Gregory Koukl's Blog, page 72
November 18, 2014
A 5-Step Method for Studying Scripture: John 15:1-8
I want to lay out a 5-step method I use to study Scripture. I'll apply it to John 15:1-8 to illustrate the method. It's not the only method, and it's not an exhaustive method, but I hope you find it helpful as a tool in your personal study of Scripture.
STEP #1 – Identify the genre of the biblical passage.
John’s gospel falls under the genre of ancient biography, much like ancient Greco-Roman biographies. However, in his historiographical work, John is not a disinterested observer. While recounting factual historical events, ancient historians would also emphasize particular themes. Often in ancient biography, the writer would embed those themes in the narrative (“the moral of the story”). So John, like the other gospel writers, is both historian and theologian. John’s gospel is especially interpretive in its approach to history, and therefore, it may be most accurate to call the Johannine narrative a theological biography.
STEP #2 – State your initial understanding of the “generic or intrinsic conception” of the passage.
Jesus gives His disciples final instructions to abide in Him out of love and to love one another.
STEP #3 – Make observations about the literary, grammatical, historical, and cultural contexts of your passage.
John writes to both Jews and Gentiles to persuade them of Jesus’ divine origin and the divine message that He brings. In particular, John focuses his attention on the Pharisees as opponents and contrasts them with what it truly means to follow Jesus. John labels them “the Jews” and gives a negative view of the Jewish authorities throughout the gospel.
In John 12, John has transitioned us out of Jesus’ public ministry with a summary in verses 37-50. In chapter 13, we are led into the Upper Room Discourse, as Jesus joins His disciples at the Last Supper. From chapters 13 through 17, Jesus instructs and commissions the disciples during His very last night with them. At the beginning of chapter 15, Jesus has just finished telling the disciples that their love for Him is evidenced in their obedience to Him.
STEP #4 – In light of steps 1 through 3, interpret the meaning of the passage.
Knowing that these are some of the last instructions Jesus gives to His disciples, we sense their urgency and importance. In the Old Testament, Israel is portrayed as a vineyard or vine (e.g. Ps. 80:8; Is. 5:7; Hos. 10:1) and God is the one who cares for the vine. The analogy demonstrates the dependency relationship. In the same way, Jesus identifies Himself as the vine that His followers are dependent upon. If they do not “abide in” Him, they cannot produce the fruit of good works that marks every believer.
Jesus then instructs His disciples that their relationships with one another are to be marked by love. Verses 12 and 17 seem to “bookend” these verses, and the commandment to love one another stated in verse 12 is repeated and re-emphasized in verse 17. This has been the consistent message of Jesus. After washing the disciples' feet in the beginning of chapter 13 and modeling His love for them, He informs them that they are to follow His example of love (v. 34) and that the defining mark of the community of believers is their love for one another (v. 35). In chapter 14, He emphasizes the intrinsic connection between love and obedience. But that obedience can only flow out of the believer who abides in Christ, and the clearest evidence will be found in the love believers have for one another.
STEP #5 – Apply the passage to life.
These passages very clearly state that as a community of believers we are to love one another, just as Jesus has loved us. This is a tall order, but at the same time, it must be attainable if Christ has commanded us to do so. We can certainly look to Jesus as our model and see expressions of this kind of love in His life. Indeed, when the community of God is marked by this love, it will be evidence to others that we are Jesus’ disciples (13:35).
Throughout John’s gospel we see how this love is evidenced in the believers’ lives by seeing how it is evidenced in Jesus. First, we see it in humility. Jesus performs the menial task of a servant by washing the feet of the disciples in John 13. He then instructs them that He is their example and that they should do likewise. As the body of Christ, we should emulate Christ's example of humble service to one another. Second, we see it in unity. Jesus intercedes for believers in chapter 17, asking the Father that the believers may be “one” and “perfected in unity.” The ideal state of community in the body is unity.
We need to evaluate our love in light of Jesus’ love, and not by the standard of love of those around us. When we compare ourselves to others, we can rationalize quite easily and make ourselves look pretty good in our own eyes. However, when we see our love in the light of Jesus’ love, we are humbled.
Also, as one whose work largely deals with apologetics and theology, this was a much needed reminder that my love for the other members of the body is a more powerful “argument” for the truth of Christianity than any of the intellectual arguments I can marshal. My hope and prayer is that people can see my love for others, even in my apologetic presentations.
(Want to learn more about studying and interpreting Scripture? Here are some excellent videos from Dr. Walt Russell.)
November 17, 2014
Tolerance or Lack of Courage?
Greg explains how the word tolerance is often used inappropriately.
