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How is Christianity different from other world religions?

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Peter Sean Bradley comments on the Hindu/Christian debate I posted yesterday. The debate really showed the difference between how Hindus view religion and how Christians view religion. I thought one of his points was particularly interesting.

Peter Sean Bradley writes:

According to Professor Philip Carey, Christianity is unique in the religious-sphere because of its obsession with the person of Jesus.  Because Christianity is about a person, it is essential to know who that person is, which therefore puts a heavy emphasis on doctrine, specifically correct doctrine, about the person of Jesus.  Christianity is thus a faith rather than simply a practice and faith – being intellectual adherence to ideas – are by definition exclusive.  One can, for example, be faithful to many things, until there is a conflict among those things, and then the true faith has to be determined. This is the reason for the Christian obsession with orthodoxy, i.e., “correct belief,” rather than some Christian proclivity for hair-splitting.

The apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:12-14:

12But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

13If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.

14And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.

Basically, Christianity is the only religion that stands or falls on a historical event: the resurrection. Either it happened or it didn’t. And the job of every individual is to test for themselves and act accordingly. Christianity is about truth – what really happened. If people are just interested in religion to comfort them, or to spur them towards good deeds, or as a cultural/ethnic identity, or as a set of rules and rituals, then they cannot be Christians.

Consider the words of Jesus from John 18:36-37, when he is being questioned by Pilate:

36Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

37“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

And it turns out that Hindus are not the only ones who tend to think that religion is not about propositional truth. Peter Sean Bradley cites this interview with Paula Fredricksen, a Jewish historian who specializes in ancient history. Paula says that even Judaism is not exclusive in the sense that it required pagans to abandon other gods in order to worship in the Jewish synagogue.

My experience dealing with Jewish believers is that they have one of two views. The ones I’ve met were either cultural Jews who are functional atheists, or they believed that a religion is “true” so long as it results in good works. In my experience, debates and apologetics are not emphasized in Judaism, (or in Hinduism). Two of my favorite radio talk show hosts are Jewish. Michael Medved (orthodox) and Dennis Prager (Reformed), have both stated this point of view on air many times.

Mentoring

MUST-READ: Guest post: Purposeful parenting today

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The following post is a guest post from my friend Andrew.

Purposeful Parenting in Today’s World

Bob drives his bright red sports car 140 kilometres per hour on the highway and is pulled over by a police officer.  The officer gives Bob a:

  1. friendly greeting
  2. cookie
  3. speeding ticket

Susan prefers sleeping late to showing up at work on time.  After arriving at the office two to three hours late for two weeks in a row, Susan’s boss tells her to:

  1. get to bed a little earlier
  2. take some vacation time to rest up
  3. look for another job

This reality check comes from an article on parenting by Dr. Bill Maier from Focus on the Family.  It shows in a humorous way how real life consequences will catch up with your child sooner or later (the answer to both questions is number 3, of course).

Now here are a couple of my own:

Your son starts university and soon realizes that one of his professors is a hostile feminist.  The feminist professor:

  1. immediately concedes her radical feminist views and offers to help your son with his studies
  2. tells the class what an asset conservatism and/or Christianity is to our society
  3. publicly humiliates your son when he voices an objection, and makes every effort to fail him

Your daughter enters the workforce.  Her colleagues say things like:

  1. how I can become a Christian just like you?
  2. maybe we could start a Bible study together
  3. are you for real – do you actually believe that Jesus rose from the dead

Are your children going to be able to handle this?

Let me start off with some general principles that I think you will find useful for parenting in general.  Then in the second half of this post I want to share some more ideas that will help you be more purposeful in the formation of your child and help them prepare for what life will throw at them – ideas that I hope will help you to address the last two scenarios above.

Your children need you to be their parent, not their friend

Children need and want their parents to lay down the rules, to set boundaries, and to give them guidance.  They really need to know where they stand.  While they have friends elsewhere, they don’t get parenting from anywhere else.  Your children don’t have to like you, but they have to respect and obey you.  When you make the rules clear and consistent and your children choose to disobey them, then the punishment is their choice rather than your infliction.  This should really be a separate point, but don’t be afraid to discipline your children.  This will help them in the long run.

Your children respect your authority and guidance more than you think

Parents tend to underestimate the influence that they have on their children and overestimate the influence that friends have.  Don’t be afraid to teach your children, give them your opinion and set boundaries.

Follow through or your children won’t take you seriously

Children learn quickly, so if you state a consequence you have to be willing to follow through with it.  If you don’t, your words will be empty to them and they will not respect you or listen to you.  If you tell your child that if they hit their sibling one more time you will call off the big trip to the zoo then you have to be willing to do this, so choose your words carefully!

