Death as a Key to the Meaning of Life

Death as a Key to the Meaning of Life

Sep 3, 2025 | Apologetics

I’m not a real big fan of this whole mortality thing. Apparently nobody else isn’t either given death is the ever present reality most people do everything they can to ignore. Death is like the FBI knocking on your door in the middle of the night and responding, “I don’t hear anything.” I’m the guy saying, “What? It sounds like an army! Are you nuts!” Nonetheless, most people just don’t want to deal with it until they have to, one way or the other. Even at a funeral most people are thinking, unconsciously no doubt, “I’m glad that’s not me.” All the while knowing one day it will be, sooner rather than later. Even those who make it to a hundred think it’s coming way too soon. I can imagine your average centenarian thinking as death approaches, “But, I was just born!” If you’re under 40 you won’t get that, but one day you will.

So, I am going to address the most important and least popular subject known to man, going in as Alexander Pope may have said, as a fool “where angels fear to tread.” Of course angels have never had the pleasure of experiencing death, but from the moment of our conception we are condemned to die. Something, I can attest, you do not want to bring up to your newly pregnant daughter. Way to be a buzz kill, Pops! Yes, I really did that, I confess. Me and Woody Allen aren’t so different after all. Of course we come to different conclusions in the face of the inevitable, and that’s what this little discourse into the intolerable elephant in the room is really about—hope.

Scripture and the Resurrection
Recently we had a shocking death in our extended family, and the next morning in my reading I was providentially at Iasiah 25 where I read these hopeful words:

7 On this mountain he will destroy
the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
8     he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears
from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
from all the earth.
The Lord has spoken.

9 In that day they will say,

“Surely this is our God;
we trusted in him, and he saved us.
This is the Lord, we trusted in him;
let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.”

I’ve been on a resurrection scripture memory kick of late because as much as I believe in the resurrection and everything Paul says about in I Corinthians 15, I still find it difficult to believe it’s all true.

(A brief apologetics excursion. One of my favorite means of defending the veracity of Christianity is something I call the consideration of the alternative. If something isn’t true, then some alternative must be; there is no in between. So, whenever I wonder about our resurrection or life after death, I look outside. The creation screams of God’s existence and Romans 1:20 comes to mind:

20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so people are without excuse.

It’s impossible that it’s all a product of chance, which it would have to be if atheistic materialism is true. That is today by far the least plausible alternative. Pantheism, that God is everything, is almost as implausible, and that’s the only other alternative. So theism is the only explanation for the world and everything in it, and Christianity is the most plausible theistic religion, again, by far. Back to death, or our victory over it.)

Meditating on the resurrection verses in Scripture is comforting because it’s apparent the bringing of our dead physical bodies back to life eternal was God’s plan from the beginning. Let’s take a look at some of these passages.

Job 25
25 I know that my redeemerlives,
and that in the end he will stand on the earth.
26 And after my skin has been destroyed,
yetinmy flesh I will see God;
27 I myself will see him
with my own eyes—I, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me.

Psalm 71
20 Though you have made me see troubles,
many and bitter,
you will restore my life again;
from the depths of the earth
you will again bring me up.
21 You will increase my honor
and comfort me once more.

Isaiah 26
19 But your dead will live, Lord;
their bodies will rise—
let those who dwell in the dust
wake up and shout for joy—
your dew is like the dew of the morning;
the earth will give birth to her dead.

Daniel 12
But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered. 2 Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. 3 Those who are wisewill shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.

Hosea 6
“Come, let us return to the Lord.
He has torn us to pieces
but he will heal us;
he has injured us
but he will bind up our wounds.
2 After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will restore us,
that we may live in his presence.

Revelation 21
3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

John in this passage was almost certainly thinking of Isaiah 25.

John 11
Lastly, I will comment one the most powerful passage in all of Scripture that proves beyond any reasonable doubt that our resurrection will happen and life after death in our physical bodies is a certain reality. Jesus has finally come to Bethany after allowing Lazarus to die. Before he got there he told his disciples his friend was sick, but he delayed going so Lazarus would die. He said the reason was “for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it,” and that they might believe.

When they get there the sisters of Lazarus are distraught and ask why he didn’t get there sooner—he could have healed Lazarus. Martha still believes God will do whatever Jesus asks, and he tells her, “Your brother will rise again.” She replies, yes “he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” But Jesus has isn’t talking about that. And his reply is something that if it isn’t true is not only cruel, but it would mean Jesus was a liar. As we’ll see in a moment, however, a liar doesn’t bring a dead man back to life.

25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though he die; 26 and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Who says something like this! Either an absolute lunatic madman, or God and the Savior of the world. The latter is the only thing that makes sense.

Then we come to the part of the story that can only be explained by its being true. My contention is that nobody could make this up, let alone a first century Jew. The Messiah they were all expecting did not have this kind of power. When Jesus is taken to the tomb to see where they laid Lazarus we have the shortest verse in the Bible, “Jesus wept.” John also tells us, twice, that Jesus was “deeply moved.” Strong’s gives us the extended meaning of that phrase:

From en and brimaomai (to snort with anger); to have indignation on, i.e. (transitively) to blame, (intransitively) to sigh with chagrin, (specially) to sternly enjoin — straitly charge, groan, murmur against.

In other words, in the not so polite vernacular, Jesus was pissed! At what, you might ask. Death! It’s wrong, it’s ugly, it’s horrible, an aberration, the apex of his creation experiencing the most horrible humiliating form of demise and decay. But this brings us to another powerful apologetics point. Why would Jesus be angry knowing in a few minutes he would bring Lazarus back to life? That makes no sense whatsoever, unless the entire story is true. As we say, also in the vernacular, you can’t make this stuff up! The reason Jesus did it was to give them, and us living 2000 years later, evidence that they might believe it was God the Father who sent him. Our hope is solid and secure, so as Paul tells us, that when we encounter death we “may not grieve as others do who have no hope” (I Thess. 4:13).

How Do We Explain Death?
I’ve long thought of death as the great question mark. In the history of the world, religions and philosophies have arisen to answer the Big Questions of life: Why are we here? Why is there evil? Why is there death? What is our destiny? Modern secular man is unique in all of history in that he is determined to not ask such questions. Why are we here? Who cares. Eat, drink, and be merry . . . . Evil and death? Just deal with it, or try to escape it if you can. Somebody’s bound to find the fountain of youth eventually. Destiny? Dirt. What an inspiring vision for life! Yet in the 20th century secularism became the dominant worldview of the entire Western world, including much of Asia. All that matters is this life, and it is assumed we can’t know anything beyond that, so why waste your time speculating when everyone disagrees about it anyway. Yet these questions persist because of the great question mark.

I never thought I’d see the great Berlin Wall of secularism fall. Like the real wall separating free from communist Germany in the Cold War, secularism is also built on lies, and lies are ultimately unsustainable. Liars can get away with it for a short time, but eventually lies reveal themselves for what they are: not the truth. Death, it turns out, is the implacable foe is secularism. Like Jesus, every human being knows it’s wrong, ugly, and that it shouldn’t be. In fact, every animal and bug knows it too. Why do you think it is that pesky fly or mosquito does everything it can to keep you from crushing it? It doesn’t want to die! When your typical secular agnostic person goes to a funeral of someone who lived to be a hundred, death is easier to ignore; they lived a good long life, let’s celebrate it. But if they go to the funeral of a five year old? This is wrong! This shouldn’t happen! The question haunts them. But they shove it down and move on with their secular life.

