Minds and Hearts

“You’ll never change anyone’s mind about God,” wrote Greg Koukl over at Stand to Reason recently. I completely agree with him. Even the most formidable apologists for the Christian faith never save anyone. It’s the Lord who opens blinded eyes and stopped ears. It’s the Holy Spirit of God who testifies along with our testimony. Without his work in the hearts of unbelievers, Christians are powerless to accomplish anything of eternal value. We are utterly dependent on him.

Let me give you a perfect example.

Evidence We Can Point To

Apologists gotta apologize.

You can’t blame them, really. It’s how apologists are made, and the body of Christ would not be complete or anywhere near so well defended if we didn’t have them. But sometimes, no matter how hard we want to demonstrate that some assertion we disagree about in scripture is intellectually, historically, scientifically or factually defensible, we are going to hit a wall.

Too Hot to Handle: The Good, the Bad and the Godly

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Plato is among the most influential figures in philosophical thought. He is an absolute giant, and it would difficult to overestimate the extent to which his writing has shaped the Western mindset.

That being understood, unless you have studied theology or philosophy, you may find it hard to understand how a 2,400-year-old dialogue has any relevance at all to the question of whether God exists. And yet one question posed by Socrates in Plato’s Euthyphro is still bandied about online regularly.

Too Hot to Handle: The Virtual Soapbox

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

IC and I watched a video the other day. Not in the same room, because we live many miles apart and can’t get together as often as we’d like. But we share many interests and tend to bounce links back and forth, and this was one of them.

I’d like to think we could learn something from it.

Tom: IC, I think we might be better off leaving out the names of the principals, because I’m going to be blunt about issues that have to do with body language and manner, as opposed to the content of a man’s argument, and since ‘the internet is forever’, I’d rather not go on record with those sorts of criticisms of people whose overall Christian testimony and handling of the word of God I respect and value. Cool?

Dear Dinesh: On Evil and Suffering

[Dinesh D’Souza is a writer, scholar, filmmaker and Christian apologist.]

Dear Dinesh:

Thank you very, very much for your 2007 book, What’s So Great About Christianity? I regret having not gotten around to reading it earlier. What a fine piece of writing!

It seems to me it fills a very necessary gap in our growing corpus of apologetics literature: rather than merely defeating atheist reasoning (yet again), it rightly points to the need for a more positive take on Christian achievements. It is an apology without an “apologetic” tone, if you take my meaning; a confident treatise on the goods of faith, rather than a defensive reaction to the current round of atheist hate literature. More of this is what we need.

In the spirit of supporting that, I wonder if I could offer a thought that might further strengthen the case you are so courageously putting forward?

Brains With Feet

I was reading a book on apologetics, a collection of essays. It had one by Sean McDowell. Yes, that Sean McDowell, son of the more famous Josh McDowell. (How tired he must be of hearing that!)

Anyway, I’ve read a few McDowell books, and from the first moment I opened one, I remember feeling a vague sense of … what was it? ... a sort of vague ‘missing’.

Too Hot to Handle: Tearing Down Strongholds

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

[Editor’s note: When we were young we used to play road hockey. Now we do this. I missed out on this particular email discussion, but I thought the rest of you might enjoy it as much as I did when I woke up to find it in my inbox. And yes, I got called out for not participating, but these days I will take sleep whenever I can get it.]

Bernie: Okay, bear with me ...

Assumptions and Loaded Conversations

Back in 2012, NBA Commissioner David Stern caught flack for cracking an old joke in an interview with Jim Rome. Rome asked him if the NBA lottery was rigged. Stern came back with, “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?”

Of course, this immediately got him into trouble with the PC set, who took him to be making fun of the very serious issue of wife abuse. I can sympathize with their ire; but in fairness, I think it’s not what Stern was trying to say. He was actually referring to an old (admittedly somewhat tasteless) joke. I think I first read it on a bubble gum wrapper when I was a kid, and I remember seeing it in other places as well. It was one of those things that was “just around”. The joke went like this:

Question: What’s a question you cannot answer either “Yes” or “No”?

