1 Peter 3:15: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” Jesus is the centre of our faith, so we need to understand, and be able to explain clearly, why we believe in him.

This isn’t as easy as it used to be. (This post follows on from my discussion of Training disciples to stand and Apologetics for disciples.)

Can we trust the Gospels?

Once, a christian could quote stories of Jesus from the gospels and they would generally be accepted But nowadays it will often not be enough to simply quote the Bible. Many people have seen TV shows questioning the Bible’s historical reliability, and they may want to know why we believe it to be true.

And some of the old apologetics may not be so useful either. While christian apologists like Lee Strobel provide good information for believers, many unbelievers will say (quite correctly) that his books on Jesus are christian apologetics, and do not represent the consensus of historical scholarship. They may want to start from a more neutral position.

It can be useful in some situations to start with scholars who are not always christians, and who approach the gospels as they would other historical texts, and not as divinely inspired. Even though they will question the historical reliability of some sections of the gospels that we believe, they still endorse a great deal. If sceptics refuse to accept these scholars, then it is they who are closing their eyes to the evidence.

We can get a lot from the most respected scholars:

• Sceptics sometimes argue that the accounts of Jesus’ life are not contemporary, ignoring that they are more contemporary, and far better attested, than most ancient history – see The gospels as history.
• While some non-believers argue on the internet and in books that Jesus never existed and the stories are legendary, virtually no scholars (whether christians or not) accept this – see The Jesus myth theory.
• The scholars also generally believe that much of the information we have about Jesus is reliable, even if they don’t always agree on exactly what – see Jesus and the historians.

I don’t suggest we all need to read a raft of scholarly texts on the New Testament and Jesus (few of us want to read large academic books), but I do suggest we should be more familiar with the approach I’ve outlined, so we can use it when required. For most people, I suggest reading Aussie historian and pastor, John Dickson – they have a strong historical basis and reference the most respected scholars, yet are easy to read. A good place to start is Life of Jesus, both book and DVD. Not only will John give you some good apologetic material, but you will find your understanding of Jesus will be deepened.

Was Jesus divine?

It is not enough that people accept that Jesus was a historical figure who taught and was crucified in first century Israel. We want people to see that he was (and is) the son of God and our saviour. To establish this, christian apologists used to rely on the claims of Jesus and the argument that a person who made such claims had to be either the son of God, a liar or a lunatic, but these arguments require a little more work these days. For a start, many sceptics will not accept as genuine many of the passages used by apologists – for instance, the “I am” sayings in John’s gospel.

William Lane Craig’s book Reasonable Faith contains arguments based on passages generally accepted as genuine by contemporary scholarship to justify the conclusions that Jesus was divine and that he was indeed resurrected. The book is solid reading, but the lines of argument can be understood by most christians – see Jesus – son of God?.

Most scholars would accept as genuine passages which tell us the following:

• Jesus’ teaching on the kingdom of God,
• the titles he used about himself,
• his authority in teaching, healing and forgiving sins,
• how he prayed.

From these teachings and the passages where they are found, it can be seen that Jesus claimed a special relationship with God, one which is most reasonably explained by his divinity. Many scholars would not agree with the conclusion, but most would accept the passages on which it is based.

Craig also uses what has become known as the minimal facts approach to the resurrection. It can be shown that the majority of New Testament scholars accept a number of facts about the end of Jesus’ life as historically established (i.e. they don’t require faith), because there are good historical arguments supporting this conclusion:

• Jesus was crucified and buried in a tomb near the walls of Jerusalem.
• Several days later his tomb was empty.
• The disciples “saw” (in some sense) Jesus alive after his crucifixion.
• Belief in the resurrection of Jesus was a significant component in the later spread of christianity.

Taken together, the arguments about how Jesus presented himself and the early belief in his resurrection, can be a strong basis for faith and for apologetics – and it’s all based on good historical facts.

We need to do our homework

Apologists and teachers should try to become familiar with this line of approach, and give some basic outline to all disciples. This will give everyone a basis for their faith in Jesus that can stand up to critical scrutiny.

In Training disciples to stand I suggested that we need to develop our methods of evangelism and discipleship to include some apologetics. Young disciples need to be encouraged to better think through why they believe, and how to defend their belief against attack.

But what apologetics are important and relevant?

