Dad- Today's chapter will be right down your alley.
A Recap of UA Day 27- Mark received a call at his office from a high school student who stated, “I used to be a Christian.” Mark invited the young person to his office for further discussion. Mark learned the high schooler attended a church that was authoritarian in its approach. When the young man and a friend started to ask questions, they were repeatedly told “those are things people of faith must accept by faith.” After several of these types of encounters, the two young men decided the Bible couldn’t be trusted and started a Skeptics Club designed to present evidence against the Bible and Christianity. Mark and Lee Strobel attended a meeting of the Skeptics Club. As a result of the meeting both high schoolers rededicated their lives to Christ and converted their Skeptics Club back into a Bible Study group.
I have always enjoyed apologetics (“the discipline of defending a religious position through the systemic use of reason.”) But, I have never been intentional enough on the subject to be able to defend Christianity to a skeptic. Mark writes on page 183 “you’ve gotta do you homework.” He asserts that while knowledge of the Bible must be our preeminent goal, that knowledge must be supplemented with scientific, historical and academic support for Christianity. What are your thoughts about this?
Why are so many of today's churches afraid of those tough-to-answer question? Is it because our seminaries are not preparing our pastors? Maybe our congregations have become so lazy we are not willing to put in the time and effort to become defenders of our faith. At times if feels like the days of yore when the Bible was only available to men of the cloth so that the congregation had to blindly follow the church leaders.
How many of the titles in this link do you own? Top 25 Christian Apologetics Books How does this compare to the number of inspirational books in your library? Thoughts?
Apologetics remains a big question mark for me. Yes, the title of "Unprepared" fits me well, but a part of me goes back to the idea that "If a skeptic does not accept the Bible as God's word and final answer, then no amount of arguement will convince him of anything."
ReplyDeleteIf two people both agree that the Bible is God's inspired word, will they have any serious, vital disagreements?
I'm looking forward to school being out and maybe we can spend some significant amount of time on topics such as this.
I think the days of "just because the Bible says so" are behind us. Today's skeptics are much less willing to just accept things on blind faith. If "just faith" were all it took, then why aren't all other religions just as valid? I don't believe God would ask us to blindly accept Christianity over all other religions without there being historical, scientific and academic proofs for belief in His Son and the truth of the Bible.
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