Understanding the Faith

A Survey of Christian Apologetics

Jeff Myers

• Publisher: David C Cook
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781434709691
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Teologia cristiana

Does the Bible have authority in a world committed to relative truth? The understanding of absolute, objective truth has been largely lost. Spend just a few minutes discussing politics or religion and you'll hear responses like, "There is no truth!" or "That may be true for you, but not for me." Understanding the Faith dares to wade into the middle of the controversy with chapters such as:

• Is God Christian?
• Isn't Claiming Truth Intolerant?
• Is the Bible Anti-Science?

Summit Ministries' half century of teaching, this first volume of the Understanding the Times Series is your definitive resource for deepening and defending your faith. It's a required resource for every Christian's bookshelf.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1. How to Figure Out Where You’re Going

Let’s say you parachute into the middle of New York City’s Central Park. When you land, a mysterious stranger says to you, “There is a five-thousand-dollar diamond necklace waiting for you at Tiffany & Co. It’s yours, free, on one condition: you have to claim it in the next twenty minutes.”

Even if you care nothing for diamond necklaces, this would get your attention. You could always sell it and keep the cash.

“But what is Tiffany & Co., and how do I get there?” you ask.

“I can’t tell you,” says your anonymous source. “You’ll have to find out on your own.”

Of course, you suspect a trick. After all, you just parachuted in. You know nothing about your would-be benefactor. But the necklace is worth a lot, so you have a strong incentive to check it out.

If you want the necklace, you’re going to have to overcome your fear (and your embarrassment at dragging a parachute behind you) and start asking for directions.

Your heart begins pounding. You feel your pocket—smartphone must have fallen out during the jump. You’ve never been in New York City before. The time limit creates a sense of urgency—if you just wandered around for a few hours, you might eventually find Tiffany & Co. But you don’t have hours. You have twenty minutes.

If you want the necklace, you’re going to have to overcome your fear (and your embarrassment at dragging a parachute behind you) and start asking for directions. You will probably have three questions: Where am I? Where is Tiffany & Co.? What is the fastest way to get there?

But what kind of person do you ask? It must be someone who knows New York City generally and where certain stores are in particular. The homeless guy on the bench may know the layout of New York City, but he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would know much about jewelry stores. The skateboarding teenager probably won’t know either. Will the mom pushing the baby in a stroller?

Let’s say you find a source you think might be credible. How do you know he or she is telling the truth? After all, people in New York act as if they know what they’re doing, but some of them must be just as lost as you. In fact, they might be wrong and not even know it. Or worse, your source may have a sick sense of humor and think it’s funny to send you running off in the wrong direction. Will you ask more than one person to get confirmation? What do you do if their answers conflict?

The middle of Central Park to Tiffany & Co. on Fifth Avenue on the southeast side of the park is less than a mile. You can easily make it there inside of twenty minutes, especially if you jog. But it will take a few minutes to get directions and to orient yourself. There’s no time for mistakes.

If you want the necklace, you’ll have only one chance.

2. Getting Directions for Life

Some things about the search for the Tiffany & Co. necklace are very much like real life.

People who figure out what works in life are rewarded. The rewards may be tangible (money or things) or intangible (peace of mind, satisfaction with a job well done). The rewards may be temporal (in this life) or eternal (beyond death). Either way, there is a time limit; one out of every one person dies (you’ve probably noticed). There is a real world with real rules. You can’t set off to the north and expect to reach a southerly destination (except after a very long walk and swim around the earth).

This book was written to aid you in your exploration for God: Is he real? What is he like? Is what the Bible says about him authoritative and worthy of obedience? Many people question whether this is a valid pursuit. Some think it is irrelevant whether God exists. Others see belief in God and the Bible as an anesthetic that exists only to help those who have a low tolerance for pain cope. Still others see God and the Bible as fictions invented to help the powerful oppress the weak.

Skeptics, cynics, atheists, agnostics, and firm believers all have at least one thing in common: they don’t know everything.

We should not be too quick to dismiss these assertions. There are undoubtedly people who claim to be Christians but live as if God is irrelevant. And we can easily imagine people embracing Christianity because they want a crutch to help them hobble through life or a club with which to bully others.

Skeptics, cynics, atheists, agnostics, and firm believers all have at least one thing in common: they don’t know everything. Beyond general things (such as how to walk without falling down, how to feed ourselves, and so on), we need help. Think of all the confusing issues humans face:

• Is there a God? And what do I understand to be true about him?
• How should I respond to those who believe differently, especially those whose understanding of God tells them to harm people like me?
• Where did we come from? Are we really a special creation of God, or are we the result of a random process of evolution? What does this mean for how we live together?
• What should I do for a job? What kinds of jobs are worth doing? How can we create more jobs?
• What does God want from me? How can I even know? What if people who have a different view of him try to stop me from doing what he wants?
• Should I get married? What is marriage anyway? If two people of the same sex want to marry each other, is that truly marriage?
• How can I live in harmony with those around me? Which political and economic policies are most harmonious with human flourishing? How should we respond when bad decisions made by leaders create disharmony?

You might say, “I refuse to think about this—I’m not going anywhere,” but you actually are. In this case, nowhere is surely as much a destination as somewhere.

It’s tempting to dismiss these questions as trivial, but they matter. In the end, we have to act on what we know, and all our questions and actions will lead us to some destination. You might say, “I refuse to think about this—I’m not going anywhere,” but you actually are. In this case, nowhere is surely as much a destination as somewhere.

All these questions about direction in life matter because we humans are not mere animals; we need to make sense of the world, not just survive in it. Among all living creatures, only human beings seem to wrestle with why we exist. In A World without Heroes, George Roche said:

Man is a very strange animal…. Not that there is anything particularly queer about our physical equipment; this is all quite reasonable. But gorillas have hands as we do, yet use them for very little, and never to play the piano or skip stones or whittle or write letters. Dolphins have bigger brains than we do, but you seldom hear them discoursing on nuclear physics. Chihuahuas are more hairless than we, but have never thought to wear clothes…. Man alone weeps for cause, and “is shaken with the beautiful madness called laughter.”1

The products of our musings and mental processing are called ideas, and our lives are full of them.2 Some ideas accurately reflect our world. Many do not. Some help us; others cause harm. Are there clues we can use to figure out the difference?

3. Is One Direction Better Than Another?

Alice was completely overwhelmed by Wonderland and at an absolute loss for where to go. She asked the Cheshire Cat,

“Would you tell me, please, which way ...