Reasons why people believe …. or disbelieve

Christians believe for a mixture of objective and subjective reasons. Objective reasons include philosophical arguments based on science, and the historical evidence for Jesus; subjective reasons include personal experience of God through healing or guidance or a changed life – either one’s own experience or someone else’s. (See Do christians believe for irrational reasons?.)

Because we all have different paths to God, each of us will rely on different reasons to believe, and each of us should be able to “give a reason for the hope we have” (1 Peter 3:15). Once, it would have been enough to simply share what the Bible says about Jesus and our own story, but increasingly we will be asked why we believe the Bible is true and how we know our experience is anything more than subjective, and we may need to be able to give an answer.

People’s reasons for disbelieving are also varied. Some are objective, based on the pain and suffering in the world, the alleged inconsistencies or problems in the Bible, or questions about why God remains so “hidden”. Other people disbelieve for more subjective reasons, such as suffering in their own life, especially at the hands of christians or churches.

We should have some understanding of …..

All christians should be able to briefly explain the essentials, and we should also be including these matters (briefly) in our evangelism:

• Why they believe the New Testament is trustworthy;
• why they believe Jesus is the son of God; and
• what following Jesus means to them.

In addition, it would be helpful to be able to outline other reasons that are important to their belief:

• any experience they have had of God’s healing, or guidance, or help in changing their life around; or
• simple outlines of arguments for God’s existence based on cosmology or other aspects of the world; or
• accounts of other people’s healings or experiences of God.

Finally, it would be helpful to understand the truths behind sceptics arguments against christian belief, including:

• Was Jesus a real person or a legend?
• Can we know much historically about Jesus?
• If there’s a good God, how come there is so much suffering?
• Alleged inconsistencies in the Bible.
• Why did God order genocide in the Old Testament?
• Why is God so hidden from us?
• How could a good God send people to hell?
• Religion causes war and suffering, and opposes science.
• Evolution vs Genesis

Giving a reason for our hope

I’m not suggesting that everyone needs to study up on these matters. But I am suggesting that more christians need to, learning to use good apologetics material that can withstand attacks (it is my conclusion that much christian apologetic material doesn’t stand up to careful criticism). And that all christians need to have some familiarity with the most essential facts, for the sake of their own confident faith as well as to be able to stand under criticism.

Over the next few weeks, I will outline how I suggest we should approach these questions, and recommend some useful books and websites. Please come back to check it out.

(Photo: Morguefile.)

Jon and his wife Lisa live in one of Sydney’s most depressed suburbs as part of a community supported by Urban Neighbours of Hope, and try to bring hope to the many people who need it. I deeply admire them and their work, and I don’t think I could do it. I blogged about his book, Muddy Spirituality.

Here is an article from the Sydney Morning Herald about their life. It’s worth reading. (The photo above was taken from the article.)

It doesn’t take long before a thoughtful Bible reader comes across some rather odd and nasty things, especially in the Old Testament. And non-believers use the odd and nasty things as a weapon against christians: “How can you believe in a God who is genocidal?” they might say.

What are we to make of these things? Do they make it hard to maintain faith in Jesus? And how should we answer the critics?

The problem

There are many places in the Old Testament where God is described as doing or ordering things which we would today say were morally repugnant. Because I think ordering humans to do his “dirty work” is the most difficult to explain, I will give several examples of this:

• In Deuteronomy 21:18-21, the law instructs that persistently rebellious sons shall be stoned to death.
• In Joshua 10:16-42, Joshua’s defeated tribe after tribe and (verse 40) says “He left no survivors. He totally destroyed all who breathed, just as the LORD, the God of Israel, had commanded.”
• In 1 Samuel 15:3, God is recorded as ordering King Saul to entirely wipe out the Amalekites, including women, children and babies.
• Genesis 22 contains the well known story of Abraham being told by God to sacrifice his son Isaac, only to be reprieved at the last minute.

These stories, effectively ethic cleansing or genocide (and there are more like them), are jarring, to say the least, and it is hard to see why they don’t cause more problems than they do for christians. We may be able to accept that God has the right to give and take away life, but it is difficult to see how God can include “Do not murder” in the Ten Commandments and then order these killings. How are we to explain these commands?

Starting point

If we are christians, our supreme revelation of God is in Jesus. When we see him we see God. He remains the foundation of our faith and he has not changed. These difficult Old Testament passages are no reason to give up trusting in Jesus. But he taught non-violence (e.g. Matthew 5:21-22, 38-48), so we have a dilemma – why does God seem so different in the Old Testament compared to the New?

Possible explanations

God is God – get used to it!