Given the dominant media culture is secular, including our entertainment, programming to ignore the Big Questions is everywhere, and effective. A great example of how pernicious this is comes from your typical TV show or movie. There are no angry atheists denouncing God, but God is pretty much invisible, persona non grata. That’s much more effective. The average viewer without even thinking comes away with the impression that God is irrelevant to life. Thus secularism perpetuates itself. Yet something surprising is happening in this third decade of the 21st century—secularism is dying. Even if secular people are inclined not to ask the Big Questions, in the depths of their being everyone is looking for meaning, hope, and purpose. They will try to squeeze them out of this life, but that’s becoming increasingly difficult. The Berlin Wall of secularism is crackin’ bad

Most people don’t realize secularism is a several hundred year experiment in Western culture that isn’t working out quite like planned. Religion supposedly created all the strife in the world, if we just get rid of religion, or completely personalize it so it’s invisible in society, harmony and peace will reign. It hasn’t quite worked out like that. Not to mention that the Big Questions won’t go away, and secularism has no answers, as in zip, zero, nada, as in none. Evil? Deal with it. Death? Too bad. Why are we here? Who cares, just get all you can, and can all you get. Without God, specifically the God of the Bible, the questions are unanswerable. Death and evil are the most persistent and unanswerable of the questions. If you look at world religions, none attempt to answer why they exist. We are born into a world in which they exist, so religions developed to try to deal with all the pain and suffering of life. Only one religion has a plausible answer as to why they do.

The Problem of Evil and Death
Ever since the French Philosopher Voltaire blamed the great 1755 Lisbon earthquake on God, more or less, evil and death have been the problem for Christians. When it is referred to as “the problem of evil,” it is assumed to be a problem only for Christians. Which is ironic given Christianity is the only religion or explanation for existence that offers any answers that makes sense. Like I said, other religions don’t attempt to answer why they exist, but just accept that they do and try to deal with them. The atheist, secularist, irreligious have presumed since Voltaire that they don’t have to address the problem because it isn’t a problem for their worldview. But it’s a big, huge problem, and one they have no answer for. If you get rid of God, does that make evil and death any more palatable? Does a God-less universe help us make any more sense of all the senseless pain and suffering in the world? Make sense of the wickedness of man? It does not.

The only atheist response is, deal with it. In philosophical terms evil and death are just brute facts. They simply are and have no reason for their existence and no purpose beyond our trying to avoid them, and when we can’t, making our lives miserable. They are simply unfortunate and meaningless events in our unfortunate and meaningless existence. No wonder atheism in all of world history is a very tough sell. Nineteenth century German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, an atheist, believed religion was a way for human beings to deal with evil and death; it was merely projection. As Marx put it, religion was the “opium of the masses.” Yet he, like other atheists after him, felt the slightest need to in any way prove that we in fact do live in a God-less universe. For them it is so obvious it need not be proved. They like most secularists believed that as science and knowledge advanced, religion would lose all credibility and wither on the vine. It hasn’t quite worked out that way.

Another way to refer to the problem of evil is theodicy. The word has God in it, in Greek theos, so it developed as a vindication of God’s goodness and power, but every worldview must have a theodicy. Atheism on that account fails miserably. This could not be said any better than by William Shakespeare himself. In the face of a God-less universe who could argue with this:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Christianity, on the other hand, has a perfectly plausible explanation, whether someone accepts it or not. We read the story in Genesis 1-3, which, by the way, is the only explanation anywhere in all of history of why evil exists. The beauty of the story is that it is perfectly plausible, unlike other ancient pagan myths. God created man, male and female he created them, perfectly good. He gave them one command to assure their obedience and loyalty to him, to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And what was his warning if they did? “For when you eat from it you will certainly die.” As we know Eve was deceived by the serpent, ate, and Adam went along for the ride. Everything went to hell in that moment. We only get one chapter in, and murder rears its ugly head as Cain kills his brother Abel. And it has been thus ever since. We can see this drama play out in the life of every human being because as Solzhenitsyn said, “the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” Everyone knows this is true. Genesis 1-3 tells us why.

Lastly, only Christianity offers a solution, as indicated by all the hopeful passages above. We find that in God’s promise immediately after Adam and Eve’s rebellion, as if God had it planned all along. He tells them,

15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”

We learn in due course that this offspring, seed in Hebrew indicating one person, was Jesus Christ, who would once and for all deal with the problem of evil, of sin, suffering, and death. He rose from the dead to confirm the victory promised here, and ascended to the right hand of God to rule through his Holy Spirit to bring it all to pass.

 

Nietzsche and Why It’s OK to Eat Your Neighbor

Nietzsche and Why It’s OK to Eat Your Neighbor

Dec 4, 2024 | Apologetics, Uncategorized

I bet you never thought cannibalism and Nietzsche would go together, but they do, quite nicely. I might never have put those two together, but I heard Gary DeMar discuss his book, Why It Might Be OK to Eat Your Neighbor, on his podcast. This subtitle gives us the apologetics focus of the book: If Atheism is Right Can Anything Be Wrong?

I’ll start with my own question. What sets Christianity apart from every other religion and worldview and philosophy on earth?

The answer is as simple as it is profound: It is true, and everything else is not.

If it is not true, as Paul says about the resurrection, we are to be pitied more than all people. That I believed Christianity is the ultimate truth about the nature of reality is the only reason I became a Christian way back in the fall of 1978, exactly 46 years ago as I write this. At the time I couldn’t tell you why I believed it was true, but God seemed entirely too obvious to dismiss. Growing up Catholic I was, thankfully, given a Christian worldview, and the reality I experienced as a teenager for me confirmed that worldview. So, when I was presented the gospel in a college Dorm room in Best Hall at Arizona State University, I believed it immediately. It would be a couple years before I would get my introduction to apologetics, or the defense of the Christian faith.

If you’re not familiar with that term, you should be. We live in a post-Christian thoroughly secular culture that tells us in ways big and small, overtly and covertly, that Christianity is not the truth, but one spiritual option among many and all of them are valid. Well, no they are not, which I’ll get to in a moment. First the word, apologetics. We get the word from Peter in chapter 3 of his first epistle:

15 But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect . . . .

The word for defense in Greek, apologia-ἀπολογία, means “a verbal defense (particularly in a law court).” This means Peter is commanding his readers, and by extension every Christian throughout all time, to not only know what we believe, but why we believe it. Apologetics, as the theological discipline of defending the veracity of Christianity is called, is not just for certain Christians of an intellectual bent. If you can’t tell your friends or family members why you believe Christianity is the truth, then you need to get to work and invest some time in figuring that out. The resources today online are endless, as are books and articles easily available. Before I get to Nietzsche, I came across a short clip on Twitter that is a great illustration about why apologetics is so necessary even as it is so rare among Christians.

Kid Rock was on Joe Rogan’s podcast which is viewed or listened to by 10 to 15 million people, and Rogan asks the Kid if he could go back in history where he would go, and Rock says, “Jesus.” Rogan asks him why he believes it and Rock says . . . . faith. We need to get Kid Rock some training in apologetics because he obviously he believes in Christianity for the exact same reason I did and do, it’s the truth, but all he could say is, faith, that he just believes it. There is so much evidence for the veracity of Christianity, historical, textual, philosophical, archeological, that Rock could have spent hours telling Rogan exactly why he believes Christianity is the truth.

The Nature of Faith
Which brings us to faith. Many people today in our secular world think of faith as a specifically religious word for believing in something just because you want to, but that is a shallow modern definition of faith. In fact, faith is something we use every day of our lives or we wouldn’t get out of bed. I define faith as trust based on adequate evidence, thus faith is not a specifically religious concept. Faith basically means trust, and when we exercise faith we generally do it with justified warrant. That is, there is enough evidence to justify putting my trust in something or someone.

