Mentoring

Of course you’re smart enough to learn how to defend your faith

2 Comments
Practice that makes perfect
Practice that makes perfect – everyone struggles at the beginning

Pastor Matt Rawlings has a post for all of you who are worried that you are not smart enough to learn how to defend the Christian faith (apologetics).

His post is here on his blog. (H/T The Poached Egg)

He starts like this:

One of the objections I often receive when I point out that defending the Christian faith is a Scriptural command (1 Peter 3:15) is “But I’m not smart enough to be a Christian apologist!” My answer is always, “Your IQ does not need to bust the bank for you to defend Christianity in a graceful and compelling manner.

Columnist Thomas Friedman (not someone I usually agree with) pointed out that the key to success often is NOT an individual’s IQ but their CQ or “Curiosity Quotient.”  What Friedman means is that a person’s willingness to dig in and work at something out of their intellectual passion will succeed.

It is important to remember that some scholars maintain that Albert Einstein did not have a genius IQ and he blew his first attempt at earning a spot in college.  Yet, physics was his passion and after failing to land a teaching gig, his curiosity propelled him to carry on and, as a result, he changed the world.

You may or may not make a worldwide impact but you can make an eternal one by learning to defend the Christian faith.  If you are passionate about Jesus Christ, your desire can learn enough to answer questions like, “If God exists and is good, why is there evil?”, “Doesn’t the Old Testament portray God as angry and violent?”, “But doesn’t science prove that Genesis is inaccurate?”, “Is there any real evidence for the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ?”, etc.

Any Christian can learn to defend the faith if they are willing to do a little bit of reading.  You don’t have to be well-versed in physics or philosophy of religion.  You don’t have to earn a degree in apologetics.  You just need to pick up a few books and memorize a few solid arguments to respond to the most common objections to Christianity.

I would recommend starting with a few short, readable but powerful books such as Greg Koukl’s Tactics (Zondervan 2009), Det. J. Warner Wallace’s Cold-Case Christianity (David C. Cook 2013), Lee Strobel’s The Case for a Creator (Zondervan, 2005), Mark Mittleberg’s Confident Faith (Tyndale 2013) and, of course, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek (Crossway 2004).

So, no excuses, get to reading and practice defending the faith with others.  Anyone can do it and most can do it very well.

I just started trying to get a friend of mine to learn more about the Christian worldview, and the four books I recommended were these:

  1. Is God Just a Human Invention? (by Sean McDowell and Jonathan Morrow)
  2. The Case for Life (by Scott Klusendorf)
  3. What is Marriage? (by Robert P. George, Ryan T. Anderson and Sherif Girgis)
  4. Indivisible (by Jay W. Richards and James Robison)

We are busy working though the first one already, which is my favorite book to give people new to apologetics. It provides real capabilities in a short, easy-to-read book. Even the chapters are short. I picked #2 and #3 to be on social issues, and #4 to be on politics, because I wanted to have a broad focus before narrowing down to pure apologetics. And because I wanted to take about practical issues that impact our daily lives.

After we finish book #1, I’m going to recommend “Cold Case Christianity” by J. Warner Wallace and “The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus” by Michael Licona and Gary Habermas. All of these books are introductory. And yet, to be perfectly honest, I do not recommend much more than these 6 books, for most lay Christians. These books are a thousand times better than the stuff I read when I was getting started in apologetics 25 years ago.

What I like about Pastor Matt’s post is that he challenges Christians to grow by doing things that may be a bit uncomfortable for them. The command to defend the Christian worldview is right there in the Bible in 1 Peter 3:15. It’s not some optional spiritual gift in some list of optional spiritual gifts – it’s a duty that we all must perform to the best of our ability. I wish more pastors urged lay Christians to learn how to discuss their faith with non-Christians – with people who do not assume that the entire Bible is infallible. Just urge them to talk about ordinary things, the “big questions” that Matt listed. We need to be curious, just like he said.

Polemics

Are Christians cherry-picking which verses to obey from the Old Testament?

10 Comments

Here’s a wonderful article from Peter Saunders.

