. But as they experience rules within the context of a loving relationship proven to care about their best interest, they are set free to respond positively.

A lot of parents fear that they have little influence on their kids. They think school, their children’s peers, and the media have way more influence than they do. But they would be wrong! Studies have shown that kids, whether they act like it or not, are closely watching and listening to their parents.

A national online study shows that 45 percent of young people consider their parents to be their role models. Other studies show that 32 percent of today’s kids look to their friends and just 15 percent look to celebrities for guidance and inspiration. In fact, the studies show that even until your children reach twenty-five years of age, the greatest influence on their behavior will be the loving, close relationship with their parents, especially their dad.

With that in mind, then, the challenge is to be the best parental role model that you can be. Never forget that every word you speak and every action you take is being observed by your kids. To be an effective parent, then, align your parenting with God’s Word, and be ready to defend God’s truth against a culture that daily entices your children to stray from God. If you need to take anger management classes, do it. If you need to take effective communication classes, do it. And take full advantage of Christian-based parenting books and videos, many of which are widely available on the Internet. Consider adding Set Free to Choose Right to your arsenal of available parenting resources.

 

Set Free to Choose Right by Josh McDowell

Whether dealing with sexuality and pornography or honesty and self-control, equip your children with a biblical foundation to know why right is right and wrong is wrong. They can learn to make smart choices, to avoid many pitfalls in life.

Pick up your own copy to gain the wisdom in this helpful parenting resource.

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Doubt: When It’s Beneficial for Christians

Photo by Steve Halama

Doubt Can Be the Catalyst for Real Faith.

Do “real” Christians have the freedom to doubt the existence of God, Jesus, and the truths of the Bible? Or should we feel guilty when our faith wobbles like Jell-O?

Says Paul Tillich, “Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.” I happen to agree with him.

God knows that we will have questions and doubts because we can’t see the big picture like He does. That’s why He repeatedly tells us, in His Word, to trust and chill (“Do NOT fear!”). But God also tells us to pursue the development of our faith. Doubt is a great motivator to fuel this pursuit.

God is not offended by our doubt. God designed us to seek truth, that we might grow in our knowledge of Him.

“We can all come up with lots of reasons for not wanting to ask the big questions,” writes Ann Sullivan, the author of Permission to Doubt: One Woman’s Journey into a Thinking Faith. “We don’t want to appear vulnerable or confused. We were taught that our inquiries are a sign of disrespect or unbelief. We are afraid our faith will buckle under the bright lights of interrogation.” She adds that some of us sidestep investigations altogether, just to make sure God doesn’t get mad at us. “But if God is really God,” she queries, “how could He ever be threatened by us? If our faith is rooted in truth and our ability to reason is a gift from God, shouldn’t He be able to handle any question we come up with?”

You bet.

Her question gets at the heart of the matter, doesn’t it? Some of us hide or ignore our doubts because we’re not sure God can handle our daring to ask questions. Trusting God is rough stuff for people taught that God is easily angered and delights in thumping them on the head. 

I like the clarity that Pete Enns, a noted college professor, provides when he suggests that, “Doubting God is painful and frightening because we think we are leaving God behind, but we are only leaving behind the idea of God we like to surround ourselves with—the small God, the God we control, the God who agrees with us. Doubt forces us to look at who we think God is.”

If faith and doubt are expressed as a mathematical equation, suggests Christian writer Ed Cyzewski, it would look like this: A little faith > a lot of doubt. Doubt, he’s saying, doesn’t cancel out our faith. Because the opposite of faith isn’t doubt, but unbelief.

~ Skeptical Versus Skepticism ~

The definition of skeptical is “having an attitude of doubt.” As a philosophy, Skepticism goes so far as to question whether it’s even possible for humans to attain knowledge. “Can we ever really know anything?” ask these thinkers. “Does this chair really exist, or do I merely think it exists?”

Pyrrhonian Skepticism, developed in ancient Greece, even declines to make definitive judgements on the truth or untruth of any belief. So don’t ask these thinkers if the chair exists, because they will only argue both sides. Some even propose that our human “reality”—the lives that you and I think we’re living on a daily basis—is nothing more than mental fantasy generated by an evil genie or super-computers. (Cue the Matrix movie trailer, please.) 

John Ortberg, Jr., in his fabulous ChristianityToday.com article titled Slaying Spiritual Skepticism, asserts that the more destructive form of skepticism is a disease not so much of the intellect, but of the will. “It is not the doubting of Thomas that leads to a search for the truth,” he writes, “it is the doubting of Pilate (“What is truth?”), which is less a question about truth than an affirmation that truth cannot be found, an excuse to wash my hands of the whole thing and simply pursue my agenda.”

