Gregory Koukl's Blog, page 118

Your Work Is Important

Joseph Scheumann has a post on “Five
Encouragements for Everyday Work” discussing the value and purpose of our
work. You’re not a second-class citizen in God’s eyes if you’re not in the
ministry. No matter what you do for a living (assuming it’s legal and moral),
your work is important. We’re all creating value for our societies, our
families, and ourselves; and God is working through even the most obscure job
to serve people.

Scheumann quotes Gene Veith:

The ability to read God’s word is
an inexpressibly precious blessing, but reading is an ability that did not
spring fully formed in our young minds, it required the vocation of
teachers. God protects us through the cop on the beat and the whole panoply of
the legal system. He gives us beauty and meaning through artists. He lets us
travel through the ministry of auto workers, mechanics, road crews, and airline
employees. He keeps us clean through the work of garbage collectors, plumbers,
sanitation workers, and sometimes undocumented aliens who clean our hotel
rooms. He brings people to salvation through pastors and through anyone else
who proclaims the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost. The fast-food worker, the
inverter; the clerical assistant, the scientist; the accountant, the musician —
they all have high callings, used by God to bless and serve His people and His
creation. (God
at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life, 14–15)

I’m always reminded of the beauty and dignity of work when I
catch an episode of Undercover Boss. It doesn’t matter how low on the pay scale
or how seemingly mundane the job is, when I see a man joyfully do his work with
excellence, out of a desire to create something that will serve the customers
to the best of his ability, there is a certain glory and awe that surrounds this,
and I want to be just like him.

The Reasonable, Evidential Nature of Christian Faith

Skeptics sometimes portray Christians as both “unreasonable” and “unreasoning.” The Christian culture only exacerbates the problem when it advocates for a definition of “faith” removed from evidence. Is true faith blind? How are true believers to respond to doubt? What is the relationship between faith and reason? Richard Dawkins once said:

“Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that.”

This view of Christian belief is common among skeptics and believers alike. Critics think Christians accept truth claims without any evidential support and many Christians embrace the claims of Christianity unaware of the strong evidence supporting our worldview. Dawkins is correct when he argues against forming beliefs without evidence. People who accept truth claims without any examination or need for evidence are prone to believing myths and making bad decisions.

Christians Are Called to a Reasonable Faith
Christians, however, are not called to make decisions without good evidence. The God of the Bible does not call his children to obey blindly. The Gospels are themselves an important form of direct evidence; the testimony of eyewitnesses who observed the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. That’s why the scriptures repeatedly call us to have a reasoned belief in Christ, and not to resort to the behavior of unreasoning animals:

Jude 4, 10
For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ…. But these men revile the things which they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed.

The Bible uses this word for “unreasoning” in a pejorative manner; to be unreasoning is to act like a brute animal. God clearly wants more from beings created in His image.

Christians Are Called to an Examined Faith
In fact, God wants us to examine all the evidence at our disposal and to study the things of God with great intensity. When we do this, we truly begin to worship Him with our mind:

Matthew 22:37-38
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment.”

This kind of faith is unafraid of challenges. In fact, Christians are encouraged to examine what they believe critically so they can be fully convinced:

1 Thessalonians 5:19-21
Do not quench the Spirit; do not despise prophetic utterances. But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good…

1 John 4:1
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Romans 14:5
Let each man be fully convinced in his own mind.

2 Timothy 3:14
You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them…

Christians Are Called to an Evidential Faith
Critical examination requires us to investigate the evidence, and God holds evidence in high regard. He wants us to be convinced after we examine the facts. Jesus valued evidence and continually provided evidence to make his case:

John 14:11
“Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.”

Jesus continued to provide evidence to the disciples, even after the Resurrection:

Acts 1:2-3
…until the day when He was taken up, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen. To these He also presented Himself alive, after His suffering, by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days, and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God.