The challenge:

An argument frequently advanced by those attempting to defend homosexual practice is that Christians ‘cherry pick’ the commands in the Bible – that is, they chose to emphasise some commands while ignoring others.

The Old Testament may forbid homosexual acts (Leviticus 18:2; 20:13) but it also forbids eating seafood without fins and scales (Leviticus 11:9-12; Deuteronomy 14:9, 10).

So how can Christians then justify upholding laws on sexual morality whilst at the same time ignoring the food laws from the very same books of the Bible? Why may they eat shellfish but not be allowed to have sex outside marriage? Isn’t this inconsistent and hypocritical?

The solution is that God enters into “covenants” with his people, and the terms of those covenants change.

Especially dietary laws:

The answer to this question lies in an understanding of biblical covenants.

A covenant is a binding solemn agreement made between two parties. It generally leaves each with obligations. But it holds only between the parties involved.

There are a number of biblical covenants: Noahic, Abrahamic, Sinaitic (Old), Davidic and New.

Under the Noahic covenant, which God made with all living human beings (Genesis 9:8-17), people were able to eat anything:

‘Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything’ (Genesis 9:3).

But under the Sinaitic (Old) Covenant, which God made with the nation of Israel, people were able to eat certain foods, but not others.

Jesus clearly created a new covenant with his followers, where the dietary laws are lifted:

Jesus said that he had come to fulfil the ‘Law and the Prophets’ (Matthew 5:17; Luke 24:44). He would establish this new covenant with new laws, with himself as high priest based on his own sacrificial death on the cross.

This new covenant would completely deal with sin (Hebrews 10:1-18) and protect all those who put their faith in him from God’s wrath and judgement…

[…]‘In the same way, after the supper (Jesus) took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you”’ (Luke 22:20). ‘…we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all’ (Hebrews 10:10)

People would come under the protection of this new covenant, not by virtue of belonging to the nation of Israel, but through faith in Christ. In fact the function of the Old Testament Law (Sinaitic covenant) was to point to Christ as its fulfilment.

[…]So what then did Christ say about foods? He pronounced all foods clean for his followers to eat:

‘ “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them?  For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.) He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them.  For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder,  adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.  All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” (Mark 7:18-23)

Jesus was making that point that under the new covenant God required purity of the heart. Internal thoughts and attitudes were as important as external actions.

So, for Christians, the dietary / ceremonial laws don’t apply, but the moral laws do apply. Food is OK for Christians, but sexual immorality – which includes premarital sex and adultery – are NOT OK for Christians.

I think sometimes when you are talking to people whose motivation is just to get rid of any objective moral law entirely, they tend to ask questions without really wanting a good answer. This is especially true when it comes to the morality of sex. They ask the question not to get an answer, but to justify getting rid of the moral rules governing sexuality. The answers are there for people who are willing to respect God in their decision-making. The answers are not found only by people who have a reason to not want to find them.

News

Illegal immigrant released by Obama administration sexually assaults 14-year-old girl

19 Comments
Should Keane Dean get amnesty?
Illegal immigrant Keane Dean

This story is in the radically leftist Los Angeles Times, of all places.

Excerpt:

A convicted sex offender charged last week with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Santa Clarita is in the country illegally and had recently been released on bail from immigration custody, according to federal authorities.

Keane Dean, 26, a citizen of the Philippines, was released in April on $10,000 bond so he could be free while he contested his immigration case. He had been targeted for deportation because of his criminal record.

The 14-year-old girl, who was found in Dean’s garage, told investigators that Dean befriended her at a grocery store the previous day, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Dean has been charged with two counts of child sexual abuse and is being held in lieu of $110,000 bail.

This was not his first offence:

In March 2014, Dean was caught inappropriately touching himself inside a Macy’s department store and was banned from the Glendale Galleria for three years. He was sentenced to six months in state prison for indecent exposure and 16 months for burglary, to be served concurrently, a district attorney’s spokesman said.

Dean also has a 2008 conviction for lewd conduct in public.

There are interesting quotes in the articles from people who agree with giving detainees “bond hearings” where they can be released if they post bond.

