Discussions Along The Road Less Traveled By
Glen Peoples alerted me to yesterday’s Conference where William Graig Lane and Richard Hawkins were part of a six man panel discussing whether or not the Universe has a purpose. Not quite the debate that I’d like to see between the slickest apologist an the planet and the renowned atheist, but there is some interesting dialogue. Like many, I would love to see these two go head-to-head. Slick Willie would dice Hawkins to bits methinks.
Some time back I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who is the counseling pastor at a local church. We were discussing a few of the many theological issues that I still have not fully resolved to my own liking. During the course of this conversation he made a statement that has really stuck with me and that I quite often use as a yardstick while working out my own theology.
Essentially what he told me was, that while I am attempting to discover who the God of the Bible really is, to be sure that the theology that I come up with is a theology that I would want for my children and my children’s children.
I think that in this ever evolving age that we live in, a statement like that carries more and more weight with each passing year. I sometimes rant about Fundamentalism, but to be quite honest there are many aspects of Fundamentalist Christianity that are enviable. The desire to live a holy life before God, shunning the “ways of the world” is not a bad thing. In fact, that is precisely what I believe that Jesus called us to do.
In fact, I believe that the pure and innocent lives that many who claimed the moniker of “fundamentalist” just a few short generations ago would be preferable in many ways to having to grow up in the increasingly secular world that we presently find ourselves in here in the 21st century. But those days of innocence are long gone and hiding our heads in the proverbial sand does much more harm than good. Realistically, the only way to possibly think that you can raise your children and not have them influenced by today’s secular and scientifically advancing world is to live on some compound in the middle of nowhere (with no Internet access!), and pray that they never leave and experience the “real world.” So although I find some of the aspects of fundamentalism somewhat enviable, I realize that envy is really not for fundamentalism itself, but instead for the lost world from which that type of religion was viable. But the world has moved on since then.
So how do you develop a personal theology that you can pass on to your children that is biblically sound but that can withstand the rigors of a world where militant atheism, gay marriage, secular humanism and even Christians bashing each other over doctrinal differences is part of the daily news. How do you explain to them that God created the world when science has largely “proven” evolution. In an ever increasing “naturalist” world that denies the miraculous, how can you convince them that Jesus was in fact raised from the dead and that they should put their faith in Him, even when the shelves in the religious section of the local bookstore has an ever increasing number of books that will tell them that is a myth and that the “historical Jesus” was at best simply a gifted Jewish prophet. How do you instill in your children reverence for the Bible as God’s word, but still account for the fact that it really is not “inerrant” (with just a bit of research they will find out for themselves that inerrancy in the fundamentalist sense is kind of like believing in Santa Claus) without enrolling them in college level theology courses?
Well to begin with, ignoring science or claiming that the dinosaur bones that they have more than likely handled with their own hands by the time that they have graduated high school are a devious ploy of the devil to trick mankind simply won’t work (I was actually told that as a child). We may be able to shelter our younger children by homeschooling them, but unless we send them to some fundamentalist university and then convince them to live in a world without television or Internet, they are going to eventually encounter real science. Although God could have made the world in six days, the overwhelming evidence points more to the direction that He may have taken a wee bit longer than that. In developing a theological ideology for our children we simply cannot ignore what modern science is telling us, instead we must find a way to integrate the God of the Bible with what we have proven scientifically, otherwise they will quite often question everything that we ever told them about God.
(Now I am not taking a “naturalist” view here. Science has never disproved the miraculous and naturalism is an entirely different subject.)
Secondly, I am not going to teach my children to hate homosexuals or anybody else for that matter. While I believe that the Bible is fairly clear about same-sex relationships and thing that it take some fairly creative hermeneutical gymnastics to justify homosexuality, I am not telling my children that “God hates fags” and is sending them all straight to Hell. (To my own embarrassment, I must admit that I once did just that.)
