Want to Draw Closer to God? Use a Map!

In book four of Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis tells of having a conversation with an old air force officer who believed in God, but felt that the theologies we teach somehow diminish his reality. The officer proclaims, "I know there's a God. I've felt Him: out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that's just why I don't believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him."1

This "all I need is Jesus" concept has only grown since Lewis' writing that story, and I can understand why. For those that have been delivered from a life of misery or the effects of addition, the real changing presence of the Gospel is powerful and moving. Theology seems to be about somehow deconstructing God, making him more distant than He is experientially. Lewis agreed with that assessment, yet he cautioned against abandoning learning theology simply because it is less experientially powerful than the direct witness of the Spirit. He used the analogy of an Englishman learning about the Atlantic Ocean by walking along the beach. Surely this experience, too, has a feel that informs the man in a far more powerful way than seeing the ocean drawn upon a map. Yet, the map is important. Lewis explains:

The map is admittedly only coloured paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single isolated glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together.

In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.

Now, Theology is like the map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God—experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map.2

A Map to God's Character

I like Lewis' analogy. The study of theology is perhaps drier than the experiential aspects of the Christian life, but it informs us about God as he is, not simply the small sliver we experience. Further, when difficulties come into our lives, we can refer back to our learning of who God is and how he works and have confidence in his character. We grow in our devotion to him as we grow in our understanding of him.

The writer to the Hebrews rebuked those Christians for not moving beyond the pure milk of the word. He expected them to mature in their relationship with God as Christians. He wanted them to deal with more complex theological ideas than "repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment" (Heb. 6:1-2, ESV). Those are all important foundations of the gospel, but there is so much more to learn.

If we wish to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we need to learn more about his essential nature and his character. We need a map to guide us on our journey in understanding him better. We will need to be shown those hidden treasures that can build us up as believers. After all, what lover doesn't want to know everything he can about his beloved?

References

1. Lewis, C. S. "Mere Christianity." The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 2002. 127-128 Print.
2. Lewis, 128.

Hidden Benefits of a Church-Based Apologetics Ministry

"Apologetics? What are you apologizing for?", "Is that a class that husbands are supposed to take?", "What is that?" These are questions I hear frequently whenever I mention the study of apologetics. It probably comes as no surprise the word "apologetics" is foreign to most people, not only the general public but also those who are a part of the Christian church. Even evangelicals, who define themselves by their passion to follow Jesus' command to "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations"(Matt. 28:17) usually look quizzically at me whenever I begin discussing the need for apologetics, even though apologetics is an essential part of making disciples. Why would this be?

One of the problems is simply that the church doesn't talk a lot about it. Apologetics is generally understood to be a specialty discipline—specifically engaging in defending the faith against skeptics, alternate religions and cults, and contrary worldviews. As such, many pastors eel that it can only play a very limited role in ministering to the needs of their congregation. How does apologetics help the man trying to feed his family after losing his job or the newly widowed woman?

I've said before that in many churches, a person telling his or her pastor of their desire to start an apologetics ministry results in an experience similar to a young man telling his Jewish mother he wants to be a proctologist. "Well, I glad you're going to be a doctor," she would say, "But why did you have to choose that!" Pastors are happy to have people desiring to get into ministry opportunities, but they simply aren't sure where apologetics fits in their church. However, many times both church leadership and laity fail to understand the more holistic aspects of providing a strong apologetics ministry to the local congregation. In this article, I'd like to highlight some benefits of an apologetics ministry that applies directly to every member of the church congregation, benefits that you may not have considered before.

Apologetics guards believers against heresies

The word apologetics literally means providing reasons and evidence for the Christian faith. Part of this means defending the Christian faith from imposters or detractors, but it also means protecting those in the church from the wolves dressed in sheep's clothing. I've often made the claim that one could define apologetics as theology properly applied and there is no greater need to apply theology properly than with new believers. The Burned-Over district of western New York in the early 1820s is a good example. Just as church congregations continued to grow and revivals spread, these were accompanied by the establishment of such unorthodox beliefs systems as the Mormons, the Spiritists, and the Millerites who spawned both the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Seventh Day Adventists .1

 If we are to defend our beliefs with reason and evidence, then it follows we need to know just what we believe and the reasons why we hold to those beliefs. Since apologetics encompasses the study of theology, especially as it relates to orthodoxy, it is one way Christians learn to discern orthodoxy from heresy. Thus one of the hidden benefits of a church beginning an apologetics teaching ministry is it helps guard Christians from falling into heretical beliefs. Apologetics is defensive as well as evangelical.