The earliest Christians understood the connection between reason, evidence and faith, and they did not see these concepts as mutually exclusive. In fact, Paul often used direct evidence to make his case for Christianity:

Acts 17:30-31
“Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”

Acts 17:2-3
And according to Paul’s custom, he went to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead

Christians Are Called to a Case-Making Faith
When believers use their minds, investigate the evidence and become convinced, something wonderful happens: We have the courage to defend what we believe using the same evidence, logic and reasoning power we used to come to faith in the first place:

1 Peter 3:15
[B]ut sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence…

Christians in all disciplines of inquiry and discovery have used their reasoning power to investigate the evidence. Christians are not irrational, and Christian faith is not blind. The rich intellectual history of Christianity calls each of us to have a reasonable, examined, evidential, case-making faith. This kind of faith honors God and withstands skeptical criticism and personal doubt.

Why We Shouldn't Abort Babies That Are Going to Die

In an article titled “Twenty
reasons to think twice about aborting a baby with anencephaly,” Peter
Saunders tells the story of how his thinking was jarred out of the usual view
of this common practice:

Before I qualified as a doctor I
probably would have taken the generally expressed view [of support for aborting
a child with a fatal abnormality], but an experience I had as a junior doctor
dramatically changed my attitudes both to disability and abortion….

The administrative clerk on the
medical ward where I was working was heavily pregnant and I asked her when she
was due. She gave me the date and before I could say anything else said, ‘my
baby has anencephaly’. While I was inwardly asking why she had not had an
abortion, she added, ‘I could not bring myself to end the life of my own baby’.

The baby was born a few weeks later
and survived about a week. She held it, nursed and cared for it and said her
goodbyes before its inevitable death.

Up until that point I had not
contemplated that such an approach was even possible. She not only demonstrated
that it was but taught me a huge lesson about courage, compassion and how to
face and handle tragedy, grief and bereavement. I have never forgotten it and
resolved then, that if I was ever in the same situation I would want to do the
same.

Saunders offers twenty concise and compelling reasons why we
should not end the lives of children with anencephaly. For example: 

A baby with anencephaly is a
dependent relative
Babies with anencephaly are profoundly
dependent but are also biologically related to their parents and carry their
genes. They are therefore dependent relatives and so should I believe be
treated with the same love and respect as any other dependent and dying close
relative.

Here are all twenty reasons (please see the article
for a brief explanation of each):

A baby
with anencephaly is a human being
A baby
with anencephaly is not brain dead
A baby
with anencephaly is a dependent relative
A baby
with anencephaly is a disabled person
Palliative
care is the best response to terminal illness 
We
should not be making judgments about the worth of other people  
Abortion
for anencephaly is discriminatory 
Abortion
for anencephaly is often a coercive offer 
Abortion
for anencephaly is contrary to every historic ethical code  
Abortion for anencephaly exchanges one
problem for a whole set of different problems 
Saying goodbye properly is important for
resolving grief and achieving closure
Abortion for anencephaly can be profoundly
damaging to a mother’s mental health 
Pregnancy is the most intimate form of
hospitality
There are real dangers of incremental
extension once we embark down this route
Deformity does not define us
Easing our own pain is not sufficient reason
for ending another person’s life
Anencephaly forces us to acknowledge and face
our deepest prejudices
Major life decisions should not be made at a
time of crisis
We should not allow ourselves to be
manipulated by the media or those with an agenda 
Death is not the end

Most of these reasons to not abort don’t just apply to babies with
fatal abnormalities, they also apply to any baby with a disability. If you’re
terrified by the knowledge that your baby is going to be born with a
disability, I urge you to read carefully through the explanations of each of
these reasons given in the article.

And consider, also, who God is, who we are, and why
we’re here. There are many sufferings we endure in this life, but God does
not permit even one instance of suffering for which He doesn’t have a
purpose. Just as Jesus revealed God’s glory and grace to us through His
suffering, so our own suffering can reveal God’s greatness and grace to us and
to others. And that, after all, is what we are here on this earth to do.

If you’re not sure how God could be glorified through your having
a child with disabilities, read Wrestling
with an Angel: A Story of Love, Disability and the Lessons of Grace by Greg
Lucas. And if you need some encouragement, try these lectures from Desiring
God’s recent conference, “The
Works of God: God’s Good Design in Disability.”

Let our view of human beings, disabilities, and suffering
not be the same as the world’s.