Short term pain, long term gain

This was our motto when our children were infants, and it still is.  Addressing problems immediately will be painful, but they will only become a habit or worse problems down the road if you don’t.  We learned pretty quickly that running to our crying baby every hour during the night would quiet them down and give us instant gratification at a time when we were sleep-deprived, but we also learned that if we suffered the short term pain of letting them cry it out a bit then our baby would learn how to settle themselves and sleep better.

Let boys be boys and girls be girls

Don’t let feminist ideology creep into the way you parent.  It’s healthy for girls to play ‘house’, nurture their dolls, and play dress-up.  And it’s okay for boys to try ‘dangerous’ things, be rambunctious, and open doors for ladies.  Boys and girls are innately different, and that’s okay.

Okay, these are some great general guidelines that have helped us with our parenting so far.  Now for some deeper principles that I hope will prepare your child for life:

Be purposeful with your parenting…have a plan and an end goal in mind

You can’t guarantee how your children will turn out, but if you are purposeful with your parenting and have an end goal rather than just hoping they will turn out okay, there is a good chance you will be successful.  For my wife and I, the end goal is to train our children so that when they come of age we will be able to launch them into life with them being capable of standing on their own two feet (e.g., capable of dealing effectively with the third and fourth situations at the start of this post).  This is our conscious plan.  Children need to be gradually given more and more freedom and responsibility as they demonstrate that they can handle it.  Don’t wait until they are about to leave the nest to give them their freedom because it may be more than they can handle.  You have a relatively small window of opportunity to train your children.  This window decreases with time, so don’t waste it.

Allow your children to fail under controlled circumstances

Failure is a great teacher, so allow your children to fail when they are young.  For example, let them spend some of their hard earned chore money on a cheap toy that will fall apart after the first use.  This will teach them the value of money and give them discretion in spending.  You don’t want them to learn this lesson the hard way later on when they are buying their first house.  Let them go to their math test in grade 10 without having studied because they really wanted to play.  Better to have them learn this lesson now than in univer$ity.

Expose them to scenarios that they will experience later and teach them how to deal with them

Again, in a controlled setting you need to carefully expose your children to what they will encounter in life.  Take them to a university debate between a Christian and an atheist.  Let them hear the arguments, see how the audience reacts, and allow them to feel uncomfortable.  Show them a news article about schoolchildren who were told that they had to send a letter to their government representative with a certain view.  Let your child hear a homosexual activist on the radio.  Supervise them and discuss with them what they have just experienced.  Teach them how to respond in these scenarios.  You won’t be able to shelter them for life, so gradually expose them under controlled conditions and teach them how to deal and respond to what they encounter.

Train yourself, and do it well

Listen, training up your children is your responsibility and no one else’s.  Not only that, but you are the only one that is going to prepare them properly – you can no longer rely on school, church, friend’s parents, etc.  In order to train them to respond to life circumstances and defend their beliefs you are going to have to learn this stuff yourself.  Take the time to read books, listen to lectures/debates, etc.  As a parent I know it is really tough to find the time to do this when you are working full time or are busy with life, but you have to do it.  Don’t let your life get too busy with distractions because otherwise your purposeful parenting plan won’t happen, it requires purposeful daily decisions. What is the point of having children only to lose them to militant atheist, leftist, feminist, homosexual, etc. ideology because you didn’t prepare them properly.

Train your children well

I know I’ve touched on this already, but let me expand a bit.  This is really, really important!  A lot of people around your children are going to teach them bad ideas that are opposite to your own – their school, their friends and the government will all do this.  You need to be purposeful in teaching them moral values and virtues, otherwise they probably won’t learn them.  Training your children is your responsibility.  Be purposeful in teaching your children virtues like loyalty, bravery, chivalry, respect, modesty (especially for girls), and discipline.  Teach them about freedom of speech, religious liberty, chastity, capitalism, free markets, the sanctity of life, post-modern culture, traditional marriage, and abstinence.  Also give them books with characters who portray these things and discuss these things with your children on every occasion (as an aside, don’t let your children rot in front of the trash that is shown on television…rather teach them to love to read books).

Most importantly, as a Christian who believes that Christianity is objectively true, I can’t stress enough how important it is to teach your children about Christianity.  All religions are testable, and our Christian faith can hold its own and can compete well in the marketplace of ideas.  The evidence is very much on our side and we stand on the shoulders of giants who have gone before us.  Having said this, we live in a world that is very hostile to Christianity and you need to teach your children the evidence for their faith.  They need to know the Bible inside-out and backwards, but they also need to know how to defend their faith using other evidence (hint: Christian apologetics; see the Resources section below).  Teaching them how to do this will give them the courage to defend what they believe to be true.  You also need to teach your children about different worldviews and religions, and why they don’t make sense.

