Gregory Koukl's Blog, page 79

Is It Possible to Decide Not to Sin?

If humans have the ability to make decisions, is it possible not to sin?

Christians: Intolerant Haters Since AD 33

Pliny the Younger, a Roman governor of Bithynia who, as Michael Kruger wrote in a recent post, thought that “intolerance of the Roman gods was enough of a reason to kill Christians, despite their [as noted by Pliny himself] holy lives,” commented back in the second century on the “stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy” of Christians who would not yield to the culture.

This obstinacy has been getting us into trouble for 2,000 years whenever a government makes the upsetting discovery that Christians place the authority of Jesus (as expressed in the unchangeable Bible) above that of civil authorities and so can’t be bent to their will no matter what. And I mean no matter what. The horrific tortures Christians have suffered over the ages are innumerable.

But guess what? We’re still here. And we’ll still be here 500 years from now, if Jesus hasn’t returned by then. I think our culture still does not know our God-enabled stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy. They still have hope that some pressure will convince us. But once it sinks in that they’ve met an immovable force…well, what happens next has not, in the past, proved to be fun for Christians. If a rock can’t be convinced to move along and stop impeding traffic in the middle of the road to progress, then the only thing left is to work at removing it.

Enter Michael Kruger’s post: “Regarded as ‘Intolerant Haters’: What’s New?”

In the midst of the high-octane cultural wars of the last several years—particularly the debate over homosexual marriage—evangelical Christians have been slapped with all sorts of pejorative labels. Words such as bigoted, arrogant, exclusive, dogmatic, and homophobic are just a few.

But two labels particularly stand out. First, Christians are regularly regarded as intolerant. Christians are not only regarded as intolerant religiously—because they affirm the words of Jesus that “no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6)—but they are regarded as intolerant ethically, because they refuse to approve any and all behaviors as morally good. 

Christians are also regularly (and ironically) regarded as haters. Apparently, our modern world regards the act of telling people they’re wrong as a form of hatred. It is never explained how the charge does not apply equally in the other direction, since those who make this charge are telling Christians they are wrong.

Needless to say, such a situation can discourage Christians in the modern day. We might be tempted to despair and think that the church is entering into dark days. But a little historical perspective might be useful. Truth be told, this is not the first time Christians have received such labels. Indeed, pejoratives were given to Christians from the beginning.

Read the rest of what Michael Kruger has to say about two ancient leaders who accused us of hatred and intolerance. He says these stories are both frightening and encouraging.

Do I have the strength and courage to stand with Jesus no matter what? Absolutely not. Though I’m committed to it, I have no delusions of grandeur about my own ability to do so. But thank God, I know that I am kept for Jesus Christ, and I trust Him to give me what I need when the time comes for me to need it.

Academics Are Secondary to Soul Development

On the podcast this week, Greg offered encouragement to those who are considering homeschooling their children (or already working hard at it) by reading a letter sent to him by a friend of Stand to Reason. Here is that letter:

Thursday last week was a rough day in "Mom" land. I failed to get up and going before my kids, and for me, this usually means I am playing catch-up all day. I didn't have an aim for the day, our baby decided to take the opportunity to eat much more often than usual and so our routine was out of whack, and my two five year olds were bored to tears and solved their boredom by bickering with each other constantly. I didn't get a chance to have a meal, let alone a shower, until mid-afternoon and generally felt like the worst version of myself as a person, mother, wife, you name it. I called my husband in tears, pleading with him – or perhaps, with myself – to change our minds about homeschooling that will be starting in a week. I was convinced that not only couldn't I do it, I didn't want to! I watched all my friends on the street happily walk their kiddos to the school bus (which a good family friend is driving this year), wave goodbye, and have a day to themselves to get things done, have a break, run errands without tag-alongs! The ease. The simplicity. The peace and quiet.

Thoughts began to invade, like perhaps I couldn't give my daughters everything they needed for their education, like socialization. P.E. Reading Group. And all the other things I enjoyed about school as a child but that my girls wouldn't experience in the same way through a homeschool co-op. I started to spiral into imagining that I would perhaps be harming them by homeschooling, and that I would certainly drive myself nuts! Suffice it to say, by bedtime my heart was heavy about the decision we had already made.

