One Reason Why Jesus Cannot be Mythical

It is becoming more and more popular in certain atheist circles to claim that Jesus never existed. They claim that the story of the Messiah from Nazareth is simply a regurgitation of the myths of old, such as Osiris, Dionysius, or Mithras. But such claims, while superficially tempting are really impossible to manage if you study the details.

Historian Paul L. Maier shows just one way the charge of myth crumbles in his book In the Fullness of Time, and he takes scarcely more than a paragraph from his introduction to do it. He writes:

Instead of claiming a mythological founder, or one who materialized from the mists of the past in an appearance datable only to the nearest century or two, Christianity boldly asserts that Jesus' public ministry began (in association with that of John the Baptist) in

… the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, in the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas … (Luke 3:1, RSV)

No mythological heroes or cardboard characters here! This sixfold documentation involves personalities and places, all of which are well known and historical. In fact, we know even more about this collection of proper names from sources outside the New Testament. The author of 2 Peter expressed Christianity's "historical advantage" splendidly: "For we did not follow cleverly devised myths … but we had been eyewitnesses" (1:16). 1 (Emphasis in the original.)

References

1. Maier, Paul L. In the Fullness of Time: A Historian Looks at Christmas, Easter, and the Early Church. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1991. Print.

Tips for Sharing Your Faith #8 – Be Confident!

In hockey, scoring a goal is tough. A team will average thirty or more shots on goal per game, with only one or two making it past the goalkeeper. Because of this, teams will often circle or delay their attempts hoping for a better opportunity. While some care should be exercised so a player doesn't blow a chance, it's easy to fall into the trap of being over cautious. Players begin to look for the "perfect" chance. Of course, there's another team on the ice, so perfect chances are rather hard to come by. The result is they dismiss decent opportunities or possible opportunities as not good enough and they fall deeper into a scoring slump.

I think the same thing is true in sharing our beliefs with others. Over the last week and a half, I've been offering several tips on sharing and defending your faith. I'd like to wrap up this series by simply offering a word of encouragement: be confident! Take a chance and strike up a conversation with a person. Don't be afraid to tell someone the Christian position on a particular topic that's being discussed. Write a letter to the editor or ask someone out to lunch.

Remember, we are commanded by God to make disciples (Matt.28:19) and to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3). I also know that many people find this very scary. But, as I've written before, you're smarter than you think you are. It really doesn't take a lot to ask someone why they hold to his or her beliefs. If you are gracious and listen a lot, the conversations can turn out very pleasant. I've approached atheists on college campuses who were complete strangers and had extended conversations about God and morality with them which end in them actually thanking me for taking the time to talk about these issues.

Paul, when writing to Timothy, encouraged him to not be ashamed of his Christian beliefs. He states, "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind" (1 Tim 1:7 NKJV). Jesus promised that he wouldn't leave us alone in this task, but he would provide the Holy Spirit to help us in our efforts (John 14:15,25-26). We have the very Spirit that shaped the world helping us in our witnessing to others!

Wayne Gretzky, the greatest goal-scorer the NHL has ever seen, has been credited with saying, "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take." I think that's right. Be confident. Take a chance to share your faith. You cannot get better at it until you risk a bit of yourself and do it. You may be surprised at  how quickly you can see fruit from your faithfulness.

To see all the posts in this series, click here.

Image courtesy goaliej54. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Tips for Sharing Your Faith #7 – Be Gracious

 Every year, I attend the meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. The EPS is a collection of professional philosophers and apologists from different parts of the world. Tonight, Paul Copan addressed the audience and gave a talk about emphasizing gentleness and respect when sharing our faith. As it happens, this is exactly the topic I was planning on writing about tonight.

The phrase "gentleness and respect" is the second half of 1 Peter 3:15, known as the apologist’s verse. It reads, "Always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence." Yesterday, I wrote about the what of 1 Peter 3:15—the "always be ready to give a defense" part. I said that it would take some work on your part to study the common objections that you may hear so you can answer them.

Arguments Shouldn’t Be Adversarial

Today, I want to focus on that last part. As I said previously, passionate arguments can generate a lot of emotion and it can become difficult to keep one’s emotions in check. Yet, it’s crucial that you don’t get heated in your talks. Remember, our goal is not to win the argument, but to win the person to Jesus. Yelling and snapping at people won’t accomplish this. In fact, it may have just the opposite effect of driving people away.

