Here is what I wrote on my myspace, it is an apologetic rank….
I am a Christian training for ministry. That does not mean that I am a republican, nor does it mean I am some flaky evangelical who waves his hands around while crying to some stupid praise song written by some quack who doesn’t even know who Jesus is… I am a Christian by God’s doing, not my own. I am not better than others who currently are without Christ, I am just a reciepient of His grace, and the glory goes to Him. So why Christianity? “Everybody knows” it’s outdated, disproven, and that its morals are repressive right? Wrong. Unfortunately, modern folks are almost never taught about Logic, Philosophy, or what constitutes a coherent worldview which makes it increasingly difficult to discuss Christian truth today. This is also why in our culture people are increasingly dependant upon talking heads, radio personalities, and charismatic-smart-sounding people (ie Richard Dawkins) to shape their thinking. In our day and age a university ‘professor’ can stand in front of his pupils and declare with absolute assurance, “THERE IS NO ABSOLUTE TRUTH”, and rarely any students see the blatant logical cotradiction in that statement which renders the statements plausibility as impossible. Atheists can whine about there being no loving God in the world because of all of the evil and suffering, while the very existence of any objective morality depends on God’s existence in the first place to make moral distinctions possible. If there is no God, there is no morality, all you see around you are animals doing what they do. Saying morals are created by society or your own preferences is a non-statement, because that strips the very definition of morality of its ability to judge good or bad soceities or individuals orientations. I agree and know that evil exists, the only difference between you and I is that I (by grace) trust God’s wisdom and providence in allowing it, and finally judging it… you don’t. Concerning natural disasters; if for billions of years all there has been in the world is a massive orgy of death and sex, then why does nearly every human culture have a concept of a former paradise? Maybe the world used to be a paradise and now we deserve this traumatic world, a certain book seems to say so… Besides if there is no God, you would never be able know that He doesn’t exist anyways. If matter is ultimate, then my consciousness and yours is an illusion created by chemical reactions. My brain just so happens to “fizz” in a Christian way, and yours in a non-Christian way. The whole concept of thought and the ability to come to conclusions presupposes the ability of the mind to transcend. What room is there for transcendance in your worldivew? You say there is no logical reason to believe in God or the Bible, yet you first have to account for the laws of logic. How can universal, unchanging, abstract entities, which place THOUGHT as ultimate exist in a universe without a supreme thinking being (God), and consisting only of chaos and “chance” (as if thats actually a thing)? If you want to be stubborn and claim that the laws of logic AREN’T universal and unchanging then there is no truth. You cannot even know that there is no truth, because knowing that would be truth, get it? So before you start railing about the crusades, hypocrites in the church, how ‘mean’ God was in the Old Testament, or how hell is unjust, lets examine what foundation your standing upon because I guarantee that it’s the same one I’m standing upon, you just won’t admit it. In fact, you cannot avoid it because you are God’s creature, period (see my headline quote). There was a man who used to despise the Church and Christians more then you probably do, until he was converted by the ressurected Christ himself. He (named Paul) wrote this at the apex of his ministry to a group of Christians. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” (Romans 1:18-22) You see, this text says that all people everywhere know God. However, they suppress this truth until God’s grace overcomes their wills/thinking to turn them back to Him. God reveals Himself in scripture as an eternal, infinite, immutabile (unchanging), being who is one in essence yet three in person and therefore in a self-sufficient, perfect relationship with Himself. He provides the preconditions for the existence of life, personality, relationships, love, morality, logic, and knowledge within the world. Furthermore, one of Jesus’ disciples, named John, wrote in 90 AD that Jesus is the eternal logos (trasnlated: Word Jn 1:1-2) who “enlightens every man” (Jn 1:9). The Greek word Logos was used in Greek philosophy to refer to that ultimate principle or force in the universe which makes things orderly and rational, and therefore endows man with the ability to think and reason. However, John tells us that it is Jesus, the eternally generated Son of God who imposes His thoughts upon the world thereby giving men the light to think. Maybe you heard