Think of driving down a two‑lane road going 50 miles per hour, and another car coming toward you at the same speed. That’s a closure rate of 100 miles per hour. If the other car swerves into your lane, there will be a lot of damage. And maybe death. How do you know that car will stay on its side of the road? You don’t; you have faith that it will. What evidence do you have for such trust? You know that people generally stay on their side of the road. You trust that the person driving the vehicle has a license and got adequate training to operate several thousand pounds of metal at high speed. You trust that the state does a good job of policing its roads. And so on. Do you know any of this? Nope. How about the food you eat? Will it kill you? Do you know it won’t? Nope. How about the dentist or doctor you see? Do you know they won’t harm you? Nope.

This is a discussion about epistemology, or the study of knowing and knowledge. I challenge a specific definition of knowing: that to “know” a thing is to be absolutely certain about it, and that we can only “know” via our reason. Rene Descartes (1596‑1650) was the philosopher who introduced the poison of equating knowledge with absolute certainty in Western thought. If you’re familiar with my work, you’ll know Descartes appears often, maybe too often, but he was a fulcrum point of Western culture from Christian to post-Christian secular culture. It would take several hundred years for this bacillus to infect the entire culture, but in the 21st century secularism is the default worldview. So to average Westerners, like Kid Rock and Joe Rogan, faith equals religion because it’s not something that can be known with absolute certainty, like science or the laws of nature, math, etc., things you can observe and measure.

I’ve noticed over the years many Christians are the mirror image of atheists in this regard. They tend to think absolute certainty is necessary to justify their beliefs, and thus they deny what is obvious: they are finite. It almost seems silly for me to write that sentence. Who would not admit they are finite, limited in every way imaginable? Daniel Taylor writes about the downside of demanding certainty in his book, The Myth of Certainty:

Ironically, the insistence on certainty destroys its very possibility. The demand for certainty inevitably creates its opposite—doubt. Doubt derives its greatest strength from those who fear it most. Unwisely glorified as the primary way to truth by many secularists, it is equally unwisely feared by many in Christendom as truth’s mortal enemy.

Such an unhealthy fear of doubt is what happens when you base your epistemology on a false anthropology and psychology, i.e., that human reason is capable of achieving knowledge of an absolute sort. There is only one being who has such knowledge and certainty, and He would be the Creator of it all.

The implication of this is that there is no such thing as an unbeliever, and thus everyone lives by faith. One of my pet peeves is Christians calling people believers and unbelievers. The word “believers” is all over Acts, but Luke and those he was writing to and who read it knew exactly who he was talking about, Christians. We, on the other hand live in a post-Christian secular culture so using the phrase believer/unbeliever allows secular people, like Joe Rogan, to think faith is just a religious thing. As of yet he can’t muster up the faith to become a Christian, not realizing he’s a person of faith every bit as much as a Christian. Which brings us to . . . .

 

It’s a cookbook!!!

Since all people live by faith, the only reason cannibalism doesn’t exist anymore is faith, specifically the Christian faith. Secular people fail to realize moral values, what they consider right and wrong, come from faith, come from some belief of some people somewhere. Of course, most people never give this a second thought, it just is. As an easy example, they think obviously slavery is wrong. They think, isn’t it obvious owning another human being is evil? Well, no, it’s actually not obvious at all. In fact, for all of recorded history until very recently (the 19th century), slavery was a common fact of everyday life for people all over the earth. The reason there is nothing in the New Testament about the evils of slavery and calls for its abolition is because it was obvious to everyone at the time that slavery was a normal part of human existence. Paul implies it is good for slaves to get their freedom, but never indicates slavery is a moral wrong.

That only happened in due course because as it became apparent Jesus wasn’t returning as soon as Christians had hoped, church leaders and Christian thinkers realized they had to grapple with the implications of the Christian faith for society. These implications were profound because the competing moral system of the day was paganism. In fact, even as enlightened and brilliant as the ancient Greeks were, they were still polytheistic pagans. Aristotle, for example, believed women and slaves were inferior beings and deserved their lesser status in life. To say to any ancient person prior to the diffusion of Christianity throughout the world that all human beings were ontologically equal would have been considered absurd. Very few modern people in the West (which is most of the world at this point), have any idea their entire moral value system of liberalism is built upon Christianity and would not have existed without it. They are fed lies through their secular education and media that this value system is a result of the Enlightenment, but the Enlightenment only came into being because of Christianity.

An important book for Christian apologetics in the 21st century was written by a non-Christian, British historian Tom Holland. It’s called, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. His story is a fascinating one. He always loved history, and found as he grew up and became a scholar he wanted to learn everything he could about the ancient Greeks and Romans. For various reasons the ancient world appealed to him, but as his career progressed something happened. As he studied the ancient world he realized he had nothing in common with them. In his own words:

It was not just the extremes of callousness that unsettled me, but the complete lack of any sense that the poor or the weak might have the slightest intrinsic value. Why did I find this disturbing? Because, in my morals and ethics, I was not a Spartan or a Roman at all. . . . Assumptions I had grown up with—about how a society should properly be organized, and the principles that it should uphold—were not bred of classical antiquity, still less of ‘human nature’ but very distinctively of that civilization’s Christian past.

Almost every person in the world today fails to realize we’re not cannibals, to use the most extreme example, because of Jesus of Nazareth, who died on a Roman cross, was buried, and whose followers claimed rose bodily, physically from the dead. As Holland adds:

So profound has been the impact of Christianity on the development of Western civilization that it has come to be hidden from view.

As in completely invisible.

The Moral Argument Simplified
Have you ever asked yourself the question, why is anything right or wrong, good or evil? The simple answer is God. In fact, the only answer is God. If atheistic materialism is true, as absurd as that is to contemplate, there can be no right and wrong, good or evil. The reason? If the material is all there is, if all we are is lucky dirt, you can’t get moral values from dirt. Another way of saying it is, you can’t get ought from is. In other words, I cannot infer cannibalism, or slavery, or murder, or adultery, or homosexuality, or lying, or theft, etc., are wrong just from material reality. Certainly, they are unpleasant, or delude us for a time, but we only know they are wrong, and ultimately lead to disaster, because God has revealed it to us, primarily in his word, but also in the created order and our consciences.

If, on the other hand, there is no God, right and wrong, good and evil, are mere preferences, like my preference in ice cream, or which sports teams I support. I once asked my brother-in-law if what we consider good or evil are mere preferences, and he said yes, like almost all modern secular would. So I asked him if Hitler butchering six million Jews was a preference, like whether he liked vanilla or chocolate ice cream. He got kind of a sick look on his face. He immediately intuited that no, choosing to commit genocide on a race of people isn’t like preferring one flavor of ice cream over another. We all know it is morally repugnant, pure evil, because God said so. He declared in the Ten Commandments, “You shall not murder.” Prior to the entire world being Christianized, killing was the preference of the powerful over the weak, and might made right.

And that is the final implication of the moral argument. If there is no God, we cannot escape might makes right, the one with the biggest stick or the biggest gun, or whoever is the strongest, determines what is right and what is wrong. If dirt is all we got, there can be no other appeal. This is why over time Tom Holland became repulsed by the ancient world. If there was no Jesus of Nazareth, nothing would have changed. In fact, as you study the rise of Christianity and the West, you see clearly through the development of the rule of law in England, that the political liberty enjoyed by much of the world today developed only because of Christianity. Because there is a transcendent moral standard, the king and the government were eventually forced into submitting to God through the law. It began with Magna Carta in 1215, eventually reaching fulfillment in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and developed fully in the founding of America in 1776.