Many years ago I was a purchaser for a hardware distribution company. One of my vendors had a girl who would always answer the phone in a very kurt manner. She sounded harsh and a little bothered any time I called to place an order. Given that this vendor had a cutoff time that if not met could mean some serous delays, I knew that it would not benefit me to react to the abrasiveness of this girl; I just couldn’t afford the gatekeeper as an enemy. Therefore, I decided that whenever I called I wouldn’t ask for my sales rep without engaging her with a bit of small talk. I’d ask her about her day or if she had a nice weekend. Soon, whenever she heard my name, her tone changed and she was genuinely happy to hear my voice in the phone. My calls were handled aster and they would now make some exceptions for my needs. This is all because I consciously decided to treat abrasiveness with care.

Practice Your Patience

Peter not only commands us to prepare for defending our faith through study, he also instructs us to prepare to defend the faith graciously. It may surprise you to think of gentleness and respectfulness as things that require preparation, but they do. Being kind when another is attacking is a hard thing to do. You have to make a conscious decision to keep calm and defuse any potential conflict. It doesn’t feel natural to us. It takes practice.

Proverbs 16:21 reads, "The wise in heart will be called understanding, and sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness." Our arguments can actually become more persuasive when we defer to another. Again, if you feel things are getting out of hand, you can stop the conversation. By telling your questioner, "You know, I value you so much as a person that I don’t want our relationship to be hurt by this conversation. Why don’t we take a break and meet again another day," you demonstrate you care more about them than being a conqueror. Such actions can open the minds of others far more quickly than any intellectual argument may do on its own.

Tips for Sharing Your Faith #6 – Prepare and Seek an Answer

People have noted how some of the most wildly successful people seem to dress in a uniform. Even though he could have afforded any type of clothing, Apple founder Steve Jobs chose to always appear in the same combination of jeans and a black turtleneck. Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg said that he has only one drawer at his house filled with "about 20 of these gray t-shirts." 1

Why would such successful people choose to limit themselves so much? Zuckerberg recently answered that question by saying he wanted to spend his time focused on the thing that mattered most to him. "I'd feel I'm not doing my job if I spend any of my energy on things that are silly or frivolous about my life." That may be a bit of an overstatement, but it is true that highly successful people pour more of their energy into achieving their goals than most people. They strive to cut out distractions, whatever they may be, in order to really focus on making their product or service the best in its class.

Always prepare to give a defense

That lesson is also true in sharing your faith. We are commanded to make preparations before we have encounters with people to be able to answer their questions on Christianity. 1 Peter 3:15, which reads "Always be prepared to give a defense to those who ask of the hope that is within you," is the most well-known of these verses, but there are many others.

So, while you don't have to limit your wardrobe choices, it is imperative for Christians to prepare before they step outside the door. Make sure you have studied some of the key objections that are common among skeptics such as arguments for the existence of God, dealing with the problem of evil, and the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Make sure you look at both sides of a controversial issue. As I've warned both in this series and more fully in a previous article, you do not want to erect a straw man. You should be able to put the issue and the solution into plain language without using "Christianese" in order to make sure that you are understood.

Don't bluff

Of course, it's impossible to know everything. People will have had different experiences from you and they will have heard different things. They may bring up a point that you hadn't heard yet or perhaps something you haven't thought a lot about. The key in these situations is to recognize that you aren't fully prepared to answer that point. Don't bluff! Bluffing may be an acceptable strategy for poker, but when the goal of a conversation is to discover the truth about an issue, bluffing an answer is the worst thing you can do! In certain situations you will have to admit that you hadn't heard that point before. Don't be afraid to tell someone "that's an interesting question; I'd like to get back to you on that." However, if you offer that response, you have now obligated yourself to dig into the books and really seek out an answer. This means you will need to set aside time to investigate the question thoroughly.

Make sure you set a time to meet again

Because you are taking on such an obligation, whenever you hit a roadblock you should always agree on a time to meet again and take up the conversation. This offers two advantages: first, it makes sure the other person is serious about continuing the discussion. While the research in digging out an answer is always good for you, you don't want to always be doing research if he or she isn't interested in engaging in your findings. If they don't want to meet again, you will know their objection is simply a smokescreen.

Second, setting a time pushes you to not procrastinate. I know that a lot of things compete for our time and distractions can creep into our lives, causing us to delay doing those important things. If you delay meeting again because you haven't had time to look into the issue may be perceived by them as you not really caring about the truth, or worse they may feel you don't care about them! It's also best to try and capture a puzzling question when it is fresh in your mind, so you can get the objection right and not spend a lot of time researching something the other person wasn't ever asking.

