Today on the Evangelists Podcast, we're continuing to think of quick answers to quick questions.
SPEAKER_03The Evangelists Podcast. Encouragement to speak life to a needy world. With Glenn Scrivener and Andy Brinkley.
SPEAKER_04Okay, this is uh the second part of our series on quick answers to quick questions. We looked at uh the first quarter of them. Four of them. Four of sixteen. And uh this time we're gonna go on to look at some more in-depth.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Things that sort of pop up in conversation, maybe not exactly phrased as questions, but uh often objections to faith that are sort of considered to be killers to any belief. And what can we say quickly just to sort of arrest the conversation at that point and redirect it into into helpful ways?
SPEAKER_04Okay. Uh before we go on, why not receive our free Speak Life Daily? It's a small pocket-sized booklet that tells thirty-one stories of what God is doing around the world. Did you know thousands are responding to the gospel in Cameroon, that thirty thousand find Christ every day in China, or about the shipment of eighty thousand Bibles to Cuba. Not only this, but it also gives insider information about what we're up to at Speak Life, uh particularly what Glenn's up to gallivanting around the country and speaking. Uh it tells us uh it also gives uh daily inspiration for your prayers daily.
SPEAKER_01Hmm.
SPEAKER_04So uh you can get a copy of that by going to our website, revivalme um speaklife.org.uk.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, pick it up. It's it'll uh it'll help your prayers and uh open your vision for what's happening in the world and and help you to pray for us here.
SPEAKER_04We've got uh uh another rating from uh iTunes, which I'm gonna read out by Ryan Maslin. Um Ryan uh got one of you he signed up for one of your books last time when we when we did that uh little probe. Oh yes, oh enjoy. So he gave us five stars, he says, looking forward to the next a hundred. If you're after a podcast that doesn't only build you up in evangelism, then listening to Glenn and Andy is the best place to start. TEP always provides fantastic gospel-centric thoughts, which is fantastic. I'm personally looking forward to the next one hundred.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's very nice of you.
SPEAKER_04Thank you, Ryan. Thank you, Ryan. Yeah, enjoy the book as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so w let's just recap what we did last time, then with these five quick answers. Quick answers.
SPEAKER_00Have them up your sleeve.
SPEAKER_04Atheism isn't a belief, it's the absence of belief.
SPEAKER_00Uh really? And I suppose anarchism is the absence of political convictions. If God made the world, who made God? That's like asking if the sun enlightens the earth, what enlightens the sun?
SPEAKER_04I don't believe in God.
SPEAKER_00I probably don't believe in the God you're imagining either. Let's talk about Jesus.
SPEAKER_04I could never be religious.
SPEAKER_00Many say I could never be married, but then they meet the one. That's who Jesus is to me.
SPEAKER_04Okay, and then we've got uh we've got some more, four more, um, which we can go through.
SPEAKER_00Yep. But again, it it can sound glib, can't it? It can sound clever and pompous just to sort of, you know, um have the have these things. So you you've got to be very careful how you deploy these. It's to be deployed in the middle of relationship and trying to answer the person from where they're coming from. But very often these issues are just they're just in the ether, and and non-Christians kind of often and we all do it to to some degree, that there's there are all sorts of unexamined beliefs that we have that are just floating in the air, and we've never really thought about them, but we just sort of grab them off the shelf and and use them. Um and and these are just ways to kind of neutralize the those uh what Tim Keller calls defeater beliefs, to neutralize those that that say that you know this would defeat any faith in Jesus. Um and instead just re-orient the the conversation towards Jesus.
SPEAKER_04Um it's just because kind of to help help point people to Christ rather than get dwell in the uh the complications of philosophy or something.
