This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled
That's not very wise. Public representatives of Christ shouldn't be youths who pretend to be doing battle with Satan. They more than likely don't have the spiritual maturity necessary to keep safe from the subtleties of the greatest of the liars.I regularly get the opportunity to train groups of high school students in preparation for Berkeley Missions trips. These students spend four to eight weeks learning about the evidence supporting the Christian worldview and examining many of the most popular objections to Christianity.
And contrary to what you might think, your bible tells you that Satan is a master deceiver. Your impressing spiritual babies with your one-dollar apologetics crap is not going to adequately prepare them for spiritual warfare, which is what the NT says is really going on when Christians witness for Christ.
By the way, there is zero NT precedent for equipping children to defend the gospel. You are just blindly assuming, without evidence or argument, that Jude 3 applies to kids just as much as it applies to adults. Common sense says because Satan has America strongly deceived, the person who chooses to go battle with the prince of darkness probably needs to have just a bit more spiritual maturity and theological knowledge than what your 60-second answers can stuff into the underdeveloped brains of teenagers.
You may say teens were considered not kids but adults in the 1st century, but your problem is what your teen audience is like TODAY. TODAY, teens are not as mature as they were centuries ago when the world's sins weren't being flashed into their brains ever second of the day, as happens in today's sick consumerist America.
Paul didn't even think certain adults should be publicly taught:
34 The women are to keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but are to subject themselves, just as the Law also says.But if modern American Christianity is correct about equal rights for women, then this is one of those bible verses that doesn't apply to you today because the culture has changed. That's foolish, of course, as nothing in the context expresses or implies that Paul's comment there was only made out of regard for the particular Corinthian culture. Consistent with Paul's other teachings, Paul did not believe women should be taught publicly, any known exceptions merely proving the general rule. Women in the first century also were generally disallowed from speaking in the synagogue, so viewing Paul here as a mysoginist is at least more reasonable than the transparently hollow "cultural" interpretation that gets rid of this bothersome requirement.
35 If they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church. (1 Cor. 14:34-35 NAU)
But for now the point is that if Paul thought even some adults should not be publicly taught, it is fairly certain that he also wouldn't approve of publicly teaching religion to children (i.e., spiritual babies). Why? Because such people can ask hard questions and turn the public lesson into the forbidden "wrangling of words" which Paul said harms everybody else that might be present (2nd Timothy 2:14).
And if your spiritual warriors were honest with themselves and with you, they'd have admitted that their having grown up in the faith, or having done the church thing because their friend invited them to start becoming involved in church life, was a major motivating factor. Sorry, but genuine salvation requires genuine remorse, and it's a rare teen that truly feels guilty, and even rareer is the teen who is trying to feel guilty about transgressing something written in an ancient holy book. They have a hard enough time feeling guilty about transgressing modern-day law!When we are early in the process, I begin by asking the students to tell me why they are Christians in the first place.
I spent 15 years of my young adult life convinced Christianity was the only true religion, and I only became an atheist after examining the evidence for the eyewitness authorship of the New Testament Gospels (among other developments). Go ahead, google it: there are scores of atheist bible critics who honestly admit that back when they were Christians, it was when they started doing more scholarly studies in biblical issues, that their faith started wavering.I spent most of my life convinced theism was little more than a useful delusion, and I only became a believer after examining the evidence for the eyewitness reliability of the New Testament Gospels.
Objectivity would demand that you also admit you are a salesman, and you like the whole idea of selling Jesus for profit without paying taxes, an enterprise wherein you ironically make yourself the center of the discussion while trying to convince people that they should fix their gaze only upon Jesus.As a result, when people ask me why I am a Christian today, I briefly outline the evidence I found persuasive.
With one group of students, however, when I asked the students to tell me why they were Christians, I didn’t get a single evidential response. Most had difficulty answering the question at all, and those who did sounded like members of the Mormon Church.
An excellent reason for you to identify such "Christians" as spiritually immature at best, and in no condition to be "equipped to defend the gospel", given that the NT describes this not as an intellectual exercise, but as doing battle with the most dark force in the cosmos. If you wouldn't give a baby a shotgun...
You are not so subtley implying that mere prayer is insufficient to achieve salvation or other Christian objectives. The NT disagrees with your shit-attitude:I didn’t know a lot of Christians growing up; I was surrounded by atheists and Mormon family members. I have six fantastic half-brothers and sisters who were raised in the LDS (Latter Day Saints) Church. Many are still committed to Mormonism and happy to share their faith. But if you ask them why they are believers, you’ll get many of the same answers I received with the high school students in the Berkeley training. “I prayed about it and God confirmed it was true,”
16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. (Jas. 5:16 NAU)
Will you trifle that because James said this in the context of healing, that therefore, the effective fervent prayer of a righteous man doesn't accomplish much when directed toward other issues?