References

1. John H. Martin writes of the District: "The Burned-Over District of New York spawned one religious revival after another in the decades between 1820 and 1850. Revivalism, Millennialism, Spiritualism followed each other, often overlapping and partaking of similar elements. There was a credulity at the time (and at other times as well, no doubt) which led individuals from one religious impulse to another. There was a spiritual yearning for answers to the questions and problems of this world and a concern about any future existence which might be faced after this life. There also existed a willingness to follow any one who seemed to have answers, be it Charles Grandison Finney, William Miller, the Fox sisters, or a new, self-proclaimed prophet, Joseph Smith, who appeared on the scene in Palmyra, New York. The very early followers of Joseph Smith came from among the religious restless, the dissatisfied, who succumbed easily to the religious emotionalism of the times. They had been exposed to the popular religious awakenings of the day with the expectations for the life beyond this worldly realm. The traditional theology of Christianity was not of great interest to these seeker for answer, and they were susceptible to explanations which moved beyond the traditional Biblical basis of the various Christian faiths. Thus the beliefs of Joseph Smith were to find a small following in New York before the new faith of Mormonism moved beyond the borders of New York and its future growth." From "Saints, Sinners and Reformers: The Burned-Over District Re-Visited" The Crooked Lake Review Issue No. 137. 2005. Web. 3/17/2012 http://www.crookedlakereview.com/books/saints_sinners/martin9.html
Image courtesy http://www.ForestWander.com [CC BY-SA 3.0 us]

The Explosion in Apologetics Education (video)

Christians find their faith questioned more than ever before. That's one reason we are seeing an explosion in ways believers can learn to defend their faith with reason and precision. Here, Lenny sits down with Dr. Craig Hazen, who is the Founder and Director of M.A. Program in Christian Apologetics at Biola University to talk about the incredible growth of apologetics and the increasingly diverse programs available to those who wish to study apologetics at home or for a degree.

True Freedom Requires Work

I've been a musician for over thirty years. I can't tell you how many times I've spoken to people who have appreciated my playing and mentioned with some envy that they wished they could step up to an instrument and play whatever they wanted. In the course of such conversations I was surprised to find it isn't uncommon that they had taken music lessons as a child but the drudgery of practice soon overcame them. Sometimes they would tell me that they felt tied down or burdened to practice while their friends were outside playing. They wanted to be free from practicing.

This concept of freedom is a childish one. To assume that freedom means one may spend his or her minutes on whatever does not feel like work is confused. The man who spent years practicing at the piano is more free than those who chose to avoid the hours of practice. He has more choices now available to him. He can choose to play a song if he desires while they cannot. By seeking to free themselves from the responsibility the instrument requires, they actually made themselves less free.

The Childishness of Modern Demands for Freedom

That childish concept of freedom seems to dominate our modern culture. Last year, The Guardian ran an article citing three separate studies demonstrating that "the days are over when children wanted to grow up to be astronauts or policemen or firemen. Now they want to be actors, singers or YouTube personalities."1 That reverses previous findings where being accepted as part of a group or community were prized as top goals while fame was listed near the bottom.

Certainly, the always-on perspective of social media plays a part here, but I don't think it's the entire story. Modern technology has given us many benefits and as a result we assume that we can make bad choices and still get everything we want. In an article for the Wall Street Journal, author Sarah Richards brags about how she spent nearly $50,000 to freeze her eggs so that she can some day in the future have the children she so desires.2 I've written previously about how more and more people view children as an accessory to their lives instead of a sacred trust of continuing community and culture. The concept of having it all without consequence is bringing forth some real consequences indeed, not the least of which is for the children of these insta-parents.

