evangelism – Page 10 – Christ the Truth

The Image of the Invisible Omnibeing? 1

GlenSeptember 12, 2013September 12, 20131 Comment

A repost

The average Christian testimony goes something like this: I’d always believed in God and then I came to see that Jesus was this god-I-always-believed-in.

Average Christian evangelism really hopes that people believe in “God”. We are relieved to hear that a person believes in "God." Phew, we think, that's half the job done!

If they don’t believe in "God" we draw a deep breath and rummage around for some arguments to convince them of "God":

There’s order in the world, there must be an Orderer.
Everything is caused, there must be a Cause at the top of the chain.
There’s morality – there must be a Moral Lawgiver.
You have a sense of something more, there must be Something more.

And we argue towards some kind of OmniBeing. You know the omnis – maybe you learnt them in religious studies at school. God is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, omnivorous, ambidextrous, double-joined, tri-focal, etc, etc, etc.

And if our arguments are clever enough, maybe they’ll agree to our philosophy. Hallelujah, they believe in the Omnibeing! This is surely a step in the right direction, we imagine.

After all, didn't Elijah use similar tactics on the Baal worshippers. I don't have my bible to hand but I seem to remember some very powerful arguments on Mount Carmel. All that stuff about "Yahweh is a bit like Baal. But bigger. And less despotic." Brilliant stuff.

Well, now that we've used philosophical theism as a stepping stone to Jesus, we come to the business end of proceedings: it's time to unveil Jesus Himself. And so we hand over a Gospel to our unbeliever and try to convince them that Jesus is the Omnibeing made flesh.

The unbeliever goes away and reads the Gospel. And what do they find? A laughing, crying, shouting, serving, healing, loving Human Sacrifice. And the non-Christian says – “Wow, that stuff’s interesting. But it doesn’t sound like the Omnibeing.”

At this stage we must remain firm. It would be easy to sell out the OmniBeing. But no. We must be faithful to our bedrock theism, right? So here's how we proceed:

-- “Hmm, tricky" we say, "all that passionate, self-sacrificial blood and suffering - that's just on the surface. That’s not the real God-stuff. That's His human nature. But don’t worry, deep down Jesus is really the Omnibeing."

-- "Really?" says the enquirer, "Cos all that Jesus-stuff is very attract..."

-- ..."No, no, it's a gloss. Nothing to see here. The OmniBeing rules!"

And we pray that the non-Christian agrees. For if they do, then surely we have brought them to see that Jesus is Lord. Right?

Wrong. This is not the conversion of an unbeliever to Christ. This is the conversion of Jesus to the Omnibeing. And we’ve taken people away from the real God – the Father who Jesus actually reveals.

You see Colossians 1:15 turns our natural assumptions on their head. We reckon that God is obvious and Jesus is not. We survey the religious beliefs of the land and we're told that most people believe in God, but they're not sure about Jesus. (People tick the "Belief in God" box but they're uncertain of Jesus - maybe He's a prophet or a myth, etc). But the bottom line is, most of the world thinks God is obvious but Jesus is obscure. Colossians 1:15 says the exact opposite:

The Son is the Image of the invisible God.

God is the invisible One. He is the unknown entity. But the Son is His Image. Jesus is the One on display. Therefore evangelism is not about working from the invisible to the visible. It's starting with the Image and then inferring what God is like.

As Lord Byron said "If God isn't like Jesus Christ, he ought to be." That's the direction of travel - from Christ to the Father who He reveals.

In evangelism we often use the phrase "Jesus is God." But when we say that we don't mean that "Jesus (weirdly enough) is the god you'd always believed in." Instead we proclaim "Jesus (yes, that's right, Jesus the One who bled for sinners!) He reveals the true God - a God so good you never dared imagine Him!"

Podcast: What’s Stopping Us? part two

GlenSeptember 7, 2013Leave a comment

In our last episode we began looking at Problems of the Head. We tried to establish the proper place of reason in evangelism. Reason is not the ladder reaching up to heaven, revelation is the rescue that comes down.