Wallace continues:
Subjective feelings of god's presence are legitimized by the bible:“I have a relationship with God and I feel His presence,”
13 Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Rom. 15:13 NAU)Wallace continues:
That sort of shit is also biblical:“I had a strong experience that changed my life,”
2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. (Rom. 12:2 NAU)Wallace continues:
9 But if I say, "I will not remember Him Or speak anymore in His name," Then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire Shut up in my bones; And I am weary of holding it in, And I cannot endure it. (Jer. 20:9 NAU)
Subjective feelings of certitude, which are not easily explained to others, is also biblical:“I just know it is true,”
26 In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; (Rom. 8:26 NAU)
14 For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. (1 Cor. 14:14 NAU)Wallace continues:
Being a Christian because that's always been what your family was involved in, is biblical:“I was raised in the Church and I’ve never had a reason to question it; God has always been a part of my life,”
1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. (Eph. 6:1 NAU)
1 It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do.
2 An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,
3 not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money.
4 He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity (1 Tim. 3:1-4 NAU)
Wallace continues:
Any morally good difference counts as a biblically justified excuse to believe one is saved:“I know it’s true because my life is very different now.”
17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. (2 Cor. 5:17 NAU)Wallace continues:
These are all great responses and I want to be careful not to minimize the importance or validity of experiential evidence. But when I heard these kinds of answers offered as justification by the Christian students in our group, I asked them: “Do you believe Mormonism is true?” Many of these students had already been on the Utah Missions trip, so they understood the dramatic difference between the claims of Mormonism and the claims of Christianity. They all confirmed they did not believe Mormonism was true and immediately recognized the problem with their responses.
Then they also recognized the problem with the bible verses that justify their subjective beliefs, supra.
Which can only mean you do not think the Holy Spirit moves in Christians today, unless they demonstrate the empirical validity of their beliefs. Sorry, that's not in the spirit of 1st century Christianity. That's in the spirit of some modern evangelical who didn't notice that making everything into an "argument" leaves no room to attribute reasonable significance to the Holy Spirit's alleged invisible convicting-work. According to you, the Holy Spirit does do anything when a Christian is testifying...unless the Christian can demonstrate satisfaction of modern-day criteria for authenticating historical documents. If the age of miracles has passed, that's your problem, and it likely means a) Acts is no longer a good blueprint for the church of today, and b) this deficiency in Acts has probably gone unnoticed by most Christians who "believe the bible".The manner in which they had been measuring and evaluating their beliefs about God was insufficient.
Which creates for you a problematic possibility that the reason they came to Christ without apologetics is because the Holy Spirit actually doesn't need apologetics to do what he does...which would mean god needs you and your arguments about as much as you need Pepsi.None of them had ever examined the evidence for Christianity.
And unless you condemn that way of salvation, the fact that they became genuinely born again, unrelated to apologetics, proves that the Holy Spirit is much less interested in apologetics than you are.They were what I refer to as “Accidental Christians,” holding the correct and true view of the world, without actually knowing why it was the correct and true view of the world.
Which ought to tell you how deceptive religious faith can be. No evidence is never a problem. Where there's a will, there's a way, even if it doesn't involve evidence. And by your own testimony, such clouded thinking is even found in abundance in the typical mainstream Protestant churches which you personally believe are the closest thing to real Christianity on earth today.In all the years I’ve been in the midst of Mormon believers (both in my family and on the streets of Utah as a missionary) I’ve never once encountered a Mormon believer who told me he or she was a Mormon because of the evidence.
True, but you cannot pretend the problems with the various different versions of Joe Smith's first vision, are substantially greater than the differences between the 4 gospels. What's more likely, that Mark thought telling the readers how Jesus called the original disciples into service (Mark 1) was more important than what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount? Nah, Mark didn't "knowingly exclude" the Sermon on the Mount. He leaves it out more than likely because he didn't know Jesus said any such thing. And since Mark's ignorance was manifested this way when he wrote the gospel 25 years after Jesus died, his omission of the Sermon on the Mount and preference for other less significant stories is a bastard of a headache for inerrantists to "fix".It’s never happened. Mormonism cannot be supported by the historical evidence, especially when examined through the template I use for eyewitness reliability.
