Category: Apologetics

Turning from Idols toward God: the Human Intellect

Many Christians have abdicated the realm of the intellect to modern culture and secular institutions

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Human beings can make idols out of anything. We can even make an idol of human intellect/mind. As with all created things, the human intellect is limited and finite. Many people, nevertheless, put their ultimate faith in the human intellect. This is idolatry when we trust in our own intellect instead of trusting in God.

Putting faith in our own intellect is, ultimately, foolish. What do we know that God doesn’t know? What can we understand that God doesn’t understand? Relying on ourselves in this way, to the exclusion of relying of God, is (to put it mildly) short-sighted. It is sin, to put it more bluntly.

Self-reliance is the mistake that Eve made in the garden when the serpent tempted her by saying “you will be like God”![1] We want to be our own gods. We would rather rely on ourselves and our own intellect.

This is the basis of pride, which is the essence of sin. Paul says that our pride and self-reliance is why “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise”.[2] But, “the wisdom of this world is foolishness” to God.”[3] As Isaiah says:

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways
And My thoughts than your thoughts.”

Isaiah 55:8-9

For these reasons, and others perhaps, Christians today tend to distrust science, worldly thinking, philosophy and even the mind, itself. Some Christians have all but abandoned the world of science, philosophy and the intellect to secular institutions and minds, and this is a terrible mistake!

Christians are skeptical of science. Christians are fearful of philosophy. Christians are even distrustful of their own minds. Many Christians have abdicated the realm of the intellect to modern culture and secular institutions. But here’s the thing: this is sinful too!

Sin[4] means literally (forfeiture or loss from) not hitting the target, to miss the mark. We can sin by directing ourselves in a way that God doesn’t approve, and we can also sin by failing to direct ourselves in a way that God approves. Sin has positive (active) and negative (passive) components.

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Follow The Evidence Where It Leads

Exploring the relationship between science and faith

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Francis Bacon, the father of modern science, used to say there are two books of God: the book of Scripture (the word of God) and the book of nature (the work of God). He believed, as did many people who came before him and after him, that all truth is God’s truth. He believed that there is no contradiction at the end of the day between those two “books”. Any apparent discrepancy or conflict is in the interpretation of one or the other of those two sources of the revelation of God. There is no discrepancy or conflict at the level of the facts themselves; the only discrepancy or conflict is in our understanding of Scripture (theology) or nature (science).

Theology and science are, at best, interpretations of the data. Theology and science are not the facts, but interpretations of the facts. Scientists and theologians have disputes and disagreement among themselves and between the disciplines. We all have preconceived ideas on ultimate and intermediate issues, but following the evidence where it leads is the approach most surely to result in the most accurate understanding.

People who identify in both camps of science and theology promote the misconception that science and theology (or science and faith if you will) are incompatible. That is unfortunate, because there shouldn’t be any tension between the two. While science is the study of the natural world and theology is the study of the super-natural world (so to speak), the two should be in perfect harmony if, indeed, a Causal Agent (who we might call God ) exists who caused the universe to begin.

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Can We Trust the Bible?

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One of the most common skeptical positions in regard to the Bible is that we can’t trust it because it has changed over time. We don’t even have the original text anymore. We don’t have any of the manuscripts, and most of the manuscripts we do have are copies of copies that were produced centuries, sometimes many centuries, later.

The “telephone game” that children play has been used as an illustration of how easily things that are communicated get twisted and changed so that we can’t even tell what the original meaning was by the time the communication comes back to us after being repeated over and over from one person to the next. This illustration is applied to the Bible as proof that it can’t be trusted because it has been translated and copied over and over and over again. How do we even know what the original text said?!

These are serious contentions. An honest person cannot just brush these contentions aside, but it isn’t the end of the story.

Yes, faith is a foundation of Christian belief, but Christian faith is not a blind faith as some suppose. Christian faith means putting our trust in God, and not in ourselves, but Christian faith also does not insist or even ask us to throw out our minds in the process.

In fact, we are specifically instructed to love God not only with our hearts and strength, but with our minds!

As I have stated previously, doubt and skepticism are not sin according to the Bible. Thomas doubted, and he became known for his skepticism but he was a follower of Jesus. He was an original follower of Jesus, and he traveled with Jesus from the beginning of his public life to his death. He wasn’t just known for his doubt, however; he was also known for his faith!

Paul urged the Thessalonians to “test everything”, and hold on to what is good. The Bible urges us to have “honest skepticism”, which should not be confused with skepticism for the sake of skepticism. A person who is skeptical of everything, even the certainty of truth, should not even bother looking into anything because the exercise is pointless.

The quest for truth is pointless for the pure skeptic who is unwilling to commit to any truths. He already knows where he will end up! The contention that there is no objective truth is a self-defeating statement. The statement, itself, is offered as an objective truth, therefore it isn’t even true of itself!

But we digress. Whether the Bible can be trusted is the question, so let’s dive in.

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There Is No Proof of God?

Where does our sense of self, love, purpose and inclination to worship come from?

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A popular skeptical notion about spiritual things is that there is no proof of God. But is that a reasonable statement?

What does the skeptic mean by proof? Does he mean strict proof, mathematical proof or proof beyond a doubt? If that is what the skeptic means, then the skeptic will always remain a skeptic, because that kind of proof is unattainable.

There is nothing inherently bad or wrong in being skeptical. Skepticism or doubt is not a sin as some might suppose. “Doubting Thomas” was a disciple of Jesus after all! Honest skepticism is not a problem. In fact, honest skepticism is healthy; it drives us to test truth claims and weed out falsity.

The demand for strict proof that God exists, however, is not honest skepticism. While we might attain to some proof beyond a “reasonable” doubt, strict proof, mathematical proof, or proof beyond any doubt is impossible. I will try to explore why that is in this blog article.

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Is the Bible Sexist and Racist? Part 5 – Racism

God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.

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This is the last in a series of five blog articles on the question: whether the Bible is sexist and racist? The subject was introduced in Part 1. We tackled sexism by looking at the overarching theme of the Bible on men and women in Part 2 and by looking at how Jesus treated women in Part 4. We tackled racism in Part 3 by looking at the overarching theme of the Bible on diversity. Finally, we view racism and diversity through the life of Jesus and His followers in this part 5.

Jesus doesn’t tackle the issue of racism or diversity directly, but He lived in a complicated time. He was Jewish, living in a tight-knit Jewish community, which was governed and ruled by foreigners, the Romans. The Jews had a history of living alongside foreigners and were at various times throughout that history governed by them against their will.

Many of the foreigners were very closely related, like the Samaritans, who were of Jewish descent, and the Canaanites before them. The northern kingdom (Israel) and southern kingdom (Judah) split and became foreigners to each other.

The Jews in Jesus’s day believed there were only two types of people: Jews and everyone else (Gentiles). They seemed to have forgotten that the very first words God spoke to Abraham, when He chose to bless Abraham and his progeny, was that God would make a blessing to all the nations. (Genesis 12:1-3) God didn’t choose them simply to bless them, but to bless all nations through them.

Jesus was that blessing. Jesus is traced back to Abraham. He is from the line of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He is the root of Jesse’s seed, father of David. Jesus is the Promised One.

Jesus also claimed to be God in the flesh, so, how Jesus viewed others is the key to understanding what the Bible says about racism and diversity.

Continue reading “Is the Bible Sexist and Racist? Part 5 – Racism” →