Answer: Have you stopped beating your wife yet?

Perhaps Stern and I chewed the same gum, I don’t know.

A Profound Apology

So I was supervising some young Christians, along with at least one unbeliever. They were viewing an apologetics video. It was one that had been professionally produced — you know, the kind that had enough money put into it to reasonably approximate Hollywood or TED Talk production values. Their local church had made it available, off that Christian video-streaming service that some churches seem to like.

The topic was “Why Does God Allow Suffering and Tragedy?”

What a great topic, I thought. Whether you’re a Christian or an unbeliever, that’s got to be something you’ve asked yourself, because you don’t live long in this world without running into some kind of suffering. If you’re fortunate, it’s small; but it’s astonishing how huge the things some children face can be.

Too Hot to Handle: Faith in the Crosshairs

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

The website GodIsImaginary is an interesting study.

As you might guess from the title, it’s the work of evangelical atheists attempting to lure gullible Christians into the spiritual equivalent of a Venus flytrap. The bait is a little bit of flattery: “I’m going to assume you are an educated Christian”, “You are a smart person. You know how the world works, and you know how to think critically.”

It’s quite a clever move actually. For once, they’ve dialed back the mockery and abuse atheists can rarely resist in the interest of catching more flies with honey.

Too Big for Its Boots

“For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.”

A “lofty opinion” is a theological argument that is too big for its boots. The Greek word from which we get the expression is hypsōma, which means an elevated structure. Rightly recognizing the apostle is speaking of metaphorical heights, other English translations use the expression “pretension” or “presumption”, “proud obstacle” or “speculation”.

Anonymous Asks (58)

“How can I witness to peers who have intelligent answers to all my arguments for Christianity?”

At some point we all hit the upper end of our capacity to effectively persuade others with dialectical arguments. Education, IQ, maturity, grasp of relevant facts, logical mindset, time spent in the word of God and life experience are all “ceilings” of a sort. Limitations in these areas, understandable or otherwise, create a barrier beyond which we become significantly less persuasive when we try to make the case for the gospel to people on the higher end of each spectrum.

Some of these barriers may be hurdled with sufficient time, prayer and hard work; others, like IQ, are pretty much hardwired whether we like it or not.

Dear Dinesh: On Evil and Suffering

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Too Hot to Handle: The Good, the Bad and the Godly

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Assumptions and Loaded Conversations

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Brains With Feet

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Too Hot to Handle: The Virtual Soapbox

The most recent version of this post is available here.

A Profound Apology

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Dear Dinesh: On Evil and Suffering

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Assumptions and Loaded Conversations

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Too Hot to Handle: Faith in the Crosshairs

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Brains With Feet

The most current version of this post is available here.

A Profound Apology

The most recent version of this post is available here.

One Bad Argument Deserves Another

Sometimes better to add nothing ...

The creation/evolution debate goes on, but maybe a little less publicly than before.

In my lifetime, evolution has become the preferred ideology for those seeking election to public office and the only broadly acceptable “scientific” explanation of origins. Even an increasing number of evangelicals are buying in.

As Neil Carter puts it, “Scientists are no longer debating the topic of common ancestry nor the age of the earth. That ship sailed a long time ago”.

Which is too bad, really. Truth does not cease to be truth because people have stopped discussing it and, for the most part, abandoned the search for it.

Quote of the Day (8)

You can probably find every subject in the world being discussed somewhere in the blogosphere, along with just about every aspect of Christian living.

But my favourite exchange of the day? Haus Frau has a legitimate question about how best to respond to advocates of Christian homosexuality who seek to disqualify Paul on the subject.

Assumptions and Loaded Conversations

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Missing Links

The other day in a piece entitled “Top 10 Ways To Argue Like A Christian”, I mentioned that my ten choices were far from exhaustive. So far from exhaustive that I thought of another one almost immediately but, you know, ten is such a nice round number.

But another important facet of presenting an argument, while not specifically Christian, is just all-around good form and decent, respectful behavior. It relates particularly to internet discussions and arguments, but has application any time we take on a published assertion of fact or point of view.

So, mind if I add an eleventh?