It’s an incredible story, and the moral argument providentially developed in history through the almighty power of the Sovereign God of the Bible turning it into reality. We must build on what God has provided as we battle God-less secularism and raise up Christendom 2.0. from the ashes of the Enlightenment. I’ll finish with the C.S. Lewis quote I use all the time because it says it all:

I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not just because I see it but because by it I see everything else.

 

 

Rebuilding Christendom and the Consideration of the Alternative

Rebuilding Christendom and the Consideration of the Alternative

Oct 30, 2024 | Apologetics, Uncategorized

As we slowly, but I trust surely, rebuild Christendom, i.e., push back and defeat secularism, Christians and the church in general need to rebuild the Christian plausibility structures of Western society. I recently wrote about the role Jordan Peterson is playing in doing just that. Few of us have the kind of platform Peterson does and can make such a sizable contribution, but each one of us has our own sphere of influence, and every piece of the plausibility puzzle matters, even the smallest piece. What exactly, you may ask, is a plausibility structure, and why is it so important? Good questions.

The term was coined by sociologist Peter Berger in his books, The Social Construction of Realty (with Thomas Luckman) and The Sacred Canopy. As a sociological construct (i.e., what it means to live with and among human beings and the culture and meanings they create), it simply means what seems true to us, and the social structures that contribute to that seeming. A simple example is that for many of our neighbors, God seems no more real than Santa Clause  Whether God is real is not the point; what seems real is.

Society creates the plausibility structures that contribute to God and Christianity being plausible to us, or not. These structures are built into our educational systems, media, entertainment, etc. In the West, God is persona non‑grata, unwelcome; if he exists at all he is merely a personal preference. We call this secularism, and our job is to discredit the secular plausibility structures, and put Christian ones in their place. God has been providentially ordering this to happen since, as I argue in my latest book, Trump came down the escalator in 2015, but this started happening before Trump. One could date it to the election of Barack Obama and the takeover of the Democrat Party by the woke left. With him, the media went all in with Fake News, and the security apparatus of the deep state, and its bureaucratic minions became tools in the hands of the party. The reactions of the Tea Party were the rumblings of the awakening, but they were stillborn because those patriots were a threat to Uniparty globalist establishment in power, Democrat and Republican.

As I also argue in the book, secularism is an experiment in society without God in Western culture, and it has failed, miserably. It has nowhere to go. And as nature abhors a vacuum, something must fill the plausibility hole left in its wake. That would be Christianity. What Trump, or the reaction to Trump, exposed was how brittle a veneer secularism is to hold a society together  in a post-Christian world. Thus the opportunity and need to re-Christianize the culture.

This rebuilding and tearing down of plausibility structures must first, of course, start with us, then our families, then out from there (my first book, The Persuasive Christian Parent, is how I did that with my children) . This means we have to know not only what we believe, but why we believe it. The latter is what we call apologetics, the defense of the Christian faith. The word and the charge to do this comes from I Peter 3:15:

But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

The word for “answer” in Greek is apologia, which means a reasoned argument or defense that presents evidence supplied as compelling proof. Ancient Greek lawyers used apologia when defending a client in court. I wonder how many Christians are actually “prepared” to give an answer as to why they believe Christianity is the truth. I’m afraid it is not very many, but that is why we ourselves need to become prepared, and to encourage others to as well. You are now officially encouraged!

The Consideration of the Alternative
Thus we come to the purpose for this piece, the consideration of the alternative, probably my favorite apologetics tool. I realized how powerful it is using it on myself over the years as I dealt with the inevitable doubt that comes from faith. I’ll get more into faith later as I flesh out that concept, but there were times in my four plus decade Christian journey when Christianity didn’t seem so plausible to me. Over time I began to realize an inevitable conclusion that comes from doubt: if one thing isn’t true, something else has to be. First for the concept. Tim Keller in The Reason for God points out something so obvious I wondered why I had never thought of it myself:

But even as believers should learn to look for reasons behind their faith, skeptics must learn to look for a type of faith hidden within their reasoning. All doubts, however skeptical and cynical they may seem, are really a set of alternative beliefs. You cannot doubt Belief A except from a position of faith in Belief B.

As I began to understand the inevitability of having to choose one belief or another in life, it slowly dawned on me how important it is for defending the veracity of Christianity. This comes down to an issue of epistemology, of knowing, which we’ll discuss, but think about it. I have a choice to believe or trust in almost every encounter in life. I can choose to either trust the doctor, or not. When I go to the store and buy food or go to a restaurant, I can choose to believe the food is safe and won’t harm me, or not. When I drive, I can choose to believe the other drivers will abide by the rules of the rode or not. In any case, we can never be absolutely certain, the importance of which we’ll get into shortly.

But before we get there, prior to understanding all this this, I went through a period of what I call plausibility insanity in my Christian journey when I could almost see why not believing in God was plausible to some people. By this time I’d been a Christian for over 30 years, and you would think I would have a solid grasp on why I believed in it, but I hadn’t studied apologetics since my seminary days when I was in my 20s, and at that time I’m around the half-century mark. In 2009 after a pathetic apologetics experience with a co-worker, and I was really bad, I decided I had to get back into it, and started listening and reading everything I could get my hands on. But a plausibility structure isn’t built overnight, thus the insanity.

For example, I would be in church seeing people praying and singing hymns and wonder if they were just doing that to the air. Mind you, intellectually I absolutely believed Christianity was truth, and materialistic atheism was not, but we’re talking about plausibility here and what seems real, not what we believe is real. The question is, of course, is it real. Does God exist, and is Christianity the truth, or not. There is no in between. The choice is binary as we say nowadays, either/or. Another question logically, inevitably follows from this, one very few have considered: If Christianity isn’t true, then what is? Something has to be true about the nature of reality, so we are forced to deal with “the consideration of the alternative.” What exactly would that be. Ther are, as we know, many alternatives, but not as many as we think.

Let’s Consider the Alternatives
I’ve come across skeptics who will trot out the well-worn line that there are thousands of religions so who are you to say yours is the only absolute truth. Well, I didn’t say is it. Jesus, the foundation upon which Christianity is built, said it. And the Bible from beginning to end means to be taken as the ultimate truth about the nature of things. So, what are the alternatives to Christianity? Starting with the big picture, there are only three: theism, atheism, and pantheism. Every religion falls under one of these three. I will share how I deal with each one.

Atheism, which simply means the material is all that exists, is the least plausible of the three. Whenever I wonder if it’s all real, I simply look outside and think to myself, “If God doesn’t exist, then everything is a product of chance. Impossible!” Is it really plausible that everything we see and experience is the result of a mindless, purposeless, cosmic accident, matter in motion crashing into itself to create . . . . all of it? Really? The human heart, the human brain, the human nervous and immune system, all merely a product of chance, a cosmic accident. I know instantly that is absurd, which is why there are so very few atheists in the world. It takes far more faith, a Grand Canyon sized leap of faith, to believe the atheist worldview than to believe in the all-powerful Creator God of the Bible.

Pantheism, from a definition in Britannica, is

the doctrine that the universe conceived of as a whole is God and, conversely, that there is no God but the combined substance, forces, and laws that are manifested in the existing universe.

Thus the universe, as in atheism, is impersonal. Which is odd when you think about it because how could a universe have a world filled with persons itself be impersonal? This would mean that everything is God, the rat, the tree, the spider, the sun, the moon, the stars, you, me, the dirt, all of it. Animism is a form of pantheism in that all things are imbued with some kind of spiritual essence, although impersonal. African and native American religions, for example, were animistic, but Africa is now becoming maybe the most Christian continent on earth. Pantheism is the least credible of alternatives to modern westerners.