Thirdly and while I am on the subject of Hell, I have no plans to teach my children that a wrathful God plans on subjecting the damned to an eternity of torment either. Whether annihilationism or just a “separation from God” does more justice to scripture on the doctrine of Hell I have yet to fully ascertain, but I am convinced that much of our current doctrine on Hell was a fabrication of the Catholic church, influenced by Greek thought. And many of our youth today have a very difficult time reconciling what we claim is a God of love and eternal torment for the “damned”.
I don’t want my children to become Christians because of fear of Hell. I want them to become Christians because they love a God who they realize loves them more than they could possibly understand.
Fourthly, I do not plan on teaching my children that the Hindu or Islamic child that they sit next to in school is going to Hell if they never (in this lifetime) become a Christian. While I do believe that Jesus Christ is the resurrected Son of God, I simply do not have enough information to go on to make the assertion that all “good” Hindus or anybody else is going to “Hell”. While I would like to be a Christian inclusivist or even a universalist, I am not quite there yet either. What I do believe is that God, through His grace, introduced me to His Son, and that is the path that I must take. Even if there are other paths that lead to salvation, I remain convinced that the Christian path is the superior one and that is what I will teach my children. What God has in store for non-Christians is His business; my business is to represent His love to everyone that He places in my path.
Fifth, I have no plans to teach my children that God is some sort of cosmic ATM machine nor is He an Alladin’s lamp who will grant your every desire and make you healthy and wealthy if you just say the right prayer or send a big enough check to the church. I do believe that God does bless people, but more than ever I believe that those blessings simply come automatically when we begin to live a life such as the one that Jesus provided an example of. Not that God doesn’t supernaturally intervene at times for those who put Him first in their lives, because I do believe that He does. But when He does, I think that it is quite often either to bring glory to His name or to build our faith.
We no longer live in a world where we can simply declare to our children as dogmatic many of these areas of Christianity that in fact really quite gray and expect them to just accept it as fact because “we said so”. While I do believe that the Bible is inspired, I have also discovered that many of the things that I was told that the Bible said just simply aren’t in there. In today’s Information Age, we cannot expect that our children will not eventually make the same realizations.
So, as I continue to “work out my own Christ-centered theology”, I seek to craft a theology so that it will withstand the close scrutiny that I know that my children will give to it…and their children as well. Although Christ could possibly return before my children’s children reach the age where they begin to ask the difficult questions, I think that I owe it to them to have answers to whatever questions they may ask about God and the Bible in case He doesn’t. And I don’t think “because the pastor said so” will be sufficient in a world where today’s knowledge is outdated six months from now and information (as well as misinformation) on every subject imaginable is only a mouse click away.
Although the reading of various apologists from C.S. Lewis to William Craig Lane were instrumental to removing my objections about Christianity and therefore surrendering my life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, I have since wondered how relevant apologetics are in this post-modern 21st century. I have in many ways ‘moved past’ apologetics and focused my studies in Christian Epistemology and various other theological areas such as soteriology, ecclesiology and seeking answers to my questions about how I misunderstood (and probably still do, although hopefully not to nearly as large of a degree) what the Christian hope really is and is not.
At one time, apologetics were really important to me and I wanted to be able to convince others that had struggled with faith and become agnostics or atheists that “Yes, God is real and I can prove it!” But then I ran into the “New Atheists” and soon changed my tune. I watched and read as these militant atheists poked every hole imaginable in many of the things that I had read and studied to come to the point where I was ready to take my leap of faith. I couldn’t believe it when I read them comparing faith in God to that of having faith in some so-called “Flying Spaghetti Monster.”
I have come to the point where I really don’t see much of a point in engaging atheists and trying to convince them of why I believe that God is real and that Jesus Christ is His resurrected Son. My opinion has somewhat become, “Hey, I read the Bible and a whole lot of books about the Bible. I researched my butt off trying to determine if there was a real, valid reason to place my hope and faith in something that I can’t see, smell, touch or hear. I became convinced. If I could do it, so can you!”