As I prayed in the shower the next morning, heart still heavy, I asked that God would break through the emotions and the mental fog and bring clarity and direction for me in regards to school. That He would show me the "why" if, indeed, the Classical homeschool co-op is still the best course to pursue at this time even if it is the most challenging. As I got ready for the day, I decided to listen to a sermon podcast, but for some reason our church website was down. So I thought I'd double check the STR site for any podcasts I had missed. Imagine my curiosity when I saw the title of the newest podcast: The First Day of School. 

Greg, your words literally brought tears to my eyes and fresh hope to my heart. The truth that "there is no such thing as a neutral education" struck me to the core. And as I heard you describe the first day's chapel, the instruction and the singing, and the praying afterwards, my heart was tenderized with the fresh realization that academics are secondary to what my husband and I really value in our educational "aim" for our girls. It is the development of the soul, providing a firm foundation not only for this life but for the life to come, that is of highest priority. The weight of this responsibility is, at times, crushing. But I believe that God crushes us to rebuild us into His likeness, and that He promises to carry the burden with us. Let me be crushed and rebuilt for my children, the most precious of burdens I will ever carry!

I am so grateful that while we don't have the ability at this time to send our girls to a Christian school, we do have the opportunity to homeschool them with a fabulous Classical Christian co-op. I trust that as we proceed, even though aspects of this path seem daunting at present, I am confident that God will bring provision in ways I can't expect or anticipate from this vantage point. I believe that simply being faithful to Him will bring joy, peace, and fulfillment to our family, and maybe I will absolutely love educating at home! Regardless, after listening to your podcast and discussing it afterwards with my husband, we are renewed in our conviction that this is the best path for us at present, that we must educate our precious girls in light of eternity, with the best of our ability as God gives us grace to do so.

For more on classical Christian education, see here.

Christianity's Uniqueness

In reply to the critics who claim Christianity was just a copy-cat religion among the ancient religions, it's helpful to take a look at how an ancient adherent of these pagan religions viewed Christianity. The inherent uniqueness of Christianity was a scandal to many. Not only would Jesus' followers not worship other gods, they rejected the layers of intermediary deities. Christianity taught that we could approach God directly in Jesus Christ. This was utterly unique in the ancient pantheon of gods.

This passage from David Bentley Hart's book Atheist Delusions, recounts such reaction and makes an interesting parallel to one of the most common contemporary objections.

In such a world [the polytheism and syncretism of ancient Rome], the gospel was an outrage, and it was perfectly reasonable for its cultured despisers to describe its apostles as “atheists.” Christians were – what could be more obvious? – enemies of society, impious, subversive, and irrational; and it was no more than civic prudence to detest them for refusing to honor the gods of their ancestors, for scorning the common good, and for advancing the grotesque and shameful claim that all the gods and spirits had been made subject to a crucified criminal from Galilee – one who during his life had consorted with peasants and harlots, lepers and lunatics. This was far worse than mere irreverence; it was pure and misanthropic perversity; it was anarchy. One can see something of this alarm in the fragments we still possess of On True Doctrine by the second-century pagan Celsus (preserved in Origen’s treatise Against Celsus, written many decades later). It is unlikely that Celsus would have thought the Christians worth his notice had he not recognized something uniquely dangerous lurking in their gospel of love and peace. He would have naturally viewed the new religion with a certain patrician disdain, undoubtedly, and his treatise contains considerable quantity of contempt for the ridiculous rabble and pliable simpletons that Christianity attracted into its fold: the lowborn and uneducated, slaves, women and children, cobblers, laundresses, weavers of wool, and so forth. But, at that level, Christianity would have been no more distasteful to Celsus than any of those other Asiatic superstitions that occasionally course through the empire, working mischief in every social class, and provoking a largely impotent consternation from the educated and well bred. It would hardly have merited the energetic attack he actually wrote.