(HT: @JoshBrahm)

No Good People

American physicist and Nobel winner Steven Weinberg has famously said, "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

But where does the atheist and naturalist find objective values of good and evil in his worldview to make this judgment? There are no good or evil people; there are no good or evil acts. His worldview doesn't support this judgment. All he can do is report what he does and doesn't like, personal tastes about religion and behavior.

Greg writes:

The atheist must solve the problem of good. How can anything ultimately be evil or good in a universe bereft of any standard to make sense of the terms?

Darwin will not rescue the atheist here, because evolution is a materialistic process that can only produce material merchandise. No stirring and recombining of molecules over time will ever cause a moral fact to pop into existence in the immaterial realm. At best, Darwinism might account for behaviors or beliefs that human beings falsely label “moral” because the deception accomplishes some evolutionary purpose. But it is deception, pure and simple. The kind of robust morality necessary to ground the atheist’s complaint about evil is impossible on a materialist take on reality.

No, the atheist has not gotten rid of the problem of evil by rejecting God. He has compounded the problem. The only thing he has gotten rid of is hope.

Greg explains more here.

Challenge Response: Jesus Didn't Die on the Cross

Here's my response to the Qur'anic claim that Jesus didn't die on the cross. You can see the original challenge here.

    

The Saint of the British Empire

Dr. David Livingstone was a celebrity in his day. The reporter who set out through Africa to find him after a two-year silence prepared his famous line for when they finally met: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" He found him working and serving the people of Africa that Livingstone dedicated his life to.

Livingstone was a missionary, medical doctor, and explorer – and a huge celebrity in his day. He wrangled with mission boards and was difficult to get along with. He left his family for years at a time. He sought to end the slave trade and freed many. His explorations were not only significant geographically, they also opened the way for missionaries who followed him to the continent.

Livingstone wrote his first manifesto, a 400-page book called Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa. It is still an important source for reconstructing the precolonial history of Africa. It was an immediate bestseller, selling 70,000 copies. As historian Timothy Holmes says in Journey to Livingstone (1993), it had something for everyone: "The Christian's faith in God is strengthened by the author's very survival of every imaginable danger. The abolitionist is inspired by the prospect of stopping the slave trade. Medical men are intrigued by Livingstone's approach to disease and the value of his treatment for fever."

The reporter, Henry Stanley, who found Livingstone became a Christian because of him and took up his work after his death.

Stanley described Livingstone as a "truly pious man—a man deeply imbued with real religious instincts. His religion … is of the true, practical kind, never losing a chance to manifest itself in a quiet, practical way—never demonstrative or loud. It is always at work, if not in deed, by shining example."

Livingstone's tacit evangelism touched Stanley, who had arrived in Africa "as prejudiced against religion as the worst infidel in London." Livingstone had truly left all to follow Christ, and his model of dedication converted Stanley. After Livingstone's death, Stanley stepped up to continue his fantastic voyages.

You can read more about this intriguing man.

Do We Need Another Youth Conference?

"Do we really need another youth conference?"

Well, our Rethink Conference preregistration numbers suggest we do. With over 400 students, youth leaders, and parents already signed up, we have further evidence that youth are hungry for this kind of conference. Why? Because it's not the typical youth camp or conference, where students may be entertained, may have a lot of "fun," may be wowed with bells and whistles, but who may not walk away equipped with anything more than a temporary hyped-up experience. 

Students want parents and church leadership to step up their training. The Center for Parent & Youth Understanding (CPYU) conducted interviews with students who had grown up in the church and were now in college. This is the kind of thing CPYU heard again and again:  

CPYU: As you reflect on your church youth group experience, what are some things you wish your youth group would have done more of to prepare you for college?

Gabrielle: I was in several youth groups in high school and unfortunately found that youth group was too “soft”—we played a lot of games and had a lot of fun retreats, but rarely learned about the fundamentals of faith, why we believe what we believe, and what it is that we do believe. Now that I am in college, my faith is under constant scrutiny and always being tested by scientific concepts and the secular slant of most universities. I wish I had been equipped with a more solid justification for my faith: knowing how to answer the tough questions, how to respond to arguments, and how to stand firm in what feels like a storm against my spirituality.