Until recently, probably the most common christian explanation was to simply argue that God is good, and so these killings must have been necessary, and we shouldn’t question God. The Bible is God’s inerrant word, so the stories must be literal history, and we shouldn’t doubt them.

Sometimes christians try to justify God’s commands. For example, some of the accusations by non-believers are based on misunderstandings. And we can better understand God’s actions when we understand the evil of the Canaanites and the corrupting effect of this evil on God’s people. But in the long run, we can’t know all the facts, so don’t question God, OK?

But this response is now under strong attack. Christians holding this view are being accused of believing in a genocidal God who, far from being loving, does not behave in a way that almost everyone today would find repugnant. (For example, Richard Dawkins used this argument to justify not debating christian philosopher William Lane Craig, who holds a view similar to this.)

In recent times, some further explanations have been offered. It is said that the alleged genocide of Joshua 10 never happened, that later chapters show many of the “exterminated” tribes still alive, thus showing that the author never intended us to understand the command literally. Perhaps the language is just macho exaggeration. But this somehow misses the point, and doesn’t make God’s alleged actions any more palatable, nor preserve the inerrant view of the Bible.

Perhaps the most interesting test is this, and it is one commonly posed by non-believers. If you believed God told you to sacrifice your child, or wipe out a tribe, would you do it? If you would (and some christians give this answer), then you show yourself to be a scary and dangerous person who is disregarding Jesus’ teachings about non-violence. And if you wouldn’t, then you are saying that God’s apparent commands are not morally acceptable to you.

Perhaps God adapted his commands to the times?

Some seek to explain God’s commands as part of a program of gradual change. Every tribe or nation had their own gods, so God began what the Hebrews could understand in those violent times, and slowly brought his people into a new and correct understanding. But while progressive revelation is a part of christian belief, this seems an unacceptable explanation, for it still means God commanded some terrible things.

Perhaps the Old Testament records what people thought rather than what God actually said?

Faced with the above difficulties, some christians conclude that it is impossible that God could have given such horrendous commands. The accounts must reflect what the Israelites thought, and the Old Testament shows them gradually learning that God’s ways are different to the middle eastern culture of the time. The Bible is a true record of what they thought, not what God said.

Some argue that there are more than one strand in the Old Testament, a monotheistic strand and a polytheistic one, and these two compete until monotheism is seen as being true. Perhaps this is God’s way of making the choices clearer for us – we can see the results of wrong understandings of God, and we now have a choice whether to perpetrate them, or follow the new revelation in Jesus. Perhaps God’s revelation was through a fallible human document, not an inerrant divine one?

This view has the virtue of preserving God’s character, but means the Bible is reduced to a more human book. That is no problem for many christians, but would disturb others whose faith depends on the Bible bring infallibly “right”. And it would certainly mean we would have to be more circumspect about using Old Testament texts as guides to God’s commands.

Admit we don’t know

“I am a christian, and my belief is in Jesus. We are in a new covenant now (see The Old Testament law and christians). I am appalled at the killings in the Old Testament and cannot explain them, but my inability to explain them doesn’t alter my faith in Jesus and in his teachings.”

This approach has the virtue of being honest and preserving God’s character, but wouldn’t appeal to those who want answers to everything.

So, can we know which is the truth?

Each of us has to make up our own minds. I have been considering and praying about this difficult question on and off for more than a year, and I am still unsure. But my tentative conclusions (for what they’re worth) are:

1. I think it is best to admit we find the passages troubling and cannot explain them. We should not attempt to justify God, he is quite capable of looking after himself. Any attempt to justify those commands will lose more than it gains. (In my judgment, even as skilful a thinker as WL Craig lost ground when trying to justify God’s commands here.) We don’t have all the answers.
2. If asked, we should be clear that we wouldn’t kill our child or someone else even if we thought God had commanded it, because we would trust Jesus’ teachings against killing more than we’d trust our perception of God’s command. CS Lewis once said something like “If God and truth seem to be leading you in two different directions, follow truth, and you’ll find that was where God was all along.” (Unfortunately I cannot find the exact quote.)
3. The Old Testament is the old covenant, for a different time and a different people, it no longer applies to us. Whatever is the truth about those commands, they do not accurately and fully reveal God and we are not required to follow them. Jesus reveals God most completely, and we follow him – and he clearly taught against such violence.
4. We need to re-examine our views on Biblical inerrancy, literal interpretations and the purpose and meaning of the Old Testament. We need to consider what historians, archaeologists and anthropologists have found about the accuracy as literal history of some sections of the Old Testament. There may be truth in all the views outlined above.

