7 or so questions, 7 or so answers: an elevator pitch

I've mentioned elsewhere the 7 basic questions that every Christian should be able to give three answers to: the "elevator" pitch (we say 'lift'), the short answer and the discussion.

Here are my "elevator" pitches

1. Why are you a Christian?

Mankind only can understand himself in terms of a necessary reference point. But man is personal, so that reference point must be both self-existing and personal. Jesus of Nazareth is that reference point so I follow his way.

2. Why do you read the Bible?

It makes the best sense of the world/human condition that we have. It makes its case in history, not merely by theoretical claims or mythological stories.

3. Why do you attend church?

I don't 'attend' church. I am part of a church. [You could stop there if you are pressed for time, and await a follow-on question at another time.] Church is the gathering of people who are committed to the way of Christ. I'm 'in', so I'm 'in'. And we get together to encourage and learn from each other.

4. Don't all religions teach the same thing?

4.1 No. Most religions ask man to pull himself up by the bootstraps Christianity recognizes this is obviously impossible. They seek the solution to the failing system in the very system that is failing, so they really offer nothing for mankind's dilemma. [Alienation from the creator in an alienated world.]

Related is the question, " Why is Jesus the only way to God? "

4.2 Because he is the creator, and restoration of relationship cannot come from within the 'system', but only from outside it.

5. That's good if it's your truth, but I'm spiritual without that/it's not for me. 

5.1 If it's only my truth it's not truth at all, and I'd be crazy to rely on it. It's like being broke, but being your own bank. What people need is a relationship with the Truth that is objectively outside themselves.

5.2 What do you mean 'you are spiritual'? 'Spiritual' is about the connection with the one who is ultimately there, not the reflection of our own contemplation.

5.3. Really? Which spirit are you spiritual with then?

6. How can a God of love permit so much evil and suffering?

6.1 By permitting mankind to live and be able to seek him and the resolution of our broken lives in his eternal life and love. We live in a broken world that is marked by alienation from the creator, but the benefit of us being linked to the creator is so good that it outweighs all the bad even conceivable.

6.2 If we didn't participate in the horror show we make by rejecting God, we would never know that we had rejected God and be able to seek him.

7. Hasn't science disproved the Bible?

How could it? The Bible explains why science is possible at all!

The eighth question, of course, is:

Why do you believe in God?

8.1 Yeshua of Nazareth, Jesus, as the West names him, declared himself to be God on earth, demonstrated that during his teaching career, and came back from the dead to authenticate himself.

8.2 Finite beings, which we are and the cosmos is, demand an end point and a beginning point or source or a basis that is not finite; plus there needs to be an absolute source for personhood. God, the creator, is these things.

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God, evil and modern man

I have yet to hear a sermon or apologetic that really deals with this in terms that might make sense to modern man. Schaeffer comes closest, but he still doesn't quite do it. Nevertheless, he does touch on it in passing, in True Spirituality when he talks of sin as being the breaking of fellowship with God.

Most disquisitions on this topic do nothing to overturn the ancient pagan impression of 'good' and 'evil' as two forces in active opposition and of similar potency.

But NO!

Good and evil do not float platonically behind God, and do not have any existence except in terms of who God is.

God is good by definition, or more precisely, God is love and the properties of goodness and evil (the inversion of goodness, as hate is the inversion of love) flow from this.

Evil, sin, suffering represent the inversion of God's love, of who God is! The result from rejection of fellowship with God.

A&E were told that 'the tree' would bring them face to face with this inversion, rejection, denial of God. That is, face to face with evil, which they would thus 'know'. That is experience and understand.

Love is the disposition to benefit the other even to your disadvantage, to give priority to the other. Evil is inversion of this, to benefit oneself in denial of others.

This comes out in fragments of pride, greed, selfishness, self-centredness littered through every day. From Adam's step away from God in denying him and asserting his own values in that denial, both Adam and the creation were stranded from man's communion with God. But there was more involved. Not only was mankind stranded, but the creation as a whole was severed from its comfort with God's presence. Man as the steward, as God's vicegerent in the creation had  broken the entire creation

The great tragedy is that the creation was given to us as the stage for our communion with God, but it became the place severed from that communion and God's love and life. It's promise was death, and God warned him.

The domain as a whole was broken, subjected to loss, to decay and degradation as the creation in its entirety was dragged after the one set to govern it in love and peace.