In this episode we work through some of the implications for reason. We think about how we should address enquirer's intellectual objections. In particular we try to:

Reframe the question
Reflect to the questioner, and
Reveal Christ

The true nature of evangelism is not offering Cool, Credibility, Creeds or Courses. It's offering Christ.

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How to be transformed – the missionary context of 2 Corinthians 3:18 3

GlenSeptember 5, 20133 Comments

What's this verse about?

And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory... (2 Cor 3:18)

Is it about enjoying private devotional experiences with Jesus so that we become like Him? That's a popular interpretation. And it's half right. But it's really not the full story.

The NIV footnote says that 'reflect' can be translated 'contemplate'. But I think 'reflect' is a better translation. It's a word that means 'showing like a mirror shows'. The question is this - Is the mirror-like-ness telling us about how the beholder looks at the mirror? Or is the mirror-like-ness telling us about how the mirror itself reflects outwardly?

My guess is the latter. Our faces are like mirrors reflecting outwardly to the world the glory of Jesus.

This fits the context. Paul has been reminding us about Moses's face-to-face encounters with the Lord (2 Cor 3:7,13). He put a veil on to stop the Israelites seeing this fading glory. But we (as v18 says) have unveiled faces. And so what happens? Others see the glory of Christ as we reflect it out to the world.

So this verse does indeed depend on our having devotional experiences with Jesus - just as Moses did (e.g. Exodus 33:7-11). But that in itself will not transform us into Christ's likeness. Reflecting Christ's glory out into the world - that will transform us.

Which is what the next two chapters of 2 Corinthians are all about.

Too often we think of holiness as one thing and mission as another. Really they are mutually defining and mutually achieved. Just as God's own being is a being in outreach, so our Christian character is a character in outreach. To divorce the two is disastrous.

Holiness-in-mission is parallel to God's being-in-becoming. Just as God is who He is in His mission, so are we. Reflecting the Lord's glory is not a private activity - or at least it must not end there. It's not essentially pietistic but proclamatory. It's not about locking ourselves in a "prayer closet" - it's outgoing witness (to believers and unbelievers).

Why has the Church caused so much pain? 2

GlenSeptember 1, 2013September 1, 20132 Comments

I've been asked to write brief answers to six thorny questions:

Hasn't science disproved God?

Is God homophobic?

Why does God appear so violent in the Old Testament?

Are the gospel accounts trustworthy?

Why isn't God more obvious?

Why has the Church caused so much pain?

I've got to keep these under 600 words. I'd love if you could help. What have I missed? What have I got wrong?

...........................

Why has the Church caused so much pain?

Not a Liability!

The church is not a liability in mission. The church is God’s mission strategy for the world (Psalm 14:5; Matthew 28:16-20; Acts 2:41-47; Ephesians 3:10-11; 1 Timothy 3:15). Certainly, we can denounce many of the church’s actions, but only because they betray her true nature as Jesus’ bride.

In evangelism training I encourage Christians to consider the statement “That’s what I love about my church...” We need to be able to finish that sentence with genuine enthusiasm and drop it into conversation. We need to invite people into communities that don’t just have the answer to this complaint but who are the answer.

Macro or Micro?

People ask this question in two ways. On the macro level, it’s about crusades, inquisitions and conquistadors. On the micro level, it’s personal: “those people hurt me and they call themselves Christians.” We must figure out which version of the question is being asked.

Macro

David Bentley-Hart’s book “Atheist Delusions” does a wonderful job of outlining the Christian revolution from the first century onwards. Church, the world’s largest sociological phenomenon, has also been the champion of the greatest social improvements (e.g. equality, human rights, philanthropy, hospitals, hospices, schools, science, etc). Its failures (e.g. the crusades) occurred precisely when it forsook the teaching of its Lord (Matthew 5:38-48; 26:52-54; John 18:36).