This issue won’t go away

I don’t believe this issue will go away. It troubles too many believers, is perhaps the main rod that unbelievers use to beat christians, and plays a significant part in the loss of faith of many christians. Many books are being written about it.

In Habbakuk 1:5-6, God says he is doing an unexpected and shocking thing – using the fierce Babylonians to punish and correct his people. Whatever we may think about that, I can’t help feeling God is using the attacks of the atheists on this matter to force us to reconsider our traditional approach to this troubling question. Let us not miss the opportunity, but let us pray and consider.

For further reading you may wish to try Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God by Paul Copan. I haven’t read it, but reviews indicate it may be the best defence of the traditional christian view. For a critique of this view and this book, see Randall Rauser Is God a Moral Monster Parts 1 – 4.

I have been looking at the problem of christians losing faith and turning away from following Jesus (see Making disciples is a new game these days, Why do some christians give up belief?, and Do christians believe for irrational reasons?).

So what should we do about it?

How do we help young christians to be prepared for attacks on their faith, to be able to grow through doubt and questioning, and after all, to stand (Ephesians 6:13)?

The way it used to be

I can remember as a young christian, my discipleship training consisted of:

• doctrine,
• encouragement to read the Bible and pray every day, and
• do’s and don’ts of christian living.

There was nothing I can remember on how to be sure our belief is true, how to sustain faith under attack, or how to live as a christian in difficult environments. I think the assumption was that if we maintained a disciplined devotional life, kept attending church, and avoided a bunch of temptations, we would be OK.

I don’t recall much emphasis, either in evangelism, or in discipleship training, on reasons to believe. Again, I think the assumption was that faith was a work of the Holy Spirit, and people would believe because of the Spirit’s work, or they would choose to resist the Spirit.

Training to stand

I believe it needs to be different today, if we want to help people maintain their faith and obedience.

• Just doing Bible teaching through sermons and small group studies is too theoretical, and gives little practical wisdom. Young christians need training, through mentoring, opportunities to learn from role models, experience and encouragement. We don’t have to follow secular trends, but we would be foolish to fail to learn from what educators have discovered about training – it needs to be active (participative), practical (related to life) and relevant to needs.
• A good parent doesn’t send their child off to school for the first time without preparation, prayer and encouragement, and a soldier doesn’t go off to war without having done training in the use of arms and exercises simulating battle conditions, to prepare them. We need to avoid sending young christian ‘soldiers’ out into a tough world insufficiently prepared.

Doing better

• Training in apologetics should start, in a very simple way, during evangelism – people should be told why christianity is true, not just asked to believe it. And it should continue in discipleship training, so that christians are familiar with some of the main ways their faith will be attacked intellectually, and not shocked by the vehemence of the arguments against them.
• This training need only be at a simple level for most people, but there will be some who want or need to go further, and they should be encouraged and helped to find books and websites which can help them honestly think through the issues. And it is important that apologetics be honest and based on good information – much christian apologetics is embarrassingly weak and easily answered.
• Those who don’t find apologetics relevant should be encouraged to understand the reasons why they believe (e.g. their relationship with God), and also to be able to point critics to good apologetic material.
• Discipleship training needs to be realistic – busy people will not always find time for a 30 minute ‘quiet time’ every day, and evangelism at work isn’t as simple as some christian leaders seem to infer. Young christians need to be prepared for the busyness that may creep up on them when that start full time work, get married or start a family. Older christians can share ways to get through these times and learn to pray in a less structured way.
• Church services, sermons, small groups, etc need to be more relevant to the daily lives of christians – and unfortunately, pastors and ministers who went straight from school or university to Bible college to be trained in Bible exegesis may be the very worst people to help here because in many cases they are talking theory.
• We need to cultivate a culture of honesty, open-ness and flexibility. Christians need to feel free to discuss doubts without being looked down on, and to question doctrines and practices that may be time-honoured but may not be helpful any longer, without being pedantically pulled into line. Christians need to be committed to the truths of their faith and their life with God, and this requires us all to work things out for ourselves, to some degree at least.
• And of course we need to pray for our children – our own children even when they are adults, and the children, teens and adults in our churches – that they will continue to grow in faith, knowledge and understanding.