Nevertheless, God's love is unstoppable and perseveres, as does his creature in his image as one with real choices. God in this love acted to establish the 'long stop' position and occupied it in Christ. This position enables the final defeat of death -- the great inversion of the meaning of mankind echoed thereafter in his offspring -- and our regeneration to join his kingdom finally in the New Creation.

Methodological Theism?

Modern science proceeds not on the basis of methodological naturalism, but on the basis of methodological Christian theism! Naturalism by itself, whether metaphysical or 'merely' methodological has not produced modern science. In fact, it has produced neither systematic inquiry into the created cosmos, nor ceaseless curiosity. For this old world view, what is simply is! But for Christian theism. Paganism is a similar dead hand. What is is the product of the rainbow serpent. End of discussion. For panentheists, what is is god, and no inquiry is possible. If the god is capricious, as is the Muslim god, no science is again possible.

What Christian theism assures us of, and this is demonstrated in the first chapters of Genesis, is a material creation that is causally rational, that is objectively there, that is propositionally explicable, and created for our superintendence/care/stewardship and operation. It invites curious exploration, and demonstrates the principle in Adam naming the animals brought to him: he observed, analyzed, classified and categorized. It was up to him. All God did was bring his subjects to him.

The materialist detractors think that Christian theism stifles inquiry. Not so. The record is that materialism does so. The great example is the rapidly diminishing number of 'vestigial' organs. We will soon be at zero in that count. The fiction of vestigial organs stifled inquiry and led to countless unnecessary, dangerous and sometimes fatal surgical operations.

But, confident of a cosmos designed by one limitlessly wise and knowledgeable (see Prov. 3:19-20) we are confident to keep exploring, keep finding knowledge and reliably communicating it. Our curiosity will, we are sure, be endlessly repaid. There will be no 'do not enter' signs as we know the entire material cosmos is here for our habitation, occupation, use and enjoyment. The detractors confuse the creator God with the fake gods of paganism, with the occasionalist 'gods' of the Greek Olympus, or the stupid gods of thing and place. These prevent science.

Nor does one who takes the cosmos as designed ever say...well, I don't know, God did it. No, we say. "This clearly presents a challenge to understanding, but it was made so as to be understandable by the creator, so let's get on, persevere, work hard, expose our ideas to criticism, let's learn how this thing works."

The only problem arises where metaphysical naturalism enters the ring. It sets preconditions that result in imagined histories being used to guide the work of observation and analysis. These could well lead us astray, as NDE leads us astray and produces speculation but no knowledge.

The Funeral

Not a particular funeral, although I'll get to that, but in general

At a recent home group meeting a funeral in my family was mentioned, and some discussion ensued. I made the point that talking the gospel was particularly difficult (as in tricky) at a funeral.

A couple of clergy guys present disagreed vigorously, asserting that it was easy to 'preach the gospel' at a funeral.

But, to what end?

At my family funeral a sub-deacon conducted the service and gave a well composed and brief sermon which sought to convey the gospel to an audience that was preponderantly not interested. Their disinterest was abetted by the talk which didn't use their language, touch their life concerns or give a hint of their day-to-day experience being considered.

No particular interest was shown even afterwards.

One attendee did mention to me that she envied people who believed in heaven, but she didn't want to join them. Perhaps I missed a quiet plea for more information there, but the conversation didn't head in that direction, despite my poor efforts, I  must admit.

The gospel words went in one ear and out the other because they didn't connect with the pagan fatalism that is the default view of death in the modern world. It is this that needs to be tackled and undone.

Most people are afraid of death, but only in their quiet moments as they age; otherwise not so much.

It is quite a challenge to convey the gospel in such a setting and offers of hope, the promise of the resurrection are more suitable, ignoring that some, if not many of the hearers do not wish to truly participate in such. Thus, it is hard to convey the gospel at a funeral.

The street preacher?

So, what's the point of 'street preaching'?

Paul went to the place of discussion in Acts 17 and engaged in real discussion people who were there to discuss. He sought to form real connections, however transient they might have been.

Street preaching by contrast just hoses people with a blather of Bible-talk that ignores them as individuals with real concerns and life conditions. It denies people's realness and value as being in God's image. It also presumes that the hearers would know what he was saying, but without a biblical context, not so.

Attempted evangelism, I'd call it.

Perhaps it might work in parts of the USA where there is a large proportion of the population who might be familiar with the blather, but not in any other Western country, I would think.

See: https://youtube.com/shorts/BO48tNmwnAc

In my small corner

Our church has just started a monthly segment at our 'youth' service called 'In my small corner'.

This is a cross between a Q&A and a time of sharing of conversations had.