Christians Shouldn't be Afraid of Study

Christians are not immune to this kind of thinking. Evangelicals value life and place a high value on family and passing on their beliefs. However, most Christians in the pew are more like the fleeing music pupil than the practicing mater when it comes to matters of theology and apologetics. Sure, they attend Sunday morning and perhaps even mid-week services. Some even have a daily devotion time where they will read their Bibles and seek God's leading. All of this is great, but how many Christians are putting in the time to study the details of their faith? How many can defend their beliefs against the challenges offered by the secular world? How many can even demonstrate a fundamental belief like the Trinity using only their Bibles as support?

I understand that the idea of doing "school work" in one's devotion time may seem like drudgery. In fact, my experience has been the opposite. In working through a systematic theology book or an intellectually rigorous question, I have found that my studies draw out character traits of God I would have never otherwise uncovered. I learn new things about him, his greatness, and just how boundless his love for us is. I am actually more free in my worship of God as I discover new things about him. So, don't be afraid to go deep, dear Christian. You may find the work of study much more freeing than you believe.

References

1.Smith, Michael. "Studies Show That Children Just Want to Be Famous." Guardian Liberty Voice. Guardian Liberty Voice, 3 Aug. 2013. Web. 12 Sept. 2014. <http://guardianlv.com/2013/08/studies-show-that-children-just-want-to-be-famous/>.

2. Richards, Sarah E. "Why I Froze My Eggs (And You Should, Too)." The Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones & Company, 13 May 2013. Web. 12 Sept. 2014. <http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323628004578458882165244260> .

My Concern with One-Year Bible Plans

The New Year has descended upon us and many people have resolved to improve themselves in different ways. People are starting exercise regimens, cleaning out their desks, and hiding their credit cards (because cutting them up would be, well, a little too permanent!) Nicotine patches and diet books are flying off the shelves. I applaud the desire of people who want to better themselves. I know of many Christians who also desire to become more intimate with the scriptures and so they set themselves to read through the entire Bible. Some of them adopt various read-through-the Bible-in-a-year plans.

I think a more intimate knowledge of God's word is a very laudable goal. However, I have some concerns in the way the one-year bible reading programs are laid out. In fact, I think that many of the programs may actually hinder the goal of knowing the scriptures better. Here are my top three concerns:

1. One-Year Reading Plans Impose Artificial Breaks on the Text

There are several different ways the Bible is laid out by one-year plans. The oldest is to provide a section of the Old Testament, a section of the New Testament, a portion of Psalms and a portion of Proverbs. But this is a terrible way to read the Bible! The books of the Bible are written as just that, books that have a central purpose carried throughout. For example, January 7ths New Testament reading presents Matthew 6, but stops ten verses short. Those ten verses are the completion of the thought of Matthew 6. Jesus says in Matt. 6:25, "That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life" easily showing that verse 25 and following are connected to verse 24. By dividing the text up this way it become harder, not easier, to see what the author's intent and overall message really is.

Other plans, such as beginning-to-end plans or chronological versions are better, as you are at least not reading only a portion of a psalm. But because most of these plans are designed to fit within a specific time period, such as 15 minutes a day, they will still be forced to break the narrative. The books in the Bible were written to be taken as a whole. The New Testament epistles were initially letters to specific audiences. Would you ever read bits of a letter every day for a week and then writing a reply to your correspondent? You would want to read the entire letter so you would have the proper context to form a proper understanding.

2. One-Year Reading Plans Creates the Illusion of Verse Independence

One of the classic ways the Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses twist scripture is to take certain verses that by themselves seem to support their teaching and use them as proof, ignoring the larger context of the entire text. For example, the Jehovah's Witnesses will use Romans 10:9 to show that Jesus is not God. However, in the verses immediately following, Paul tells us that Jesus is "Lord of all" people, Jewish and Gentile, and he quotes Joel 2:32 to say "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" (Romans 10:13). Interestingly, that Joel passage uses the divine name of God, YHWH, where Paul writes Lord. This clearly equates Jesus as YHWH.