Not if my argument against Jesus' resurrection is considered.Christianity, however, is supported by the historical facts and can hold up under fair scrutiny.
Which should not bother them if they know their bible, since the bible doesn't condemn or sideline the validity of completely subjective experience the way today's Christian apologists do....and I draw the further conclusion that because Christian apologetics virtually obliterates the significance of completely subjective experience, this is where it deviates from NT teachings. Not saying the NT never requires apologetics, but only that those parts clash with the parts that justify inward feelings of salvation.When young believers are challenged in their university years, they will undoubtedly be questioned about their “epistemology” (their “theory of knowledge”). They’ll be asked not only about what they believe, but why and how they came to believe it.
I draw a final conclusion that if God really was god and had the magic fairy dust Ezra 1:1 says he has, then the best explanation for passages like Jude 3 would be completely naturalistic (i.e., god not only doesn't "need" you to give arguments, he likely doesn't even "want" you to give arguments). Sure, you can learn spiritual maturity by learning apologetics, but God can infuse the same into you by waving his Ezra 1:1 magic wand. If God wants to draw a family closer to him, he doesn't have to stand aside and allow a pedophile to rape their little girl to death and plunge the family into lifetime depression...he can just do his Ezra 1:1 wand-waving and that family will do or believe whatever he wants them to do or believe.
In the last analysis, the requirement to argue the case for Christ sounds more like what naturalistic men with false religion would require, not what a truly sovereign god would require. Your god is like the stupid dad who allows his young son to play with a chain saw and endure amputation, because dad thinks this extreme accident will work a greater good in the future and help keep his son humble when he grows up. FUCK YOU.
That’s why our answers have to be more than subjective; we must be prepared to make a defense to everyone who asks us to give an account for the hope that is in us (1 Peter 3:15), using objective evidence, just as Jesus often did.
Nevermind the fact that the need to do apologetics, as expressed in such passages, clashes with the fact that God could get anybody to believe anything he wanted with a wave of his magic Ezra 1:1 wand, and in doing so, preempt the vast majority, if not ALL, of the sin in the world thereby. So your god is sort of like the stupid man who fulfills his sexual desires by raping little girls instead of having consensual sex with adult women. He does things the stupid wasteful hurtful hard way that violates basic common sense, then demands that we stop asking questions when we notice what an unfair cocksucker he really is. Well fuck you, I'm asking questions and I won't be stopping anytime soon. I allow no exceptions for the big invisible man who lives in the sky and has an eternal inability to properly manage money.
Correct, because if YOU don't do anything, God certainly isn't going to do anything. Somebody either learns apologetics, or God cannot accomplished his salvific goals in the world.Our responses, as Christians, need to be very different than the responses offered by Mormons if we hope to influence a skeptical world and have the confidence necessary to survive in an ever more hostile cultural environment.
While Mormonism is ultimately false, you've gone too far here. If you don't think so, introduce your spiritual babies to organizations dedicated to demonstrating the historical and theological accuracy of the book of Mormon, such asClearly, the kinds of responses our Mormon friends and family members might offer are insufficient, because they ignore the objective evidence we, as Christians, would cite to demonstrate the falsity of Mormonism.
https://www.shields-research.org/
https://www.fairmormon.org/
Some Christian scholars admit mormon scholarship is becoming more and more formidable:
Our fourth conclusion is that at the academic level evangelicals are losing the debate with the Mormons. We are losing the battle and do not know it. In recent years the sophistication and erudition of LDS apologetics has risen considerably while evangelical responses have not.4 Those who have the skills necessary for this task rarely demonstrate an interest in the issues. Often they do not even know that there is a need. In large part this is due entirely to ignorance of the relevant literature.Source here.
Dr. James White is one of the more intellectual of the Christian apologists, and yet he took a rather brutal beating from a mormon scholar in an extended debate about the OT and monotheism. See
http://www.shields-research.org/Critics/A-O_01b.html
Wallace continues:
Maybe because the NT supports the wholly subjective experience thing just as much as it does the "apologetics" approach?Why then, would we, as Christian believers, take a similar approach to defending our own faith?
But more is not always better. Suggest you read Michah 6:8.We can offer so much more if we are only willing to familiarize ourselves with the evidence.
No doubt because the Holy Spirit is helpless without human beings.Our responses, as Christians, need to be very different than the responses offered by Mormons if we hope to influence a skeptical world and have the confidence necessary to survive in an ever more hostile cultural environment.
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