What clearly and genuinely horrified Celsus about this particular superstition was not its predictable vulgarity but the novel spirit of rebellion that permeated its teachings. He continually speaks of Christianity as a form of sedition or rebellion, and what he principally condemns is its defiance of the immemorial religious customs of the world’s tribes, cities, and nations. The several peoples of the earth, he believed, were governed by various gods who acted as lieutenants of the Great God, and the laws and customs they had established in every place were part of the divine constitution of the universe, which no one, high born or low, should presume to disregard or abandon. It was appalling to him that Christians, feeling no decent reverence for these ancient ordinances and institutions, should refrain from worship of the gods, should decline to venerate the good daemons who served as intermediaries between the human and divine worlds, and should even refuse to pray to these ancient powers for the emperor. These Christians were so depraved as to think themselves actually above the temples and traditions and cults of their ancestors; they even – ludicrously enough – imagined themselves somehow to have been raised above the deathless emissaries of God, the divine stars and all the other celestial agencies, and to have been granted a kind of immediate intimacy with God himself. And in thus claiming emancipation from the principalities and powers, the thrones and dominions, they had also renounced their spiritual and moral ties to their peoples and to the greater cosmic order. To Celsus, this was all too clearly an unnatural and deracinated piety, a religion like no other, which – rather than providing a sacred bond between the believer and his nation – sought to transcend nations altogether.

And, of course, he was entirely correct. The Christians were indeed a separate people, or at least aspired to be: another nation within each nation (as Origin liked to say), a new humanity that (according to Justin Martyr) had learned no longer to despise those of other races but rather to live with them as brothers and sisters. The church – governed by its own laws, acknowledging no rival allegiances – aimed at becoming a universal people, a universal race, more universal than any empire of gods or men, and subject only to Christ. No creed could have been more subversive of the ancient wisdom of the world, and no movement more worthy of the hatred of those for whom that wisdom was the truth of the ages.

One of the more diverting ironies of contemporary anti-Christian polemic is the recrudescence of this same line of critique – or, rather, the development of something very similar, though with a more modern inflection. Today, obviously, it is not the “seditiousness” of the gospel that offends us (we are scarcely conscious of it), much less its “vulgarity” (which for us is a word almost devoid of any connotation of disapproval), but its “intolerance.” At least, in certain circles, this has become a favorite complaint. It is needless to say, a charge redolent of certain distinctly modern concerns. The early Christians rarely would have had the leisure to think in such terms, even had those terms been intelligible to then. As theirs was for centuries the weaker position within society, they tended to think of the faiths of their ancestors not simply as rival creeds but as a tyranny from which they had escaped. They understood their rejection of all gods but their own as the very charter of their spiritual freedom, their writ of emancipation from the malign cosmic principalities that enslaved the nations. To judge from some of the recent popular literature on the topic, however, there are some who view this attitude on the part of the early Christians not only as unreasonable, nor only as a little wicked, but as Christianity’s principal and most damning fault.

Same-Sex Marriage Is Not the New Interracial Marriage

Comparing opponents of same-sex marriage to those who opposed interracial marriage is common, but not accurate. As I’ve posted before, the arguments of same-sex marriage advocates actually have more in common with those of interracial marriage opponents. Frank Beckwith explains:

By injecting race into the equation, anti-miscegenation supporters were very much like contemporary same-sex marriage proponents, for in both cases they introduced a criterion other than male-female complementarity in order to promote the goals of a utopian social movement: race purity or sexual egalitarianism. 

This is why, in both cases, the advocates require state coercion to enforce their goals. Without the state’s cooperation and enforcement, there would have been no anti-miscegenation laws and there would be no same-sex marriage. The reason for this, writes libertarian economist Jennifer Roback Morse, is that “marriage between men and women is a pre-political, naturally emerging social institution. Men and women come together to create children, independently of any government.” Hence, this explains its standing as an uncontroversial common law liberty. “By contrast,” Morse goes on to write, “same-sex ‘marriage’ [and same-race-only marriage] is completely a creation of the state….”

Ryan Anderson adds to this “7 Reasons Why the Current Marriage Debate Is Nothing Like the Debate on Interracial Marriage.” Here are three: 

Great thinkers—including champions of human rights—knew that gender matters for marriage, and none thought that race does. Searching the writings of Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, Maimonides and Al-Farabi, Luther and Calvin, Locke and Kant, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., one finds that the sexual union of male and female goes to the heart of their reflections on marriage but that considerations of race with respect to marriage never appear. Only late in human history do political communities prohibit intermarriage on the basis of race. Bans on interracial marriage had nothing to do with the nature of marriage and everything to do with denying dignity and equality before the law.


