Category: Apologetics

What Jesus Thinks of Doubters

In light of the recent announcements of Christian leaders struggling with doubt, what does Jesus think of doubters?

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Following the announcement of Joshua Harris that he no longer considers himself a Christian, and Marty Sampson, who says he is loosing his faith, the Christian world has exploded with conversation about doubt and doubters. So much angst. Some of the comments have been harsh with criticism.

These kinds of announcements tend to rock a world that may look shaky to begin, especially from the outside. Sometimes even from the inside.

These guys may not be household names, (I didn’t know either name until a few weeks ago), but they have each influenced 21st Century Christianity in the United States (Harris) and beyond (Sampson). Joshua Harris wrote a book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye (1997), that influenced dating culture (or the lack thereof) for a generation of young Christians. Marty Sampson was a worship leader and songwriter for one of the most prolific and visible (if not controversial) Christian churches, Hillsong.

In the wake of his divorce, Joshua Harris publicly eschewed his faith, stating that he is no longer a Christian. Not many weeks later, Marty Sampson, the Hillsong worship leader, announced that he was losing his faith. Since then he has clarified that he hasn’t walked away from the faith. He is simply struggling with doubt – something most Christians have experienced (even if we don’t like to talk about it).

The reactions have predictably poured in. High profile Christians struggling with their faith is like an earthquake that hits close to home (for Christians) or in a third world country (for people who are not). You know there will be casualties. (The fact that we put so much faith in our leaders is another topic in itself!)

Many of those reactions have been negative, even harsh. That’s why I write. That’s why Mike and Debbie Licona have taken to the Internet in a video to discuss the issue.

Mike has written, perhaps, the most significant work on the evidence of the resurrection – The Resurrection: A New Historiographical Approach. His mentor, Gary Habermas, revolutionized the way people think about the resurrection by using the “minimal facts” that even skeptics will accept to make a compelling case for the resurrection.

And here’s the thing: the works that have come to define these men and the quality of their scholarship were born out of doubt. They were once doubters. Their doubts led them to dig deeper and get answers, even as they feared those answers might unravel the faith that had come to define them.

They each stared doubt in the face and dared to seek truth, and their doubts led them on journeys that became their life work.

Doubts are not necessarily a bad thing. Fear, I believe, is worse than doubt. Fear feeds on and exasperates doubt, but fear keeps us from resolving those doubts in a productive way.

When I survey the Bible, I see admonitions against fear that suggest that fear, not doubt, is the antithesis to faith.

As for doubt, we shouldn’t be so reluctant or fearful. If our faith can’t hold up, it isn’t worth holding onto. If God is true, and I believe He is, we have nothing to fear. He is a God of truth that gives us confidence that we can expose our doubts to the truth with assurance that they can and will be resolved.

Further, I think it’s important to consider what Jesus thought about doubters. Jesus didn’t condemn them. He was patient with them. We don’t find him railing against doubters, though he did find fault with people who were more confident in themselves than they had a right to be!

Jesus embraced people who doubted. Consider the observations along these lines by Mike Licona in the video below:

I have often thought about Thomas, (aka Doubting Thomas) in this context. He didn’t just doubt after Jesus died, when he famously demanded to see his hands and side; Thomas was a doubter from the beginning. Do a search for all the places Thomas is mentioned in the Gospels, and you will see what I mean.

Now, consider this: Jesus chose Thomas and invited Thomas to follow him though Thomas was a doubter! That means that Jesus didn’t just leave Room for Doubters and Skeptics; he affirmatively chooses doubters who are willing to follow him, despite their doubts. Thomas walked with Jesus for three years, doubting all the while until Jesus proved himself to Thomas in a compelling and intimate way.

So the message is this: if you are doubting, be honest about it and seek answers. Jesus invites us to knock, and keep on knocking, to seek and keep on seeking, to ask and keep on asking. You might even read the book by Gary Habermas, The Thomas Factor: Using Your Doubts to Draw Closer to God.

And to Christians who are not (presently) wrestling with doubt, remember the words of Jude: “Be merciful to those who doubt….” (verse 22) Jesus demonstrates a merciful attitude towards Thomas, who doubted from the beginning, to Peter, who denied Jesus three times when the chips were down, and toward us when we doubt.