The first 7 'conversations' will be the 7 basic questions that a Christian must be able to answer to follow Peter in 1 Peter 3:15.

1. Why are you a Christian?
2. Why do you read the Bible?
3. Why do you attend church?
4. Don't all religions teach the same thing?
5. That's good if its your truth, but I'm spiritual without that/its not for me.
6. How can a God of love permit so much evil and suffering?
7. Hasn't science disproved the Bible?

From this point people will be invited to relate a conversation they've had and how they deal with it, or how they might have done so. A short discussion may follow.

So, here would be my first one:

Last evening I was talking to a man who was unpersuaded by the 'moral' argument for God. He insisted that the only thing he did was what made him happy and didn't offend against the law or other people.

He put everything down to social structures that had evolved.

I tried to bat back every response, I used examples of the Holocaust, Isis, Crime cartels and Hamas, and we had a good talk for a long time, but what would you have said?

A few things we want to do with this segment:

• Get people used to talking about their faith and its implications
• Show that they don't have to 'win' every encounter (Peter tells us to explain our 'why' not win the argument)
• Discuss responses, and use these for teaching points at another time
• Stimulate conversation over coffee later
• Encourage reading of relevant books/watch videos
• Encourage thoughtful  reading of the Bible.
  

Science and the Bible, or Science v the Bible?

All intellectual endeavor starts with a conception of the world. If that conception is not aligned with the world as it truly is, it fails to enable, or even allow, proper examination of the world. By proper I mean, in a manner that gives true knowledge of the discretely objective world. For instance,

 

> the ancients and pagans generally entertained fictitious occasionalist (look it up) gods contained by the cosmos that were fickle derivations of man at his stupidest, even the fates, that seemed to be over them also seemed to be contained by the cosmos.

> animists as a type of pagan had gods that were enemies and the world was their playground: again, fickle, needing to be appeased, usually by human suffering and sacrifice (oops, we do that today with abortion). It was spooksville all round.

> Aristotle had a view that made the world impossible to truly explore.

 

> Plato too, for that matter, and the

 

> German idealists more or less the same (we are now entering a time that inherits their subjectivism and undoes science). 

 

> Islam views it as subject to a capricious god, making pursuit of knowledge gained by study of the world impossible.

 

> Eastern monism, broadly speaking, reduces the world to a figment, so science is irrelevant, so science is irrelevant and because 'god' is everything, impossible, and

 

> materialism reduces it to chance material conjunctions, or 'dirt' for short, eliminating any hope that a mind that resulted from such random events would have anything of value to say about anything.

 

Darwin also noted this risk, but he nevertheless went on to undermine himself, sitting on the branch he was sawing off.

 

The Christian understanding of the world is utterly different, and thus underpins the rise of modern science, explicitly.

 

The description of the creation in Genesis 1 and 2 gives us this: The world (the cosmos, really) is separate from God, and brought into existence with coherent purpose. At the same time God was active and present in the world, as Creator, not creature.

 

The creation described, as analyzed below was set in the world we are in, indicated by the 'days' of creation making what it teaches set in and about reality (indeed it 'grounds reality'): the reality that we are in and have intellectual access to.

 

This was not off in some silly-ville of paganism or fantasy; it was located concretely in the history we are in and so its characteristics were definitive for us.

 

Its creation showed rational causality and propositional (intelligible) content, with a clear dependency sequence, starting with the general energy field (light). Each day's action rejecting 'chance' and showing its own teleological arc. Something NDE fails in at every point.

 

It shows that we, created 'like' the creator, are able to correspondingly (or conjointly) examine the world which we are to rightly govern/subdue/superintend/steward (none of which means 'exploit', degrade or destroy), gain knowledge and convert this to communicable and intelligible propositions.

 

The basis for this is a confidence in the constancy of the world at some level, regularity and rationality of material processes, and reliability of our cognitive faculties to understand the world as deeply as we can go.

 

There is no limit because we are confident that the world is entirely explicable. A 'designed' world encourages this, a random world jeopardizes the project before it starts.

 

This mission is encouraged because we are also confident that we have a purposeful role in the purposeful world: we have an in-built teleological sense that encourages the worthiness of the project.

 

So, Genesis 1-2 is not a science text, per se. Rather it is the text that explains why science is possible at all, worthwhile and within our grasp.

 

It demonstrates this where Adam is asked to name various animals brought to him. Those sitting on the village idiot fence always get this wrong. Name follows 'understand'. Adam necessarily observed, understood, evaluated and classified in one way or another. The first example of empirical science that we have. All other science has followed this pattern.