Gregory Koukl's Blog, page 57

Links Mentioned on the 4/07/15 Show

The following is a rundown of this week's podcast, annotated with links that were either mentioned on the show or inspired by it:

HOUR ONE

Guest: Alan Shlemon – Dealing with Homosexuality and Transgender Issues in the Church with Truth and Compassion (0:00)

Alan Shlemon
The Ambassador's Guide to Understanding Homosexuality by Alan Shlemon
I Was a Transgender Woman by Walt Heyer
How to Help Transgender Children by Amy Hall
Protecting Your Ministry from Sexual Orientation Gender Identity Lawsuits: A Legal Guide by Alliance Defending Freedom
The Ambassador's Guide to Islam by Alan Shlemon

Questions:

– Announcements by Greg (0:29)

See upcoming events with STR speakers
Apologetics conference in Pensacola, FL – April 10–11

1. Forgiveness doesn't end the consequences of sin. (0:30)

The Sin of Forgiveness? by Greg Koukl
Is Forgiveness Always Right and Required? by Justin Taylor

 2. What would Jesus do about baking a cake for a same-sex wedding? (0:40)

Bake for Them Two by Jessica Kantrowitz
Refusing to Serve Individuals vs. Refusing to Participate in Events by Amy Hall – Includes thoughts on why you shouldn't go against your conscience (or force anyone else to)
Bake for Them Two, or Walk with the Few by Eric Teetsel

HOUR TWO

Commentary: Clues to the Historicity of the Resurrection Accounts? (1:00)

The Final Days of Jesus: The Most Important Week of the Most Important Person Who Ever Lived by Andreas Köstenberger and Justin Taylor
The Resurrection of Jesus: a Clinical Review of Psychiatric Hypotheses for the Biblical Story of Easter by Joseph W. Bergeron and Gary R. Habermas

Questions:

3. Different kinds of discrimination (1:23)

4. God was unfair to the Israelites in Egyptian slavery. (1:39)

5. Recommend a book on Bible difficulties. (1:52)

Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties by Gleason Archer
Hard Sayings of the Old Testament by Walter Kaiser
More Hard Sayings of the Old Testament by Walter Kaiser
Difficult Passages in the New Testament by Robert Stein
Today's Handbook for Solving Bible Difficulties by David O'Brien
Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible by John Haley
A Reasonable Response: Answers to Tough Questions on God, Christianity, and the Bible by Joseph Gorra and William Lane Craig

HOUR THREE

Commentary: Attending Church with Kids (2:00)

Questions:

6. Confusing marriage and partnership (2:11)

Why C.S. Lewis Was Wrong on Marriage (and J.R.R. Tolkien Was Right) by Jake Meador
Marriage: What It Is, Why It Matters, and the Consequences of Redefining It by Ryan Anderson
Privatize Marriage? by Amy Hall
Understand the Same-Sex Marriage Issue by Amy Hall

– Comments from Greg (2:26)

Bigotry, the Bible, and the Lessons of Indiana by Frank Bruni (New York Times) – Christians "must be made 'to take homosexuality off the sin list.'"
Articles on the Religious Freedom Fiasco by Amy Hall – Includes responses to the Frank Bruni article

7. Should Christian wedding photographers take a stand in their industry? (2:31)

Three Steps to Protect Christian Wedding Vendors by Greg Koukl
A Note from Creator Cakes by Andrew Walker – Another idea for how bakers, photographers, etc. can deal with governmental coercion
(See links under question #2.)

 8. How to lead his wife to Jesus? (2:49)

Ephesians 2:8-9
John 1:12
1 John 5:11-13
What Is the Gospel? by Greg Gilbert

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

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

What Jesus Said about Homosexuality

Did Jesus say anything about homosexuality? That’s the challenge offered to Christians who cite the Bible as the basis for their convictions about same-sex marriage. My answer: Jesus said something in Leviticus 18:22-23, 20:13, Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9, and 1 Timothy 1:10.

The Bible’s view of the Bible is that it is God-breathed. 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” Jesus is God, therefore all of the Bible is His Word, not just the parts in red in the four Gospels. 

Jesus spoke about everything from Genesis 1:1 through Revelation 22:21. And that includes anything in the 66 books about homosexuality.

There’s No Evidence for the Resurrection (If You Rule Out Evidence for the Resurrection)

Some humor from Lutheran Satire: "Donall and Conall [formerly of “St. Patrick’s Bad Analogies”] Meet Richard Dawkins":

 

Challenge: Same-Sex Marriage Gives Stability to Children

This week’s challenge is taken from a question Alan received:

If you take away same-sex marriage, you’ll take away stability from children of same-sex couples. So not only will you be discriminating against people wanting to marry, but you’ll also be hurting the next generation!