Even cultures that embraced same-sex relationships did not treat them as marriages. Far from having been devised as a pretext for excluding same-sex relationships—as some now charge—marriage as the union of husband and wife arose in many places over several centuries entirely independent of, and well before any debates about, same-sex relationships. Indeed, it arose in cultures that had no concept of sexual orientation and in some that fully accepted homoeroticism and even took it for granted. Bans on interracial marriage, by contrast, were the result of racism and nothing more. 


Marriage must be color-blind, but it cannot be gender-blind. The melanin content of two people’s skin has nothing to do with their capacity to unite in the bond of marriage as a comprehensive union naturally ordered to procreation. The sexual difference between a man and a woman, however, is central to what marriage is. Men and women regardless of their race can unite in marriage, and children regardless of their race deserve moms and dads. To acknowledge such facts requires an understanding of what marriage is.

Read the rest of Ryan Anderson’s article, or listen to a recent interview he did on this subject.

Links Mentioned on the 9/09/14 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:

reTHINK Student Apologetics Conference – September 26-27 in Southern California


Drifting Towards Darwin (PDF) by Greg Koukl


First Day of School – Last week's podcast


Homosexuality: Nature or Nurture by Greg Koukl and Alan Shlemon


NARTH website


The Ambassador's Guide to Understanding Homosexuality by Alan Shlemon


The Question of Canon by Michael Kruger


Canon Revisited by Michael Kruger


Worshipping Images of Ourselves by Amy Hall (on homosexuality)


The Other Dark Exchange: Homosexuality Part 1, Part 2 by John Piper


A Response to Matthew Vines: The Bible Doesn't Support Same-Sex Relationships by Amy Hall (includes a link to James White's extensive response to arguments for homosexuality from the Bible)


The MacArthur Study Bible


The NET Bible


The ESV Study Bible

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.

Cal State Universities Derecognize InterVarsity Clubs

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s requirement that leaders in their campus clubs be Christian has been declared unacceptable discrimination by the Cal State University system. The clubs were told they must cease enforcing their requirement that leaders hold Christian beliefs. InterVarsity declined, and after a one-year exemption period, the 23 university campuses in the Cal State system “derecognized” InterVarsity. This means the clubs no longer have free access to campus meeting rooms, nor can they receive student activity money, participate in student fairs, or use the university name in the name of their clubs.

It’s utter hogwash. And because it’s such utter hogwash, it’s hard to believe that anyone actually believes the argument being made here. A club formed around a particular identity can’t limit its officers to people who affirm and promote that identity? What nonsense is this? Is it possible that someone could actually think this is reasonable?

Whether anyone truly thinks it’s reasonable or not, this strategy has already been used to derecognize Christian campus groups in other parts of the country. In one recent example, a woman working for InterVarsity who considered herself to be “an acceptable kind of evangelical,” was surprised to find that she was “The Wrong Kind of Christian” for Vanderbilt, as she explained in Christianity Today:

Like most campus groups, InterVarsity welcomes anyone as a member. But it asks key student leaders—the executive council and small group leaders—to affirm its doctrinal statement, which outlines broad Christian orthodoxy and does not mention sexual conduct specifically. But the university saw belief statements themselves as suspect. Any belief—particularly those about the authority of Scripture or the church—could potentially constrain sexual activity or identity. So what began as a concern about sexuality and pluralism quickly became a conversation about whether robustly religious communities would be allowed on campus.

In effect, the new policy privileged certain belief groups and forbade all others. Religious organizations were welcome as long as they were malleable: as long as their leaders didn't need to profess anything in particular; as long as they could be governed by sheer democracy and adjust to popular mores or trends; as long as they didn't prioritize theological stability. Creedal statements were allowed, but as an accessory, a historic document, or a suggested guideline. They could not have binding authority to shape or govern the teaching and practices of a campus religious community….

The line between good and evil was drawn by two issues: creedal belief and sexual expression. If religious groups required set truths or limited sexual autonomy, they were bad—not just wrong but evil, narrow-minded, and too dangerous to be tolerated on campus.

It didn't matter to them if we were politically or racially diverse, if we cared about the environment or built Habitat homes. It didn't matter if our students were top in their fields and some of the kindest, most thoughtful, most compassionate leaders on campus. There was a line in the sand, and we fell on the wrong side of it.