What is the Nothing Out of which the Universe Emerged

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On a typical Sunday morning, I am contemplative, thinking about God, the nature of the world and other ultimate things. I have gotten home from church. The distant rumbling of thunder portends more rain to add to the buckets (more like vats) that came down earlier this morning. (We’ve had an unusual amount of precipitation in the Chicago area for about a year now.)

Though sunlight threatens to break through the clouds, despite the rumblings to the contrary, it’s a good day for reading and thinking.

In that vein, I read an article from Forbes magazine that came up in my Google feed: Ask Ethan: Can We Really Get a Universe From Nothing? Ethan, is Ethan Siegel, a Forbes contributor. He is an astrophysicist, author and “science communicator” according to the short bio at the end of the article.

It just so happens that I spent my Friday evening this week with another astrophysicist, Hugh Ross, a brilliant man who is a Christian, and also a man of science. In fact, it was science that led him to his belief in God. But I digress. (You can hear the story of how science led Hugh Ross to God in his own words here.)

My meeting with Hugh Ross isn’t really relevant to the topic, other than the fact that our conversation got me thinking about science and ultimate things, things that science doesn’t really address (or hasn’t yet answered). Does God exist? Where did the universe come from?

The article suggests an answer to one of those ultimate questions: where did the universe come from? It suggests that the universe didn’t really come from nothing – at least not the kind of nothing that we usually imagine when we think of nothing. It entices the reader with a title that suggests an ultimate answer, but it doesn’t deliver.

Continue reading “What is the Nothing Out of which the Universe Emerged” →

Are the Gospels Reliable?

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I recently read a blog post by Brett Lunn, on his blog, Capturing Christianity, titled Why Everyone Should Believe that the Gospels are Reliable. If it were that easy, everyone would believe the Gospels are reliable. But, he makes some good points, and one in particular that sparked my interest.

The Gospels, of course, refer to the books we know as the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The earliest copies of those writings don’t actually contain a reference to authorship, which has occasioned a great deal of modern conjecture about who really wrote them. I say “modern conjecture” because the authorship wasn’t questioned for centuries.

In fact, the earliest charge from anyone raising a question about the authorship of the Gospels was advanced in the 4th Century by Faustus. Augustine, the great writer, thinker and theologian took on the skeptic, Faustus, with the response, “How do we know the authorship of the works of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Varro, and other similar writers but by the unbroken chain of evidence?”[1] With the Gospels, we have a history of acceptance that they are authentic writings of the men to whom they are ascribed all the way up to the 4th Century. That’s a pretty good chain of title.

Further, it’s not as if the writings didn’t actually identify the authors, as people suppose. They did identify the authors, but the identification was in the titles (not in the text), and they didn’t uniformly identify the authors in exactly the same format. Some said, “Gospel according to….”, and some simply said, “According to….” Much ado about nothing?

Another criticism is that the Gospels weren’t written by the most officious people. John, of course, was a close disciple of Jesus, and so was Matthew, but Matthew was kind of suspect. He was a tax collector, and tax collectors for the Roman government were persona non gratis in the Jewish outskirts of the Roman Empire. Couldn’t a disciple with better credentials have authored a Gospel?

Mark and Luke aren’t even disciples! Luke was a companion of Paul. He wasn’t even Jewish; he was a gentile! He wrote in the Greek style of the highly educated, using Greek expressions, instead of Hebrew ones. We know him chiefly through Paul’s letters: Luke the doctor (Col. 4:14) who was the last companion to remain with Paul before his death (2 Tim. 4:10-11) among other references.

And Mark? He was a companion of Peter. He was also a companion of Paul, being described as a missionary with Barnabas and Paul (John Mark) in whose house many gathered to pray. Paul also asks for Mark to come to him in the same letter in which he laments that Luke is the only person still with him. (2 Timothy 4:11) Peter referred to Mark as his son, which most scholars take to mean a term of honor and endearment. (1 Peter 5:13)

Mark also had a falling out with Paul at some point, however. (Acts 15:36-39) Luke was a Gentile. Matthew was a despised tax collector. Couldn’t even a fledgling religion come up with credible scribes of the central story?

Sure, if Christianity was nothing but a religion concocted by the imaginations of men. Frankly, why would anyone choose this cast of characters?