Theism is really the only game in town. Of the varieties of theism, we can cross polytheism off the list from the start. The ancient Greeks and Romans blew that up, and when Alfred the Great defeated the pagan Viking heathens from the north, paganism finally died in Western culture. It seems, however, that the Hindus didn’t quite get the message, but our discussion is specifically in the context of Western civilization, and thus Hinduism doesn’t qualify, although it is indeed as discredited as the polytheism of old. We can also cross off the list the seemingly infinite variations of religions that pilfer from Christianity. As I say in my book, Uninvented, everyone wants a piece of Jesus. Sorry, you can’t have him! Why should I trust Mohamed, the bloodthirsty raider who came 600 years after Christ, more than the Apostles? I won’t. Another of the ancient theistic religions that doesn’t steal from Christ is Zoroastrianism because it developed in Persia five centuries before Christianity, but it too has no appeal in the West, and doesn’t make claims to ultimate universal truth as does Christianity.

What is most fascinating about every other religion, and philosophy for that matter, save Christianity and Judaism, is that none gives us any kind of plausible explanation as to where evil comes from. For most of them, it just is, now we have to figure out a way to deal with it.  None of the answers are satisfying because they don’t deal with the central issue, man’s rebellion against his Creator. Man’s nature, who he is in his fundamental being, is the problem, not his circumstances or others, but himself. Every other religion or philosophy seeks to change man’s behavior or thoughts, but can’t change his being, his natural inclination to sin, to do wrong. Only God in Christ promises by His power and initiative to do that, to change our sinful rebellious hearts of stone to flesh, that we might be born anew with the ability to change what we do and think because God Himself in Christ has changed who we are. As Paul says, when we are “in Christ” we are a “new creation, the old has gone, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17)

Nothing else satisfies our deepest plausibility need, the thing we can grab on to which seems real, which makes sense of everything, like Christ. A C.S. Lewis quote I use all the time says it perfectly:

I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Jesus of Nazareth is the reason Judaism by itself can’t claim the mantel of ultimate truth because it’s a story without an ending, and that ending is Christ. All of Isreal’s religion and history pointed forward to him, as Jesus himself told us after he rose from the dead (Luke 24).

Epistemology, Faith and Doubt: It’s All About Trust
This is the title of a section of my first book, The Persuasive Christian Parent, because what we know, why we know, how we know, are all important in raising our children in the faith, thus epistemology, or the study of that knowing. Rene Descartes wrote in the 17th century that absolute certainty was attainable by reason alone, but that proved as attainable to catch as Moby Dick, and as dangerous to try. When reason was exalted over revelation, knowing became the Holy Grail. Prior, philosophers had started their quest with being or ontology, and thus God and metaphysics came first. Now with the knower, man, coming first over his Creator, epistemology dominated intellectual discourse. God slowly became irrelevant because fallen man will always tend toward Babel if he doesn’t start with the God revealed to us in Scripture and creation.

Faith and doubt are an inescapable part of knowing because to know something requires faith to know it. As finite creatures absolute knowing is a chimera, an illusion which far too many think is possible. Yet how many people believe they have attained absolute certainty a la Descartes? One is too many, but alas they sprout like weeds in an untended garden. We can know things. Knowledge in Scripture, being able to know and trust what we know, is assumed throughout, but what I’m challenging is a specific definition of knowing: that to “know” a thing is to be absolutely certain about it, and that we can only “know” via our reason.

Which brings us to faith, a concept that is not intrinsically religious. All human beings utilize faith every day, or they wouldn’t get out of bed. It basically means trust, and when we exercise faith we generally do it with justified warrant. That is, there is enough evidence to justify putting my trust in something or someone. Since we are finite, limited in every way, human reason is incapable of achieving knowledge of an absolute sort. Much of what we “know” is not the result of some kind of logical process, deduction like a syllogism, or rigorous inductive reasoning. What we “know” can’t be proved in the final analysis. Rather what we “know” must be accepted by faith, which is warranted trust based on evidence. When we get right down to it, faith, and the acceptance of its inevitability in life, is to pay homage to our finitude. But human beings are not fond of admitting they are finite.

This refusal to accept our created nature makes perfect sense in light of what we read in the first few chapters of Genesis. We learn that our Creator is God and that we are not (shocking to some, I know). We learn that the fall from our esteemed created state was instigated by the temptation of wanting to be like God, to usurp his place as the one who defines reality, good and evil. The first temptation of man, that which caused all the suffering, misery, and death, was epistemological. The insistence that we ought to have absolute certainty and that we can reason our way to perfect knowledge, is an indication that we are by nature rebels who refuse to accept that we are contingent beings. We are dependent on God, as the Apostle Paul told the Greek philosophers in Acts 17, for life, breath, and everything else. That pretty much covers it all, including our knowing. Thus I conclude, we ought to pray for epistemological humility, which as we learn from I Corinthians 8, is knowing exercised in love for the service of others.

Uninvented: I Corinthians 15, Either Paul is Telling the Truth or He is a Liar

Uninvented: I Corinthians 15, Either Paul is Telling the Truth or He is a Liar

May 1, 2024 | Apologetics, Uncategorized

I was recently making my way through I Corinthians and hit chapter 15. I had a hard time getting past it, so I parked there for a while. You may remember this chapter is Paul’s great declaration of resurrection, first of Christ’s, then ours. Having written a book about the impossibility of the Bible having been invented, merely a figment of human imagination, I can’t help seeing Scripture through that lens, all the time. This chapter is a perfect example of why. Let’s look at what to Paul says is the most important thing about the gospel:

3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas (Peter), and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

What he received is the most important thing, as in for Christians nothing else is as important as this. It’s number 1, top of the list, everything else can’t compare with it in importance. The reason he says this is because it proves Christianity is true. Critics for 300 years have claimed it is not true, and if they are right those who claimed to be eyewitness of this most important thing were either liars or delusional, which parallels the arguments for and against the resurrection. There are no other options than these three, a resurrection trilemma that parallels the Jesus trilemma; Jesus is either Lord, lunatic, or liar.

Where Did Paul Get This Most Important Thing?
This raises a question: how and from whom did he receive it? Biblical scholars tell us the construction and the repetition of the word “that” tells us it was a memorized creed of the early church. How early? Almost all scholars agree that Paul “received” this teaching when he visited Jerusalem after his conversion (Galatians 1):

18 Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. 19 I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother. 20 I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie.

And if Paul was in fact lying, they could have easily found out from Peter and James if he was, but he wasn’t—at least about visiting the Apostles soon after his conversion. The historical fact of his visit lends credibility to his assertion the risen Jesus appeared to him, “as one abnormally born.” Again we have only three options; either he was telling the truth, was lying, or it was an illusion. The latter is impossible because everyone who claims they encountered the risen Jesus would have had the same illusion or delusion, and those psychological and emotional states don’t work that way.

That leaves us only two options, truth or lies, and if the latter, that would make a remarkable number of liars agreeing on and keeping the lies, many of whom were willing to die for that lie—I’m going with truth.

Within three years the resurrection of Jesus was so accepted as a fact in Christianity that it became a memorized creed passed on to grow the faith. Critical scholars in the 19th century sought to undermine the credibility of Christianity by claiming the basic outline of Christianity grew over time among primarily pagan Christians throughout the Roman Empire. They seemed to have ignored this text that proved them wrong.

According to the Scriptures
The next thing we notice is the importance of the phrase, “according to the Scriptures.” Christianity wasn’t some new-fangled religion, but the fulfillment of the very old religion of Judaism. Jesus declared as much when he said in Luke 24 that the Scriptures, “the writings” in Greek, were all about him. He even rebuked the disciples because it should have been obvious: “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” In 20/20 hindsight it became so obvious to the Apostles and teachers of early Christianity that they quoted the Old Testament consistently in their writings and preaching:

The New Testament writers included approximately 250 express Old Testament quotations, and if one includes indirect or partial quotations, the number jumps to more than 1,000 (referring to all OT books except Obadiah).

