On today's episode, we're thinking about quick answers to quick questions. The Evangelists Podcast. Encouragement to speak life to a needy world. With Glenn Scrivener and Andy Brinkley.
SPEAKER_01This is uh number four in the uh series of quick answers to quick questions. We've been going through some quick, sort of pithy in a way, uh responses to people that come out with with sort of major objections to to faith, to Christianity. And uh we've been we've been going through a number of them.
SPEAKER_02Um sixty well, we've done twelve, haven't we?
SPEAKER_01Done twelve, yep.
SPEAKER_02Final four. It's like the semi-finals, the final four.
SPEAKER_01Before we go on, uh I just want to tell you about the Speak Life Daily. It's a small pocket-sized booklet that tells thirty-one stories of what God is doing through the church around the world. Did you know thousands are responding to the gospel in Cameroon? Thirty thousand find Christ every day in China, or the shipment of eighty thousand Bibles to Cuba. Not only this, but it gives inside information about what we're up to at Speak Life, uh what Glenn's diary is, and uh git also gives some daily spiritual inspiration. You can sign up uh for a paper copy or uh via email at our website speaklife.org.uk. So, Glenn, we've got uh another Australian review for the podcast. And I'm gonna give it to you to read again.
SPEAKER_02Geda, get a so you can get the accent.
SPEAKER_01And how are you going?
SPEAKER_02What do you know? All strike alike. Okay, customer reviews. Okay, James Krieg. Hello, James. Uh the Evangelist Podcast is a great resource for those who are serious about proclaiming the gospel in an engaging way with people today. Glenn's presentations are always clear and accessible with a deep biblical insight into both the issues we face and the simple but profound truth of the gospel. The fact that he is also an Aussie is a bonus, obviously. As I think UK and Australian cultures are similar enough for our issues and struggles in evangelism to be much the same. Well done, Andy and Glenn. Oh, thank you very much, James. That's great. Just so you know, I hadn't seen that before, and I didn't I didn't know that I was gonna be reading such nice things about us. Oh well, anyway, thank you very much. And for everyone who's surprised, I am the most surprised.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so we're gonna recap uh all of these now. Should we just we'll recap all of them? Let's let's alternate. Do twelve.
SPEAKER_02Let's alternate. I'll be the questioner, you be the answer, and then I'll you be the questioner and I'll be the answer.
SPEAKER_01Yeah? Well. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah? Okay.
SPEAKER_01Atheism isn't a belief, it's the absence of belief.
SPEAKER_02Really? And I suppose anarchism is the absence of political convictions? If God made the world, who made God?
SPEAKER_01That's like asking, if the sun enlightens the earth, what enlightens the sun? I don't believe in God.
SPEAKER_02I probably don't believe in the God you're imagining either. Let's talk about Jesus. I could never be religious.
SPEAKER_01Many say I could never be married. But then they meet the one. That's who Jesus is to me. How can you believe in the virgin birth of Jesus?
SPEAKER_02How can you believe in the virgin birth of the cosmos? Talk about miraculous. There's no need for God. Science explains it all.
SPEAKER_01I can explain that sentence. No need for you then. If you grew up in 12th century Nepal, you wouldn't be a Christian.
SPEAKER_02If you grew up there, you wouldn't be a skeptic.
SPEAKER_01You believe we're born sick and commanded to be well. No, we're born hungry and offered bread. As with the physical, so the spiritual. Suffering rules out God.
SPEAKER_02Which God? Certainly many gods are incompatible with suffering, but what about the crucified God? To say Jesus is the one way is narrow.
SPEAKER_01But you insist on one way to consider religions. That's narrow. To say sex stroke marriage is for one man and one woman is homophobic.
SPEAKER_02Think of a Buddhist. Is their vegetarianism carnivore phobic? Religions cause all wars.
SPEAKER_01Nope. Only about seven percent. God isn't the common denomin denominator in war, humanity is.
SPEAKER_02There we go.