I think the answer is that no one would have chosen these guys, and the story wasn’t made up. These are the men who reported what they saw, what they heard and what they knew to be true from firsthand accounts. The truth is kind of like that. It isn’t neat and clean like a story someone made up. It is what it is.

And this is the point that intrigues me by the article that inspires this piece. Continue reading “Are the Gospels Reliable?” →

Sunday Worship is Evidence for the Resurrection

The sudden change from Saturday observance to Sunday observance in the First Century is evidence of a momentous occurrence that lead to the change.

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Many of the things we do have become so traditional and commonplace that we don’t think about when they started and why. One of those things is the practice of Christians gathering on Sundays for “worship” or “church.” After all, Christians have been gathering on Sundays for almost 2000 years!

But why? What is the history? And why is that important?

We are approaching another Easter, so the death of Jesus and the resurrection is top of mind this time of year. That is the Christian story, or course. These central components of the Christian narrative give us the context to explain why Christians gather on Sundays.

Christians gather on Sundays because Sunday was the day of the resurrection according to the Gospel accounts (all four of them). While we take the Sunday gatherings for granted, the first followers of Jesus gathered on Saturdays.

Their people – the Jews – had always gathered on Saturdays – the Sabbath. The Sabbath was sacred to them going back hundreds – as many as fifteen hundreds – of years. The change from Saturday gatherings to Sunday gatherings by the first Christians (who were Jewish), therefore, was a watershed change that we might not appreciate so many years later.

Christianity grew out of Judaism, of course. Jesus was a Jew and so were all of his first followers. The Sabbath (from sunset of Friday evening to the appearance of the stars in the sky on Saturday evening) is holy in Judaism. (See Wikipedia) The Sabbath is the 7th day of the calendar week for the Jews and represents the day God rested from creation.

Keeping the Sabbath as a holy day of rest was first commanded by Moses as reflected in in the Torah (Exodus 16:26, 29) after the Exodus from Egypt. (Exodus 20:8-11) It is one of the Ten Commandments. The Sabbath continues to be faithfully and diligently observed in Jewish communities around the world to this day.

The Sabbath had been faithfully and diligently observed for many centuries up to the time of Jesus, but the followers of Jesus began a new tradition of gathering on Sundays. The relatively sudden change, after such emphasis on the Sabbath for so many centuries marks a pivotal, historic change that is best explained by a significant, historic occurrence.

According to those early Christ followers (and all Christ followers today), the resurrection on Sunday is the explanation for that sudden change in the First Century after fifteen hundred centuries of Saturday observances.

We have learned to be skeptical of biblical, historical claims since the Enlightenment, existentialism, modernism and post modernism have done their deconstructive work. People have posited that the resurrection didn’t happen and only developed as time and embellishment gave rise to the idea in the vein of a legend.

But the sudden change from Saturday observance to Sunday observance in the First Century is historical fact that few (if any) would challenge. It tells its own story about the historicity of that reason why the change was made.

Continue reading “Sunday Worship is Evidence for the Resurrection” →

Another Look at God In Light of the Evil in the World (Part 3)

The Bible describes an ongoing cosmic conflict. Why the conflict of beings opposing God if He is all-powerful?

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I have been blogging on the problem of pain. (See the Introduction, Part 1 and Part 2). This is “the” problem, with a capital “P” for the Christian who maintains, based on biblical revelation, that God is all-powerful and all-good. If God is so powerful, why can’t He stop the evil? If God is so good, why doesn’t He stop the evil? Either God isn’t all-powerful, or He isn’t good, or (ultimately) the God of the Bible doesn’t exist.

I am working my way through the puzzle, putting the pieces in place. You will have to read through the previous posts to catch up (if you want to). The piece of the puzzle I want to explore next is the cosmic drama that is evident in the Scripture.

Jesus refers to Satan as the ruler of this world. So Satan most have some authority and jurisdiction over the world. If God is really God, the authority of the Devil to do what he does must have give by God.

But why?! If the question isn’t simply rhetorical, there must be a purpose? Why would an all-powerful God allow restraints on His power to allow opposition from a being He created?

Before I try to answer that question, I want to dive into the evidence of this conflict that we see in the Scripture. then I will look for clues as to why that conflict would be allowed by an all-powerful God.

Continue reading “Another Look at God In Light of the Evil in the World (Part 3)” →