In modern Evangelical Christianity the focus often becomes the New Testament, but Christianity was built and grew on the Old. That means we ought to give it as much attention as the New. The more we are steeped in the history of redemption from Genesis to Malachi, the fulfillment and implications of it from Matthew to Revelation become even more transformational, both for us individually and the nations of the earth.

The Resurrection of the Dead.
Then Paul moves from Jesus’ resurrection to ours. This brings up yet another realization I’ve had since my “conversion” to postmillennialism. For most of my Christian life I thought the goal of the Christian life was to go to heaven when we die. I knew very well the ultimate goal was the resurrection on a new heavens and earth, but heaven seemed the more immediate and important purpose of the Christian life. But it isn’t. Whatever happens to us between death and the resurrection, it’s just a way station, a place to get ready for the big show. God never had in mind a bodyless immaterial existence for His creatures or His people. One thing that distinguished God’s people from the pagans in the ancient world was their declaration that the material was inherently good, but disfigured. There was something beyond this fallen and broken material life, but it was still a material life.

But is it true? The only reason I believed in Christianity in the first place was because I believed it was true. I discovered early on there is plenty of evidence for its veracity, the most important being the resurrection. Reading the New Testament makes that abundantly clear; the church was built on the assertion that Jesus of Nazareth died on a Roman cross, was buried for three days, and returned to life, with more than 500 people claiming to be eyewitnesses of this fact. It is true or it is not, and we are forced to deal with the issues above, unless we think a man coming back to life claiming to be God is no big deal. As we see from this chapter, people claiming it was not true was something the church had to deal with from the beginning. Human beings don’t come back from the dead, and people in the first century had as difficult a time believing it as we do.

In verses 12-18 Paul directly deals with the skeptics, and tells us everything turns on whether Jesus really did come back from the dead. He and the other Apostles were so convinced of this they were willing to die for it, and nobody dies for what they know to be a lie. His argument is that if Jesus really did come back from the dead, so will we. Later in the chapter he tells us that was the reason Jesus came to earth, to conquer death, the last enemy (v. 26).

Jewish Conceptions of Resurrection
The concept of resurrection was nothing new to Jews; they believed it passionately, just not the resurrection of one man in the middle of history. That made no sense to them, which is one reason first century Jews don’t make up the resurrection of Jesus.

A good example of this is when Jesus was comforting Martha at the tomb of her brother Lazarus (John 11), and he tells her, her brother will rise again. She replied that she knows he will, “in the resurrection at the last day,” but Jesus was telling her something more profound. In response,

25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though he die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

The victory over death comes through the one who overcame death first, who paid the penalty of sin, death, for us. The general resurrection of God’s people to eternal life could not happen unless sin’s penalty is paid. That is the only way these beautiful verses in Isaiah 25 could come true:

On this mountain he will destroy
the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
8     he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears
from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
from all the earth.
The Lord has spoken.

These verses are about Jesus. The mountain Isaiah speaks of was the mountain on which Jerusalem, the Holy City, was built. The city that had a temple of sacrifice and atonement for sin that was a type of the temple, Jesus, to come. Jesus the Messiah’s resurrection was the Jewish fulfillment of these prophetic words from the book of Daniel (chapter 12):

 2 Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. 3 Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.

Knowing it is true ought to compel us to “lead many to righteousness.”

If Christ Has Not been Raised Our Faith is Futile
So called “liberal” Christians of the 19th and early 20th centuries thought they could keep Christianity without a physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Many scholars, like Rudolf Bultmann, said this historicity of any of it was irrelevant. The only thing that counted was what people believed. The heck with that! If the Apostles were lying or deluded, I’ll go find something else to do and believe. Those “liberal” Christians should have done what I would do if I was convinced Christianity wasn’t true: burn the Bible and move on. But they did something far worse. They changed the nature of Christianity and claimed it was the real deal.

Paul wouldn’t have none of this. Either Christ physically, bodily, materially, in space and time, actually came back to life after being dead three days, or as he says,

 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.

Everything turns on the resurrection; everything else is noise. If Jesus of Nazareth did not come back from the dead and is not alive at this moment, what we believe is a joke and a fraud. And we can all agree with Paul when he says,

19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

Why should we be pitied if Jesus didn’t come back from the dead? Because we are basing our lives on a lie. Who wants to live a lie? If it is not true, in fact, we deserve to be mocked and scorned as delusional suckers.

In his book, Christianity & Liberalism, J. Gresham Machen declares that “Christianity depends, not upon a complex of ideas, but upon the narration of an event.” Either that event happened, or it did not. If there is not enough evidence that it did, don’t waste your time. Contrary to postmodernism, historical events can’t be true for one person, and not for another.

In defending the Christian faith, to yourself and others, this is critically important. The church was built on this specific claim, nothing else. There was nothing ambiguous about it. The Apostles and all who believed because of their message knew exactly what they meant, and decided to trust them that it was true. If you study the resurrection, you’ll quickly conclude, unless you have an anti-supernatural bias, that the resurrection is the only plausible explanation for the early explosive growth of Christianity.

As I often say, lies or delusions do not do that.

 

The Apostles Turning the World Upside Down-Today!

The Apostles Turning the World Upside Down-Today!

Jan 17, 2024 | Apologetics

Reading through Acts is an incredible apologetics experience. I once heard an ex-atheist interviewed on the Side B Stories podcast say it was reading through Acts that brought him to faith. He said there was no way it could be made up, and of course I agree! One of my goals in writing Uninvented was to encourage Christians to read the Bible with an apologetics mindset. This is especially crucial in our secular age. We need to understand how the Bible presents itself as true history, not as myth, fairy tale, or fiction as critics have insisted for 300 years. When you read it, it reads real. It breathes out verisimilitude on every page. Acts is especially powerful in this regard because Luke, the author (also of the gospel) is such a careful chronicler of events. Even non-Christian scholars have to admit he is an excellent historian. We also have much to learn from Acts about the world-transforming nature of the faith that has once for all been delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3).

This piece was specifically inspired by a sermon I heard at our church earlier this year as the pastor was making his way through Acts. Paul and his companions were in Thessalonica, and as usual causing a stir by preaching the risen Lord Jesus. We read in Acts 17 how some Jewish religious leaders were none too happy and formed a mob to take out the trouble makers.

6 And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also, 7 and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.”

Exactly! There is another king named Jesus! And Caesar doesn’t like that one bit.

Having read the NIV translation of the Bible since I became a Christian in 1978, I didn’t know this verse said what the ESV correctly translates as, “turned the world upside down.” The NIV says, “These men who have caused trouble all over the world . . . ” and that doesn’t do justice to the Greek. That morning I couldn’t help feeling a thrill at this passage, especially connecting king Jesus to turning the world upside down by turning it right side up! According to Strong’s, the extended meaning reads like this:

anastatóō (literally, “change standing from going up to down“– properly, turn something over (up to down), i.e. to upset (up-set), raising one part up at the expense of another which results in dislocation (confusion); to unsettle, make disorderly (dis-orderly).

These Jewish leaders didn’t realize how right they were! God’s created order distorted at the fall was turned upside down, everything potentially becoming the inversion of what God created to be. The mess that we see all around us and observe in history, not to mention our own lives, was the result. But God from before the world was even created was going thwart the devil’s plans, and it started the very day of the disaster created by man’s rebellion. That fallen world is what the Apostles were turning upside down, and God through his Holy Spirit and His word and His people is still doing it.

