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The Mysterious Drew lectures on Christianity and the culture war in Defenders

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Investigation in progress
Investigation in progress

Drew taught Dr. William Lane Craig’s Defenders class for two weeks in a row while Dr. Craig was in Australia. He chose to focus on secularism.

Note: Drew has some problems with the microphone for the first 2.5 minutes of part 1. Be patient.

Part 1 deals with how Europe and America became secular in different ways.

Part 1 topics:

  • Secularism: the attempt to take values based on religion (e.g. – Judeo-Christian values) out of the public square
  • Television programs that are targeted to more thoughtful viewers favor secular or liberal worldviews
  • Consider the sexual revolution – a new set of beliefs about sex are being pushed into the culture
  • Sex revolution includes: same-sex marriage, pornography, hookup culture, no-fault divorce
  • The effect of the sexual revolution has been to introduce widespread fatherlessness, which is very bad for children
  • The sexual revolution is being pushed in the popular culture, but also in the school sexual education programs
  • You can see where secularism has led to by looking at Europe, which has largely rejected its Christian roots
  • For example, Germany and Sweden are very aggressive about stamping out homeschooling
  • They do this because they are trying to push a government-approved set of beliefs and meanings onto children
  • How bad could it get? You can look at how Orthodox Judaism was persecuted in Russia after the communist revolution
  • How did Europe become so secular?
  • Wars in Europe between Protestants and Catholics caused people to think that theistic religion was bad
  • Secularists first attacked theism philosophically by trying to replace it with deism – the view that miracles do not occur
  • Secularists then pushed a radical empirism which attempted to reduce religious claims to meaningless irrationality
  • The Christian church responded by retreating from philosophical and theological claims and focusing on moral claims
  • That’s how Europe became secular, but how did America become secular?
  • America became secular because Christianity was transformed from a knowledge tradition to an emotional tradition
  • Pastors started to move away from presenting Christianity as true and instead presented it as emotionally fulfilling
  • Pastors emphasized personal experiences instead of philosophical theology and apologetics
  • European ideas arrived: deism, Darwinism, Bible criticism, etc.
  • Christianity responded to this by abandoning the centers of learning it had founded (universities) into pious isolation
  • As the universities became more secular, they turned out the next generation of influencers, including the media
  • This retreat from intellectual engagement was augmented by a fixation on end-times speculation (e.g. Left Behind)
  • (Drew talks to Jeremy, a philosophy student at Georgia State University, about whether Christianity is respected in his classes)
  • How politicians and the media used the Scopes Monkey Trial to marginalize Christianity as anti-science
  • The perception of Christians in the public square changed – they were viewed as ignorant, irrational and anti-science
  • Instead of causing Christians to work harder at science, they became even more fundamentalist, and less influential
  • Christians today are a tiny minority of influential groups, e.g. – scientists, media, etc.
  • In contrast, secular Jews, who tend to grow up in a culture that values learning, have a much greater influence
  • Even if Christians try to retreat to the country where they can homeschool, there is no hiding from the Internet
  • Which organizations are working against secularism today?
  • Example of what Christians can do: Plantinga’s refutation of the problem of evil
  • Example of what Christians can do: widespread use of ultrasound to move people to the pro-life view
  • Example of what Christians can do: Liberty University’s effort to produce Christians who can work in media
  • A story about William Lane Craig and a secular physicist who had lost her faith

People must have liked what they heard and saw in the first week, because he got a big turnout in the second week.

Part 2 deals with practical tips for engaging in the culture.

Topics in Part 2:

  • The real root cause of opposition to Christianity is from the sexual revolution
  • For example, moral relativism is so popular in the university, but it is almost entirely driven by sexual liberation
  • Evangelism and culture-shaping are not the same thing – each requires a different set of skills
  • Where do people get their information? Public school, news media, late night comedy shows, etc.
  • Two things for every Christian need to do: 1) Get informed, and 2) Get involved
  • First: you do not need to be smarter than average. Dr. Craig is a leading scholar because he studies 9 hours a day
  • Implying that people with influence are “smart” just provides us with an excuse not to try if we are not “smart”
  • Ordinary Christians need to be willing to give up fun more than they need to be naturally “smart”
  • Asks Cody: what about that Christian apologist who hung out mostly with internet atheists and then became one
  • Famous quantum chemist: you’re right, I am not much smarter than most people, I just work a lot harder at it
  • Drew: to get informed, you should follow good Christian blogs like Apologetics 315 and Wintery Knight
  • Drew knows Wintery Knight personally and WK is someone who knows apologetics but he also knows other things
  • WK connects the Christian worldview to lots different things, e.g. = marriage – he can find you the right people and books
  • (Drew holds up “What is Marriage?” book) This is the best book to argue the same-sex marriage issue
  • (Drew hold up “The Case for Life” book) This is the best book to argue the pro-life position
  • Slacktivism: don’t just send people links that you find on the Internet – read the articles and books and then talk about them
  • (Drew holds up the Lee Strobel “Case for” books) These are the best introductory books on basic Christian apologetics
  • Audio books are a great way for people to take in the information, and you can get them for free from the library
  • The Internet is not the best place for arguing about the things you learn – face to face conversations are much better
  • Biola’s apologetics certificate program is an excellent resource, and it’s all audio lectures so you just listen to them
  • You can get free apologetics audio from Apologetics 315 and Phil Fernandes
  • We also need to learn how to how to change the culture and how the other side changes the culture
  • To really make a difference, then a graduate degree might be for you – especially the M.A. in apologetics from Biola
  • The university is also very important – Christianity needs to be represented in the university
  • Influential people like Supreme Court justices come out of the university, which is why we need to be there
  • The Discovery Institute is doing the most to provide a credible rival to naturalistic science
  • They have a budget of $4 million dollars and they are punching way above their weight
  • If every evangelical sent them $20, they’d have a budget of $1.2 billion – what could they do with that?
  • (Drew puts a check for $20 for Discovery Institute in an envelope and seals it, to show how it’s done)
  • The Truth Project, which is put out by Focus on the Family – it’s another excellent training resource
  • When it comes to politics, focus on discussing policy issues, not on pushing particular candidates
  • If every evangelical Christian just pulled their own weight, it would make a big difference
  • It all starts by making the decision to take some leisure time to do things that really work

I could not agree with him more on his selections on the marriage debate and the abortion debate. I have bought at least a half-dozen of each of those for people. And I highly recommend getting the Strobel books on audio, especially the Case for a Creator. Love that book. Listen to it a bunch a times and you will start to talk like Lee Strobel.

I listened to all the Biola University lectures before they even had the certificate program, along with the Stand to Reason Masters Series in Christian Thought and about 60 Veritas Forum leture sets. Those things probably did the most for me to become a capable defender of Christianity.

The point he made about giving money to the Discovery Institute is important. In the last month, I sent out $300 to a Ratio Christi chapter for a lecture they gave, and $500 for a Christian group in Canada that put on an apologetics conference.

I think he’s right when he talks about everyone pulling their own weight. I spend about 2-3 hours a day reading and blogging. I donate a portion of my earnings to Christian scholars who study and/or speak at the university. I support Christian students who are doing degrees in philosophy, science and engineering. In church, I don’t anything yet, but I have a network of friends who do things in church, like organize lectures, debates and apologetics book studies. My current pastor is aware of my abilities, and he’s already asked me to help them with an evangelism program they are starting up.

I got started on apologetics by putting in the time on some of the things he mentioned in part 2 of his talk. The basic things to do are reading introductory books on apologetics, especially the ones on philosophy of religion, historical Jesus and physical sciences. If you can’t read, then at least get hold of lectures from Biola University and listen to those, along with Lee Strobel audio books, Brian Auten interviews, William Lane Craig debates. Just put them in the car and listen, and soon you’ll be sounding just like them.

Commentary

Is cohabitation a better way to prepare for marriage than courting?

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Painting: "Courtship", by Edmund Blair Leighton (1888)
Painting: “Courtship”, by Edmund Blair Leighton (1888)

Consider this assessment of cohabitation from the radically-leftist New York Times.

Excerpt:

AT 32, one of my clients (I’ll call her Jennifer) had a lavish wine-country wedding. By then, Jennifer and her boyfriend had lived together for more than four years. The event was attended by the couple’s friends, families and two dogs.

When Jennifer started therapy with me less than a year later, she was looking for a divorce lawyer. “I spent more time planning my wedding than I spent happily married,” she sobbed. Most disheartening to Jennifer was that she’d tried to do everything right. “My parents got married young so, of course, they got divorced. We lived together! How did this happen?”

Cohabitation in the United States has increased by more than 1,500 percent in the past half century. In 1960, about 450,000 unmarried couples lived together. Now the number is more than 7.5 million. The majority of young adults in their 20s will live with a romantic partner at least once, and more than half of all marriages will be preceded by cohabitation. This shift has been attributed to the sexual revolution and the availability of birth control, and in our current economy, sharing the bills makes cohabiting appealing. But when you talk to people in their 20s, you also hear about something else: cohabitation as prophylaxis.