some televangelist with a mullet and a southern accent once tell you, that you needed, a “personal relationship with Jesus”. Well, if he would actually read his Bible, rather then shine his chicklet teeth in the mirror all day, he would find out that every human being already does have one… and it ain’t good! Later in the book of Romans (what was quoted above) Paul said, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to (literally: ‘at war with’) God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot” (Romans 8:7) See, no matter what your worldview is, your problem is not that you lack proof for God, but that you want to be Him or at least close to it. “But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:4). Man’s first fall came about for the quest for moral autonomy, and to this day the first forms of absolutes that man is willing to deny are moral absolutes. Why? So he can feel justified to do this… Paul continues… “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them (Romans 1:24-32).” This can be seen in many of the thinkers and philosophers who laid the bedrock for secularism and university education such as; Marx, Darwin, Freud, Neitzsche, Huxley, and Dewey rejected God a priori and many of them lived lifestyles that would cause the average person to preclude them from even babysitting their kids. Yet, their thinking literally fills the minds of our society and young students today. So in light of this I must sound pretty pessimistic… Not at all. Is all hopeless? No. “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4). The Second member of the Trinity became fully human while remeaning fully God in one person, a mystery known as the hypostatic union. He then took the role as the 2nd Adam (Romans 5:14-20), or the new federal head for those who will be saved. Therefore, He being God could not sin, and therefore did not and fulfilled the righteousness that was lost by Adam’s transgression. Furthermore, He bore the wrath of his people setting them free from the eternal punishment that is due to rebellious finite creatures who owe everything to their infinite Creator. “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life” (Romans 5:8-10) You must repent (abhor sin) and place you faith in Christ ALONE for salvation. Your ‘good works’ will not get you into heaven, because you cannot bribe an infinitely Holy and Just judge to let you off. Even our good works are tainted with false motives and pretenses. The prophet Isaiah wrote in 750BC that all our good works are like filthy rags (Is. 64:6). The Hebrew literally means ‘used menstraul cloths’. So before God all you have is a bucket of used tampons. Good luck with that. But you say I cannot believe this gospel non-sense, because we cannot be sure what Gospels were included and excluded. Nice try. But Christianity as a historical movement is the belief that Jesus Christ is the redeemer of God’s people, and the fulfillment of the promises to the Patriachs and to Israel. It is a Messianic Jewish movement, and the earliest Christians believed in Christ’s substitutionary death and ressurection. The apostle’s and earliests Christians were willing to, and did die mercilessly for their beliefs. We have the writings of the early Christians descended from the Apostles, they only believe what is outlined in the New Testament, and in fact quote it so extensively, that we could reconstruct the New Testament from their writings completely. Gnostic gospels came in almost a century after the death of the last apostles. It is an attempt to infiltrate a Greek concept of God and reality that is completely antithecal to Judaism, into Christianity. THEY were the ones who wanted to “edit the Bible”, as they simply borrowed material from the first century gospels and epistles and injected their own philosophies into them. And just because some councils declared what the canon is officially in the 4th century, in no way shows sinister motives than if a bunch of artists got together and held a council officially declaring that Van Gogh was a great painter. The Da Vinci Code and all this other nonsense is a last ditch attempt at a centuries old effort to discredit historic Christianity. But you say, “I would rather believe that, then this gospel foolishness about a man dying for us.” Well the Bible is two steps ahead of you. “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” (1 Corinthians 1:18-19) God has revealed himself to man through many different authors, in many genres of writing, over 1500 years. Its authenticity is demonstrated through its declaring the future before it happens, just read Isaiah 53 (www.biblegateway.com) for yourself and think about what I have told you of Jesus. So all I can say is what Dr. Cornelius Van Til said in his hypothetical conversation with an unbeliever, “So I can only undertake to show that, even if it does not appear reasonble to you, it is reasonable for you, to believe in God.” And it is with Him and His mercy that I leave you.