What do you think about this one? Does same-sex marriage bolster the institution of the family and protect children? If not, why not? Respond to this challenge in the comments below, then Alan will post his response on Thursday.

[Explore past challenges here and here.]

Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism

Greg discusses his views on covenant theology and dispensationalism.

Free Audiobook: The Truth of the Cross

Right now, R.C. Sproul’s book The Truth of the Cross is available for free on Ligonier’s website as an audiobook. It’s the perfect weekend to listen. 

In this book, Dr. R.C. Sproul surveys the great work accomplished by Jesus Christ through His crucifixion—the redemption of God’s people. Dr. Sproul considers the atonement from numerous angles and shows conclusively that the cross was absolutely necessary if anyone was to be saved.

Opening the Scriptures, Dr. Sproul shows that God Himself provided salvation by sending Jesus Christ to die on the cross, and the cross was always God’s intended method by which to bring salvation. The Truth of the Cross is an uncompromising reminder that the atonement of Christ is an absolutely essential doctrine of the Christian faith, one that should be studied and understood by all believers.

Enjoy, and happy Easter!

RFRA Is Not Jim Crow

In the controversy over the Indiana law, comparisons are again being made between same-sex marriage and interracial marriage: We’ve all realized that banning interracial marriage was bigotry and wrong; we should admit the same about same-sex marriage. One commentator drew the comparison on another line claiming that bigotry of interracial marriage was religiously motivated.

The comparison is not an accurate one in any way.

Frank Beckwith has made the observation that the ban on interracial marriage was not one that was founded on nature and natural function. Couples have been marrying interracially for millennia. It was a relatively recent move to ban it by law that was motivated out of hatred and racism. Race has nothing to do with the natural function of marriage and procreation. That’s why it’s been a rare thing historically to ban it.

This is fundamentally different than same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage has never been practiced before, in any culture, at any time in history. There’s never been a ban because it never happened. That’s the opposite of interracial marriage.

While many of the bigots in the past used the Bible to justify their actions, this was always a minority of people who claimed to be Christians. And the movement for treating all people equally has been deeply grounded in the Bible. As has happened many times over the years, religion was misused to justify their sin, but the Bible did not motivate the sin.

Critics claim that the Indiana law protecting religious conscience will be used to discriminate against gay people. You know what reason we have to be skeptical of that claim? The bakers and photographers who’ve objected to being compelled to participate in same-sex weddings have no history of refusing service to gay individuals. Their conscientious objection is to the activity of a wedding for gay people, not against gay individuals. There’s a significant difference between baking a cake for a gay person’s birthday and baking a cake for a wedding celebration of a same-sex couple. No one has claimed a conscience objection to the former, only the later.

There’s another real difference between the Indiana law and Jim Crow laws. The Indiana law gives religious people a standing if sued to defend themselves against illegitimate discrimination. The law doesn’t compel them to do or not do anything. Jim Crow laws compelled businesses to deny service to individuals, even if they objected to the discriminatory laws. Business owners had no freedom to provide service, even when their religiously-informed consciences objected.

The comparison between the religious objections to same-sex marriage and interracial marriage is a false one. They should be corrected at every opportunity. Religious liberty protection should be extended in the cases of participating in the celebration of same-sex marriage because it’s in no way like Jim Crow.

Finding Truth: Foreword

We’re starting our book club today. If you didn’t hear about it earlier, don’t worry—it’s not too late to join us! Today we’re only covering the foreword to Nancy Pearcey’s book Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism and Other God Substitutes, so you’ll be able to easily catch up with the first chapter for next week. (If you purchase it through STR and use the coupon code “STRread,” you’ll also receive a CD of Greg’s interview with Nancy Pearcey and get a 15% discount.)

In his foreword, Richard Pearcey counteracts the popular notion of faith as “a commitment so private and so personal that evaluation and evidence are irrelevant” by stressing the non-subjective nature of the claims made by Christianity. A few examples given by Pearcey:

“If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile,” states 1 Corinthians 15:17. Some people may balk at the linkage of fact to commitment, but the dynamic worldview set forth in the biblical data welcomes the connection…. Thomas was not persuaded by looking inward to his heart, but by evaluating evidence in the external world. He then made a commitment on the basis of relevant facts, not because of a lack of facts and certainly not against them…. 