Here’s a question: if even philosophers think they can’t know anything with complete certainty—and be perfectly fine with holding that view—why do we Christians begin to sweat buckets when a skeptic demands that we prove, 100 percent, that God exists? Ahem! If they’re going to make that assertion, they first should prove by the same measure that He doesn’t.

Writes Lenny Esposito in his powerful article on ComeReason.org, “It seems that many people who object to Christianity want the Christians to do all the work and provide an answer for every nuance of their belief system, but don’t feel they are obligated to do the same. What bothers me is many Christians accept that premise and do a lot of work when the person objecting really wasn’t interested in the truth to begin with. Now, some people are sincerely seeking answers, and we should be able to give them good reasons for believing why we believe. But if the skeptic feels it important for you to have reasons for your faith, then they should be equally accountable.”

Dudes! Stop thinking you have to be a Christian encyclopedia, or that Christianity will crumble if you can’t answer every question! You’re not God (right?); you won’t have all the answers for this crazy thing called life while you’re still living it.

~ What? Even Mother Teresa Doubted? ~

It’s not just us average Christians who doubt. Heck, no! Doubt plagues even the major players!

Many noted Christian teachers and leaders have publicly acknowledged their doubt—among them Pope Francis, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Spurgeon. Closer to home, Sean McDowell has shared that his nature leads him to be a “consistent doubter.” He doubts, for example, his purchases, his daily choices, and yes, his spiritual beliefs. McDowell has said that his doubts can feel “crushing.” (Can you relate?) But he doesn’t view doubt to be a shameful weakness, as it pushes him to study, think, question—and share his findings to strengthen the faith of others.

The amazing Mother Teresa also had crushing doubts, as the world learned when her private letters were published. The secular media promptly labeled her a “fake,” “liar,” and “pretender.” Yet in this story by Enns, we gain insight into her deep faith:

“In 1975, the Jesuit philosopher, John Kavanaugh, went to work for three months at the ‘house of the dying’ in Calcutta with Mother Teresa. He was searching for an answer to some spiritual struggles. On his very first morning there, he met Mother Teresa. She asked him, ‘And what can I do for you?’ Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him. ‘What do you want me to pray for?’ she asked. He answered with the request that was the very reason he traveled thousands of miles to India: ‘Pray that I have clarity.’ Mother Teresa said firmly, ‘No. I will not do that.’ When he asked her why, she said, ‘Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.’ When Kavanaugh said, ‘You always seem to have clarity,’ Mother Teresa laughed and said, ‘I have never had clarity. What I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.’”

The world might label us “fake” Christians when doubt pulls at us to question our faith. But in actuality, admitting our doubts places us squarely in the authentic zone. And that’s right where God can begin speaking clearly to us. #waycool (All He might say, by the way, is, “Teresa, you don’t need to know that right now. Just trust.”) 

~ Face Your Doubt, See Where It Leads ~

So what’s your deal with doubt? Do you pretend, like many church leaders, that your faith never falters? 

I’ll admit that I sometimes doubt that God is working for my good. There are things I pray for, you see, that He is not providing. In those moments, I have to remember my limited view. And like Mother Teresa, I often question why a great and powerful God would allow so much evil and pain in this world. I have only two choices: take the easy route—simply decide that God is neither great nor good (or possibly asleep at the wheel)—or decide to seek answers to understand His nature and what He says about our free will and the consequences of sin.

Still, doubt can not only hurt, but be paralyzing.

I love the song “Even If” by the Christian band, MercyMe. It captures the direction I think every Christian should be headed: to faith, despite the doubt. Just a few of the song’s lyrics: “They say it only takes a little faith to move a mountain. Well good thing, a little faith is all I have right now. God when you choose to leave mountains unmoveable, give me the strength to be able to sing it is well with my soul.” #likewow #youareIam

So how do we constructively handle doubt? First, by searching for answers in reliable sources. And lastly, by recognizing when to “Let go and let God.”

But while we’re on the hunt for truth, we must develop our ability to think critically, with rational and logical thought. We need to recognize where we are seeing others’ biases and assumptions instead of the truth. And then we need to admit our own biases. It’s okay to challenge everything, as buying into the crippling lie that Christians must live with “blind faith” doesn’t actually produce faith of substance.