I can’t help thinking this new antagonism to christianity, and the pressures on christians from our culture, are being used by God to lead us into new understandings of truth and the world, new ways of training and equipping and preparing, and new ways of engaging with the world. Lets’ get the message!

]]> http://theway21stcentury.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/training-disciples-to-stand/feed/ 3 unklee Palace guard http://theway21stcentury.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/do-christians-believe-for-irrational-reasons/ http://theway21stcentury.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/do-christians-believe-for-irrational-reasons/#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:12:33 +0000 unklee http://theway21stcentury.wordpress.com/?p=795 ]]> These days, christians may have to face the common accusation that their belief is based on blind, reasonless faith, and not on evidence, and that therefore they should logically give up belief. “There’s no more evidence for the christian God than for Santa or Thor”, they may be told.

This can be a major source of doubt for some believers. But is the accusation fair?

Reasons for belief

People decide to follow Jesus, and people who were brought up christian choose to continue in the faith, for a range of reasons. The different reasons constitute different types of evidence of the reality of God – for example:

1. Through rationally examining the objective evidence – i.e. the various philosophical arguments for the existence of God and the historical evidence for Jesus. This is objective evidence and is available to everyone.
2. Through finding that everything makes more sense from a christian viewpoint – they may find that following Jesus helps them turn their lives around, or they may observe that their parents’ lives as christians make sense. This evidence will be different for each person, but all can embark on a life with Jesus and find out for themselves if it makes sense.
3. Through objective but personal experiences of God’s action – e.g. they may experience a miraculous healing or a vision that shows them God is active in their lives. These convincing experiences will only be given to some people, but they can become evidence to others who learn about them.
4. Through some virtually incommunicable experience of God which assures them that God is establishing a relationship with them. For some, faith is instinctive, they just know they believe without necessarily being able to articulate why. Again such experience is not given to everyone, although christians believe that the Holy Spirit is active in giving faith to anyone who believes.
5. Through never questioning what they were taught at home or church. This faith is based on trust that those who have taught them knew what they were talking about.

Are these reasons rational?

Sceptics will say that few, if any, of these reasons are based on evidence and logic. But this view is generally based on the assumption that repeatable observable scientific-type evidence is the only valid way to know something. But that is a very restrictive assumption, and following it universally would rule out much of what we know by personal experience, or learn from history or from experts in subjects we know little about. It is also an assumption that doesn’t pass its own test, because we cannot demonstrate that assumption by science. So it isn’t unreasonable to look wider than the sceptics do.

Different kinds of evidence

Each of these reasons for belief is based on evidence of different kinds.

• The philosophical arguments (reason 1) are based on scientific facts and are very well developed (see Philosophical arguments for the existence of God). They were enough to lead eminent atheist philosopher Anthony Flew to change his mind about God, so they can be considered to be very respectable reasons to believe. Most christians would think the beginning and design of the universe to be among their reasons for believing in God, even if their thinking is less sophisticated than the philosophers’.
• The historical evidence for Jesus (reason 1) is quite strong (see Jesus and the historians and Jesus – son of God). Even if a christian hasn’t studied this evidence, it is not unreasonable for them to accept the word of someone who has made a study of the evidence.
• Personal experience (reasons 2-4) is a valid form of evidence and hence a valid basis of belief. Documented cases of miraculous healing are especially strong evidence (see Eleven healings). Authority (reason 5) is also valid (most of what we know we known on the basis of authority). It is true that both experience and authority can sometimes be mistaken, but so can science. In all three cases, continuity of evidence over time, and confirmation by others, give us increased confidence in our conclusions.

More than one reason

Few people believe for just one of these reasons. People who have some subjective experience of God (reason 4) will find their life continues to confirm this experience (reason 2). People who have never had a vision of God or experienced a clearcut case of God’s miraculous healing may nevertheless know, or have read about, someone else’s experience. And no-one can believe in Jesus for very long without having heard some of the gospel record of his life and teachings, which is also evidence.

Maturing in understanding

We all grow in our understanding as we mature. For example, I learnt very early not to play with electrical power outlets, but only learned much later when I studied Physics why this was dangerous, but that didn’t negate the truth of my childish understanding. In obedience to 1 Peter 3:15 (“Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.”), christians should be willing to improve their understanding of their beliefs and the reasons to believe, changing and adjusting where necessary as they go. Not questioning what we were taught at home or church may be acceptable for a child, but is probably not a sufficient basis for an adult.

