Category: Apologetics

We’re All Great Abbreviators

Posted on August 3, 2016

I’ve just finished writing a study guide for three of the craziest letters in the New Testament–1, 2 Peter & Jude. The letters cover stuff like: angels sleeping with humans, gang rape, homosexuality, greed, self-made morality, godly character, doubt, faith, eternal fire, eternal life, angels disputing with demons, the end of the world, and its total renewal.

If 1 Peter exults, “Jesus will return,” and 2 Peter rebuffs the claim, “Jesus won’t return,” then Jude exhorts, “Jesus is just about here.” The crazy content in these letters all revolve around the person and return of Jesus, which to some, sounds even crazier. However, there’s an awful lot of history and evidence for the life and ministry of Jesus, and he gathers praise from people around the world, even across religions. Even if you don’t believe Jesus is returning, you should want him to.

Why? Because he’s bringing redemption with him. He’s a God who finishes what he starts. Peter, Jesus’ close disciple says this whole glorious mess of a world will end in dissolution and renewal. He promises that when Jesus returns the world will become “a new heavens and earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Pet. 3:13). With Jesus back, justice will move into every neighborhood, shanty town, and back alley.

We are all, in the words of Huxley, “Great Abbreviators.” No one tells the whole truth about the whole world. We abbreviate things from our finite perspective, from our own front porch, step, or stoop. Heck, I’m an abbreviator, which is why I need to hear from someone who has full-length understanding. Someone who views all the steps, stoops, and porches–all the souls and the sciences of this world–and can tell me how it I’m supposed to live.

That’s why I find the Bible so meaningful. It tells me who I am by telling me who God is. It’s not a history of everything, but everything in it is historically oriented. It’s not just vague philosophies or moral codes; it’s about real people and events happening in space and time.

And let’s face it; if you’ve seen Stranger Things you know there’s more to this world than what we can see. And the strange things of this world pull us toward the darkness or to the light, toward the end of the world or its new beginning. If all that’s true, then Bible is an indispensable guide to help us through to where we all want to be, a world submerged in justice and peace. In Jesus’ renewed world.

Books on Character (& Virtue Collapse)

Posted on April 27, 2015

In working through Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, I’m trying to better understand our present moral collapse. Virtues have turned into values, and sins have morphed into mistakes. The new center for morality is the individual, not God, which is quite scary. Christians aren’t the only ones with a “sermon on mount.”

Here are a few books that have been helpful. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

The Road to Character, David Brooks

Is Shame Necessary? New Uses for an Old Tool, Jennifer Jacquet

Losing Our Virtue, David Wells

Back to Virtue, Peter Kreeft

“Sight Unseen” The Hows and Whys of Invisibility, Kathryn Shulz

After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters, NT Wright

Resurrection and the Moral Order, Oliver O’ Donovan

 

 

Responding to the State of the Secular Union

Posted on March 17, 2015

In 2008, about 50 million people in America checked the “Religious None” box. Ten million of those are ardent atheists. This means that the rest of these 40 million people aren’t really sure what they believe. The nones account for more than More than Charismatic, Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Mormons and Muslims put together. You (hopefully) have friends, neighbors and coworkers that fall into this category.

People like David Noise, author of Unbeliever Nation, are on a campaign to claim the nones for the secularist camp.

Evangelicals aren’t the only people on mission.

What are You Doing About “Secularized” Faith?

But you don’t have to check the “none” box to be influenced by secular thinking. Many people are skeptical about cardinal Christian doctrines such as the incarnation, resurrection, and the Trinity. This may be surprising as the incarnation and the resurrection represent the two biggest holiday celebrations in Christianity.The Trinity, of course, gets at the very heart of God.

As our country fragments, different religious groups are isolated from one another more and more. Evangelicals are seen as militant and uninterested in genuine dialog. They often treat doubt as the eighth deadly sin. But the reality is that many Christians are struggling with the very same doubts.