Pastor Timothy Keller uses a helpful analogy to show why it’s critical that we view doubt in the right light:

“A faith without some doubts,” he says, “is like a human body without any antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person’s faith can collapse almost overnight if she has failed over the years to listen to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection. Believers should acknowledge and wrestle with doubts—not only their own but their friends’ and neighbors’.”

Go ahead, admit your doubt. Just don’t stop there. Take action. Tell God your doubts and ask His help in finding truthful answers. He’s gonna love it. Just as He loves you.

 

This blog post highlights Josh and Sean McDowell’s recently revised apologetics classic, Evidence That Demands a Verdict. We are certain this fully updated and expanded resource will be an effective evangelism tool for you, and strengthen your faith by answering the toughest questions tossed to you by skeptics. Know what you know, because it’s true. But share this truth with LOVE!

If you’d like to start from the first blog post in this series, click here: Apologetics: Apologizing for Believing in God?.

 

The post Doubt: When It’s Beneficial for Christians appeared first on Josh.org.

Does Truth Even Matter? 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.

The post Does Truth Even Matter? Quick VIDEO appeared first on Josh.org.

Objective Truth: Christian Response to Postmodernism

Conveniently Ignoring Objective Truth.

“If you are anything like me,” says noted Christian author and speaker Lisa Bevere, “you want to love the broken people around you.”

But so often Christians are told they’re being judgmental and hateful if they don’t accept the false version of love that accepts everything — no matter how destructive it is to people’s lives.

“In a wavering world,” adds Bevere, “I believe we can be people who stand like a rock, embodying both grace and truth. Real truth is not a river. It’s a rock.”

Lisa’s comments have been reverberating inside my brain ever since I heard them. Because she’s spot on. In rejecting objective truth, society is wooing us to believe that truth is a river; that it ebbs and flows with the trends, and that we each get to define and live out our personalized version of it.

Park a minute at this comic strip by Adam Ford called “Anti-Choice Judge.” It masterfully shows how subjective truth can warp a person’s view of themselves and the world. We need objective truth — God’s truth — to keep us from spiraling into total narcissistic self-absorption! We need God’s truth to keep things real.

~ Please Don’t Feel Judged or Offended ~

The Church is supposed to be full of Christians who are salty beacons of light. We’re supposed to lead people into an authentic relationship with Christ. Many churches — filled with messy people in various stages of sanctification (Duh! That’s what church is for!) — take this directive seriously and do their best to evidence Christ in their thoughts, words, and actions.

But just as many churches seem to be confused about their purpose.

In their attempt to demonstrate how “loving” they are, many now choose to dilute, if not ignore, God’s objective truth when it comes to hot potato issues such as abortion and sexual identity/behavior. Some churches no longer even use the words “sin” or “sinner,” for fear that someone might be offended and not return to fill the seats and budget. But these churches are failing to remind people of their desperate need for Christ as Savior. 

Shall we present Jesus’ cruel, excruciatingly painful sacrifice as unneeded or trivial, just so people will feel little — or no — conviction about their life choices? Shall “church” come to mean nothing more than weekly self-esteem rah-rah sessions for “good” people to “claim their blessing”?

Theatrical worship experiences, amped by pulse-pounding drums and guitars, fog smoke, and strobe lights are thrilling in the moment, but don’t stay with us after we walk out. Hey, Jesus, didn’t you just LOVE that mountain-top rock concert?!

Warm, fuzzy, funny sermons make us feel good, but did they lead us to a raw encounter with Christ? What about all the gimmicks many churches now use to entice people through their doors? Jesus, weren’t you just AWED at how clever we were to incorporate helicopter egg drops at Easter and glow-in-the-dark acrobats at Christmas? They will bring people to you, Jesus, we just know it!!! 

But do people leave talking about Jesus — or the helicopter?

When we become so hip and cool in the eyes of secular society, will the Church still have impact? Or will it become just another outlet for momentary feel good entertainment?

Jesus isn’t interested in our feeling comfortable. He’s interested in movement and growth. He wants to break all the chains and crap that keep us from Him.

Romans 8:1: “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” There is a huge difference between the person who is apologetic about his sin and the person who is repentant about his sin. In the first, a person continues to sin, knowing God is gracious to forgive. In the second, a person refuses to continue in his or her sin because s/he wants to please Christ.