While Christians will rightly decry the JW twisting of scriptures such as these, the church has become complicit in such abuses by elevating Bible verses over Bible books. We take simple, quotable lines out of their context and use them in ways the writer never intended.

Unfortunately, by presenting the biblical texts as bits, the idea of the verse above the book is elevated. For example, we read about the feeding of the 5,000 in Matthew and we think it is only about what little thing can we bring to Jesus that He could multiply. However, if we were to read the full context of Matthew, we can see how he portrays Jesus as fulfilling Israel's mission: Jesus was "called out of Egypt" (Mat. 2:14), He wandered in the wilderness (Mat. 4:1-10), He delivers the law of God on the mountain (Mat. 5-7), and He relies on God to provide for Him and His flock as the feeding of the 5,000 demonstrates. This picture is hard to see with daily readings but reading Matthew as a whole will show it more easily.

3. One-Year Reading Plans Create Misplaced Goals

A last concern I have over one-year plans is I think it subtly shifts the goal of bible reading itself. As I mentioned at the top of this article, I believe that many people begin such a regimen in order to become more intimate with all of scripture. However, I know when I had previously attempted such a plan things began to get difficult after mid-February. Until then, the Old Testament stories are fairly familiar. One can suffer through a genealogy or two, but Abraham offering Isaac or the plagues of Egypt bring us right back to Cecil B. DeMille familiarity. When the reader hits Leviticus, though, it becomes tough sledding! All of a sudden my intent shifts from understanding the context of the passage to simply getting through it. My goals changed. I was only looking for checking off the box that I did my reading today, not necessarily on what part the passage plays in telling God's story, it essentially defeated the purpose for which I started reading-to become more intimate with the scriptures!

Please note that I'm not saying there is no benefit to one-year plans. Neither am I saying that everyone who engages in the Bible this way will fall into these traps. I'm only expressing my concern that structuring one's reading in this way makes doing so easier and may hinder the primary goal of true knowledge of the Bible.

Instead, I want to pass along a recommendation that was given by Dr. Walt Russell in his book Playing With Fire: How the Bible Ignites Change in Your Soul. Dr. Russell is a bible scholar and he recommends creating a reading plan where you focus on one book each month. Start off with a gospel account, or even a short epistle such as Galatians. Once you've chosen your book, you should read it every day. At first, don't stop for the parts you don't have a full grasp of; simply read it as a complete work. After the second week or so, you will begin to notice refrains in the text—ideas that are repeated or reinforced. You can begin to see the work as a single message and then you can go deeper with a commentary or bible helps.

The goal is to master one book per month. On the next month, select another. One you get used to this approach you will find that it really doesn't take an incredible amount of time to read through a book (Galatians can be read in 20 minutes or so.) But you will be going deeper and truly understanding the scripture as God intended.

I'm indebted to Dr. Russell and his teaching in enlightening me with this approach. I think it will provide a very different experience for you. Read Playing with Fire and see how you can ignite change in your soul!

Seeing Jesus as an Intellect

Who is Jesus? The question has been around as long as Jesus has! From the time that Jesus began ministering; people have been asking "Who is this man?" Jesus is portrayed many ways in the Bible. Some of His titles in the Bible include:

• Savior
• Messiah
• The Lamb of God
• The Light of the World
• The Second Adam
• The Son of God
• The Word made flesh
• Lord of Lords
• King of kings

Of course, people continue to try and add dimensions to Jesus that they find relevant. Recent book titles that invoke Jesus include Jesus: CEO, Jesus is my Superhero, Jesus the Prophet of Allah, Jesus the Rebel, Jesus the Outlaw, and The Good Man Jesus & the Scoundrel Christ. These are simply examples of people trying to see Jesus as a reflection of their highest ideals; even the former head of the Soviet Union,Mikhail Gorbachev, called Jesus "the first socialist"![1] Obviously, people view Jesus through the lens of their assumptions and what they want Him to be.

Do Christians miss aspects of who Jesus is by our assumptions?