SPEAKER_00I mean you you you you probably aren't surprised if you're involved in evangelism on any level, the number of people for whom, well, but who made God is just, you know, at some level they're thinking that this is why I could never believe in Christianity, because incoherence, who made God, ha ha ha, and and off I go. And and they've never even considered that there might be an answer to that. And of course the answer that the Christians give is, well, it's a mystery, and you know I don't know what what answers we usually give. But if if you're able to give a crisp little no, we've thought about this. You know, think about the sun, it's like that. Okay, now can we move on to what's really important? That's the purpose of these kind of quick answers to quick questions, to arrest those moments and to say, no, we've thought about that. And have you thought about this? That's that's what they're for. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Well, the first one then. How can you believe in the virgin birth of Jesus?
SPEAKER_00And one response is, Well, how can you believe in the virgin birth of the cosmos? Talk about miraculous.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I saw that tweet on uh when you tweeted that out, you got a lot of uh response from those.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. It's it got translated into French, Spanish, and Portuguese. There's even in fact, it's I I think I first tweeted that out like two years ago. It was it was ages ago when I first tweeted and and I keep seeing it in my feed, it kinda gets tweeted round. And I even saw it last week in Portuguese. Someone had made this um meme with my ugly face on it. There it is in Portuguese, so you know you know you've made it.
SPEAKER_04I've got to put that on the show notes.
SPEAKER_00Okay, you got to, yeah. It's it was a it was a very quizzical looking photo of me from many years ago. Um Yeah, so you know you've made it when you're when you're translated into Portuguese and and uh yeah. I believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, you believe you believe in the virgin birth of the cosmos, choose your miracle. You know, that's that was that was the old tweet. But um But it's it's amazing it's amazing how often people just don't think in those terms about how miraculous a naturalistic account of the universe is. To get life out of non-life is just I mean, forget about the birth of virgin okay, you know, this this this works too when people say, Well, you believe that, you know, the corpse Jesus just reanimated in the tomb, never to die again. Like you you really think like out of that out of that tomb, dead men don't rise, you know that, don't you? But you know, at that stage you say, Well, I believe in life coming out of non-life. I believe that in that tomb, Jesus of Nazareth, who is the Son of God, who was prophesied all throughout the the scriptures, who would rise again from the dead, yeah, I believe that he went from non-life to life. That's a miracle, right? Now, Mrs. Naturalist, Mr. Naturalist, whoever you are, you believe in life coming out of non-life in a far more miraculous way, don't you? Like somehow, what kind of naturalistic mechanism could there ever be that life and the life of the biosphere like emerges from non-life? You can't even begin to explain to me a a framework in which that is even mildly plausible. Like you don't even begin to be able to explain that. That is so much a bigger miracle than that Jesus of Nazareth went from non-life to life. Yeah. You think the biosphere went from non-life to life. So that's that's you know, so if people bring up the resurrection, but in in this one, if people bring up the virgin birth, you believe in the virgin birth of Jesus? You believe in the virgin birth of the cosmos, except you don't even have a virgin.
SPEAKER_02You got nothing.