In a secular blot post I read yesterday, the author stated that Christianity will “finally be of help to people” once society is able to remove its attachment to the supernatural. Sigh. Whenever I hear comments like this, which are typically expressed by atheists and angry ex-Christians who feel failed by the Church and God, I shake my head at their clueless arrogance. Yes, the Church is messy and flawed, and sometimes downright sinful, but it holds incredible life-changing power when it dies to self and allows Christ to reign.

~Moralistic Therapeutic Deism ~

Fortunately, God is at work even in churches that have embraced Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.

“What the heck is that?” you ask.

Basically, it’s a feel-good theology in which God is a teddy bear. The term was coined by sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton in 2005, after they conducted a nationwide telephone survey of Christian teens to learn how they viewed religion.

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, writes Ford in another of his cool cartoons, “happens to be a preferred religion of Western culture, which usually (and tragically) goes by the name Christianity.” In it, God is a cosmic therapist and divine butler. Though He exists, it isn’t necessary to actually make him part of our daily life — unless we have need of Him.

God is simply at our beck and call, like a personal genie.

Adds Kenda Creasy Dean, author of Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism “offers comfort, bolsters self-esteem, helps solve problems, and lubricates interpersonal relationships by encouraging people to do good, feel good, and keep God at arm’s length.”

The bottom line: every “Christian” gets to heaven by being “good,” rather than submitting to Christ. Being a “good” person, you see, is the golden ticket to get into heaven. And anyway, God is a loving God, so He won’t really send anyone to Hell, you know! That would just be soooo mean! 

Dale Partridge, the founder of the RelearnChurch.org, which seeks to reconnect churches to the Bible, holds this view:  “We want costless Christianity,” he states. “We don’t like participatory Christianity that has a cost.”

~ Sin? What’s That? ~

Society asserts that God can’t be real, so objective truth can’t be real, either. So neither is the notion of “sin.” As Bevere notes, we’ve become a society of opinionated, rather than convicted, people.

But being a Christian isn’t about consensus morality determined by society. It’s morality based on the Word of God. The person who minimizes and justifies sin with a “Don’t judge me!” response, adds Ford, knows very little of the Bible.

Clearly, a lot of Christians aren’t reading the Bible.

A 2016 study of 1,000 Christians, conducted by LifeWay Research, showed that ONLY 11 percent of those surveyed had read the whole Bible. Ten percent of those surveyed had read NONE of it! A whopping thirteen percent had read only a few sentences. How can Christians know the objective truth of what God considers sin, if they haven’t read His messages to them?

For many years I was a superficial Christian, determined to keep Jesus at arm’s length because I hated the gruesome cross story. But when I did start to seek Him — in part by reading the Bible, which society asserts is just a dry, useless book — this is what I discovered: that Jesus isn’t just “that cool dude who went around loving and healing people.” He’s our mind-blowing God who deliberately took human form to show us that He fully identifies with our every thought and struggle. He “gets” our temptations and our failings and our messy bits and our dark corners — and FULLY accepts and loves us — like no other person or organization or group ever will.

To know Jesus is awesome. To only know of Him is to seriously miss out.

Many who reject Christ hold a melioristic viewpoint: that the world is made better by human effort. That humans have an inherent tendency toward progress or improvement. That the perfectibility of man is entirely possible, above the control of every power that would impede it. Among those “powers,” they list religion.

But Jesus isn’t “religion.” Jesus is raw, real, authentic truth and love. He is our very needed savior. Our souls clamor for Him, even as we adamantly turn to other sources to fill our need for love, acceptance, control, and connection. Our seeking objective truth leads us to Jesus. Personal truth just leads us to an endless fascination with our bellybuttons.

 

This blog post highlights Josh and Sean McDowell’s recently revised apologetics classic, Evidence That Demands a Verdict. We are certain this fully updated and expanded resource will be an effective evangelism tool for you, and strengthen your faith by answering the toughest questions tossed to you by skeptics. Know what you know, because it’s true. But share this truth with LOVE!

If you’d like to start from the first blog post in this series, click here: Apologetics: Apologizing for Believing in God?.

 

The post Objective Truth: Christian Response to Postmodernism appeared first on Josh.org.

Does God Just Want Me to Be Happy?

Original post by Sean McDowell here. Used with permission.

Along with my regular blog here at seanmcdowell.org, I am now featuring occasional guest posts from some students in the Biola M.A. in Christian Apologetics that I personally had the privilege of teaching. This post is from my friend Ryan Pauly, a high school teacher, who also has an excellent and growing ministry of his own called Coffee House Questions . I simply asked him to write anything on his heart and mind. Check out his ministry and enjoy this post!   Sean McDowell

 

Does God Just Want Me to Be Happy?