In a nationwide survey conducted in 2001 by the National Marriage Project, then at Rutgers and now at the University of Virginia, nearly half of 20-somethings agreed with the statement, “You would only marry someone if he or she agreed to live together with you first, so that you could find out whether you really get along.” About two-thirds said they believed that moving in together before marriage was a good way to avoid divorce.

That’s a nice idea – wanting protection against divorce. But I think these hopeful attitudes that young people have about cohabitation and the utility / harmlessness of premarital sex, is so much whistling past the graveyard. The fact is that cohabitation does not improve marital stability.

The New York Times author assesses the evidence about cohabitation:

Couples who cohabit before marriage (and especially before an engagement or an otherwise clear commitment) tend to be less satisfied with their marriages — and more likely to divorce — than couples who do not. These negative outcomes are called the cohabitation effect.

Researchers originally attributed the cohabitation effect to selection, or the idea that cohabitors were less conventional about marriage and thus more open to divorce. As cohabitation has become a norm, however, studies have shown that the effect is not entirely explained by individual characteristics like religion, education or politics. Research suggests that at least some of the risks may lie in cohabitation itself.

As Jennifer and I worked to answer her question, “How did this happen?” we talked about how she and her boyfriend went from dating to cohabiting. Her response was consistent with studies reporting that most couples say it “just happened.”

“We were sleeping over at each other’s places all the time,” she said. “We liked to be together, so it was cheaper and more convenient. It was a quick decision but if it didn’t work out there was a quick exit.”

She was talking about what researchers call “sliding, not deciding.” Moving from dating to sleeping over to sleeping over a lot to cohabitation can be a gradual slope, one not marked by rings or ceremonies or sometimes even a conversation. Couples bypass talking about why they want to live together and what it will mean.

Cohabitation is associated with higher risks of divorce because it works to undermine the need for quality communication during courting and the need for commitment that is based on discipline, instead of pleasure. People slide into something that looks like marriage because the sex pulls them in. But they’ve never taken the time to talk about what the relationship is really about, and whether they are intending to commit to the other person for life, and on what terms, and for what reason. Young people find these conversations difficult and scary for a reason – they are not capable of discussing relationships in terms of self-sacrifice, self-control, and self-denial.

The focus on early sex is caused by a focus on wanting to get to pleasure right away. They want relationships to be like a consumer good, where they get their needs met without having to talk about suitability for roles, and acceptance of responsibilities and obligations. In my experience, young people are terrified of the responsibilities, obligations and expectations of a real commitment. They want relationships to be free,easy and fun – where they just get to do whatever they feel like, moment by moment. And somehow, it’s all supposed to work out, without anyone talking seriously about roles and responsibilities and commitment.

But of course that doesn’t work as well as keeping your distance and getting to know each other first. It’s not just compatibility that is important, though – it’s that both people need to prepare for the roles and responsibilities they will have in a marriage, and demonstrate to each other that each is capable of performing those roles.

What’s the answer?

Research has shown that pre-marital chastity produces more stable and higher quality marriages. And that’s because chastity helps people to focus on conversations and obligations instead of the recreational sex which clouds the judgment and glosses over the seriousness of marriage. Premarital sex rushes the relationship to the point where it is harder to break it off because of the sunk costs of sex and the pain of the break-up. Courtship is the time to discuss the things that break up marriages, like finances and division of labor. It is the time to demonstrate self-control and fidelity. Courting doesn’t allow either person to get control of the relationship through sex, so that they can get their needs met without having to care about the other person. When sex is ruled off the table, the only way to have the relationship go on is by serving the other person and showing them that you have what it takes to do the marriage role you’re assigned. That’s hard work, but young people need to accept that and get on with preparing for and practicing their marriage responsibilities.

Why not go back to courting?

If you asked me, I would tell you that courting is protection against a painful break-up as well as protection against a bad marriage. And the aim of courting is to interview the other person so that you can see whether they understand the demands of the marriage and whether they can perform their duties to their spouse and children. In particular, men should investigate whether the woman has prepared (or is willing to prepare now) to perform her roles as wife and mother, and women should investigate whether the man has prepared to perform his roles as protector, provider and moral/spiritual leader (or is willing to prepare now). Courting is not designed to be fun, although it can be fun. It is not meant to make people feel happy, it is mean to prepare them for marriage. And this is because you cannot translate fun and happy into marriage, because marriage is about well-defined roles, self-sacrifice and commitment. Marriage is about following through for the other person, whether you get what you want or not. You’d be surprised how often people give up on courting and show that their real goal for a relationship is not lifelong self-sacrificial love at all, but just using other people for their own happiness while they keep their distance from the responsibilities, obligations and expectations of the marriage covenant.