To be successful in sharing and defending one's faith will require time and effort. There's simply no escaping that. However, once you put in that effort, you may be surprised at the dividends it pays.

To see all the posts in this series, click here.

References

1. Kelly, Samantha Murphy. "Mark Zuckerberg: I Wear the Same Thing Every Day." Mashable. Mashable, 02 Oct. 2012. Web. 19 Nov. 2014. .

Tips for Sharing Your Faith #5 - Look for Logical Fallacies

When I was in sixth grade, some of my friends and I played an elaborate hoax on the second graders in our neighborhood. We took some ViewMaster projector and some slides of the Apollo missions, a sound effects record, an old reel-to-reel tape recorder and some flashing Christmas lights that we taped t the back of a panel and convinced these kids we were taking them up in space. We tried to think of everything; we even sewed some dime-store space patches on our clothing to simulate uniforms.

I don't know just how much the little kids really bought, but they sure seemed to swallow the story hook, line, and sinker. The main reason was we had all the trappings right. It looked and sounded like a space launch in their limited experience.

When you are talking about faith and opposing worldviews, many Christians can be just as gullible as the second graders in my story above. They will hear an objection or an argument and because it sounds like a real objection, they assume it is a serious issue. However, the mature Christian will be able to identify what are known as logical fallacies. Fallacies are not real arguments. They're smoke-and mirrors tricks that are not evidence of someone's position. I've reviewed a couple of these before, but I'd like to quickly go through some of the more common ones below.

1. Genetic Fallacy

The genetic fallacy is any argument that draws a conclusion due to an irrelevant aspect of the source. An example I've often used is of an elementary school teacher who taught children their multiplication tables. Imagine that later this teacher was convicted of perjury. Since the teacher is a proven liar, does that mean the children should now not believe that 2x2=4? Just because the source of that fact has been shown to be flawed, it doesn't mean that the particular point you are arguing is flawed, too. Here are some examples of the genetic fallacy:

• "You are a Christian because you were raised in a Christian country."
  
• "Because the Bible is an ancient document, it can't be relevant to today."
• "Too many Christian hypocrites have told me the same thing that you're saying."

2. Argumentum ad Populum

Argumentum ad Populum, or arguing to the people is saying because an opinion or position is the popular one, it should therefore be believed. However, the popularity of a position doesn't make the position true. Slavery was accepted in the early period of the United States, but that doesn't mean it was right or moral. Here are some examples of argumentum ad populum:

• "Everyone believes evolution is true."
• "The vast majority of scientists don't believe in God."

3. Argumentum ad Hominem

Argumentum ad Hominem means arguing to the man, and it happens when a person attacks the person for some inconsequential reason.  While the most well-known version of the fallacy would include an insult ("You're too stupid for me to believe that!"), many times the ad Hominem argument is more subtle. For example, a Democrat that rejects any statement offered by a Republican because of his party affiliation is committing a type of the ad Hominem fallacy. Here are a couple more:

• "I can't listen to you about abortion. How can you possibly know how a woman feels since you're a man?"
• "Christianity can't be believed. I mean, look at what the Christians did in the Crusades!"

4. False Dilemma

A false dilemma is when you are offered two choices as the only two possibilities, while more really exist.

• "Either you accept outdated beliefs or you hold to reason."
  
• "I would rather place my trust in science than faith."

5. Straw Man

Sometimes people will either oversimplify Christian beliefs or completely misstate what Christians believe. Just as a scarecrow stuffed with straw is easier to knock over than a real man, some will construct a straw man of the Christian's beliefs just to more easily knock them down.  (For a fuller explanation of a straw man, see this.) Here are a few straw men that you may recognize:

• "All you Bible-believing nuts want to be slain in the spirit and protest against homosexuals"
• "Everything needs a cause. God is a thing, so what caused him?"

6. Appeal to Pity

Appeals to pity are simply trying to not argue on the reasons for a position but rather on making someone feel bad. It tries to play on people's emotions rather than the facts of the matter. You can see this used all the time in political campaigns, where candidates will offer one or two anecdotes of a person who is in a tough spot and then argue that certain policies need to be adopted "to help her out of this difficult time." It's a tug on the heartstrings instead of looking at the argument itself. Here are some more examples:

• "If abortion is not legalized, then only the rich will be able to get abortions."
• "Accepting Christianity would mean that there are more people in Hell than in Heaven. That's a monstrous belief."

To see all the posts in this series, click here.

Photo courtesy edgeplot and licensed by the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License