Now, I must admit that part of the reason that I came to the point where I currently am with regards to debating atheists is somewhat personal. My younger brother along with the small group of ‘friends’ that I had growing up in the cult of Armstrongism are mostly all now atheists. I wrote a post last summer pondering if growing up in the cult actually pushed many of these second-generation ‘cult-survivors’ into atheism. My brother and several of these ‘childhood friends’ are of the more extreme “New Atheist” category and I had quite a number of disparaging remarks thrown my way after I became enthusiastically Christian. One of these ‘old friends’ even sent me a really nasty private message on Facebook about what an idiot I was for believing in God and reminded me that all of ‘the old bunch’ are now atheists. He then ‘unfriended’ and blocked me on Facebook before I had the opportunity to respond.
With only a few small exceptions, I have refrained from engaging in the discussions on various forums and blogs about the validity of Christianity or theism in general, although I have pored over many of the comments at times. I have also watched some of the debates between various apologists and their atheist counterparts and found myself wondering “What’s the point?” When the atheists start talking about the “Flying Spaghetti Monster”, I find myself rolling my eyes and simply moving on. How can you reason with unreasonable people who are unwilling to actually look at the evidence objectively and simply want to call names and poke holes in any argument imaginable?
Now, I must say that there is a difference in a skeptic and a militant atheist and in the case of the former, apologetics are of the utmost importance. For the wavering and for those who want to believe but have yet to find a concrete reason to believe, the apologist has something to work with. But for the atheist that will find a way to poke a hole in any argument and believes that religion is what is wrong with the world today, is there really any reason to waste time arguing with such people?
I have asked myself if the Apostle Paul of even Jesus Himself would spend a lot of time arguing with some of today’s atheists. I don’t think so. In the account of Jesus’ commission of the seventy (or is it 72?) found In Luke 10:1-12, Jesus tells his disciples to ‘shake the dust off of their sandals’ to those in the towns and villages that would not receive the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. Jesus didn’t tell His disciples to hold a debate with the most argumentative man in town and spend a couple of weeks trying to persuade them. Preach the Gospel and then move on. That appears to be the message to me.
In today’s world of instant access information via the Internet, there is more than enough information available on even the earliest of Christian writings that simply weren’t available to the average person twenty years ago. If a person is really interested in finding out about the origins of Christianity and reasons to believe, it is more readily available now than ever before with just a few mouse clicks. So why debate someone who doesn’t believe? Sure, you can point them to various websites where they can find relevant information, but if they are not really interested in finding God, why bother? I know that some Christians seem to really enjoy engaging in heated debates with the atheists, but I wonder if that isn’t time that can be better used elsewhere.
During my early faltering steps in trying to find faith in Jesus Christ, while I was still unsure of who He actually was, I stumbled upon C.S. Lewis’ classic apologetic book “Mere Christianity. It had in all actuality been in my bookshelf for years as my wife had purchased it long ago. The book revealed many things to me that I had never previously considered and in actuality I could probably blog about this book and nothing more for many months. I don’t agree with everything that Lewis said in his various writings, but for the most part I find him to be right on. One of the more thought provoking statements in this little book is what has come to be known as the Lewis Trilemma. It’s found on pages 52-53 of the book and is as follows;
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. … Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.”
Now, although the Trilemma really isn’t Lewis’ invention and actually goes back much further, he explains it very well in his book. Some of the earliest versions appear to go back to the 1600’s with the Latin dilemma “aut deus aut homo non bonus” which is translated; either He’s God or not a good man. It appears to me that John the Evangelist actually framed it first in John 8:45-58. Lewis simply expanded this old argument in a manner that seemed most logical to him.
The argument has many defenders and detractors, and I’ve seen it hotly debated in a variety of forums, papers and books. Many will claim that it’s actually a quadrelemma or a quintelemma and say that Lewis and others have left out many other possibilities such as that Jesus may be a myth or a legend. Others will claim that Jesus never actually claimed to be God and point out the popular opinion that the Bible is deeply flawed by translation errors and by Bible writers simply wanting to push their agenda. Some of the people in the latter camp like to say that Jesus was some sort of a mystic that had perhaps spent some time in India or the like and had picked up some Hindu-type philosophy. By suggesting that He was some sort of mystic these detractors then believe that it was all right to insinuate that He was God because these Pantheistic mystics believed that God was in everything.