Against this, atheist claims – like Christopher Hitchens’ – that “religion poisons everything” are lazy caricatures. For Hitchens to make his case he had to place Stalin into the religious (and therefore evil) category and Martin Luther King into the non-religious (and therefore benevolent) category. Such intellectual dishonesty is rife in these debates. It surfaces often as the charge that “religion is the cause of all wars”. The briefest glance at 20^th century history tells you that God is not the common denominator in war – man is.

Micro

When the complaint is closer to home, we, and our local church, should be an exception that disproves their rule. Alongside that, we must point them to the true nature of church...

The Father and His adopted children

Evangelist, Michael Ots tells the story of meeting a family with a very unruly child. Michael was tempted to think poorly of the parents until he learnt the boy was adopted from a difficult background. That one fact transformed his outlook. When you realise God the Father is adopting children out of the most difficult environments you expect different things from the children and you infer different things about the Father.

The Doctor and His Hospital

Many think of Jesus as the Rewarder of the moral, therefore they expect His church to be a society of the superior. Actually Jesus is the Doctor for the spiritually sick (Mark 2:13-17) and His church is a hospital for sinners. No-one criticizes a hospital for attracting the sick!

The Spirit and His ‘works in progress’

Of course the faults of Christians are more evident, the Spirit leads us into a unity and transparency where sins are exposed. Of course our hopes for Christians are dashed more frequently, we expect more from them. But Christians do not claim moral superiority, which is why Christians are not “hypocrites” when we fail. Admission of failure is the very atmosphere of Christianity.

On the other hand, Jesus tells his most famous story about an elder brother who was too good to sit next to his younger brother at the family feast (Luke 15). If we find ourselves unable to join a church with those kinds of people in it – it’s not the church that’s being judgemental.

Why isn’t God more obvious? 1

GlenAugust 30, 2013August 29, 20131 Comment

I've been asked to write brief answers to six thorny questions:

Hasn't science disproved God?

Is God homophobic?

Why does God appear so violent in the Old Testament?

Are the gospel accounts trustworthy?

Why isn't God more obvious?

Why has the Church caused so much pain?

I've got to keep these under 600 words. I'd love if you could help. What have I missed? What have I got wrong?

...........................

Why isn't God more obvious?

The Obvious and the oblivious

"The one thing you know about God is that you don't know Him!" That's essentially how Paul opens his famous sermon in Acts 17. The Athenians were incredibly "religious" yet Paul did not think this was an advantage. Their many idols incensed him and he found a particularly tragic idol labelled "the unknown God" – a kind of catch-all deity to cover all their religious bases (v23). Thus Paul begins by pointing to the only spiritual truth they know: they are completely oblivious to God.

That's not to say that God isn't obvious. Paul rams home the manifest presence of God in every detail of the world: He gives us life (v24-25), He directs each moment (v26), He’s near to us all (v27), "in Him we live and move and have our being" (v28). There is no excuse for our ignorance. We will be judged for it (v29-31).

Romans 1:16-23 also insists that the reality of God presses in on every creature at every moment. He is totally obvious and we are totally oblivious. The reason? We "suppress the truth in unrighteousness."

Ever since the fall we have been like a maths student listening to our iPod all year instead of the teacher. When the exam comes we are both ignorant and "without excuse".

Ignorance is not bliss

It is a tragedy that the human race does not know its Maker. This ignorance is a sign of our fatal estrangement from Him (Romans 8:7; 2 Corinthians 4:4; Ephesians 2:12; 4:17-19; Colossians 2:21). But, ironically, it's something that can really connect with the unbeliever. Most unbelievers know they are not ‘one with the Almighty’. Anyone who claims to ‘commune intimately with God’ sounds mentally unbalanced. We all know that we don't know God.

I often say to non-Christians: "I bet you've prayed, and I bet you've felt like it just bounced off the ceiling." That estrangement from God is universally felt. Like Paul in Athens we can tap into that feeling of alienation. When we do so, the non-obviousness of God is not a disadvantage, it’s a vital part of our message.

