Tag Archives: Youth Pastor

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Is apologetics a waste of time in a postmodern culture?

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Air Force TACPs confirm target locations with their map
Air Force TACPs confirm target locations with their map

One thing that I noticed while growing up in youth groups and campus clubs is that most of the young unmarried ladies don’t have much interest in making a case for Christian truth claims that are reasonable and supported by evidence. Is it that they are just too lazy to do the studying? Well, no – they do very well in school and get decent jobs after they graduate. So they are able to learn and work on things they like, just not defending their faith. Is it that aren’t able to communicate? Well, no – they are able to talk and talk about things they are interested in, like clothes, television, movies, food, fitness, etc. So what’s the real problem here? I think the problem is that women (more than men) have accepted a postmodern worldview. Postmodernism reduces questions of religion and ethics to personal preferences, divorced from reason and evidence. In postmodernism, everyone is equally right about whichever religion or morality they prefer. And you choose what you like – what resonates with you. For postmodern “Christians”, it causes them to lose all motivation to study and engage in debate in areas like religion and ethics.

Look at this clip of William Lane Craig:

He’s also written a response here.

Personally, I don’t even see how you can BE a Christian and accept postmodernism.

When I was an undergraduate, there was a girl I attended IVCF with named Kerry. Although she was doing a STEM degree and graduated #2 in her class, she just preferred not to study anything related to the real questions that atheists ask. Why not? Because some male youth pastor she had a crush on had convinced her that postmodernism was true, and that it was a waste of time to argue about cosmic fine-tuning. She was more than happy to discover that (thanks to postmodernism) religion was all about feelings and intuitions. No need to waste time reading anything to learn how to give an answer for the hope within you. I would repeat to her verbatim questions I had got from atheists students in high school and university, and she just refused to do anything to come up with an answer. For her, Christianity was about feeling good and being liked, and God would never ask her to do anything (study, debate) that would cause her to be unhappy.

Another woman I worked for told me that she had enough trouble in her day-to-day life to take on any trouble in her religion. She was a leader in a program called the “Calvinettes” – girls interested in Calvinism, I guess. I asked her if she was teaching these Calvinettes anything that would help them when they were confronted by relativism and naturalism in the university. She said no, and that studying science and history was not desired by her Calvinettes, because people who study are nerdy and unpopular. Although she claimed to be in a two-way relationship with God, she never saw any responsibility to defend his honor when it was called into question.

I guess I have trouble understanding postmoderns who It would be like me marrying, and standing there silent when people spoke lies about my wife. Sharing my opinion is not what is needed here, you have to defend your wife and prove her goodness by making a factual case that overrides the other person’s opinions.

One thing is for sure: postmodern Christians don’t treat God very well. It’s almost as if embracing postmdodernism is done precisely because it relieves a person of having to do any studying and having to do any battling. When it comes to defending God’s reputation and honor when it’s called into question, we have to do what works. Not what makes us feel good. Not what makes people like us.

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Darrell Bock and Eric Chabot discuss the challenges of campus ministry

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A conflict of worldviews
A conflict of worldviews

My good friend Eric Chabot did an episode of the The Table podcast, which is the culture podcast of Dallas Theological Seminary. Eric does campus ministry at Ohio State University, one of the largest universities in the United States. He has a frontline view of the challenges that Christians face on campus, which is a battle I am so passionate about.

Here’s the podcast:

The MP3 file is here.

Summary:

  • 00:15  What does a typical RC meeting look like at Ohio State?
  • 02:44  Key social issues facing Ohio students
  • 05:30  How do you engage with the same-sex issue on campus?
  • 11:01  How do you engage with political issues on campus?
  • 13:08  How do you engage with social justice issues on campus?
  • 16:19  How would you describe the Christian environment on campus?
  • 18:33  Advice for parents considering Ohio State for their child

I give this podcast and the discussion my highest recommendation. It’s so practical, and so different from what you hear in church from pastors who seem to be totally unaware of how worldviews conflict on the university campus. This podcast is practical and hands-on.

There is also a transcript (PDF).

I just want to excerpt a few questions to get you interested enough to listen:

Dr. Darrell Bock:

Ok. Well, that’s the intellectual background. Let’s move on to the other questions I told you we were going to discuss. The social pressures of campus? This, and I’ve done a handful of these interviews, in fact I think you’re the 5th or 6th campus that we’ve done.