The notion that God became a sinless baby seems like a fairy tale.

The idea that Jesus beat death is almost sic-fi

The Trinity, well that’s not even rational.

Closing our eyes to rising secularity and skepticism about Christianity won’t do. Mounding up evidence and demanding a personal verdict isn’t enough. We, too, have to take up the mission, but not as we have in the past.

Instead of treating doubt like the enemy, we will need to befriend those who doubt. Climb into their story. Empathize with their church perpetrated wounds. See the incarnation, resurrection, and Trinity from their perspective. And respond to skeptical perspectives with sympathetic dialog.

How Should People of Faith Respond to People of Unfaith?

The most recent survey I read pointed out that the “nones” have jumped to one quarter of the population. If this secularized segment of the population continues to grow at the same clip, the largest religion in the U.S. will be no religion at all.

Over a third of the population no longer attends religious services. This means church services are not enough. We need a witnessing church not just a ‘worshipping’ church. A people confident in the self-authenticating gospel of Jesus who live out its implications in an authentic way. People who don’t just argue others into submission, but submit their own failures in faith.

Our response has to include sympathy and strategy, cultural discernment and confidence in the gospel. We need a whole new line of resources, communication, church forms, and most of all winsome Christlike people to remain faithful to the mission of Jesus.

An Example Response

My friends at Moving Works have produced several shorts that explore the implausibility of the resurrection through narrative with a Terrance Malik, Tree-of-Life feel. If you like it, feel free to use it. You might consider screening the whole 40 minute film in a local theater and hosting a Q&A afterwards. Or host a discussion group over the shorts/chapters in a coffeeshop, home, or church. Invite your friends and learn how to sympathize with doubt and re-celebrate faith in the risen Christ.

I’ve also written a short book to engage unfaith in the resurrection. It’s meant to be read in an afternoon. Study guides and stuff are available. I’m working on two new projects that deal with the implausibly of the incarnation and the Trinity.

More resources are emerging, but we need much more in the form of conversation groups, video, art, and imaginative missional endeavors. You can’t out imagine the Trinity, so let’s move forward prayerfully and winsomely to love religious nones. They aren’t just numbers; they are our neighbors, friends, and coworkers. Each one has a story worth hearing, and once we’ve heard it, we can tell the gospel story in a more loving and understanding way.

For more resources on the resurrection see www.raisedbook.com and more shorts at Moving Works.

5 “Best” Books on Evangelism

Posted on January 15, 2015

It’s hard to list five favorite books on evangelism, not because I command a vast knowledge of evangelistic literature, but because there are so many different types of “texts” or fields of knowledge that motivate and inform evangelism. Evangelism is a way of thinking first and a way of speaking second.

For example, a great missionary biography, like Amy Carmichael or Adoniram Judson, can awaken evangelistic zeal and commitment to perseverance through the difficulty of mission. Apologetic books stimulate evangelistic wisdom. Penetrating cultural texts, like Peter Berger’s A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural or David Brooks recent New York Times column on the vacuous, contemporary pursuit of “meaningfulness,” motivate us to communicate the deeper, broader, grander alternative to modernity and relativistic consumer culture—the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Practical books can fill in knowledge gaps, strengthen skill, and inspire with stories. Aesthetic texts, like poetry, fiction, or art can remind you how beautiful the gospel is, and its centerpiece, Jesus our Lord. They remind us to show how attractive Christ is, not just how reasonable his offer. Then there’s the human texts. A good evangelist will not merely address but also readpeople. There’s nothing like spending time with a skeptic, seeker, or sufferer to motivate prayerfulness and excitement about the relevance of Jesus Christ as the truth for doubters, the way for seekers, and the life for sufferers. If we read them well, we will see something of the gospel in their doubt, curiosity, and difficulty.

By now you are probably thinking this was all just a ploy to list more than five books! So, without dragging on, here are five books from different fields that are my “favorites” in evangelism.