[…]Dean was released April 29 after posting $10,000 bond.

A Democrat appointed judge named Kim Wardlaw said this about the bond hearings:

“This injunction will not flood our streets with fearsome criminals seeking to escape the force of American immigration law,” Judge Kim Wardlaw of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in an April 2013 opinion affirming the need for the bond hearings.

This is Kim Wardlaw:

Justice Kim Wardlaw, 9th Circuit Court of Appeals
Justice Kim Wardlaw, 9th Circuit Court of Appeals

Before she was appointed by Bill Clinton, she volunteered to help his presidential campaign in California in 1991-1992. She later served on the Clinton-Gore presidential transition team. A few years later she was appointed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which many regard as the most liberal appeals court in the United States. She is a Democrat.

Now let’s move to a second case.

Do you remember how Obama is always talking about his DREAMers? These are children of illegal immigrants who got a blanket amnesty from Obama.

Breitbart News reports on another case. This time, a 10-year-old boy was tortured and murdered by an illegal immigrant.

Excerpt:

At a Tuesday Senate hearing dedicated to the families who lost loved ones thanks to illegal aliens, Laura Wilkerson gave testimony on her youngest son Joshua’s horrific death while some in the silent audience wept.

[…]“This was our family’s 9/11 terrorist attack by a foreign invader,” she said at the most pivotal point in her testimony. “It is going to take another life lost by a Senator, a Congressman, the President, even another of today’s heroes, someone from Hollywood before someone in a position moves on this.”

“My son’s name was Joshua Wilkerson,” she began. “On November 16, 2010, he was beaten, strangled, tortured until he died. He was tied up, thrown in a field, and set on fire. His killer, Hermilo Moralez, was brought here illegally by his illegal parents when he was ten years old, so he fit the ‘DREAM’ kid description. He was sentenced to life in prison, which means it will be 30 years before he’s up for parole. He’ll be a 49-year-old man, who I don’t expect to be deported. And I just hope he doesn’t come to live in your city.”

[…]Wilkerson read aloud portions of the gut-wrenching autopsy: “‘This body is received in a grey body bag. There’s a tag on his toe that bears the name, Joshua Wilkerson. This is a white male weighing a hundred pounds. He is tied up with braided rope — 13 loops around his neck in a slipknot. It goes behind his back through his back belt loop. It goes to his hands and his feet, behind his body. He has multiple fractures in his face and nasal cavity. His throat and his voicebox are crushed.’”

Wilkerson took a deep breath and continued, looking at the senators before her with a steady gaze. “He was kicked so hard in the stomach that it sent his spleen into his spine, and sliced it in two… The medical examiner said it was torture.”

She went on to attack the sanctuary cities which are supported by Democrats, and in particular, by Hillary Clinton.

I think the part in bold is interesting – about how nothing will change until someone famous and powerful is a victim of an illegal immigrant.

One of my favorite authors, British psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple, makes the point often that the effects of “compassionate” laws made by rich leftists are never felt by the rich leftists themselves. The leftists are insulated from the effects of their own laws. They live in gated communities where they don’t have to worry about being the victims of crime. The rich leftists pass these laws to feel generous without actually having to give away anything of their own. But the people who do feel the effects of these laws are the people in the lower classes. The poor people, who have to live with the laws and policies passed by rich leftists seeking to feel superior. And so, because the rich leftists need to feel compassionate and superior, we get victims like that 14-year-old girl, and like that 10-year-old boy.

UPDATE: The Obama administration on victims of crime committed by illegal immigrants:

The White House vowed Thursday to veto a bill to punish sanctuary cities, instead calling on Congress to legalize illegal immigrants as the way to solve the problem of criminals who shouldn’t be on the streets.

The threat came just hours before the House was expected to pass a bill that would withhold money from states or localities that don’t abide by a federal law that requires them to cooperate when federal immigration authorities request help identifying illegal immigrants.

It’s no problem. As long as it’s your kids, and not their kids. Because the important thing is that they feel good, and get the votes from their special interest groups.