On the myth or legend argument I’ll simply say this. This argument is not for those people that do not believe in the historical Jesus. If you’re questioning whether or not Jesus was an actual real person who lived and walked during the first century in Judea, then this argument is not for you. Go back and research Jesus first and then come back to this argument. There is plenty of historical evidence to prove Jesus was real; I found it and so can you. One of the wonders of the internet age is that you can actually see scanned copies of nearly every bit of the historic writings from even before Jesus’ time until now if you want to search long and hard enough for it. You can now find in a matter of months what would once have taken years of research scouring libraries and universities across the globe
On the second argument, that of Biblical inerrancy, I’ll say this. Sure, there are some obvious shortcomings in the Bible. The first is the translation itself. Greek is a much more descriptive language than is English and there are many ways of translating scripture. On that part, I’ll go back to the research part. Do your homework. If you like, you can find scanned copies of first century texts online. Read them. By a lexicon or do like I have done and use an online one. There is plenty of information to verify that the bulk of our translations are verifiable all the way back to first century texts. There are some obvious discrepancies such as the Johannine Comma and the latter half of the 16th Chapter of Mark, but the bulk of the cannon can be substantiated with a little research.
Some people like to pick apart the scripture piece by piece, argue for the hypothetical Gospel “Q” and try to determine what parts of scripture can actually be attributed to the word of Jesus. I’ll not even go there. I personally believe that the Bible is largely what God intended for us to have and that the words of Jesus that are written in the Bible are simply that; the words of Jesus. Again, the Trilemma is not a question to be posed to someone who does not believe in the veracity of the Bible itself. If you’re still not sure of this, you still have more homework to do before you attack the Trilemma itself.
On the last question, that of Jesus being some sort of a mystic, Lewis addressed that question himself a page back. He states: “Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that sort of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world, who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.”
Another part of the Trilemma that I don’t think people give enough justice to is Jesus’ claims of being the Messiah. For brevities sake, I’ll not go into the scripture involved with this. If you want to read a detailed argument about Jesus’ claims of being the Messiah, I suggest that you read Pastor Steve Weaver’s article entitled “Did Jesus Claim To Be The Messiah?”
The point about Jesus claiming to be the Messiah that I want to make is this. The Jewish people had been anticipating this Messiah for years. His arrival had been prophesied and the Jewish people were desperately waiting to be delivered from their Roman occupiers so that, as they thought anyway, Israel would be triumphantly restored to her former glory. What “good moral teacher” would so try to deceive these people to believe that He was the Messiah if He wasn’t? It would seem to be a pretty sick joke to play on these oppressed people to let them think that He was the Messiah, if He knew that He wasn’t. It brings you right back to either He was who He said He was or else a madman or just downright evil.
For those people who have done their aforementioned homework and then arrived at the point of the Trilemma, I don’t see any other way than to realize that Jesus is Lord and God. Some will say that the Trilemma shouldn’t be argued because of some of the shortcomings of it. I say that there are no shortcomings. When there is a problem with the Trilemma, it’s simply because you are presenting it to the wrong people. You can’t argue this with someone who hasn’t yet accepted that Jesus really did exist and really did say and do the things that are recorded in the Gospels. It’s like presenting an algebra exam to someone who has not yet mastered simple mathematics. You can’t expect someone to solve for x if they don’t even know how to multiply or divide. However, once you master the essentials and are presented with this problem, you must decide what you are going to do with it. I suppose there are some who can close their eyes and simply walk the other way. I couldn’t.
I could spend much more time on this subject, but I’m not going to. Many much more educated and wiser men than me have treated this subject; I’m just putting my two cents worth in on it. I would however suggest that, if you have the time, visit Victor Reppert’s Dangerous Idea blog. He has dealt with the Trillema numerous times and in many ways. Here is a good link to all of his discussions on the Lewis Trilemma.
I don’t believe in coincidences. Don’t know that I ever have. A little over a decade ago I attended Alcoholics Anonymous for some time attempting to get over some substance abuse issues and although Christ has now done for me what A.A. never could, I took away with me a few very useful truths. One was a saying in A.A. that “coincidences are miracles where God chooses to remain anonymous.” Another was from page 449 of the Big Book where it says, “nothing in God’s world happens by accident.”