November 15, 2014
Kill Humans to Save Humans? | Taking the Heat
Alan’s and Brett’s newsletters are now posted on the website:
Must We Kill Humans to Save Other Humans? by Alan Shlemon: “Removing stem cells from a human embryo kills the developing human. Without stem cells, a week-old human can’t build his or her body. That’s why ESCR is morally wrong: It kills an innocent human being. Fortunately, scientists have discovered another source of stem cells: adult human beings. Since stem cells have been self-renewing since our embryonic days, they continue to grow and live in our bodies today. They are found in our bone marrow, brain, fat, eyes, and many other places.... Adult stem cell therapy has helped human beings for the last 20 years. To date, stem cells have been used in the treatment of 73 different conditions. How many successful human treatments have embryonic stem cells achieved? Zero. None. Nada.” (Read more)
Taking the Heat by Brett Kunkle: “Our relationships with other believers should be marked by love—the kind of love Jesus has for us. And you might expect that if the world looks in and sees that kind of love amongst believers, they would naturally be drawn to it. However, Jesus alerts us to the typical reaction of the world: “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated Me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you also” (vv. 17-20)…. So what should be the response of Christ’s followers to the world’s anger and hatred?” (Read more)
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November 14, 2014
Don’t Assume We Should Change the Body to Match the Mind
When a person’s mind conflicts with his body, which should we help him to change? While speaking at the ERLC National Conference last month, Denny Burk said:
At the heart of the transgender revolution is the notion that psychological identity trumps bodily identity. In this way of thinking, a person is whatever they think themselves to be. If a girl perceives herself to be a boy, then she is one even if her biology says otherwise.
But as Burk explains, our society takes the opposite view when it comes to “Body Integrity Identity Disorder”:
Fox News did an anonymous interview in 2009 with a person named “John” who has been consumed with feelings of dissatisfaction with his body for as long as he can remember. Ever since he was a child, he has felt like a one-legged man trapped inside a two-legged man’s body. He has suffered psychological angst his entire life because of his two legs. Even as an adult after 47 years of marriage, he still wishes and hopes to have one of his legs amputated….
It turns out that “John” has a condition that pychiatrists call “Body Integrity Identity Disorder.” According to a 2012 study, the only known treatment that provides psychological relief is amputation. Nevertheless, doctors have by and large resisted this, and people suffering from this disorder typically cannot find doctors willing to do the surgery unless they injure themselves….
We consider it wrong to amputate healthy limbs—it’s considered a mutilation of the body, out of bounds for respectable doctors, even if the would-be amputee desires it.
Burk then makes the obvious connection to those who desire sex-reassignment surgery:
If that is the case with amputations, then what are we to make of the woman who claims that she is a man trapped inside a woman’s body? …
The ethical question that we have to ask is the same one that we have already asked. Is it right for people to amputate otherwise healthy limbs? Is the problem here damaged limbs or a damaged mind? Does the body need adjusting, or does the thinking? …
Over the last few years, we have seen a number of reports about parents who are letting gender-confused children undergo hormone therapy to delay puberty indefinitely until a decision can be made about gender reassignment surgery (see here). Ironically, these parents believe that it is permissible to surgically alter a child’s body to match his sense of self but it is wrong to try and change his sense of self to match his body. Yet this leads to an obvious question. If it is wrong to attempt to change a child’s gender identity (because it is fixed and meddling with it is harmful), then why is it morally acceptable to alter something as fixed as a biological body of a minor? The moral inconsistency here is plain. To this we must also observe that the vast majority of children who report transgender feelings grow out of those feelings. I would argue that it is irresponsible and wrong to physically alter a child’s body through surgery or hormones when we know that most of these children grow out of their gender-conflicted feelings (source).
Why, only when it comes to gender disorders, do we accept the idea that the body must be changed to fit the mind? As with those who have Body Integrity Identity Disorder, shouldn’t we rather do what we can to help the suffering person adjust his gender identity to fit his body? Shouldn’t responsible doctors likewise refuse to amputate their healthy body parts?
As it turns out, even if it weren’t problematic for doctors to agree to these surgeries, we may not be doing people any favors by removing their healthy body parts at their request. I’ve posted before about “Why the First Hospital to Do Sex-Reassignment Surgeries No Longer Does Them,” and this week Stella Morabito compiled a number of stories of people who greatly regretted their surgeries here. The stories are tragic.
We ought to have a great deal of compassion for those who have gender disorders. As with those who suffer from Body Integrity Identity Disorder, we may not be able to provide relief through changing their minds. But that doesn’t mean we should assume relief would be provided through mutilating their bodies.
November 13, 2014
The Ex-Slave Abolitionist
Olaudah Equiano was born in an Igbo village in West Africa about 1745. He and his sister were captured and sold as slaves when he was 11 years old. Marc Baer, author of Mere Believers, argues “that because Equiano became a believer, the enslavement of Africans by Europeans came to an end.”
Equiano led an extraordinary life. He was brought to the Virginia colony on a slave ship and sold to a British naval officer. Equiano became a skilled seaman, learning “English, mathematics, the art of navigation, and several trades.” These are skills he would put to use in adventures all over the globe and make a living when he was free.
On July 10, 1766, he bought his freedom. He said later in his autobiography that it was the happiest day he had ever experienced.