Ryan Pauly

It is often said that people become teachers so that they don’t have to work over the summer. Although this may be true for some, it wasn’t true for me this past summer. I spent my vacation working at Summit Ministries and traveling to speak at different youth events. While at one of my speaking events, I was approached by a student who wanted to know my thoughts on drinking and smoking weed. His argument was that it was fine to drink and smoke with his friends because it didn’t negatively affect his behavior or control his life.

Instead of beginning by making a biblical argument explaining why those behaviors were wrong, I began by asking him questions.

I first asked why he thought that any action was good or morally neutral simply because he didn’t see it negatively affect his life. This seemed to catch him off guard. It might have been because he was looking for me to give reasons as to why these behaviors did have a negative effect on his life and were therefore wrong. He admitted that pastors had used this approach with him before.

 

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

Without even knowing it, this student had adopted a form of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD). One aspect of MTD is the belief that God exists and that the goal of life is to be happy and feel good about oneself. One huge way in which you can tell that someone is following MTD is by the way they respond to sin.

When they are committing a sin, they will think that is it an acceptable thing to do as long as they are still happy.

They will not look at what God has to say about that sin since they don’t think God really plays a big role in our lives.

Our students use this form of reasoning when arguing for premarital sex as well as drinking and drugs. They hear their pastors, teachers, and parents say that these things are sin and will affect them negatively.

Because they don’t immediately see negative effects, they think the behaviors are fine.

This leads them to take a non-biblical approach to morality and ethics because their experience causes them to redefine sin. Sin then is defined as something that has harmful consequences on them and others.

 

The Dominant Religion Today
I believe that MTD has become the dominant religion of youth today as they fall more and more away from founding Christian beliefs.

Youth are being exposed through TV, movies, and schools to just living a good life and being happy in oneself. Today, success is seen as being happy and doing well at what you want to do.

So, my goal was to help this student re-evaluate the way that he determined what was ethically right and wrong and return to a biblical view of morality. An action isn’t good because it makes us happy and bad because it affects us negatively. We understand that eating candy feels good but is bad for us. We also know that shots hurt but are good for us. Instead, we need to get back to looking at what God teaches.

God doesn’t want us to just be happy; he wants us to be holy.

When he realized this point, I was able to look at biblical reasons with this student as to why he shouldn’t be drinking and smoking weed.

It is holiness that brings true happiness.

 

 

The post Does God Just Want Me to Be Happy? appeared first on Josh.org.

Postmodernism: Faulty Truth, False Reality

Postmodernism robs society of objective truth and reason. Are we doomed?

One of the most popular phrases today around the globe is “You have your truth, I have my truth, and nobody knows the truth.” If one looks at that statement objectively, however, it is immediately obvious that as a guiding philosophy it’s a major fail. This supposedly inclusive view can only work in La-La Land, not in real society.

What, you ask, is Postmodernism? I’d love to hand you a simple definition, but I can’t. Because no one actually can agree on its tenets; it’s so subjective and slippery. But, at its bare bones, postmodernism is a way of analyzing life. It rejects logic, fact, objective truth, and objective moral values. Perhaps you’ll find this short overview video of postmodernism helpful.

Postmodernism says that truth is inaccessible, and that everything is interpretation. That no interpretation is final. That language only has the meaning we give it. That there is no absolute truth outside our own unique perspective. That there is no single origin of morality. That reality cannot be known nor described objectively.

Though society has been influenced by the sloppy reasoning and false narratives of postmodernism for more than 50 years, making inroads even in the Church, it is our young people who have fully embraced postmodernism as the correct lens through which to view life. Gone is black and white, replaced by an endless selection of grays.

A question posed online by a non-binary teen whose biology is female: “Why,” she asked, “does having a vagina or penis make me have to pick?” She added, “It doesn’t.” Like this teen, millions are self-selecting their identities and realities on the basis of “gender,” which grants complete subjective and fluidity. They are what they choose to be, they assert, and no one has the right to say otherwise.

~ You Don’t Get to Judge My Reality ~

In a 2000 article by Christianity Today, Postmodernism was defined as “anything, everything, and nothing.” Today, people are demanding societal respect for their desire to live in the “safe bubble” of their personally crafted identity. The list of subjective identities continues to mushroom, as society spirals deeper into individual focus and narcissism.