Walking together

Christians are a community – like a body, different members have different abilities, gifts and experiences. The case for the truth of christianity stands on the foundation of our collective understanding. Together, the reasons outlined above form a very strong case – certainly strong enough for each of us to continue to believe without major doubt, and strong enough to form useful evidence to present to anyone who is interested (see Why believe?).

So …

There are many reason to believe, and together they add up to strong evidence. We don’t need to feel ashamed or insecure by the claims of sceptics. If they don’t find our reasons sufficient for them, we can politely agree to differ, and quietly pray for them, that God might speak to them even more clearly.

And there is much more evidence for God than there is for Santa!

This post looks at the many different reasons why christians stop believing, and is based my discussions with atheists on forums and blogs over the past six years, and on accounts people give of their own ‘deconversion’ on mainly atheist websites. (These are not too hard to find.)

Some just drift …..

We are familiar with Jesus’ story of the different types of seed, representing different hears of the good news. Jesus said that many people stop believing because life just overwhelms them. Whether it is too much success and fun or too many worries, some people just drift away without necessarily deciding not to believe. You don’t find too many of these stories on the internet because they are not really committed to unbelief, they just sort of ended up there. But this would be one of the most common stories of loss of faith, especially for people who have just left school or just started full time work.

You can imagine that some of these people may not have taken this course if the christianity they experienced was more relevant to their daily lives, or if they had a strong set of relationships with christians who continued to care for them and keep in contact.

…. but others have reasons

The internet deconversion stories are probably not representative (because the people who volunteer their stories are probably much more committed unbelievers than most), but they give a taste why some people stop believing. Here are some of the most common reasons:

• Many were brought up in christian, or church-going, homes, but never really believed it or understood it. I imagine this would be a common occurrence in a country like the US, where a form of christianity is part of the culture, or among teens who have attended youth groups with their friends.
• Perhaps the major reason for disbelief is the Bible. Many were brought up to believe the Bible contained no errors, but as they discovered problems and apparent errors, they could no longer believe what they had been taught and they could see no middle ground, so they felt compelled to renounce belief. Some came to this conclusion via reading the work of critical scholars who pointed out differences in the Gospel accounts and difficulties in believing some accounts are totally accurate.
• One particular aspect of the Bible that has caused many people to doubt are the killings, some would say genocide, apparently commanded by God in the Old Testament. Surely no-one today could believe such things?
• Other issues have been the apparent conflict between Genesis and evolution, difficulty in believing in Bible miracles, especially the virgin birth and the resurrection, the doctrine of hell and judgment, and some ethical commands in the Old Testament which seem quaint and irrelevant, sometimes quite repugnant, today.
• For others, the obvious evil and suffering in the world seemed to indicate that a good God could not exist, or he wouldn’t allow this. Christians doing some of these evil things was a particular problem for some.
• Some people felt that religion just didn’t do anything for them. They never felt God was there, never felt they were in relationship with him, they didn’t feel the world was any different. Some experienced a form of christianity (often described as fundamentalist or Pentecostal) that they found very strange, to odd to really identify with.
• For some it was just unresolved questions, nothing all that major, but just little things that didn’t add up.
• Finally, some looked at world religions, and religion in general, and felt that this diversity indicated there couldn’t be a God.

I have observed ….

• Some might say that these people were not believers in the first place, and undoubtedly this is true of some. But many were pastors, preachers, evangelists, Bible college teachers; many prayed, read their Bibles, shared the faith with others and apparently believed quite fervently.
• Some people left the faith after some crisis, some moral lapse on their part, or after getting involved in behaviour patterns frowned upon by christians, but many left after a long period of slowly increasing doubt.
• For many, probably most, finally ‘coming out’ as a non-believer was a relief and gave them a sense of freedom. But there are others I have met for whom this deconversion was a very difficult step emotionally. Some feared hell even after they stopped believing in christianity, others felt disloyal and bereft. Some prayed fervently for a long time, asking God to give them faith and answer their doubts.
• Virtually all the stories I have read and heard speak much of the problems with believing christianity is true but nothing of the reasons why christian belief is true. I have it almost universal among atheists that they focus on the negative and almost never recognise both sides of the question.

As one who has also faced many of these doubts, I have a lot of sympathy with some of the people whose stories I have read or know. I do not doubt that many of them gave up belief because they genuinely could see no alternative. I have continued to believe because I think the evidence is much greater, and many of the negative arguments are mistaken, but I can understand someone coming to a different conclusion, especially if their reading is one-sided.