Fighting The Fall
I first heard this phrase when I was a young Christian, and the moment I heard it I said to myself, yes, that is what I want my life to be! That desire was actually planted some years before I became a Christian. When I was 16 my Catholic grandmother gave me a book for Christmas called The Robe about the centurion who oversaw the crucifixion of Christ. When they cast lots to see who would get his robe, he got it, and it had a deep emotional and psychological impact on his life, eventually transforming this Roman pagan into a Christian. Having rejected his life as a Roman military professional, he wandered throughout Judea trying to figure out this new life, and wherever he went he made a positive impact on the people he encountered. He helped turn anger and bitterness and jealousy and dysfunction into joy and peace and harmony. When I heard this “fighting the fall” phrase, I thought back to the centurion and the vision it gave me of what I wanted my life to be.

Just as the curse which sin brought affects everything, so the righteousness Christ came to bring seeks to reverse those affects in everything. It starts with the greatest commandment, loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and loving our neighbor as ourselves. That sets the foundation because the gospel the Apostles preached was a ministry of reconciliation. To reconcile means to restore harmony in a relationship, and God in Christ came to restore harmony to our relationships to other people and creation. The fall brought chaos, and salvation brings order. At Babel (Gen. 11) God thwarted man’s hubris, and started the process of reversing the fall in choosing Abram (Gen.12) through which he would bless all the peoples on earth. The blessings started when Christ fulfilled the promise and succeeded where the first Adam failed. On the cross he purchased a people to carry it out, and guaranteed its ultimate fulfillment when he ascended to the right hand of God to reign over all powers in heaven and earth (Eph. 1:18-23).

Christ also began the reversal of Adam’s failure to fulfill what is called the dominion mandate (Genesis 1).

28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Reconciliation extends beyond relationships, the foundation, but also to creation. Instead of letting weeds grow in the garden, we pick them. Instead of letting dust and dirt settle in the house, we clean it. Instead of living in huts, we build houses. We live in an area of Florida bustling with growth and dynamism. Every time I see a new development spring up out of the dirt I think, the fall is losing! Or when a new road is built to allow traffic to flow more smoothly and safely I think, the fall is losing! We are “taking dominion” by building, cleaning, fixing, fighting entropy (the inevitable nature of things to wear down unless we do something about it). We are created in the image of God to be co-creators with the raw material He has graciously provided.

Goodness, Beauty, and Truth and Christ’s Reign
Those familiar with classical education hear these words often. In a world full of evil, ugliness, and lies, God has given us the mission, as Paul says, to “not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:21). Living by site, Christians are easily driven to pessimism. I started pushing back on this natural tendency when I decided to believe what the Bible tells me is true about the nature of reality, that Christ reigns over all of it. Not some of it, not ninety-nine percent of it, but all of it. How in the world could we ever think that man or Satan could act outside of the express will of the king of the universe? We can’t know how this works; we don’t have to do the math, but simply accept and trust God’s revelation of his sovereign reign in Christ over all things. If you really believe this, it will transform your life and how you view everything. Reading through Romans recently, I was struck in this regard by Paul’s words about Abraham (4:17):

He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.

Think about it. The God who created everything out of nothing, calls things that don’t have existence into being. That means by His power (Zech. 4:6) through His people transforming everything the devil distorts and tries to destroy into goodness, beauty, and truth, wrapped up in a big red bow of love. Of course all of it driven by the one on the cross who paid it all that we might have life that is really life. Many Christians think Christ’s reign won’t be fully realized until he returns, but that is not at all the biblical witness.

Psalm 2 introduces the king God has installed on Zion, His holy mountain. What do kings do? They reign, and this Messianic Psalm points to Christ. And notice the following verses in other Psalms declaring the reign of this Almighty king:

  • God reigns over the nations; God sits on his holy throne. Psalm 47:8
  • The Lord reigns; he is robed in majesty; the Lord is robed; he has put on strength as his belt. Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved. Psalm 93:1
  • Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns! Yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity.” Psalm 96:10
  • The Lord reigns, let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad! Psalm 97:1
  • The Lord reigns; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake! Psalm 99:1
  • The Lord will reign forever, your God, O Zion, to all generations. Praise the Lord! Psalm 146:10

And in Psalm 110, a Psalm of the reign of the Messiah, we’re told that Christ is at God’s right hand until He makes Christ’s enemies a footstool for his feet. We know the operative word is “until” because in I Corinthians 15:25, Paul echoes these exact words, but adds the word “must.” So Christ “must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.” And we know what these enemies include because the final enemy to be defeated at his return is death; so any evil, ugliness, and lies, and anything associated with sin must be defeated before Christ returns to defeat death. I know, that is very hard to believe when we live by site, but that is the clear declaration of the word of God.

Dominion and the Triumph of Christianity
From a human perspective, what do you think the odds of Christianity taking over the Roman Empire were in the first century? How about when Jesus’ disciples were cowering in fear while their supposed Messiah lay in a tomb after having been brutally killed on a Roman cross? Or when those crazy Galileans (i.e., Jewish hicks and hayseeds) were running around Judea claiming this Jesus of Nazareth had come back from the dead? How about the odds being zero because nobody in their right mind would have even dared think such a thing could happen, especially Christians. But three hundred years later it did. Eventually Christianity defeated the pagan world and gave us the modern world. It is still transforming lives, which transforms families, communities, and eventually nations. That’s the whole point.

British historian Tom Holland wrote a wonderful book called Dominion about how the only explanation for the modern world is Christianity. Holland, not yet a Christian, is an historian of the ancient world. He loved the pagan Greeks and Romans, but over time he realized he had nothing in common with those people. He started asking why, and Dominion was the result. While early Christians could never envision the world becoming Christianized that is exactly what happened, and I would argue precisely the point of the gospel. Why do I say that? Because Jesus did! In the Great Commission, Jesus said he was given all authority “in heaven and on earth” specifically that “all nations” would be discipled. Most Christians believe this means individuals will become Christians by the preaching of the gospel, and whether it has influence on the culture of a nation is beside the point. No, that is the point! And I recently learned that Paul ends Romans confirming exactly this:

25 Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages 26 but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith.

I like the way my NIV translates this as, “so that all nations might believe and obey him.” That is dominion, and there is no way transformation of civilizations happens because of a lie. It only happened and will happen because Jesus rose from the dead, ascended to the right hand of God, and sent his Holy Spirit to extend his reign on earth, advance his kingdom, and build his church.

Having listened to a lot of testimonies over the last several years, I am convinced there is no way psychology alone can explain the transformation of people’s lives. If Christianity is a lie, then that’s all it is, nothing more. But it is in fact the power of the Living God as Paul tells us (I Cor. I:18):

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

That power is the word from which we get our English word dynamite. God’s power blows up the works of the devil and transforms lives and does exactly what the Apostles were accused of doing 2000 years ago—turning the world upside down!

 

Uninvented: Resurrection, The Foundation of the Church in the Book of Acts

Uninvented: Resurrection, The Foundation of the Church in the Book of Acts

Dec 27, 2023 | Apologetics

We won’t be surprised to learn that the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth was the most important factor in the establishment and growth of the early church. As we’ll see from Acts, the Apostles proclaimed it everywhere they went and it was clearly the foundation of the early church. Anyone who is presented with the Christian faith is confronted with a choice. Either this first century Jewish itinerant preacher came back from the dead after being brutally tortured and killed on a Roman cross, or he didn’t. That alone determines whether Christianity is true or false, and there is no in between. C.S. Lewis put it well:

One must keep on pointing out that Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.