When John the Baptist was in prison and facing capital punishment, he sent followers to ask if Jesus really was the Messiah. Jesus’s response was to adduce publicly observable miracles that lined up with previously given biblical indicators on how to identify the coming Messiah…. Because these events were public, their status as facts could be confirmed by friend and foe alike. (pp. 14-16)

The tying of theology to historical events in the world—the appeal of people such as Moses and Paul to historical occurrences as evidence of God’s power, character, and plan for His people—is uniquely Jewish and Christian. The Bible is not a retelling of untestable visions received by prophets, but a history experienced by a people over thousands of years.

Since “a falsified ‘faith’ is quite properly a discarded faith,” and “a confirmed faith, or better, a well-grounded trust, is well worth embracing by the whole person,” this book aims to enable you “to identify truth that merits trust.” Richard Pearcey sums up what you’ll find in Finding Truth this way:

[A]ll who engage this book will find encouragement to think humanely and critically about possible answers to ultimate questions. You will be invited to consider how verifiable historic Christianity incisively and rightly answers the great questions of life, “outperforms all competing worldviews,” and “fulfills humanity’s highest hopes and ideals,” as Nancy Pearcey states in this book.

Finding Truth articulates a set of key strategic principles by which to evaluate the authenticity of any worldview, whether encountered in the classroom, at the office, in the news, or on the street. In this book you will be equipped to critically examine secularism and other idols of our day as they are advanced in the garb of politics, science, entertainment, or religion.

You will also see doctrines of atheism and materialism put to the test, to assess whether they stand up under critical thinking. And you will explore faiths such as relativism and postmodernism, to consider whether they merit the informed trust of the human being (pp. 18-19).

What did you think of the foreword? Anything that intrigues you about the coming pages? Anything you disagreed with? Any questions? Any thoughts? Let’s talk about it in the comments below or on Twitter (#STRread). 

Next Friday, be ready for Part One: “I Lost My Faith at an Evangelical College.”

Refusing to Serve Individuals vs. Refusing to Participate in Events

When people say Christians want to “refuse service to gays,” the implication is that Christians don’t want to engage in economic transactions with people because of their sexual orientation—as if they’re turning people away with, “We don’t serve your kind here.”

This is not the case, and it hasn’t been the case in any of the well-known incidents involving photographers, bakers, etc. that I’m aware of. Consider the story of Barronelle Stutzman, the florist in Washington:

Robert Ingersoll and his husband, Curt Freed, said they had spent thousands of dollars and had been buying flowers from Arlene’s for nearly a decade when Ingersoll asked Stutzman to provide flowers for their wedding in 2013.

Stutzman declined, writing in a Facebook post later that it was because of "my relationship with Jesus Christ."

“I believe, biblically, that marriage is between a man and a woman,” Stutzman wrote. “That is my conviction, yours may be different.”

Stutzman said Ingersoll gave her a hug, said he "respected my opinion," and left.

[The Washington Times adds that she “referred the men to several other local florists.”]

Does that sound like “We don’t serve your kind here”? Please note that a gay couple “spent thousands of dollars and had been buying flowers from Arlene’s for nearly a decade.” That’s absolute proof that Stutzman was not discriminating against them on the basis of their sexual orientation. She merely didn’t want to participate in a same-sex wedding.

Why is there no room in our society for this?

Aaron Shafovaloff sent me an illustration this morning that he uses to help people understand the distinction between not serving a person because he is gay and not participating in a same-sex wedding (an event supporting and celebrating a view of marriage that is deeply objected to for numerous reasons):

A heterosexual couple walks into a marketing and print shop. They ask to have a banner designed and printed to promote an event for some friends. The event is the monthly "Advocacy Meetup for Genderless Marriage." The group, by principled extension, promotes same-sex marriage, since they believe marriage is a genderless institution.

At this particular advocacy meetup, only heterosexual couples happen to attend. And the couple in the shop asking for the banner happen to be orthodox Jews who believe marriage is a gendered institution. They are ordering and purchasing the banner as a favor to liberal friends promoting the meetup.

Both the potential seller and buyers are heterosexual religious conservatives who believe that marriage is a gendered institution. Yet the owner of the marketing and print shop refuses service. Should this business be successfully sued or penalized? Should any parties be able to collect damages? Why or why not?

Think about it: For the florist, baker, or photographer who wanted to follow their conscience, it didn't ultimately matter who was ordering their services. Rather, what mattered to them was the morally objectionable message and the nature of the event being celebrated and promoted.