Students want us to raise the bar of expectations and that's what Rethink does. This conference on October 25-26 will equip students with knowledge of the truth and the ability to defend the truth. There will be 8 hours of training on topics like abortion, the problem of evil, worldviews, intelligent design, tolerance and more. So what are you waiting for? Sign up today and plan to bring your students. You don't live in Southern California? That's not stopping others, as people will be traveling from out-of-state for Rethink.  

Not convinced students need this kind of training? Check out these videos that might help persuade you and others.  

Here is True U's "The Toughest Test in College" promo video: 

 

Here is Ravi Zacharias International Ministries' "ASK" Curriculum promo video:  

 

Here is Ratio Christi's promotional video: 

How Can You Increase Your Outreach?

You’ve been studying apologetics, but does the truth you
learn leap out of you in conversation with others? Learning more and more
apologetic answers won’t necessarily lead to real conversations with the people
who have the questions. It’s not knowledge of facts that will propel you
towards this, it’s something else. From Trevin
Wax:

Lack of mission is rarely a knowledge
problem; it’s a worship problem. We don’t have any trouble talking about the
things we love most. Whenever we find something worthy of attention, we talk
about it.

The same is true of our
relationship with Christ. The more we are in awe of his worthiness, the more
likely we are to speak of him to others and serve others in his name.

How do we cultivate this? John Piper said in Desiring God:

The fuel of worship is a true vision of the greatness of God; the fire that makes the fuel burn white
hot is the quickening of the Holy Spirit; the furnace made alive and warm by the flame of truth is our renewed
spirit; and the resulting heat
of our affections is powerful worship, pushing its way out in confessions,
longings, acclamations, tears, songs, shouts, bowed heads, lifted hands, and
obedient lives.

And evangelism.

If you’re looking to step outside of apologetics for a bit
and seek a “true vision of the greatness of God,” here are some ideas:

The Bible (See here
and here
for suggestions on how to do this)

The
Holiness of God (His holiness is our cultural blind spot)
Knowing
God (A book about who God is)
A
Praying Life (A review of its
strengths and weaknesses)
Christian
Biographies – lectures by John Piper (See how God has worked in the past—this
is my favorite)

Links Mentioned on the 10/15/13 Show

The following are links that were either mentioned on this week's show or inspired by it, as posted live on the @STRtweets Twitter feed:

Give 'Em Heaven by Greg Koukl


Faith and Works: Paul vs. James by Greg Koukl


Losing Your Salvation in Ephesians 1:14-3 by Amy Hall


Does God Whisper? Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 by Greg Koukl


Decision Making and the Will of God by Greg Koukl


Discipled by Narnia – by Amy Hall (on the ideas behind Joe Rigney's book)


Live Like a Narnian – Christian Discipleship in C.S. Lewis's Chronicles – Book by Joe Rigney


Live Like a Narnian – Lecture by Joe Rigney


Recovering the Lost Art of Chivalry by Joe Rigney


Narnia Invaded: How the New Films Subvert Lewis's Hierarchical World by Steven Boyer (article recommended by Rigney)


Prince Caspian: Good Film that Misses the Mark by Amy Hall

Listen to today's show or download any archived show for free. (Find links from past shows here.)

To follow the Twitter conversation during the live show (Tuesdays 4:00–7:00 p.m. PT), use the hashtag #STRtalk.

A Review of O'Reilly's Killing Jesus

Killing Jesus: A
History by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard has both positive and negative
aspects. In the end, I do
recommend reading it. But don’t
give it to non-Christians expecting it to be a dramatic replacement for reading
the Gospels themselves. The
authors tell an engaging history of Jesus’ life, but they falter serious on some
important parts of that history, which displays their bias.

The strongest part of the book is the Roman history that
provides the historical context for the time Jesus lived on earth. It’s an important aspect to understand
Jewish life at the time, the role Pontius Pilate played, and the interplay
between Pilate and the High Priests. High school history didn’t stick for many of us, so these kinds of
novels are appealing ways of learning history. It reads like an exciting novel. 