Even Christians who seek to properly understand Jesus can overlook aspects of who Jesus is because of their preconceptions. If I gave 100 people a blank sheet of paper and asked them to write their top ten attributes of Jesus, I would get many answers. I'm sure several would repeat some of the titles I've listed above. But I doubt that I would get one "Jesus is an intellectual" or Jesus is a master logician". The concept of Jesus as a logician is not any stranger than Jesus as a master carpenter, Jesus as teacher, Jesus as CEO, yet we never seem to equate Jesus with intelligence.

Why not?

Jesus relates to the Intellectual

Simply put, the modern church has not placed a sufficient value on intelligence as a necessary means for worshiping God. We tend to divorce concepts of faith and rational thought. Faith is seen as "spiritual" while knowledge is seen as "worldly." We believe Jesus was sinless and a champion of the downtrodden and we seek to do likewise. But Jesus also commanded us to love our God with all our minds (Luke 10:27) and He modeled this when He engaged with those who would question His actions.

USC professor of Philosophy Dallas Willard captures the idea of this concept well when he says:

"In our culture and among Christians as well, Jesus Christ is automatically disassociated from brilliance or intellectual capacity. Not one in a thousand will spontaneously think of him in conjunction with words such as "well-informed," "brilliant," or "smart."[2]

Dallas Willard goes on to write:

"Often, it seems to me, we see and hear his deeds and words, but we don't think of him as one who knew how to do what he did or who really had logical insight into the things he said. We don't automatically think of him as a very competent person. He multiplied the loaves and fishes and walked on water, for example--but, perhaps, he didn't know how to do it, he just used mindless incantations or prayers. Or he taught on how to be a really good person, but he did not have moral insight and understanding. He just mindlessly rattled off words that were piped in to him and through him. Really?"[3]

But can we seriously imagine that Jesus could be Lord if He were not smart? If He were divine, would He be dumb? Or uninformed?  Once you stop to think about it, how could Jesus be what Christians take Him to be in other respects and not be the best informed and most intelligent person of all: the smartest person who ever lived, bringing us the best information on the most important subjects.

In fact, John's gospel starts by identifying Jesus as the "Logos." Many Bibles translate that a "word" but the implication of Logos is not merely a word but an intelligent, rational thought. Logos is the root of our word logic and Jesus as the Logos is the embodiment of logic.  He used is throughout His ministry. His aim in utilizing logic was not to win battles, but to achieve understanding or insight in His audience, so He'd challenge the woman at the well or have the twelve disciples pick up twelve baskets of leftovers after He fed 5,000, trying to help them draw conclusions from His actions. (He even chided the disciples for not doing so.)

The church today needs to begin seeing this missing aspect of Jesus' nature. We complain and lament that our institutions of higher learning have kicked God out of the classroom, but has the church kicked the professor out of the pew? Do we never offer any kind of vigorous intellectual message so a PhD could look forward to church as a time of intellectual stimulation? Do we water down our messages so much that we never seek to stretch our congregations even just a bit, to make them a little bit smarter? Do we believe that Jesus was the smartest man who ever lived? And will we seek to love God with all of our minds as well as with our hearts, all our souls and all our strength?

For more on this topic, see: Jesus: The Smartest Man Who Ever Lived.

References

1. Haberman, Clive. "Israel Welcomes Gorbachev as a Hero". The New York Times. June 16, 1992. <http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/16/world/israel-welcomes-gorbachev-as-a-hero.html> Accessed 7/22/2013.

2. Willard, Dallas. "Jesus the Logician". DWillard.org < http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=39> Accessed: 7/22/2013

3. Ibid.

J.P. Moreland to Young Christians: "Don't let anybody bully you"

Dr. J.P. Moreland recently gave a talk on why he doubts the neo-Darwinian model of all life arising from purposeless natural processes. I highly recommend the video. At the end of the talk he offered these words of encouragement to young Christians who may not be steeped in apologetics arguments:

"Don't let anybody bully you. I meet Christians all the time who think all the smart people are on the other side. That's not true. And if you don't know how to defend your faith, that's OK; we've got people who do. And we're community; we don't all have to know how. Because we have different roles to play. But we have people in our community who are as smart as the people on the other side and we know what we're talking about. You don't need to let anybody bully you because what the Scriptures teach at the end of the day makes sense and they're reasonable and we have nothing to be ashamed of in believing in the Creator God that we believe in."