I’ve had quite a number of things that have occurred over the last few years in my journey of finding faith in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior that could have been written off as mere coincidences. At the time of some of them I did try and write them off, but in the back of my head my little voice was saying, “Hey dude, God is trying to get your attention here.” Over time these “little coincidences” continued to occur with greater frequency and with more intensity until I finally gave in and decided to listen. I would tend to think now that these little miracles would be known in Wesleyan circles as “prevenient grace.”
I had another one of these today. I had a very thought provoking discussion with my brother who, although he acknowledges Jesus as a “great moral teacher”, dismisses Him as God. He told me that he is of the belief that as long as you believe in something greater than yourself that’s all that matters. To him whether it is Islam, Buddism, Dualism, Taoism, whatever, just having any sort of a belief system is good enough. I agreed with him that it is better to have some sort of belief than none at all, but tried to tell Him how Jesus is my belief system now.
After I got off the phone, my wife asked me, why didn’t you just tell him how Jesus is in your heart now, and how He has transformed your life? Well, I sometimes have a hard time verbalizing how Jesus is in my heart now, and how very real He is to me, and how He is constantly revealing Himself in new and wonderful ways on an almost daily basis. It’s sometimes hard to put in words the realness of Jesus in your life to someone who hasn’t experienced the life-changing phenomenon of Jesus coming to live within you and changing who you are from the inside out.
I told my wife as much, and also told her that it is easier for me to talk to others, especially non-believers in a more apologetic fashion, arguing the case for Christ historically and rationally rather than in the form of personal testimony. I talked with her a little about the Lewis Trilemma and how I was thinking about maybe writing about it in my blog sometime in the future. Apologetics have their place for sure, without them I’m not sure that I would have ever come to know Christ. But upon reflection, personal testimony is also a very necessary part of being a witness for Christ.
After speaking with Jeanie for a few minutes it was time to leave for work. As is my normal fashion, I spend a five or ten minutes in prayer and then listen to Paul Sheppard for the rest of my drive into work. Now, I have found it interesting that Paul Sheppard has been teaching this week from the letters to the seven churches found in Revelation 2 and 3, and last week I spent most of the week exploring these letters, although primarily on the one to the Laodiceans. Coincidental? I, suppose it’s possible.
In my talk with God, I asked Him if I should perhaps be speaking a little more about my personal experience with Christ when I talk to other people about Him. I then flipped on the radio, and tuned in to Paul. Tonight he was on the message to the Church in Smyrna (Rev 2:8-11). He read the scripture and then said this about what Christ said to the folks in Smyrna. “Jesus wants us to know that we are not part of a religion founded by a dead holy man. Christianity at its core is really not a religion. Christianity is about having a relationship with a living Savior. You are not simply following the teachings of somebody who used to be alive and used to teach good things and who gave us a philosophy of life…No, we serve a risen Savior and he is alive forevermore… Jesus is utterly victorious!” You can listen to the entire audio Of Sheppards message that I heard here. It’s only about fifteen minutes long.
After the discussion with my brother, then talking to my wife, especially about the Trilemma, and then having the talk that I did with God, and then hearing those words coming out of the radio, I came close to running my Jeep off of the road. Coincidence? I don’t think so. In fact, if you sum up all of the “coincidences” that have occurred to me during the last few years, it’s about on the odds of winning the Irish Lottery. No, I don’t believe in coincidence anymore.
I suppose that I may have go ahead and write about the Lewis Trilemma tomorrow. I’ve been wanting to have a go at it for a while. I don’t know if I can do it justice, but I’ll give it a whirl. I’ll try and perhaps put a little more personal testimony in it while I’m at it. Seems that God is telling me that I need to speak a little more of it whenever I get the chance.
One last note. One of the other invaluable things that I picked up in A.A. was this quote in the Big Book. It is widely attributed to Herbert Spencer and goes like this:
“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance – that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”
Conversations Along The Road