It seems obvious to me that a Christian club choosing Christian leaders is legitimate religious discrimination. It should seem equally obvious that kicking out any Christian group that doesn’t conform to the administration’s ideas of the right kind of theology is illegitimate religious discrimination, and yet there we are.

I suppose it’s possible that this ridiculous situation is merely the result of a bureaucratic inability to make a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate discrimination rather than a targeted strategy to remove religious groups from campuses. But if that were the case, wouldn’t they also “derecognize” every fraternity and sorority on campus? After all, those clubs discriminate on the basis of gender, something clearly frowned upon in the university, so if no distinction can be made between legitimate and illegitimate discrimination, that should be it for the Greek system. But surprise, surprise, fraternities and sororities are exempted from this new non-discrimination policy, making this situation look less like a poorly reasoned principled decision and more like an excuse to excise “the wrong kind” of religious groups.

So far, this has been happening to campuses here and there, but now we’re talking about half a million students and faculty who will be affected by the Cal State system’s decision. I went to a Cal State, and InterVarsity played a part in my becoming serious about being a Christian, so this hits close to home. And as an apologist, I can’t help but think of Ratio Christi and pray that their work can continue.

Owen Strachan called this “a massive blow to the cause of religious liberty on the college campus.” But he also urges local churches to step up their ministry to students, and if that’s what comes out of this—if more college students become involved in local churches—that will be a good thing.

Ultimately, as angering as this is (I’m as insulted by the irrationality of it as I am by the discrimination), whatever comes out of this will be for our good—however difficult that good turns out to be, and I can’t help but feel a twinge of excitement wondering what new forms of ministry might be created to bring the gospel to universities and serve the students.

How Do We Make Apologetics Accessible to Everyday Christians?

Greg shares simple starting points for people interested in apologetics.

 

The Advantage Christians Have over Naturalists

Greg spoke at the European Leadership Forum earlier this year on the topic of naturalism, and they’ve posted this short video where Greg makes the case that theism has more explanatory power than naturalism. Enjoy!

 

 

Alan’s Trip to Lebanon

If you haven’t yet heard Greg’s interview with Alan about his trip to Lebanon last month, you should go listen. Alan was there for over a week, teaching Egyptian Christian students how to share their faith in a hostile culture. It’s fascinating to hear the kinds of questions they asked Alan—urgent questions that we don’t face here.

Alan’s family is Assyrian, and he still has relatives in Iraq who haven’t been able to leave, so the persecution there hits close to home. He retold one of the stories from his trip in his monthly newsletter:

Most of my time in Lebanon I spent training upcoming Egyptian church leaders in theology and apologetics. For them, sharing their faith with Muslims is a risky endeavor. If they ask a Muslim to read the Gospels and consider Jesus as Savior, they can be reported to the police. Although they are willing to die for their faith, there’s no reason why they can’t use innovative techniques that help them share their faith without jeopardizing their safety….

While in Lebanon, I took advantage of another opportunity. My cousin Rami had recently fled Baghdad, Iraq, because of the increasing threat of three terrorist groups: The Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, and The Legions of the People of Truth (they have a way with names, don’t they?). Bombs just a minute’s walk from his home have turned his neighborhood into a battlefield. Rami sought refuge, coincidentally, in Lebanon to apply for asylum to the United States at the United Nations office.

Although I was in the same country as he was, I didn’t have access to a car. So, I did what any American would do who needs to get around the Middle East: ask a Facebook friend for a ride. I know, I know...it sounds crazy, but a local Lebanese man had heard on Facebook I was coming to Beirut and offered to drive me around. So I “cyberstalked” him (investigated his trustworthiness online) and eventually felt reasonably safe asking him for help to find my cousin. After looking for half a day, we finally found Rami in a small apartment room. I had never met Rami because he lived his whole life in Baghdad, but it felt like a reunion nonetheless. I was able to give him information about a local Assyrian church that had helped Iraqi refugees in the past. I can only pray and wait to see if his application will be approved and he (and then the rest of his family) can safely escape Iraq. 

Read the rest of Alan’s newsletter, or listen to a more detailed retelling of his experiences in Lebanon in the interview.