SPEAKER_00And then coming out of nowhere, pure magic, nothing up the sleeve, no sleeve, no magician, nothing. Just pure magic, and you'll say you say, I believe in miracles. Honestly. So, yeah, just a a way of arresting that talk about miracles, because you know, the naturalistic worldview, if you smooth out everything and you you smooth out the supernatural from your view of reality, you know, it's it's a bit like when you're ironing and you smooth things out at the end, and at the end you would just end up with all this crumpled stuff at the edge. And that's what the naturalist kind of does. Like, oh yeah, everything's just natural processes, natural processes, natural process, and oh, at the edge, what are you just thinking about? Yeah, exactly. Let's not think about that. I'm sure natural processes will explain how life gets from non-life and how a cosmos erupts from sheer nothingness for no reason. You know. Yeah, okay. And my view is miraculous. Everyone everyone has a kind of miraculous view of of reality. But actually, the Christian, you know, that Jesus was born from a virgin. Actually, there is a whole context in which that event makes sense. That the cosmos came, not out of nothing, but out of a loving God who wants to share himself, that has an explanation. That life emerged from non life has an explanation. There is a God who wanted humanity and or that Jesus rose from the dead, okay, it's a miracle, but it's not an incomprehensible miracle. It's not absurdity. Actually, the Christians the Christians' account of all those things, the the birth of the cosmos, the birth of life from non-life, the virgin birth of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, all those things actually find a context in a living God who has purposes for all these things, and they make sense. On a naturalistic account, yeah, sure, um a virgin birth is weird and just a a a mad happening, and Jesus just reanimating from the tomb is a mad happening. But put in put that into the context of the triune God who has purposes for this world, and none of it is is suddenly inexplicable or weird or just spontaneous or absurd. The creation of the universe, the creation of life, Jesus, the the virgin birth and the resurrection all makes sense. So actually, if you want if you if you don't want to be reduced to absurdities, come on over to Christianity. If if you're content for there to be absurdities in the world that are unexplained and uh and unexplainable, fine, stick with stick with naturalism. But that's a far more miraculous account of reality, actually.
SPEAKER_04Okay. There's no need for God, science explains it all. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00Um and this is very common, so it's what people will commonly say. Um it's there's the God of the gaps kind of idea that um and Christians have kind of created this this view because for for a lot of Christians we kind of think if I can't explain it, God did it. And that's what my theology is. And and so God is relegated to all the things that you don't understand. Um now as you understand more and more processes in the natural world, well the gaps shrink, so your God shrinks. Um and it's a bit and it's a bit ridiculous. And and to be honest, it's the it's the Christians who are at fault for this, because so often we have had a God of the gaps in our understanding, and we sort of think, ah yes, science explains this much, and then the remainder, whatever is left over from science, that that bit we'll give to God.
SPEAKER_04Can you give us an example?
SPEAKER_00Oh, so you know, sometimes people say in the in the history of religions that uh ancient primitive people used to think that when the thunder claps and the lightning strikes, oh that's the gods getting angry. Now we realise it's just a weather system. And so, okay, so the gods are not in the thunder or the lightning anymore. God has shrunk. And the more that we understand not only weather systems, but actually the whole, you know, origin of the species, and we've got the you know a whole picture of the cosmos, so what room is there left for God? Um science explains everything, um, therefore there's no need for gods. And um and one way to come back at that is to say, well, I can explain that sentence that you just said. Does that mean there's no need for you? Just because you've given an explanation of something on one level does not remove the need for a speaker, for intelligence behind all of that, for a personal agent who is actually doing all that stuff. Um uh another good way of going about it is um what uh John Lennox talks about, you know, um just because you can explain the internal workings of a of a combustion engine doesn't mean you don't need Henry Ford anymore. You know, I've I've explained the the the the workings of a combustion engine. Um therefore I don't need I don't need an inventor, a designer, a personality behind it all.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and sometimes you've given the illustration of a cake, you know. You can explain completely how a cake's made and it's it's uh chemical makeup and everything, but nothing you find there will tell you why it was made. Why was it faked?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you need to ask Auntie Mabel for that. There's a personality behind it all. Um and even if you uh you know, even even if you try and you know describe all of Auntie Mabel's psychological imperatives and motivations, um, doesn't mean that there doesn't need to be an Auntie Mabel with you know an intentionality and a personality behind her, you know, doing all that. And so, you know, John Lennox would always say, um, I don't believe in a God of the gaps, I believe in a god of the whole show who did speak this universe into being. But just because he has spoken his word out into the into the world, just because we can understand that world, doesn't mean we now don't need a speaker. Yeah. Right? Um that's a bit that's a bit crazy. So just just because we can explain things doesn't mean we don't need a personality and a reality behind those things. And what scientists who believe in God have always said is this is to the glory of God, you know. And so, you know, no nobody in the English Renaissance as they're kind of really pursuing science, kind of suddenly understood all this stuff about stuff and and you know, and and then said, you know, therefore we don't need God. They say, well now we now we understand more of the mind of God.