Getting to know you

The solution to our culpable ignorance is not from our side. God will have to graciously reveal Himself to us who are lost in truth-suppression. 1 Corinthians 1 tells how it happens. Not through other-worldly power, not through sophisticated wisdom but through Christ and Him crucified. In particular, weak and foolish preaching (v17-23) of a weak and foolish Saviour (v24-25) by a weak and foolish community (v26-30) reveals the true God. That might sound crazy, but it’s a wonderful truth. Here's why...

I once asked an atheist what it would take to convince him of God. He said, “If God spelt out the 10 commandments with stars in the night sky, I’d believe.” “What a horrible God!” I responded. Such a God wants to stay at a distance, demand your obedience and expect you to piece it together from below. The living God does the reverse. He descends from the heavens, gives Himself to us and dies with arms outstretched to the world. That’s what true divinity looks like.

We must point people to Jesus, especially Jesus on the cross. He is the Image, the Word, the Exact Representation of God (Colossians 1:15; John 1:1; Hebrews 1:3). In a world of deep spiritual confusion we look to the cross and see One who has loved us to hell and back. At the cross a miracle happens. People see Jesus and say: "There is God – it's obvious!"

Can we trust the Gospels?

GlenAugust 29, 2013September 14, 2013Leave a comment

I've been asked to write brief answers to six thorny questions:

Hasn't science disproved God?

Is God homophobic?

Why does God appear so violent in the Old Testament?

Are the gospel accounts trustworthy?

Why isn't God more obvious?

Why has the Church caused so much pain?

I've got to keep these under 600 words. I'd love if you could help. What have I missed? What have I got wrong?

...........................

Can we trust the Gospels?

The Bible Proves the Bible

The Gospels are not free-floating. They fit into the symphonic story of Scripture. Therefore the way they fit is a wonderful testimony to the truth of the whole Bible. A book like Walter Kaiser’s Messiah in the Old Testament highlights over 60 detailed Old Testament predictions which Jesus concretely fulfils in the Gospels – these just scratch the surface. Josh McDowell cites 29 Old Testament prophecies that are fulfilled on Good Friday alone. Perhaps take your friend to Genesis 22, Psalm 22 or Isaiah 53 then read Matthew 27 for the fulfilment.

The Gospels Present Themselves as History

Show the enquirer Luke 1:1-4 and see that the authors of the Gospels are not attempting to write fables but history. Look through the early chapters (e.g. 2:1-4; 3:1-2, 23-38) and see how Luke mentions scores of historical figures and places. This is not “once upon a time in a land far away.” Luke is doing everything in his power to convey to us that these events happened in real world history. At that point he’s either telling the truth or concocting an elaborate and wicked hoax. What do we think?

Lost in Transmission?

Bart Ehrman wrote a best-seller called “Misquoting Jesus”, alleging that today’s copies of the Gospels aren’t necessarily what the authors first wrote. We have nearly 25 000 ancient manuscript copies of the New Testament – a number that dwarfs anything else in ancient literature. Unsurprisingly, given they were all hand copied, there are discrepancies. Yet if we were worried that these differences were of any great importance, Ehrman’s attempt to make a sensational case should reassure us. The best he can do is point to Mark 16:9-20; John 8:1-11 and 1 John 5:8 which any decent Bible translation will itself highlight without any embarrassment. Then he points out that we have alternative readings for verses like Mark 1:41 and Hebrews 2:9. Your Bible’s footnotes will probably tell you the options and you can see for yourself how little hangs on the difference. This is the best case offered by biblical studies’ most prominent sceptic. Therefore any fears that Jesus' real message is lost in transmission are unfounded.

Lost Gospels?

But aren’t there many lost gospels that were suppressed by the church? No, and you should really stop reading Dan Brown! Gospels like The Gospel of Thomas were written at least a century after the original four, in a language Jesus didn’t speak, in a completely different style (collections of sayings, not narrative) and proposing concepts of God, salvation, the body and women that are utterly alien to the Bible (and to sanity). If you want to see why the church always rejected them, just read them.

Defend the Bible?