I’m sorry ….

I’m sorry if all this sounds terribly negative. But I think we can’t ignore this issue. Love compels us to assist young christians and ex-christians where we can, and the first step is to recognise the facts and understand.

I can’t help wondering

I can’t help wondering how different all this could have been if churches and youth groups engaged more honestly with these issues, not giving glib and poorly based answers that give christians a sense of security that will easily evaporate when challenged, but rather training young christians to face doubt and difficulties and to have the knowledge to develop truthful responses. This might include christian teachers and leaders considering whether the doctrines and behaviours that alienate are indeed right, or can be presented in a more sympathetic and realistic manner.

In coming posts I will address many of these issues – what I believe are reasonable answers, but also how we need to re-think how we make disciples. If we care for people who find themselves unable to believe any more, we will want to find ways to help them before it comes to that. Watch this space!

And please share your experience or observations.

I think this is a crucial matter, and I want to devote a number of posts to it. Today, I just want to scope the problem.

The world has changed ….

Statistics show that most people are converted to christianity as children, in their teens or in their early twenties. But the world these converts are growing up into is very different than the one their parents knew. For example:

• They are way better connected to each other and the world, via mobile phones, Facebook and Google than their parents ever were. Much of their connections may be trivial, but they know how to get all sorts of information in an instant, and they can view not just printed material but vivid graphics of music and films, porn and death, speakers and fanatics on all sorts of topics.
• They have mostly been brought up by our western culture, the media and their education to believe in science and technology and to be accepting of practices their parents may never have contemplated. Hence they may well accept without much question evolution as fact, and reproductive technology, same-sex relationships, pre-marital sex and abortion as normal and good.
• They are equally likely to have absorbed a relativistic view of religious pluralism and tolerance, and feel uncomfortable with christian exclusivism. They may well also have seen documentary TV programs that question the historicity of much that christians believe.
• Disbelief and atheism have moved from being fringe beliefs to being strident and evangelistic, using tactics that are often as strong on emotional impacts as on facts. Young christians are far more likely to encounter arguments against their belief than previously.
• Our western societies have become part of a large global economic village, and individuals, even national governments, may have little control over many of the pressures that affect their economic state – they may be victims of retrenchment, they may struggle to afford a house, they may need to work long or odd hours. This puts pressure on the next generation to succeed at school, to undertake multiple courses of tertiary study and to have a well-paid, successful and secure career.

You may not like all these changes, but it is important that we understand them, and prepare disciples for them.

…. but have christians adapted?

Many of our evangelistic, teaching and discipleship approaches seem to ignore these changes or treat them inadequately.

• Some statements about the world, science and life made by preachers can seem laughable and irrelevant to teens brought up in this brave new world. They can easily lose respect.
• The Bible isn’t a simple book, and some parts of it, especially parts of the Old Testament, with commands and laws that seem to reflect long gone culture and values (at best) or immoral standards (at worst) are being questioned and criticised by sceptics. Apparent errors are being gleefully pointed out. A response by christians that says to simply believe will no longer cut it with many young converts.
• In particular, students brought up to trust science, but told to believe Genesis is historical, will feel a real disconnect that they may never recover from.
• Christian exclusivism and ethical beliefs about sex and sexuality are often expressed in insensitive and even hateful ways. This is another response that many teens will react against.
• Much preaching and teaching is theoretical and seems unrelated to real life, and disciples often receive little training and mentoring from people living life out in the world. In particular, churches and youth groups generally provide little to assist people to strengthen their reasons to believe.

These are just a few examples. But the result, for whatever reason, is that many young converts don’t last. I have spent a lot of time over the past 6 years discussing faith and unbelief with atheists, and many of them say they were brought up as believers, and these and other factors led to their deconversion.

The take home message

If we want to be successful in making disciples that last, we will need to do better at presenting our message and in preparing disciples to be able to stand against attacks on their faith. That will involve prayer, apprenticing, training and much more focussed teaching. And that will require churches and christian leaders to sharpen up their own understanding and be willing to make changes.

I have been pondering these matters for some time, and I hope to offer some definite and helpful suggestions.

The idea of an immortal soul which lives on after death is part of many people’s understanding of christianity. But it probably isn’t true.

What the Bible says

In both the Old and New Testaments, the words translated as soul (Hebrew: nephesh; Greek: psyche) clearly mean a living person, sometimes even a living creature (e.g. in Genesis 1 & 2). In Jewish thought people are not divisible into parts (soul, body, etc) but are unified beings.