I know, this all sounds like a tremendous amount of work, but your child is relying on you and no one else to prepare them for life.  It’s actually easier than you think.  Just start off with a few books.  This is so much more important than teaching them how to be on time, how to drive a car, how to take a math test, how to swim, and all of the other things that you will obviously teach them.  As I said above, you have a relatively small window of opportunity to train your children.  This window decreases with time, so don’t waste it.  For a first step please look at the Resources section below.

And lastly:

Put your marriage first

Make sure that you put your marriage ahead of your parenting.  I am convinced that one of the best things that you can do for your children is to give them the security of a stable family life and to model what a good marriage looks like.  Let them witness husband and wife roles, let them see that you love each other, and let them see you apologize to each other when you get angry or make a mistake.  Don’t get so involved in your children’s life that you neglect your spouse.  If you do this then once your children are out of the house (if your marriage survives that long), you and your spouse won’t know each other anymore.  Parenting in today’s world requires a parenting team, so you need to make sure your team is strong.

UPDATE: This is Wintery Knight. I wanted to include this bit of wisdom from commenter Shalini:

One other important thing is when one parent is disciplining the child, the other parent MUST NOT talk in defense of the child. Parents should always agree on disciplining, ’cause if one of the parents try taking sides with the kid, chances are the kid is going to assume that one parent is good and the other is bad. It doesn’t help the case in anyway!

Andrew liked this comment,  so I thought I would add it to the post.

A few resources:

Parenting

Christian Apologetics

Related posts

Podcasts

Free speech: Mark Steyn radio interview and Ezra Levant radio debate!

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UPDATE: Welcome visitors from Blue Like You! Thanks for the link Joanne!

Canadian/American free speech activist Mark Steyn on the line with Chicago radio show host Milt Rosenberg. Commercial free!

Extension 720 – Mark Steyn – June 1, 2009

URL : http://www.wgnradio.com/media/mp3file/2009-06/47337079.mp3

Duration : 1 hours 29 mins 26 secs

He re-caps the history and outcome of his trial in Canada for offending Muslims, and goes on to discuss his previous book “America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It” and his new book “Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech And The Twilight Of The West“. He reviews the state of free speech, Western Civilization, single-payer health care, welfare, anti-Western attitudes in education, and the 2008 election results.

BONUS

Ezra Levant reports on his debate against secular-leftist professor Lucie Lamarche on CBC radio. Note that the start time is 1:12 into the show. Press pause, let the clip buffer for a few minutes, then drag the slider to the 1:12 position.

Last Sunday I was on Michael Enright’s CBC radio show, The Sunday Edition, debating human rights commissions along with Keith Martin, the Liberal MP, and a nutty professor called Lucie Lamarche.

You can listen to the show here — it’s the May 31 edition. The debate starts at about 1 hour and 12 minutes into the show.

[Lamarche] loses her grip at 1:25 when Enright challenged her on the lack of due process and natural justice in HRCs. Her first response is to dismiss the horrors of HRCs as my own personal story. When I pushed back, citing the very section of the Alberta act that allows warrantless search and seizures, and pointing out that targets of HRCs don’t get legal aid, she just collapsed, saying that “discrimination is about attitudes… and transformation. It’s not only about due process.”

Oh. So to hell with the law or fairness. Guys like me need to have our attitudes transformed. It’s not law. It’s brutal politics pretending to be the law.

I like this Lucie Lamarche — for her honesty.

After a few minutes of her reading her talking points — likely authored by the battallion of PR flacks at the Canadian Human Rights Commission — she just stops pretending that HRCs are about justice. They’re about politics and propaganda — making political dissidents like me conform to the “official line”. And the high costs? That’s just an additional punishment for our thought crimes.

Seriously: when she ran out of her prepared talking points, she said what she truly believed: this was about transforming attitudes.

Ezra also hints at which kind of people fight back to defend human rights, and what kind of people destroy human rights:

Readers, do you think that Orwell or Solzhenitsyn would call Lamarche a defender of human rights, or a destroyer of them?

Do you think that giving the state the power to transform your attitudes is a protection of your freedoms, or an abridgement of them?

Do you think that Lucie Lamarche follows in the footsteps of dissidents who challenged the conventional wisdom, like Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi — or is she a descendant of the censors and bullies who tried to shut those two up?

Do not miss this debate podcast! Ezra is on fire!

And remember: we know that the secular-left believes in pounding down the good and lifting up the evil, so that moral judgments become impossible and no one feels badly for being morally evil. Remember Evan Sayet’s explanation for how progressives think: moral equivalence, postmodernism and moral relativism. And atheists do not have the ability to resist Islamo-fascism: they want to be happy, not to be heroes.