SPEAKER_01Very good. So we've sort of uh as we've been going through these, we've been highlighting that uh it's not uh it's not meant to be sort of like a glib quick um shot to kind of uh dispel all uh unbelief in one shot. Yeah. Um this is just something to sort of get behind what people are saying to sort of uh shake the foundations a little bit.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01Um it's not necessarily we're trying to um argue somebody into the kingdom of God just just to kind of uh point people i in a different um come from a different basis.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and we've done we've done episodes in the past, and perhaps we can put in the show notes other episodes we've done in terms of um the issue of handling questions, and then we've dealt at length with various objections to faith like science and sexuality and hypocrisy in the church and judgment and all these issues, and we've dealt with them at length. Um and so we'll put in the in the show notes sort of episodes that where we've also talked at greater length about the issue of handling questions and also some of these more apologetic issues um at greater length. But what this is is just the it's the acknowledgement that conversations move really fast between lots of different topics. And and that people do have these uh objections to faith that uh that they just reach for really unthinkingly. And what what you really need is to arrest those thoughts in those moments and to be able to shake the shake the foundations a little bit and and reorient the conversation towards Jesus in a in a more helpful way. And that's just that's just what we're trying to do here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, Glenn, uh a few episodes ago, in fact, uh I think it's actually about eighty episodes ago. Eighty episodes ago, alright. Um you talked about the um the four uh you talked about the three R's for when you know responding to people. I think it was uh reflecting and reframing, that's it.
SPEAKER_02Revealing. Yes, and I've come up with a fourth R actually since then. Yes. That's what happens. What happens there'll be six R's next time you ask me. Um yeah, just just little things to think about when when people come to you with questions, so uh just very briefly, because you can go to go to the episode and and and hear us unpack it, but um we reflect the question back to the questioner. If they've if they've got a question about suffering, and you know, it's perfectly legitimate to say, well, I'll yeah, I'll totally talk to you about how I think about suffering, but how do you cope with suffering? You know, I've I've got the comfort of the suffering God who joins me in the midst of of the valley of the shadow. How do you handle it with suffering? And that you know, that can lead to a really fruitful question. So you reflect it back, you relate your own experience, not as someone who's got all the answers to life, but as someone who just, yeah, as a Christian, suffering is really difficult. Like a testimony or you give a testimony of, yeah, and I thought God had abandoned me at that point, and just relate how you personally have struggled with it, not at it not at a simple intellectual level, but at a an at an existential level. Um then so you reflect, you relate, then you reframe the question according to gospel terms. And so you you might just want to think about what what are the assumptions behind that question. Well, what do you mean by God in that in that instance? Um and and so you're you're reframing um the the way that the question is uh uh asked, and therefore the way that you answer it. Because Jesus very rarely answers questions on their own terms in the gospels. He he he usually shifts the ground, reorients things, um and answers them from a different perspective, and I that's what we need to do with the reframing. I'm not interested in justifying any old deity in the in the face of a suffering world, because any old deity in the in the face of a suffering world does not like inspire trust or allegiance, because any old God who's just happens to be ruling over this mess, you think, oh, I I'm not sure I I could believe in such a God. And you might be right, if that's the God that you're thinking of, you'll you'd be right to reject that God. What about Jesus? And so that and that's the fourth R. You reveal Jesus. Everything that you're trying to do is not just to win an intellectual argument, but to shift the ground, to open things up so that you can get the word of Christ uh into people's hearts, and so you reveal Jesus, and and so you you're always trying to get straight to the heart of who is Jesus? He's the suffering God. So suffering cannot rule out the suffering God. When you when you've got Jesus at the centre, that's the beginning of the answer. So reflect, relate, reframe, reveal.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so we we'll keep those in mind as we go through these uh final four, then. Yep. Um so let's look at this. Uh why doesn't God just forgive?
SPEAKER_02And the quick answer is have you ever tried it? Have you ever tried forgiving? It hurts. It means self-sacrifice, because forgiving a debt means absorbing the cost. And so that's just pointing people to an analogy.
SPEAKER_01Um and So can I just uh jump in? Uh so this is why does why doesn't God just forgive people who've done wrong?
SPEAKER_02And um Why why go through the cross and the mess and the gospel and all those animals dying in the Old Testament and why doesn't God just you know, W about you know people who die without Christ?
SPEAKER_01Why doesn't God just let them into heaven anyway?
SPEAKER_02Is that kind of a it could be it could be that question. It's it's more specifically when people kind of just think the cross is like a completely overblown overreaction by God and why why why bother with the whole Jesus thing? Yeah. You know, if I've cr I've committed a lie and God kills his son. God kills his son and now he lets me into heaven. Well why doesn't he just cut out the whole killing his son bit?
unknownYou know?