People are mortal, not immortal, and when we die we return to dust. The christian hope is not in the immortality of the soul but in the resurrection of the body, via the grace of God.

Implications

1. The idea of a soul as separate from the body and able to live on after the body has died, appears to come from Greek thought (specifically Plato and his followers), not from the Bible or Jewish thought.
2. When Jesus talks about God destroying body and soul in hell (Matthew 10:28), he is talking about the destruction of physical bodies and the life or self that is contained within them. I believe he means what he says, that we are not immortal, and those who refuse God’s grace forfeit eternal life (see Hell – what does the Bible say?).
3. This more biblical view of soul meaning a living person removes some of the difficulties christians have faced of trying to determine when the soul enters the body at birth and leave sit at death. These questions are no longer applicable.

To see the words used in the Bible and their meanings, which lead to these conclusions, see Do we have an immortal soul?

In my last post (CS Lewis’ trilemma – not so effective now?), I discussed the much used argument, made famous by CS Lewis, that Jesus claimed to be divine, something a good and sane person would not do. Therefore Jesus must either have not been good, or not sane, or he was indeed divine.

The argument is now commonly met by the counter argument that Jesus never claimed to be divine, it was just something made up by his followers. Any attempt to use the New Testament to support the argument is met with scorn – why should we believe it?

But there is still a way to use the argument, we just have to be better prepared.

Finding common ground

For any discussion or argument to proceed, those involved need to share some common ground. Obviously they need to understand each other’s language. But they also need to share the same set of assumptions – if they don’t, the discussion will keep reaching an impasse.

Belief in the truth of the New Testament is not common ground with most non-christians. We need to find something else.

Secular historians do not treat the Bible as a divinely inspired book. Rather, they approach each of the documents that make up the Bible as they would any other document, and assess its historical value by various criteria, such as whether an event or teaching is found in multiple sources, and whether it fits with the culture and language of the time and with other known history.

Thus, if we use the conclusions of secular historians (some of whom are christians, but others are not) as a starting point, we may have common ground. (In my experience, many non-believers will not even accept that lowest common denominator, but this does at least mean we are the ones being rational and basing our views on the evidence, and leaves the non-believers having to justify why they don’t accept the evidence of the best scholars.)

So, is there enough that most scholars accept as genuine to show that Jesus claimed to be divine?

Did Jesus claim to be divine?

Using passages which even non-christian historians generally accept as genuine, an impressive case can be built, based on the following (for a more detailed discussion, see Jesus – son of God?):

1. Jesus believed he was inaugurating God’s kingdom on earth. He taught that God’s judgment of people would be based on how they responded to him. He believed his death would save the human race. And he told his disciples one day they would sit at his side and rule over the nation of Israel. All of these indicate he saw himself as God’s special representative on earth.
2. Jesus used the titles Messiah, Son of man and Son of God to describe himself. These also are claims to be God’s special representative on earth, and there are several passages where Jesus clearly identified himself as God’s son in a way no human being could be – for example Mark 12:1-9 and Matthew 11:27: “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
3. Jesus claimed divine authority when he forgave sins, performed healings and exorcisms, and said his teachings had greater authority than the God-given Old testament Law.
4. Jesus prayed to God as “Abba”, “My Father”, an expression of a familiar relationship with God.

I have not used the many “I am” statements in John’s gospel because many scholars do not accept that John records the words of Jesus, but rather his own interpretation of Jesus’ teachings.

Conclusion

It seems clear, even using only passages that most scholars accept as genuine, that Jesus made some amazing claims that he was more than a “mere man”, and some which can only be reasonably interpreted as making an implicit claim to be divine. New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham sums it up:

“The only Jesus we can plausibly find in the sources is a Jesus who, though usually reticent about it, speaks and acts for God in a way that far surpassed the authority of a prophet in the Jewish tradition. …. such prerogatives belong uniquely to God and cannot simply be delegated to someone else.”

Not all scholars will accept Jesus’ divinity as a fact of history, but using the facts they do accept a case can be made that Jesus did indeed claim to be divine – and therefore the old argument still stands. To negate the argument, non-believers have to go against the conclusions of the consensus of historians.

I suggest we should still use the trilemma in a modified form, but we need to do our research and put together some quotes and conclusions from secular scholars. This may not be an easy task for some people, but I can recommend the discussion of this matter in William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith as a good start.