J.P. is right. We have very smart people with incredibly strong arguments who are able to show the Christian worldview is at least as reasonable as modern secular viewpoints, if not more so. I know that there is a vast amount of data one must sift through in order to truly understand the points in question, but all Christians should be aware that we do have the goods, and they can walk confidently knowing that Christianity is an intelligent faith.

Roger Ebert Reviews a Tragedy: His Search for God

Roger Ebert is probably the best-known of film critics. His column in the Chicago Sun-Times and subsequent television shows were checked consistently by movie buffs to see whether a film would be worthy of their time and money. However, I think the saddest review I've read by Ebert is his review of his own search to make sense of God.

Photo courtesy Roger Ebert

In a column he wrote a couple of years ago, Ebert recounts:

"When I was in first or second grade and had just been introduced by the nuns to the concept of a limitless God, I lay awake at night driving myself nuts by repeating over and over, But how could God have no beginning? And how could he have no end? And then I thought of all the stars in the sky: But how could there be a last one? Wouldn't there always have to be one more? Many years later I know the answer to the second question, but I still don't know the answer to the first one."

Ebert loved his religion classes as a child because they would talk about hypotheticals of what counts as sin, how a person is culpable for sins they committed (or didn't know they committed), and all the ramifications of the various scenarios. This approach was to teach Ebert "theoretical thinking and applied reasoning, and was excellent training."  He writes that at about nine or ten "I no longer lost any sleep over the questions of God and infinity. I understood they could have no answers. At some point the reality of God was no longer present in my mind… Over the high school years, my belief in the likelihood of a God continued to lessen."

Now, although reticent to label himself an atheist or an agnostic, Ebert completely dismisses the idea of "any God who has personally spoken to anyone or issued instructions to men." He writes:

"I'm still struggling with the question of how anything could have no beginning and no end. These days I'm fascinated by it from the point of view of science. I cannot know everything, but I approach matters in terms of what I do and can know. Science is not 'secular.' It is a process of honest investigation."

Tomorrow I will answer Ebert's question on God, but I want to note a couple of observations today.  First, Ebert's story highlights a very real need for teaching apologetics in the church, and beginning to do so very early. Many Christians and even many pastors today think that focusing on apologetic arguments are a lot of head knowledge when what people really need is teaching Jesus and how to live today.  But look at Ebert's story.  His favorite time learning was when he and his classmates were discussing implications of God and sin, and this was in grade school!  It wasn't too lofty a subject for them, it stimulated them and made them want to know more, so much so that they'd lay on the grass after school and talk about it. Imagine your kids hanging with their friends during play time discussing theological concepts and wrestling with their implications.

Secondly, the lack of knowledge in apologetics by Ebert's teachers and parents were his ultimate undoing.  When asking his favorite nun about the dilemma of God having no beginning, she replied "that is just something you have to believe. Pray for faith."  As you can imagine, it was an unsatisfying. Ebert would then say "I lay awake wondering how I could pray for faith to a God I could not believe in without faith." Let me just say that this nun, who I don't doubt had the best of intentions, had a wrong understanding of faith and reinforced in the mind of an inquiring youngster that belief in God is irrational and unworthy of those who wish to think.  Perhaps if she was better trained in some of the great Catholic theologians like Thomas Aquinas her answer would have been correct.

Ebert's parents also were no help.  He says that during his high school years he never discussed his waning belief in God with them, but that makes me wonder if they ever discussed religion at all. As an elementary school boy with big questions about the world, Ebert went to his school teachers. If religion was a comfortable topic of conversation at home, surely he would have asked his parents also.

We as parents and teachers need to learn the answers to these questions and talk about them with our kids. And we need to start earlier rather than later. Elementary school kids have a wonder about the world and how it works, and we should be offering them the greatest truths to stimulate that wonder. Don't simply rely on the kids' Sunday School teaching to inform them about God.  The Sunday School teacher may not know the answer, or may offer the wrong answer. You need to know these answers yourself, so you can pass them along. Otherwise, our kids will think that belief in the God of all reason falls outside of reason, and therefore is irrelevant. And that breaks my heart.