SPEAKER_02Um so this is this is really the question that gets asked when once um you've explained the gospel a little a little bit. It's also a a big question that Muslims have. Um Allah is just merciful and compassionate and just, you know, forgives. Doesn't doesn't need Jesus to die for Allah to forgive you. Um so you just forgive. And and you can go in two related directions with that. You can either you can stick to strictly the um the analogy in which you say, okay, well, if you owe me ten thousand pounds and I forgive you the debt, does that cost me nothing? No, it cost me ten thousand pounds. I've I've got to find that money somewhere else. I've I I take the hit. You get off scot-free, I take the hit. And in the same way, um, you know, God freely forgives us and we're let off the hook, but it costs him. You know, he he absorbs the hit. And actually, you know, even in the Lord's Prayer, it's forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, most literally, that's what the language is. Um yeah, so when debts get wiped off, somebody bears the cost. And that's what that's what Jesus is doing on the cross. And so you I you either point people towards that kind of analogy, or you or you just point them to their own personal experience with forgiving. Do you find that easy to forgive? Um No, it's hard, isn't it? And when you decide not to bear a grudge anymore, and when you decide to to stop running them down in conversation to everybody else, and when you s when you decide to stop making them pay, um, you end up bearing the cost, don't you? It's costly. It's hard. Uh what is the cross? It's Jesus paying the cost so that we don't have to. So it's just yeah, it's that kind of analogy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay. Uh Christians are hypocrites.
SPEAKER_02Man, that comes up a lot. Um I'm as good as they are. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well then that says you're a hypocrite. I mean there's there's a there's a lot of quick answers to that that one. And sometimes the appropriate quick quick answer when when people say, you know, church is full of hypocrites, sometimes the quick answer that's appropriate is oh it's not full, there's plenty of room for one more. Always room for one more. And what you're trying to do, uh and the answer the answer that I put on Twitter was um Christians are hypocrites. No, Christians are sinners, and we're very open about it. The biggest hypocrisy is pretending you don't have any. Um So actually, Christians never pretended to perfection. Um we actually know that we're sinners, and and this sort of opens up a conversation like, you know, where you talk about Jesus says it's not the healthy you need a doctor, it's the sick. No one in a doctor's surgery is trying to pretend that they're healthy. And that's that's kind of what church is. It's it's it's meant to be. The doctor's surgery, where you're coughing and spluttering, but you're not a hypocrite because you're sick in a doctor's surgery. That's where you're meant to be. And so it's just using analogies like that, and and and like with this one, I I I I do I do want to gently push towards saying we're all hypocrites, aren't we? And and the way I do that is by revealing my own hypocrisy and sin, and I I kind of talk about how, yeah, I I say one thing and I do a different thing. Don't you? And if they say, No, I never do, hmm, is there a danger of hypocrisy in that? Is is there? Maybe and and you know, I I leave people with the the thought, maybe the mask that says, I don't I don't I'm not wearing any masks, maybe that is the most insidious and wicked of all masks to wear. You know? And maybe the Christian who actually says, Yeah, I have been wearing masks and I do it all the time, and that's not good, and I'm sorry actually that begins to be the healing for hypocrisy. Healing for hypocrisy happens when you look bad in the presence of love. Hypocrisy flourishes when you think you've got to look good in the presence of judgment. And actually the world is full of that. You think you think you've gotta look a certain way, you think you've got to achieve, you think you've got to be strong, powerful, and beautiful, and f clever, and funny, and all these different things. And actually that's what's gonna lead to hypocrisy. The message of Christianity is you're very, very wicked underneath that that mask, you're very, very selfish, you're very sinful, and you're very hypocritical. Um you're loved anyway. So drop the mask and look bad in the presence of love, and that starts to be healing for hypocrisy. Yeah. And you start to be able to uh overcome hypocrisy when you stop wearing the no hypocrisy mask.
SPEAKER_01Yes. How how do you say that to somebody you know very well?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, you're a hypocrite too. Yeah. In this face, you've got to kind of say that in a way that's polite.