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_00Um Yeah, that's and that's the way good science proceeds. It doesn't shrink God at all because it's not the God of the gaps, it's the god of the whole show.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Uh if you grew up in twelfth century Nepal, you wouldn't be a Christian.
SPEAKER_00And uh Richard Dawkins even yesterday tweeted tweeted out something very similar. Um said uh surely it should shake your faith to know that you know if you if you lived in another time and place, you would believe a completely different set of things, with exactly the same ardency. Doesn't that shake your faith? If it's good for the goose, Richard, it's good for the gander, okay? Doesn't it shake your faith that if you were in twelfth century Nepal, you wouldn't be a skeptic either? Like you'd be, I don't know, a Buddhist, probably. Wouldn't you? And and th so this this idea and and you certainly wouldn't be a neo-Darwinist. Right? And yet you ardently believe in this today, and and doesn't that shake your faith in you know, in the Neo-Dawinian synthesis? Doesn't that shake your faith? And Richard Dawkins at that stage would rightly say, Well, no, because I've come to see the rationality behind it, and I've come to investigate it for myself, and I've come to own these beliefs myself. Well, yeah, that's that's what I've done with Christianity too. But yeah, so a a quick way of coming back at that is if they say if you grew up in 12th century Nepal, you wouldn't be a Christian. Well, if you grew up there, you wouldn't be a skeptic. Okay. Now can we talk about the real issue? Is it a justified belief, the belief that I have? Yeah, let's let's admit that there are all sorts of uh psychological shapings, all sorts of social conditionings, all sorts of context and environment um that mean that, yeah, I am the kind of Christian that I am today. I've yeah, that I'm not just a Christian, I'm the kind of Christian that I am today. All of all of that, yeah. But that is absolutely 100% true for the questioner as well. And do you d and and doesn't that shake your faith that actually maybe you just grew up with a sort of a secular view in the ether and it's kind of been absorbed by you and you just think it's neutral. Do you think it's neutral? Well, why don't you imagine yourself in the shoes of a twelfth century farmer in Nepal? Okay? Do you do you think you'd believe any of the stuff that you believe? Of course you wouldn't. But therefore, let's let's like reorient the com conversation back onto well, how do we know anything? Well, I I believe in a god outside of time who well who came into time and space and into culture and earthed himself and can be known, and is the most international global phenomenon the world has ever seen. You know, and and it's very interesting that the kinds of views that Richard Dawkins has are only really popular in the West Um in the last, you know well, in terms of the new atheism in the last fifteen years. Um whereas you look at the spread of global Christianity and and you see that, you know, from the first century it was just going viral and encompassing all sorts of cultures. And you know, you you ask about any other worldview, the new atheism is very culturally located in the West. You look at Islam, very culturally located in the Middle East and in Indonesia, you look at Hinduism, almost entirely um India and people from Indian extraction. You look at Buddhism, again, almost entirely in the Far East, you look at Christianity, and it's everywhere. Absolutely everywhere in so many different cultural expressions. So as we th as as you know, if if your friend has brought up the issue of cultural location, you can say, yeah, it's a problem for all of us, it's definitely a problem for you. Um but what is the one world view that seems to ex seems to have to some degree escaped that kind of cultural location and is believed by people from all sorts of cultures around the world, come home to Christianity, and then you might have a hope of escaping from the culture-bound ways of thinking.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah, okay. Uh you believe you were born sick and commanded to be well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And th I mean this will only come up really with with people who are either familiar with uh the Bible and Christianity or are or are familiar with Christopher Hitchens and anti theists and um I mean the way he says it is just devastating with the rhetoric that he uses. He's just brilliant, but uh, you know, this this odious primitive Bronze Age belief that you are commanded. You are you are born sick, commanded to be well. Um and you know, let's sit with that for a second and and think about well what what is it that Christians are really saying? Um Hosier in in the song Take Me to Church, which was like number