Top Ten Neglected Books for Apologists - #1 Love Your God With All Your Mind

I've been taking some time to create a list of top books that I feel are very valuable for Christian apologists or anyone who finds themselves defending the Christian faith—which means every Christian who takes his faith seriously today. Most of these titles have been less visible publications by known authors or books that people really haven’t heard about.  So, why would I make the #1 book in my list one of the most noted titles by a well-recognized name like Dr. J.P. Moreland?  Simply because Love Your God with All Your Mind actually is neglected more than many realize.

As an apologist, from time to time I have had friends or church members approach me and ask what would be a good book to help them better defend their faith. Usually, this is prompted by some recent conversation where they've received some criticism on Christianity. They are usually looking for a "silver bullet" book, i.e. a single title that will address the specific issue with a quick comeback their interlocutors cannot refute. Such books do exist to some extent; Paul Copan’s True For You But Not For Me and Gleason Archer’s Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties are immediate examples that come to mind. But I am hesitant on just tossing out a couple of titles and walking away.

You see, in dealing with atheists, skeptics, and those in aberrant religious movements, one sees the scripture abused in many different ways.  I am constantly confronted by arguments that use poor reasoning, passages taken out of context, or modern meanings forced onto ancient texts. Unfortunately, too many times I’ve seen Christians who try to defend their faith become guilty of these exact same abuses. Sometimes, it feels like you are giving a power tool to a toddler; while the tool is the right one for the job, in immature hands it can damage the project and possible hurt the operator! This is where Love your God with All Your Mind plays a pivotal role.  The book doesn’t tell you what to say, but it helps you better understand the fact that Christianity has always been a faith of the intellect as much as one of the heart.  It doesn’t teach you apologetics as much as it teaches you that a disciplined, thoughtful approach to how we develop our intellect is as much an act of worship as raising our hands on Sunday morning or dropping money in a plate.

The book is clear and accessible. It’s not overly large. J.P.’s chapters include titles such as “The Mind’s Role in Spiritual Formation”, “Harassing the Hobgoblins of the Christian Mind”, and “Clearing the Cobwebs from My Mental Attic”. Each chapter helps take the man or woman in the pew from being a passive or even anti-intellectual Christian to a mature and thoughtful believer. J.P. shows how Jesus Himself modeled a strong intellectual capacity when dealing with questions from the Pharisees or Sadducees. He notes that charges of faith and reason being opposed to one another are actually lies that the enemies of Christianity promulgated. Somehow the church swallowed these lies and now believes that faith and reason live in separate spheres. With no intellectual stimulation or the ability of even their pastors to take on the difficult objections so common today, it’s no wonder that kids going off to college quickly drop out of church for what they see as a more satisfying combination of secular scholarship and morally loose living.

 NavPress has this month released a completely new edition of the book for its fifteenth anniversary, and it has been revised and expanded with a lot of new content. Specifically, chapters seven through nine have been completely replaced. They now contain a more direct apologetics message and present J.P.’s case for the existence of God and why the New Testament accounts of Jesus’ ministry, message, and resurrection are reliable. On top of that, J.P. and Joseph Gorra have produced a great study guide to accompany the book that can be downloaded from J.P.’s web site for free.

I think that Love your God with All Your Mind needs to be read by every Christian. The challenges believers will face will not be easier in the future.  In fact, given the popularity of books by the New Atheists as well as the more prominent chatter found on the Internet and social media, Christians are being pressed harder for real answers for their faith. That is why I usually put it on the top three books that I would recommend to any Christian. The Christian mind affects all aspects of Christian life, and the modern church has by and large abandoned its responsibility for nurturing that mind to maturity.