SPEAKER_02You do it by revealing your own hypocrisy in a fleshed out way. Yeah. You know. Like, you know, so I would say, uh if we're leaving the house and Emma isn't ready, I'm like, oh, just five minutes late, making us five minutes late for leaving the house, and that's that's ridiculous. But then when I'm when I'm returning home from out of the house, into into the house, I think she should be completely cool with me being five minutes late. It's like like five five minutes on my way back in, that's absolutely fine, right? Five minutes on the way out of the house, that's unreasonable and outrageous. And I sort of and so you just kind of confess your own hypocrisy in those moments. To a to to the point where they can sort of say, Oh, yeah, me too, or you know. Um I think that's that's the way. Yeah. Confessing your own is is is the way forward.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. What about if someone says, I wish I had your faith?
SPEAKER_02And the short answer I've got here is uh look, if I recommend my doctor, you don't need my faith in my doctor, you need my doctor. Um and it and it's and you know, sometimes I say it about my doctor, sometimes I say it about you know an IT consultant, or you know, I I say, you know, Andy fixed my computer the other day, you just need Andy, right? And if like if if a friend's you know says I had this you know issue with Windows 10 and it just didn't update, and I say, Well, you just need Andy, Andy will fix you out. And and if they then said, I wish I had your faith in Andy, what are you talking about? You don't need my faith in Andy, you just need Andy. Um or I do it with you know car mechanic, you know. Ed, Ed the car mechanic has fix fixed our car many times. Something one time it cost him 79p to fix our car, just you know, just to get a part, and uh and if you've got the same problem with your car, I'm gonna say, You need to call Ed. And if somebody says, I wish I had your faith in Ed, don't be ridiculous, you just need Ed. Um and in the in this way, all you're trying to do is saying, You don't need faith, you need Jesus. And if you've got Jesus, you'll have faith. Um and just trying to just trying to shift people's thinking on what faith is. It's not this thing that you possess that you try and work up in your own soul. Faith is knowing who Jesus is. So if you want do you really want faith? Well, let me tell you about Jesus. Um and in just the what just the same way as I say this doctor is great, you'll start to believe in that doctor. Just as you see Andy is a brilliant at IT, you'll start to believe in Andy. Just as you see Ed is good with cars, you'll start to believe in Ed. Just as you see Jesus is wonderful with sinners, you'll start to believe in Jesus. So you're just trying to shift people's thinking on on what is faith there, really.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's good. I like that one. You'll be inundated now. Andy, Windows 10 is not updating. If God knew there'd be suffering, why create?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and another another suffering question because it's it's it's the biggie that people have. And this one is really could it ever be worth it? Could it ever be worth it for God to to to make a world in which he knew that there would be bubonic plague, and he knew that there would be black holes, and he knew that there would be earthquakes and that hundreds of thousands of people could die at a single stroke. If you know all this, surely it's it's the height of negligence to create knowing that there'd be a a world like this. Uh and the and again, here's an analogy. Uh every parent knows that their children will suffer, and will suffer existentially, and will suffer a a great deal, but they give life nonetheless, and we tend to think that it is worth it um to give life. And and actually throughout the Bible, childbearing is just such a massive illustration of suffering in the world. In the Old Testament with Jesus, in the New Testament, everywhere you turn in the Bible, it's always talking about this childbearing thing, and we are in the pains of childbearing. And and so again, this illustration of just saying, Well, you know what, every pregnant woman will say, you know, was it painful? Oh, it was the most horrifically painful thing I've ever known in my life. Was it worth it? Yes, it was worth it. Now, interestingly, uh a couple of times I've done this, and and then people have said, Oh yeah, but what about you know, stillborn children, or what what about the mother dies in in childbirth and all that kind of stuff? And that is, again, to mistake the analogy for the thing that you're you're you're trying to describe. Um in the analogy, there really isn't a stillborn child. In the analogy, Jesus says, really, after the after the childbearing, there really is hope, there really is new creation. Do you want to be a part of this? Um there there isn't the danger of a stillborn child within this analogy of creation heading towards life and hope. Um and so at that at at that point y yeah, you want to make sure that you're being clear on what the analogy is and is not saying but you are saying that yeah, every parent knows that bringing children in the world will cause them suffering. Will will cause the children suffering, but even more it will cause the parents suffering. And that's the other thing that the illustration does, is that it says, actually, God knew that it would cost him more than it would cost any of us, and he still thought it was worth it. The cross is God is the childbearing pains of God Himself suffering so that we might have life. And he seemed to think it was worth it. For the joy set before him, he seemed to think it was worth going through it. And if Jesus thought it was worth going through all this to get to life at the end, then it must be. So maybe we can trust him.