Charles Spurgeon’s famous line is still the best on this subject: “Defend the Bible? I would as soon defend a lion! Unchain it and it will defend itself.” Our first priority is to get Scripture into people’s hands. I always challenge enquirers to pick up a Gospel (perhaps John) and shoot up a prayer: “Dear God, if you’re there, show me the real Jesus.” I tell them “You’ve got nothing to lose. If He’s not there, He won’t answer. But if He is, then you need to meet His Son. This book is the way to do it.”

Of course we can assure enquirers that the Bible is internally consistent, historically accurate, well attested, faithfully passed down, etc. But none of that makes it the word of God. God’s word vindicates itself when God Himself speaks through it.

Why does the God of the Old Testament appear so violent? 6

GlenAugust 26, 2013September 1, 20136 Comments

I've been asked to write brief answers to six thorny questions:

Hasn't science disproved God?

Is God homophobic?

Why does God appear so violent in the Old Testament?

Are the gospel accounts trustworthy?

Why isn't God more obvious?

Why has the Church caused so much pain?

I've got to keep these under 600 words. I'd love if you could help. What have I missed? What have I got wrong?

...........................

Why does God appear so violent in the Old Testament?

Confronting the Caricatures

According to the Apostles, the Old Testament is all about “the good news of peace through Jesus Christ” while the New Testament concerns Christ, “the Judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:36-43). Grace in the Old, Judgement in the New! What unites the Scriptures is Christ Himself.

John tells us Christ was there “in the beginning” (1:1-18). Therefore Christ was the One Moses, Abraham and Isaiah saw and wrote about (5:37-47; 8:56-58; 12:37-41). The problems we might have with “the God of the Old Testament” we have with Jesus.

Having said this...

The Times Have Changed

When Jesus came in the flesh He fulfilled and ended the temporary structures of the Old Testament, in particular the Temple with its priests and sacrifices and the theocratic nation with its kings and armies. Instead Jesus relentlessly urges forgiveness and non-violence (see Matthew 5:38-48; 26:52-54; Luke 6:27-36; John 18:36).

So here’s our challenge: Jesus tells us to put down our swords and to pick up His book. Yet in His book (the Old Testament) we read of several holy wars. What to think?

Let’s examine the central act of violence brought up in these discussions – the conquest of the promised land, commanded in Deuteronomy, fulfilled in Joshua. (For further reading see Paul Copan’s Is God a Moral Monster?)

The Conquest of Canaan

For 400 years Canaanite cultures were involved in child-burning and other grotesque evils (Genesis 15:13-16; cf “Molech”, Lev 18:21). The Lord gave them centuries to repent of it – considerably longer than any other “just war” ever launched. He then, through His people, visited them with a one off, unrepeatable judgement. It had nothing to do with race – this was not genocide. Later on, when the Israelites were also guilty of such sins, they too were judged.

Every Canaanite who ever sought mercy from the Israelites was spared (see Joshua 2&9). Certainly, prior to the conquest, God speaks the language of total destruction (Deut 20:16-18). Yet Copan argues that this was well understood in the day as militaristic hyperbole. The language of “driving out” precedes and predominates over language of “wiping out” (Deut 7:17-24; 9:1-6). And when Joshua sums up his achievements, he considers that he’s done what Moses had commanded – this, in spite of the fact the Canaanites were not fully driven out, let alone wiped out. (see Joshua 23-24; Judges 1)

Judgement and Grace

Having said this, these stories still shock. God is not a Rotarian. There is blood and fire to this Righteous Judge – in both Testaments. But remember three things:

First, we often complain that God should do more about evil in this world. When He gives us this one-off, unrepeatable pre-figurement of His righteous judgement, we cannot then complain at His intervention!

Second, the Bible makes it clear we are all moral and spiritual Canaanites. We all need the mercy shown to Rahab in Joshua 2. This is what Jesus provides, absorbing the fire and justice on the cross and providing us with refuge.

Third, in Jesus we are brought into a realm beyond judgement – a realm of cheek-turning, enemy-forgiving love (Colossians 1:13-14). Thus the New Testament views these ancient wars as types of our own campaign of peace (2 Corinthians 10:1-5; Ephesians 6:10-20). ‘Christian violence’ is a contradiction in terms.