As Lonny S. Jarrett writes in his article Narcissism: A Postmodern Epidemic, “Einstein’s theory of relativity, that all perception is relative to the perceiver, has become distorted into the perspective that each individual is living in his own universe, a universe that is a projection of his own mind with no external reality having its own independent existence, validity, or truth.” He adds, “Narcissism is present when one’s attention is focused relatively more on the voice in his own head than he is on the words coming out of the mouth of the person he is listening to.”

Having been brought up to expect acceptance of their personal lifestyle choices, many college students believe it perfectly acceptable to verbally or physically attack anyone they feel is disrespecting or judging their subjective truth. It’s their rage (easily triggered by self-perceived “micro-aggressions“), rather than the soundness of their arguments, that has gained them ground. The media, heady on the sensationalism of these “Social Justice Warriors,” has happily amplified their antics.

Per the Urban Dictionary, a Social Justice Warrior is someone “who uses the fight for civil rights as an excuse to be rude, condescending, and sometimes violent for the purpose of relieving their frustrations or validating their sense of unwarranted moral superiority.”

In a YouTube video I recently viewed, an angry young woman asserted that she considers it “an act of violence against her” if another person refuses to use the pronoun “They” when referencing her. Though her genetics identify her as female, she is offended by the label “She.” Not only did my jaw drop at her take-no-prisoners attitude, but at the logical implication of her statement. An act of violence — which typically leads to legal consequence — for not using the “right” pronoun?

“No one should be made to feel threatened or harassed simply because of who they are or what they believe,” stated Paul Alivisatos, UC Berkeley’s executive vice chancellor, in defending the school’s decision to beef up security and offer counseling to students “offended” by the visit of guest speaker Ben Shapiro, a conservative political commentator and author of Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth. Yet, clearly, it didn’t matter to them if Shapiro likewise felt harassed or offended.

Many SJWs believe a societal utopia can be achieved, but only through the removal of all judgements potentially lurking in objective truth and morality. “Subjectivity is comforting,” says Shapiro, “because you can never be wrong.” He adds that society — college campuses included — signal to all of us that there is virtue in being offended. That my being offended is enough for me to outright dismiss your view — and attack you for having it.

In raising our kids with the message “Feel free to be you!”, we’ve paved the highway of endless subjectivity. And having bought into this view, many of us are subtly and overtly pressuring others to vigilantly monitor that their views don’t offend another. Free speech is labeled “hate speech” when it does offend someone.

In another YouTube video I viewed, a young woman taunted an invited speaker. It was clear that she thought herself incredibly clever. Perhaps in her mind her scathing words and condescending tone imbued her with power. But in actuality, she came across as a bully. Her heightened sense of self-importance only served to amplify the obvious: she seethed with intolerance for any contrary view. In another video, in which Shapiro addressed a crowd of college students, a small group of students continued to interrupt him by chanting when he tried to speak. I had to agree, wholeheartedly, when he quipped, “You’re so boring.”

Shapiro was asked, “Why does your right to free speech trump my right to be offended?” His response, “Because if it doesn’t, there is no right to free speech.”

~ Postmodernism: Provocative Idea, Useless Model ~

Two mandates of Postmodernism are “openness” — which rejects reason — and “tolerance” — which rejects moral absolutes. It’s a reinterpretation of what is knowledge, and what should be viewed as knowl­edge. The standards of right/wrong and good/bad are just “social constructs” to be challenged or simply ignored.

Friedrich Nietzsche, the noted German atheist and philosopher, asserted that truth is just illusion. Ironically, Nietzsche, who was declared clinically insane the last decade of his life, had a huge impact on Western thinking and Postmodernist philosophers. It’s hard to understand why, when even his claim, “There are no facts, only interpretations,” gets instantly nullified because he states it as fact.

I am endlessly amused by philosophers, especially when they ignore the obvious and/or concoct theories that require a total rejection of logic. But I’m not convinced that living in a world fueled by subjective truth and subjective reality isn’t going to be really frustrating. Real truth matters.

 

This blog post highlights Josh and Sean McDowell’s recently revised apologetics classic, Evidence That Demands a Verdict. We are certain this fully updated and expanded resource will be an effective evangelism tool for you, and strengthen your faith by answering the toughest questions tossed to you by skeptics. Know what you know, because it’s true. But share this truth with LOVE!

If you’d like to start from the first blog post in this series, click here: Apologetics: Apologizing for Believing in God?.

 

The post Postmodernism: Faulty Truth, False Reality appeared first on Josh.org.