one in the charts here in the UK, and um We were born sick, I heard them say it. And he says it with like venom and spite in his in his in his voice. You know, he's talking about the the evils of church. We were born sick, I heard them say it. Okay, well let's think about this for a second. I was born not only sick, I was born with a chronic terminal, sexually transmitted disease called life, and the clock is ticking, I'm perishing. I was born dying, I wasn't just born sick. And not only was I born sick, I was born dying, I was born hungry, I was born thirsty, I was born utterly needy, so that if you know, if if I wasn't tended to every minute of the day, I would perish. Like I would die. That is the way all of us are born physically, and yet we are offered life from outside of ourselves. We are offered food and drink and shelter and love. And and so all the Christian is saying is what we already know physically. We we know that we're born perishing, but we are offered life and sustenance from beyond ourselves. The Bible just says, let's just be honest about our spiritual and emotional and spiritual and I've said spiritual and and you know, moral sense as well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That we're born cut off from true life. But we're offered it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So yeah. It's not that, you know, we're commanded to be well and we've got to try and get ourselves sorted and everything. It's uh it was offered, as you say. Yeah. It's ours for the take. We've got to gotta receive it rather than try and make ourselves.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Commanded to be well. And so I mean that's that's a real um it's interesting. The Bible is always ridiculous when you only take a part of it. Every uh any part of the Bible's story is absolutely crazy um unless it's on the Bible's own logic. You know, the fact the fact that one man butchered on a Roman cross saves the world. That's that's crazy. Unless he is the second Adam, who is answering the first Adam who brought the world down into death and chaos through sin. And he went to the tree and brought selfishness and sin and suffering on you know, on the human race and on the world through himself. Christ the second Adam, you know, does that. And so So if you do so if you just uh isolate the Jesus bit of the story, it sounds nuts. Again, if you just isolate the Adam bit of the story, it sounds nuts. Okay, so so now we're in Adam and we're all just like condemned in him. Okay, well yeah. And if if that's the only bit of the story you get, I understand why you why you're gonna kick against that. And if you think that the answer to Adam is Moses, com you know, born sick, commanded to be well. You know, if you if you think Moses comes to answer the problem of Adam and just tell you how to, you know, how to how to be well, then I can understand why you reject that that brand of Christianity. It's not even Christianity, it's it's heresy. Um But the whole story is born sick offered the healer, born dying offered life, born hungry offered bread. It's the Adam and Christ story together that actually gives the a gives you the answer. And so, even though this is meant to be a quick fire silver bullet type answer, you know, we're not born hungry and offer we we're not born, you know, second commandments be well, we're born hungry and offered bread. Um, just because it's that kind of quick answer doesn't mean that you're brushing the question aside. It means you wanted to engage it on its true terms, which is not just to pluck the Adam story out and you know, of course that's gonna be ridiculous. It's it's let's quickly try and reorient all things to the Bible's actually stor the Bible's actual story. We're born perishing, offered life. Let's talk about that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And you know, obviously use more than 140 characters if you want.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But it but it is interesting that those opportunities, they come and go like that. Yes. They really do. Yeah. Um so if someone does drop that in, it is it is handy to have this sort of stuff. The only reason I've got these quick answers to quick questions is because like eight or nine times someone has said this, and I've gone, uh. And the opportunity goes. And three days later you're on the bus and you go, ah, that's good. That's all this is. This is just collating the wisdom of a thousand conversations that have gone wrong. Um, and just trying to can we seize those moments to get things back onto a Jesus track?
SPEAKER_04Good. Okay, well, we'll leave it there. We'll go on to another four next time. Brilliant. So thanks very much for listening. Uh, if you want to hear this and the previous one um and future ones, go to speaklife.org.uk slash tep. Thanks very much. See you next time.
SPEAKER_01See ya.