SPEAKER_01And it's it's worth saying that God didn't want there to be suffering. It wasn't like he he um had a desire for suffering, you know, and it it says that uh he desires none to perish but all to come to him. Yeah. So although he was he knew it would happen in in some ways, it wasn't his perfect will to yeah. Will, it was it was our it was our behaviour, really. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's a f it's a fall, not a push, you know. Um yeah, and it's important to say it was a fall that we gladly turned from the light and fell, rather than it was a push, and he kind of you know It's not like he's uh you know moving chess pieces around and uh you know nonchalantly ha ha ha. Like the old sort of Greek ideas of Yeah yeah, yeah, send sending thunderbolts the way that you know Thor kind of in in the in the Norse religions would do that. It's it's certainly not that. You know, and and there's the there are great mysteries uh uh around it all. But um yeah, you're absolutely right. John three sixteen should be sort of uh tattooed on onto the inside of our eyeballs as we as we talk about this. Um that is yeah, God's great love. Love for the world is that none may perish, but all men have life. So the intention is for all to come in on this this new birth that God is offering. But for whatever reason, it's it's going through this trajectory, down and then up, darkness and then light. But there is no darkness in God. Darkness comes when we turn from the light. In him there is light and there is no darkness at all. So all those things we need to a affirm. But um yeah, maybe maybe the uh analogy, the illustration of of childbearing kind of helps us to figure out if God knew it was gonna happen, why suffer? Well, actually, life is a costly, painful thing. Um we know that that's true uh in in our relations, actually it's true for God as well. I'm just helping people to see that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, good. Okay, well we've we've come to the end there. Um any sort of final um encouragements or or tips if you like.
SPEAKER_02I thought as we come to the end of the day, yeah, I I mean I'm torn between saying learn this stuff or your own versions of this stuff and come up with better ones and and please email them in and and and help us to know what you um use in in in evangelism and do learn them and do take advantage of these conversations. Um in scores and scores of conversations, people have said things like I don't believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, and it's led to a good conversation because I've known what to say in that moment. People have said who made God and I've known what to say in that moment. So on on one level, I want to say, learn this stuff, learn it by hearts, take those opportunities, be bold. Um and at the same time, I want um I want us all to be context sensitive and to know I I don't just wheel out this answer because this is what I always do. Please do be prayerful, please do be listening to the wisdom of the Spirit as the Spirit is leading you to the word to be able to proclaim what is what God wants you to say in that moment, not not just because you've got you know these answers learnt by rope. So I to be to be honest, I I want I want us all to do both. I want us to to have these up our sleeves so that we can put them aside when we sense that you know it's not right for me to just give an answer right now. Right now, I just need to reflect back to them. Right now I just need to relate my own story right now. You know, m maybe I don't need to give the um the answer right now. But learn the answer first so that you've got that option. That's that's probably my my my parting shot on the issue of silver bullets. Learn them so that you can then discard them. But at least at least have them in your in your armory. Good.
SPEAKER_01Okay, well that's good. That kind of concludes our our four-part series on quick answers, and uh we'll um go on to something new next time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we're gonna talk about um we've we've often talked on the Evangelist podcast about how to speak to secular people and to speak to people uh who are atheistic in outlook and that kind of thing. Uh we're gonna do a series thinking about people who have a belief, who have what what would be recognized as a religious belief. Um so people who uh might be spiritualists, people who believe in the New Age, but also uh Islam. We're gonna talk to J. Smith and people like that, and we're gonna um think about uh how how we address people who already have faith commitments that they know about and they're a signed up member of an actual religion sort of thing. Um so really looking forward to that. We've got some great interviews uh lined up. Do tune in for that.
SPEAKER_01Good. Okay, well that's it for now. Uh go to our website where you can find this and other episodes, and also you can sign up via the links there that we've uh we've mentioned before. Uh speaklife.org.uk slash tep. Thanks very much for listening and see you then. See you soon.