We’ve done UCLA, UC Irvine, California, San Diego, A&M and Princeton, and the interesting thing is that as we move from campus to campus and I go to social issues, that – those kind of are more varied than the intellectual stuff. The intellectual stuff seems to be pretty consistent from campus to campus.

But the social challenges really are a reflection of the environment of the campus itself and certain emphasis are tied to certain campuses. So, what are the social challenges that students face in terms of their walk at Ohio State?

And:

Dr. Darrell Bock:

Ok. Well, let’s turn our attention to the final two questions that I want to be sure and get through, and that is you’re giving advice – let’s start with parents – you’re giving advice to parents. They’re thinking about, you know, sending their kid to Ohio State.

What do you regard as the, as keys for the preparation of that student that a parent should be thinking about? Perhaps in particular, thinking about their junior and senior years, they’re getting ready to think about college and the way you prepare a student for college and the choices and the freedom that they’re gonna fall into. How do you, what advice would you give to parents?

And:

Dr. Darrell Bock:

Ok. This may seem like a related question, but I do think the demands are slightly different and that is what advice do you give to youth leaders and to pastors as they are preparing kids who are going through their church programs for university?
And here, I sorta have in mind what kinds of things would you hope a youth leader who’s dealing with high school students, what kinds of issues do you hope that they’re dealing with and treating so that the student is prepared for the campus experience?

That’s why I focus so much on same-sex marriage and politics on this blog. We really have to explain to young people why natural marriage is best, and why the free enterprise system is best. We are seeing now the challenge that the combination of same-sex marriage and big secular government (socialism) poses for religious liberty.

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Judge Jean Boyd gives no jail time to drunk driver who murdered four people

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State District Judge Jean Boyd
State District Judge Jean Boyd

Here’s the story from CBS News.

Excerpt:

A Texas teenager killed four people while driving drunk in June. Prosecutors pushed for a 20-year sentence, but a judge sentenced the teen to 10 years probation and no jail time.

[…]A psychologist testified for the defense that the teen was a product of something he called “affluenza.” He meant [Ethan] Couch doesn’t link bad behavior with consequences because his parents taught him that wealth buys privilege.

That psychologist cited one instance when Couch, then 15, was caught in a parked pickup with a naked 14-year-old girl who was passed out. Couch was never punished, the psychologist said. He also testified the teenager was allowed to drink at a very young age and began driving at 13.

Investigators said surveillance tape showed Couch and his friends stealing beer from a Walmart store in June.

After leaving a party, police said Couch had his pickup going nearly 70 mph in a 40 mph zone. About 400 yards down the street, he slammed into Holly and Shelby Boyles, who had stopped to help Breanna Mitchell fix a flat tire.

Youth Pastor Brian Jennings was driving by and had also stopped to help. All of them were killed. Couch was charged with four counts of intoxication manslaughter and tried as a juvenile.

[…]Boyles said the verdict doesn’t give victims’ family the justice they need for closure.

“My immediate reaction is I’m back to week one,” he said. “We have accomplished nothing here. My healing process is out the window.”

You can read more about State District Judge Jean Boyd here. I can’t believe that this woman is a judge in Texas, of all places.

I was listening to Dennis Prager talk about this at lunch on Thursday, and I wanted to relay two points that came up. First, Prager noted that the judge was a woman, and that women tend to focus more on compassion and non-judgmentalism than men. Men tend to focus more on justice and moral standards. Men tend to believe that punishing evil harshly is the right thing to do because it deters future crimes. Men also tend to believe that punishing evil sends a message to the rest of society about what is wrong, which deters future crimes. What message does this judge’s sentence send to 16-year-old boys? It says “you can kill four innocent people and injure a fifth and get off Scot-free”.

Second, a caller to the show said that if the murderer is deemed not responsible because of what his parents did to him, then why are the parents not being punished for it? That’s a good question, and it prompts me to think about what real justice in the case might look like. Here is what real justice would look like, from someone who is not affected by the crime. First, disbar the judge so that she cannot practice law in Texas. Second, give the murderer the 20-year sentence sought by the prosecution. Third, confiscate every penny of the assets of the parents, and distribute it to the families of the victims. That is not lenient, but it would be restitution, which ought to be one of the functions of the law.