Even the fundamental Christian activity of evangelism relies heavily on the life of the mind. One of the quotations that J.P. offers in the book is from one of the early leaders of evangelicalism, J. Gresham Machen:

God usually exerts that power in connection with certain prior conditions of the human mind, and it should be ours to create, so far as we can, with the help of God, those favorable conditions for the reception of the gospel. False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.1

If you are only going to own one book from this list, this is the one to buy. If you are involved in apologetics at your church, create a study group to go over its content with others. You should recommend it to everyone and anyone. Christians needs to reclaim the mind as a necessary part of worshipping and loving God.  In so doing, they will strengthen their evangelism, their youth ministries, and their own ability to withstand the fiery darts of the evil one.

References:
1. Machen, John Gresham. What Is Christianity? Grand Rapids: Eerdman's,  1951. 162. As cited from Moreland, J.P. Love Your God with All Your Mind. Colorado Springs: Nav Press, 1997. 63.

Becoming an Effective Apologist by Forgetting All You Know

Apologetics is an interesting discipline. To be properly equipped, we spend years in study, learning theology, philosophy, worldview, ethic, reason, argumentation, and science.  I continue to read books and articles by both classic authors (Plato, Pascal, Augustine,  Aquinas, etc.) and popular authors today—both  Christian and non-Christian. We take seriously the command that we should study to show ourselves approved (2 Tim.  2:15) and that we should "always be ready to make a defense" (1 Pet. 3:15). But as important as all that preparation is, I think it's equally important to know how to chuck it all and a recent experience I had solidified that concept to me.

A few weeks ago I engaged in a conversation with a man who was seeking to know God. "John" said he was seeking to know the evidence for God's existence.  He told me he "was desperate to believe" that God is real. After a few minutes of conversation, I learned some facts about John: he claims to be agnostic, he's read Bart Ehrman and feels his arguments are strong, he feels the problem of evil argues against the existence of God.  John holds a PhD in Philosophy.

Given that John has an expertise in philosophy, I began to engage him in the arguments for God's existence – how the Bible cannot be considered circular given that it isn't one source but a collection of 66 different books written by many authors over a 1500 year period, how the Kalam shows that everything that has a beginning must have a cause, how moral theory shows that for evil to exist we must have an absolute standard against which to measure what counter with others. However, with each exchange John was becoming more combative and entrenched in his position.

I couldn't figure out at first why he was becoming so argumentative.  He had originally sounded so desperate to find out reasons to know that God is there, but the more I provided, the more he fought me. It was at this point that God opened my eyes to something - my approach was all wrong. John was a trained philosopher since most of that training was from an atheistic perspective, he had been trained to think about philosophy in a particular way.  In arguing with him intellectually, he would merely fall back on what he had learned and react almost as a reflex.  The more I engaged philosophically, the more he was unplugging from weighing the evidence.  Instead he reacting with stock responses that he was taught.

It was at this point that I asked him, “Wait, you came to me and said you want to believe.  What about your desire?” When I switched from head issues to heart issues, his tone and demeanor immediately changed and he basically said "Yes, please pray for me.  I want to believe but my heart and my mind are disconnected."  And this is where true communication began to happen.

You see, many people need to understand reasons why their objections against God are not valid, so we should know those reasons. However, by only engaging people intellectually, you limit the ways God can reach individuals.  I got to pray with this man -an agnostic  - who had all the answers to arguments for the existence of Go d except one, he could feel God’s presence pulling on his heart.

It’s important for the apologist to understand that we must not rely on only our arguments as our sole apologetic.  The real motivation here is to allow people to see the truth – that God exists and that Jesus offers salvation. If we confine ourselves to only head knowledge, we may miss the most powerful evidence for God’s reality we have - the self-attesting witness of the Holy Spirit. When I pushed hard on answering intellectual objections with John, it entrenched him more deeply in his agnosticism.  In holding a PhD, he didn’t want to be shown his extensive years of study have lead to wrong conclusions. But he couldn’t deny that there was a yearning to know God. In forgetting my head knowledge for a bit, I was able to at least talk to him about how he feels and I was able to pray that God would continue to make himself real to John, as I still pray.

Next time you have a witnessing opportunity, think a minute before you answer.  See where the person you’re talking with has needs.  Meet him or her there.  Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is to stop being smart and start feeling.