In the same way, they write about Jesus’ life in a dramatic,
engaging way. For Christians who
know the Gospels, it’s an enjoyable way of reading familiar events in an
entertaining way. The book reminds
me of Paul L. Maier’s historical fiction that I have loved reading (though in
this case, there’s little fictional embellishment).

The authors state in the foreword that they only report what
they can verify as fact, and for the most part I think they follow this
rule. There were a few places
where there was some historical embellishment that I know can’t have been in
any source, but these were minor and didn’t involve anything of great significance
or changing events as reported by the historical sources.

The primary problem with the book is the inconsistent way
they treat the Gospels as historical sources. In the foreword they say they relay on classical works, and
they do for Roman history and to vividly explain details like what it’s like to
die of crucifixion. They referred
to what Josephus wrote about Jesus and Israel. But contemporary historical
sources have little detail about Jesus.
They admit as much when they state that Jesus lived an average life in a
small backwater of the Roman Empire until the last few years of his life. Even then, no one paid much attention to
this part of the world.

The primary sources they use for much of their narrative of
Jesus’ life are the four eyewitness records – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John. So most of the book relies
on these four historical sources. Frankly,
there wouldn’t be much of a book to write without the details provided by these
accounts. They treat them as sound
sources in much of what they report, but then dismiss some things as “myth.” This is the weakest part of the book and their
methodology.

They treat the testimonies of miraculous events in these
same sources differently than they do the other events they treat as history. They include them, but not as
historical fact as they do the rest of the events of Jesus’ life. They switch from reporting the events
to hedging what these same sources tell them about miracles. They write, “Stories of Jesus turning
water into wine….”  “Witnesses say
he is performing miracles once again.”

They write, “We had to separate fact from myth based upon a
variety of sources, some of which had their own agendas” (p. 291).  Why treat some as history and other
parts of the same source as
myth? They have an
anti-supernatural bias. And my
hunch is that because they want their book to be taken seriously by other
historians, they treat these reports differently. If they think Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John can be relied on
in some cases, they don’t justify why they suddenly think these reports are
myth.

They do the same thing when they omit some of Jesus’ words
on the cross because they have a presupposition they brought to the historical
sources. O’Reilly said in an
interview that no one could have heard Jesus’ last words because the crowds
were kept too far away to overhear, and since crucifixion killed by
suffocation, Jesus’ couldn’t have spoken on the cross. Yet they do report two things He said –
which He said on the cross while undergoing suffocation and which were
overheard. There’s a
double-standard that isn’t explained.

The most egregious omission from the sources they rely on
for most of their book is the reports of the resurrection. The last chapter ends with Mary
discovering the empty tomb. In the
postscript, they report the eyewitness testimony of the risen Jesus, but that
has the effect of treating it like the miracles – suspect. The only reason to do so is to start
with an anti-supernatural presupposition and assume that any reports of such
are “myth” with an “agenda.”

The authors insert some commentary here and there that is
inconsistent with the history that they report. They accurately report that
Jesus’ claimed to be God on numerous occasions, and this is what infuriated the
Jewish leaders. But in the
foreword, they summarize Jesus’ message as peace and love. That’s a poor summary of what they
actually write about Jesus’ message. 

They also write that Jesus is a revolutionary with a band of
disciples and a growing legion of followers. This is contrary to Jesus’ own message. Though His message was revolutionary
theologically, it wasn’t revolutionary politically, which seems to be their
implication based on the context. And his followers didn’t grow over the course of His ministry. The biggest crowds Jesus had for His
teaching were at the beginning of His ministry. Between the Sermon on the Mount and the cross, the crowds
dwindled. These little insertions
of commentary are inconsistent with the facts they report.

The most ironic thing about the inconsistent way they treat
the historical records of Jesus’ life is that in the sources section, they
recommend reading excellent authors. They mention Darrell Bock, J.P. Moreland, Paul Copan, Craig Keener, and
others. Too bad they didn’t learn
better how to treat the eyewitness sources more consistently.

So kudos on placing Jesus’ life in the wider historical
context of the time and for vividly telling Jesus’ life. Read it and enjoy. But there are major fundamental flaws
in the authors’ methodology that undermines a fuller and accurate historical retelling of
Jesus’ life.