In the end, the problem of violence does not lie in millennia old Hebrew wars but in our hearts. The solution is not to reject Jesus or His book. The only answer is Jesus Himself – the Judge who became our Refuge.

Podcast: What’s Stopping Us? Part One

GlenAugust 24, 2013Leave a comment

Problems of the Head

We have discussed many intellectual objections to Christianity, but what is the place of reason in evangelism? Can we think our way to God? And if not, how should we go about telling the good news when people "demand wisdom"?

Among other things we discuss 2 Corinthians 4 and 5; Romans 1; Acts 17 and 1 Corinthians 1.

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Hasn’t science disproved God? 13

GlenAugust 20, 2013September 1, 201313 Comments

I've been asked to write brief answers to six thorny questions:

Hasn't science disproved God?

Is God homophobic?

Why does God appear so violent in the Old Testament?

Are the gospel accounts trustworthy?

Why isn't God more obvious?

Why has the Church caused so much pain?

I've got to keep it under 600 words. I'd love if you could help. What have I missed? What have I got wrong?

...........................

Hasn't science disproved God?

Thinking God’s Thoughts

When Johannes Kepler discovered the laws of planetary motion in the early 17th century he did not lose his strong Christian faith. Instead he spoke of the wonderful privilege of "thinking God's thoughts after Him." That's been the mind-set of so many giants in the history of science: Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Faraday and, in our own day, Christians like Francis Collins, leader of the Human Genome Project. They have not imagined “a God of the gaps” who was ever shrinking as their science progressed. They have believed in “the God of the whole” whose thoughts they were thinking after Him!

Faith and Foundations

Einstein said, "The fact that the universe is comprehensible is the greatest miracle." Science depends entirely upon this “miracle”. We need our minds ‘in here’ to correspond to the world ‘out there’ and for both of those to correspond to dependable laws of nature ‘up above.’ The fact that this triangle lines up so perfectly is astonishing. But Christians should not be surprised. Jesus, our Maker, sustains the universe (Hebrews 1:3) and at the same time has entered our world and assumed our humanity (John 1:14). He is the One who unites the laws ‘up above’, the world ‘out there’ and our minds ‘in here’. Faith, therefore, does not undermine science. Faith in Christ is the strongest possible foundation for scientific enquiry.

Mechanism and Maker

Science is wonderful at discovering mechanisms in nature. But understanding a mechanism does not rule out a Maker! If you explain the inner workings of a new contraption, I don’t say “Wonderful, now we can do without the inventor.” Instead I say “So that’s how they did it. Ingenius!” Same with science and God. We love to find out more of the mechanisms, but this should make us exalt our Maker, not exclude Him!

Pragmatics and Purpose

Professor of Mathematics, John Lennox often asks people to imagine a cake baked by Aunt Mildred. The cake is passed around various scientific departments. They discover 1001 facts about the cake’s nutritional content, it’s chemical and physical properties, they reverse engineer the recipe and replicate its tasty goodness. Wonderful! But can any of the scientists tell you why the cake was baked? No. For that you’d have to ask Aunt Mildred. Science is wonderful at answering the pragmatic questions: what? and how? It is simply not in a position to answer questions of purpose: why?

Evolution and Creation

Christians take different views on the question of evolution but some things we all agree on. Every creationist believes that natural selection happens – after all, from a single pair of cats on the ark we now have tabbies and tigers. At the same time no Christian evolutionist thinks natural selection explains everything about life. So we can all agree that natural selection happens while questioning its ability to explain the whole show.

For the sake of argument though, let’s imagine that random mutations and natural selection account for all the varieties of life on planet earth. This only explains the origin of the species. That’s as far as Darwin can take you. He cannot explain the origin of life itself (he must assume the origin of life). He cannot tell you the origin of the cosmos. And he cannot tell you the origin of consciousness. Those three origins questions are far more pressing, yet natural selection is no help for any of them. Science simply does not have a credible mechanism for explaining these deep issues. And even if it did, the mechanism would not disprove the Maker.