Our response to the resurrection should mirror Lewis. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, it is of no importance, and if he did, it is of infinite importance. One thing it cannot possibly be is moderately important. Yet when the Enlightenment influenced biblical criticism became a scholarly pursuit in the 19th century, many of the scholars and their followers wanted to keep Christianity without the resurrection. As reason was embraced over revelation, there developed in due course a dogmatic anti-supernatural bias: If there was something supernatural in the Bible it was assumed it couldn’t have happened and needed to be explained some other way. I say, if it didn’t happen burn the Bible and move on to something else. It’s all a lie. But alas they tried to keep the Bible, and we were introduced to something called “liberal” Christianity which is anything but Christianity. A hundred years ago J. Gresham Machen wrote a book called Christianity & Liberalism arguing that liberal Christianity was another religion altogether, and he was right.

Something Happened to Start the Early Church
One thing all non-orthodox Christian scholars agreed on even with their anti-supernatural bias was that something dramatic had to happen for the emergence of Christianity out of Judaism and its explosive growth. J.P. Moreland says anyone “who denies the resurrection owes us an explanation of this transformation which does justice to the historical facts.” Skeptics don’t like these historical facts because, well, resurrections can’t happen! Let’s confuse them with these facts they have no ability to explain apart from the supernatural. According to Moreland, the first Christians, strict Jews all, immediately gave up these Jewish convictions that defined everything about their religion:

  1. The sacrificial system.
  2. The importance of keeping the law.
  3. Keeping of the Sabbath.
  4. Non-Trinitarian theism.
  5. A human Messiah.

The skeptic says, “Yeah, so what. No big deal, happens every day of the week.” Well, if it does, I’m waiting for some evidence. Instead, all we get is anti-supernatural bias masquerading as above-it-all, supposedly objective assertions with zero basis in historical fact. As Moreland says in a bit of understatement, “The resurrection offers the only rational explanation.”

What makes the resurrection especially difficult for the skeptic to dismiss is the Jewish understanding of resurrection. A good example is when Jesus went to his friend Lazarus’s tomb and was comforting his sister Martha:

21 “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”

23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

24 Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”

The resurrection for Jews was solely an eschatological concept, something that will happen at the end of time when all sin, suffering, and death is dealt with once and for all. One person rising from the dead in the middle of history with a continuation of fallen reality was incompatible with everything they believed about resurrection. If they were to make up the resurrection of Jesus, they would have to invent a concept nobody had ever thought of in the 1,500-year history of the Jewish religion. Knowing this, we are confronted with the concept of Uninvnented: How could these Jews make up something they couldn’t conceive or imagine? I would argue they couldn’t, and the burden of proof is on the skeptics with an anti-supernatural bias to prove they did make it up, but they can’t.

Options to an Actual Resurrection
Because something had to happen for Christianity to emerge out of Judaism, the 19th century scholars and skeptics had to come up with some reason related to the resurrection that the first Christians so boldly proclaimed even at the threat to their own lives. Any of the options that have been invented, pun intended, are far less plausible than Jesus of Nazareth coming back to life on the third day after he was crucified as his followers so proclaimed.

Some, like the Pharisees, claim the disciples stole the body. Those men and women were not in any shape emotionally or psychologically to have done so. Their confusion and distress by events that happened so quickly, compounded by mourning the death of the man they thought their beloved Messiah, makes them unlikely candidates as masterminds of a conspiracy to deceive the Roman government of Judea and the Jewish leaders of Jerusalem. Not only that, but they would also have been deceiving Jesus’ followers, and then have openly lied about it for the rest of their lives, even as they gave their lives for what they knew to be a lie. Eighteenth century Christian philosopher William Paley puts it well:

Would men in such circumstances pretend to have seen what they never saw; assert facts which they had no knowledge of, go about lying to teach virtue; and, though not only convinced of Christ being an imposter, but having seen the success of his imposture in his crucifixion, yet persist in carrying on; and so persist, as to bring upon themselves, for nothing, and with full knowledge of the consequences, enmity and hatred, danger and death?

The question answers itself.

There are only two other equally implausible options. One is he didn’t really die on the cross, known as “the swoon theory,” and the other is that somehow the body disappeared, and his followers thought they experienced a risen Jesus. For the former, if Jesus somehow survived something the Romans were particularly good at, and had extensive experience doing, Jesus wouldn’t have been in good shape. An ER with modern medicine would have had a hard time keeping him alive. He certainly wouldn’t have been the Jesus they boldly proclaimed as risen, a victor over sin and death, one to be worshiped as Thomas said as Lord and God.

The only other option to an actual physical resurrection, stolen body, or swoon theory, is that the tomb was in fact empty, and Jesus’ disciples thought they saw Jesus. These appearances of Jesus, while not real, had the effect as if they were real, and boom—Christianity explodes! German higher critics of the 19th century, and liberal Christians of the early 20th, were fond of arguing for this spiritual Jesus somehow appearing, and the disciples having what they called a “resurrection experience.” The historicity of the event was beside the point, and we all know (wink, wink) people don’t come back from the dead, especially after the Romans got done with them. Jesus’ followers were so distraught, the argument goes, and so longing for the crucified Messiah to come back to them somehow, that their minds conjured up a Jesus who came back from the dead. Then, because of this “spiritual” experience, they went throughout the Roman Empire proclaiming a resurrected Lord. The problem with this explanation, other than its absurdity, is however it was explained, by dreams, visions, or mass hallucinations, it all comes up against the same cold hard truth: for Jews, a resurrection of one man in the middle of history was inconceivable, as was a resurrection that was not bodily and physical.

Eyewitnesses of a Risen Jesus
One thing liberal scholars completely rejected was that Jesus’ followers were eyewitnesses of a Jesus who did miracles and rose from the dead. All of it, in their minds, could be explained “naturally” or psychologically. Yet Jesus followers claimed they were eyewitnesses. The careful historian Luke who also wrote Acts says exactly that (Luke 1):

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, 3 it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

This sounds like something we should seriously consider. Or they were lying. That I have a hard time believing.

Let’s see how Luke conveys the foundational importance of the resurrection in Acts. I will simply put the verses below and let you contemplate the cumulative reality power they have.

 

  • Acts 1:3

3 After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.

  • Acts 1:21-22

21 Therefore it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus was living among us, 22 beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection.”

  • Acts 2:23-24

23 This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. 24 But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.

  • Acts 2:31-33

31 Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see decay. 32 God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. 33 Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear.

  • Acts 3:15

15 You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.

  • Acts 4:2

2 They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people, proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead.

  • Acts 4:10

10 then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed.

  • 4:19-20

19 But Peter and John replied, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! 20 As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

  • Acts 4:33

33 With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all . . .

  • Acts 5:30-31

30 The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead—whom you killed by hanging him on a cross. 31 God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Savior that he might bring Israel to repentance and forgive their sins.

  • Acts 10:39-41

39 “We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a cross, 40 but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen. 41 He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen—by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.

  • Acts 13:30-37

30 But God raised him from the dead, 31 and for many days he was seen by those who had traveled with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. They are now his witnesses to our people.

32 “We tell you the good news: What God promised our ancestors 33 he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. As it is written in the second Psalm:

“‘You are my son;

today I have become your father.’

34 God raised him from the dead so that he will never be subject to decay. As God has said,

“‘I will give you the holy and sure blessings promised to David.’

35 So it is also stated elsewhere:

“‘You will not let your holy one see decay.’

36 “Now when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his ancestors and his body decayed. 37 But the one whom God raised from the dead did not see decay.

  • Acts 17:2-3

2 As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,” he said.

  • Acts 17:31

31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

  • Acts 26:8, 22-23

8 Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?

22 But God has helped me to this very day; so I stand here and testify to small and great alike. I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen— 23 that the Messiah would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would bring the message of light to his own people and to the Gentiles.”