One could just as easily flip this illustration around and make it about a person who is for same-sex marriage declining to make a banner for a rally promoting man-woman-only marriage. In both cases, the sexual orientation of the individual placing the order is irrelevant. In both cases, it’s their convictions about the meaning of marriage that the owners don’t want to compromise, not their hatred or bigotry towards anyone because of their sexual orientation.

Some are saying, “So what if participating in a same-sex marriage goes against a person’s conscience? It’s wrong to object to same-sex marriage, so it’s okay to force her to do the right thing.” This attitude reflects a low view of human dignity. Instead, I agree with Luther that “it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.” This is the Christian view.

In Romans 14, Paul stresses the importance of not violating our conscience when he cautions us not to engage in anything we're not convinced is okay—that is, anything we can't, in good conscience, do to the glory of God.* He says, “Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind…. [T]o him who thinks anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.” We’re not to “put a stumbling block in a brother’s way,” “wounding his conscience” by causing him to do something he believes he shouldn’t do—even, Paul says, if that person is refraining from doing something that, in reality, is okay for him to do. You can’t “do all to the glory of God” if you're not convinced what you're doing brings glory to God. It’s an affront to human dignity to force a person into this situation.

This is why I'm strongly against forcing any person, regardless of his beliefs, to violate his conscience, and why I’m for RFRAs (not to mention the First Amendment), which are meant to respect this truth about human dignity. People should not be forced to promote or participate in events they profoundly disagree with. They should not be forced by law to violate their conscience. As Aaron concluded:

Compelling someone else's speech (through creative or expressive services) can be a soft form of slavery…. To argue in essence, “But giving people liberties and freedoms might enable them to act unethically toward others” is fundamentally to argue against the Constitution. Liberties and freedoms require vulnerabilities and risks that are worth having.

The First Amendment is meant to protect us from people who think they can perfect society if only they’re given enough control over everyone’s words and actions. Accepting the reality of diversity, even with its risks and imperfections, is what a free society does.

______________________________

*Paul is referring specifically to the Old Testament holiness code here, but the same principle should apply to unclear moral situations, as well.

An Illustration to Help Reconcile God’s Sovereignty with Evil

Two regular commenters on my “Christians, You Will Suffer” post had an exchange worth sharing with everyone. “Goat Head 5” was objecting to the idea that anyone would say God is sovereign over the evil that happens in this world. Below are some of his and “WisdomLover’s” thoughts on this (with some reformatting and combination of separate comments by me for the sake of brevity):

WISDOMLOVER: You want a case of God willing evil on an innocent victim, and I give you the example of Christ…. God apparently allows the suffering of innocent people. What is more, He has all the power in the world to prevent those sufferings….

Let's suppose my daughter is learning to ride a bicycle. Also suppose that I am perfectly capable, and do, run alongside the bicycle…. At the slightest sign of her falling over I can steady her, or, if need be, snatch her from the bicycle. I can, of course, also allow her to fall over.

None of this takes a thing away from the fact that my daughter freely rides the bicycle, that she freely kept herself from falling.

But I am also in control of whether she falls over.

GOAT HEAD 5: How could God be in control when I do what He does not want done? … How do you reconcile the Bible saying God is good with your theological idea that God wants every evil action to happen so much that He controls every event to make sure that it does? How can these coexist? 

WISDOMLOVER: In my example of the father and the bicycling child. The father is in control of whether the child falls or not. He does not want the child ever to fall, he actually hates it. For all that, he may choose to let the child fall, he may even push the child over, for all sorts of reasons that are more important than preventing what he hates….

To return to the example, the father might cause the very fall that he hates to prevent the child from getting run over. (Because he hates that even more, you see).

Couldn't it be that the evil we see in this world (that God hates) is necessary to prevent other evils that God would hate even more than the evils he allows or even causes?

Just as the child might never see the car that would have run her over...the car that required that her father push the bike over, perhaps we will never see the reason God had for causing or allowing the evil in our lives that He does.

It comes down to this. Are we going to trust in God's love for us? Or trust in our own wisdom about how things should be?

GOAT HEAD 5: If God is in control, and control is that what God wants to happen, happens, and evil happens, then God wants evil to happen. Is this OK with all of you?

WISDOMLOVER: In the bicycle example, the father's will wins whenever the will of the father and the will of the child come into conflict. God, like the father in the bicycle example, wills that necessary evils happen. Whether that's OK with me or not, the evils are necessary. I suppose I could rail against necessity as the child does. Or I could trust in God to only allow necessary evils.

You can read the unedited exchange between all the commenters here.

As this is Holy Week—a time when we commemorate the week Christ suffered great evil at the hands of men as part of the plan of God—this subject is particularly relevant.