On October 6, 1774, he experienced an even happier day. He “acknowledged my transgression to God, and poured out my soul before him with unfeigned repentance.” He had been reading the Bible but had thought that he was a moral person, obeying enough of the law to please God. On that day, he meditated on Acts 4:12: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”
Equiano became a spokesman for abolition. His personal experience and his Christian convictions gave him the moral justification to show why slavery was horrendously wrong. He “became the most important Afro-British voice in the growing opposition in the 1780s to the slave trade.” He pointed out what is taught in Acts 17:26 – all of us have one ancestor and we’re all made by God. “He publicized the true identity of those oppressors as nominal or false Christians because they did what God would not, placing shackles on other humans, and thus had behaved as if they were greater than God.”
He published his autobiography in 1789, which became a bestseller for years. “He was the first ex-slave to tell the story of his African roots, kidnapping, the horror of traveling on a slave ship and the terrible experiences that followed.” He self-published his book with the sponsorship of two British women, the Countess of Huntingdon and Hannah More. Equiano printed eight more editions and promoted the book across the British Isles.
His book influenced John Wesley and William Wilberforce. It rallied readers to the abolitionist movement. Wilberforce introduced a bill outlawing the slave trade six weeks after its publication. It was the beginning of many years of persuasion before it passed.
Equiano gave “voice, respect and dignity to black seamen and other poor African men and women who daily negotiated for their very survival in the colonies and in London.”
November 12, 2014
The Problem of Good
I read Martin Short’s autobiography this weekend. I’ve had the impression that Short is one of those celebrities who seems like a regular guy; he’s led a pretty normal life despite his celebrity. A family man, married for 30 years. I enjoyed reading the book.
Something has kept me thinking. Short was the fifth of five kids, and by far the youngest in the family. His oldest brother was killed in a car accident when Short was about 12 years old. At the time, he wondered why God would do this, allow this. He thought about some of the misadvised things people said to comfort the family. And he rejected God then because of this evil thing that had happened to his family.
Not long after his brother’s death, his mother became gravely ill with cancer and was expected to die. The doctors weren’t treating her because it was so advanced. Short’s sister, a nurse, talked to her mom about the prognosis, and their mom, in her typical spunk, rejected the idea of dying because she had one more child to finish raising (Short). And she asked her daughter to pass the grapes. This phrase, “Pass the grapes,” became family shorthand for coping with bad news and carrying on. Amazingly, their mother rallied and was in good health within six months. The doctors had no explanation. She survived several more years until Short was nearly finished with high school. She managed to get him to adulthood. He reflects on how much more difficult it would have been had he lost her at 12 and how significant those extra years were.
But he never indicates that this amazing event was the corollary to his brother’s death, that this great good was a reason to believe in God. But if the very personal problem of evil is a reason to reject God, isn’t the gift of good a reason to consider He exists? And none of the other great gifts in his life have ever caused him to rethink.
Greg has written about the problem of good. Christians need to answer the problem of evil. But atheists have to answer the problem of evil – and the problem of good. What makes something good in a world without objective standards? Where does good come from in a purely random world?
It’s a curious and sadly common trait of humans that we focus on the evil we experience and reject God, but take for granted the great good we experience.
November 11, 2014
Links Mentioned on the 11/11/14 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:
The Line in the Sand by Greg Koukl
The Reformation Project – What Greg and Alan were discussing
A Response to Matthew Vines: The Bible Doesn't Support Same-Sex Relationships (Includes a link to a five-hour refutation of Matthew Vines by James White)
Start Preparing to Defend Marriage within the Church by Amy Hall
Naturalism: Bumping into Reality by Greg Koukl
Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose
Band of Brothers miniseries
With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by E.B. Sledge
We Were Soldiers Once...and Young by Harold Moore and Joseph Galloway
Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
Platoon
Saving Private Ryan
The Defense Never Rests: A Workbook for Budding Apologists by William Lane Craig
On Guard by William Lane Craig
Flight: The Genius of Birds – Illustra Media
Metamorphosis: The Beauty and Design of Butterflies – Illustra Media
The Privileged Planet – Illustra Media
The Fallacy Detective by Nathaniel and Hans Bluedorn
The Thinking Toolbox by Nathaniel and Hans Bluedorn
What's Your Worldview? An Interactive Approach to Life's Big Questions by James Anderson
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.
Challenge: You Don’t Need Religion to Distinguish Right from Wrong
We’re going to take on one last challenge from “How to Argue That God Does Not Exist” today (see here and here for the previous ones):
Many people believe that without religion, the planet would descend into immoral chaos. The reality is that the majority of heinous crimes committed against people on this planet across all of recorded history had their roots on religious beliefs, but the ability to distinguish right from wrong does not require any religious beliefs. In addition, animals who are incapable of understanding our human concept of religion show clear evidence of understanding moral behavior and distinguishing between right and wrong.
What do you think? Tell us how you would respond to a friend who said this to you, then we’ll post Brett’s response on Thursday and you can see how you did.
Live Broadcast Today
Greg is live online Tuesday 4-7 p.m. PT. Open lines all three hours so give him a call with your question or comment at (855) 243-9975.
Listen live online. Join us on Twitter during the program @STRtweets #STRtalk.