And that’s why I encourage men to very gently and subtly guide the relationship in a way that will allow both the woman and the man to practice their expected marital duties, see how they feel about their duties and get better at being able to perform them. Men have the most to lose from the divorce courts, if things go south. That’s why it is the man’s the responsibility to detect and reject women who are only interested in fun and thrills.

Podcasts

Can a person be postmodern and a Christian at the same time?

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Can a person be postmodern and a Christian? Not for long
Can a person be postmodern and a Christian? Let’s look at their leader

Wow. Postmodern “Christian” Brian McLaren has completely abandoned traditional Christianity. McLaren, you may already know, spear-headed the “emergent church” movement – an attempt to fuse postmodern relativism with liberal Christianity.

Greg Koukl and Kevin DeYoung analyze his latest book “A New Kind of Christianity”.

The MP3 file is here.

Details:

Kevin DeYoung – Brian McLaren’s New Kind of Christianity
Host: Greg Koukl

Guest: Kevin DeYoung – Brian McLaren’s “New Kind of Christianity” (00:00:00)
Commentary: Reality vs. Religion? The Modern Upper Story Leap (00:56:39)
Guest: Dennis Prager – Reality vs. Religion (01:52:25)

We’re interested in the first hour of the three-hour show.

Topics of hour one:

  • What is Brian’s view of Creation?
  • What is Brian’s view of the Fall?
  • What is Brian’s view of Scripture?
  • What is Brian’s view of Truth?
  • What is Brian’s view of sin and Hell?
  • What is Brian’s view of the Fall?
  • What is Brian’s view of atonement?
  • How did Brian’s leftist political views infect his theology?
  • How did postmodernism affect Brian’s epistemology?
  • How faithful is Brian in interpreting the text?

There’s also a nice blog post about Brian McLaren by Melinda from Stand to Reason, too.

Excerpt:

McLaren doesn’t think the Bible is to be taken literally. For instance, the Garden of Eden story isn’t about sin and the Fall, rather it’s a “compassionate coming of age story.”  Consequently, the whole idea of sin and Hell is a horrible overreaction and has caused the church to offer a violent message and image all these years.  It follows from this interpretation then, that there is no need for the cross and Jesus’ death and resurrection.  Those are violent ideas resulting from a bad reading of the Bible.

And a couple of longer reviews are linked.

Tim Challies and Kevin DeYoung have written excellent and more in-depth reviews of McLaren’s new book and I highly recommend them.

I highly recommend you listen to this podcast and if you know anyone who is being influenced by the (non) religious left, take a look at the articles, especially the DeYoung article, which is quite good.

A generous “orthodoxy”?

And finally, here is a review of another much earlier Brian McLaren book by Biola University professor of philosophy Doug Geivett – one of my absolute favorite people. This is back when McLaren was just starting to leave orthodox Christianity behind.

Excerpt:

Brian McLaren’s book A Generous Orthodoxy (Zondervan, 2004) has been called a manifesto of the “emerging church” — a movement that is rethinking Christianity against the backdrop of postmodernism. McLaren is the founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, Md.

[…]In using the term “orthodoxy” for his position, McLaren is making a political move to subvert traditional evangelical theology. “Orthodoxy,” as he uses it, is whatever happens to be in vogue and culturally dominant. Also, an important theme among postmodernists has to do with the nature of belief — they doubt that people have, or need, good reasons to believe as they do, so they emphasize behavior over belief. (This probably explains why McLaren’s book relies less on evidence and argumentation and more on rhetoric.) However, in de-emphasizing the importance of belief, McLaren and other postmodernists overlook three things.

First, belief is the engine that drives behavior. The best way to cure wrong action is to identify false beliefs. Second, all people — even postmodernists — have definite beliefs about the things that matter most. They can’t help it. While McLaren resists the invitation to state clearly what he believes — for example, about the eternal destiny of nonbelievers — surely he has some view of the matter and that view influences his approach to the proclamation of the gospel. (As a pastor, he should have good ideas about this and a host of other issues of theological significance.) Third — though postmodernists sneer at the idea of evidence — evidence matters because it’s how we determine what’s true and is crucial to ordering our lives according to truth. In this respect, the postmodernist is out of step with the culture because human beings are by nature evidence-gatherers.

Very important to understand where these postmodern “Christians” are coming from, and where they end up when they’ve worked their mystical anti-realism through to its conclusions.