Today on the Evangelist Podcast, we're looking at quick answers to quick questions.
SPEAKER_00The Evangelists Podcast. Encouragement to speak life to a needy world. With Glenn Scrivener and Andy Brinkley.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so on the Evangelist Podcast this week, we're going to look at some quick answers to quick questions, Glenn.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Looking forward to that. It'd be good to sort of read through them all first, and then we're going to take uh sort of four podcasts to uh to look at them all.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we think we think four podcasts. We'll see, we'll see how animated we get in a discussion when I say we. But yeah, these all came out of um just on Twitter. Whenever I go on a train, um it's bad news for all my followers because they're they're about to like receive three million tweets uh on the train until my battery runs out, which usually happens within about 45 minutes. But um it's a it's a real race. Whenever I'm on a train, what will run out first, my battery or my followers? But um so uh at a on a recent uh train trip, I uh just tweeted out sixteen quick questions that often just usually they're not even like phrased as questions, they're just kind of dumped into conversation as just a that's a killer to all belief.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh so what can we say in a Twitter-length response to these sixteen things?
SPEAKER_04Okay, excellent. Well, we'll we'll go through them in a in a mo. Um I just want to remind you about the Speak Life Daily. It's our free booklet, uh small pocket-sized booklet. It tells 31 stories of what God is doing around the world. Uh, not only this, but it gives insider information about what we're up to here at Speak Life. We've just kind of rebranded the uh the building.
SPEAKER_02Yes, new signs. New signs. We are the Speak Life Centre. Yeah. Yes, with our Speak Life Daily and our speaklife.org.uk. So yeah, just trying to get uh the the fact that we are a uh a proclamation evangelism charity. Um front and centre.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I'm trying to change the um the podcast logo on the uh on iTunes because it's still got the old stuff on.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I'll work out how to do it at some point. I changed it all in the feed and everything, it just didn't update in iTunes.
SPEAKER_02Oh man. The woes of IT and I don't know.
SPEAKER_04So anyway, yeah, uh how to send off for it, uh just go to speaklife.org.uk. I thought it'd be probably just as well for people to go to speaklife.org.uk slash T E P.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Because you've we've got a list there now of of all the hundred and four.
SPEAKER_02It'll be a hundred and five by the time you listen to this, it'll be hundred and five.
SPEAKER_04Listed there, so it's probably just easy, and then if you just you know, just click on the one if you want this one today, click on 105. If you want another one, click on that one.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And there you should be able to find something that's of some value in 105 episodes. Maybe.
SPEAKER_04We failed otherwise.
SPEAKER_02We totally have, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Good. Um I found another review.
SPEAKER_02Oh, did you? Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Um by looking on uh the Canada iTunes. Uh we got a review from Guitar Player.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Hello, Guitar Player.
SPEAKER_04This is uh by Guitar D D. Straightforward, dead on. I want to do this in a Canadian accent, oh, is it from Canada?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Come on then.
SPEAKER_04Totally enjoyable and encouraging sticks to truth. So thank you, Guitar D D.
SPEAKER_02Guitar D D. A. That's what they do in Canada, isn't it? That's how you do a Canadian accent. You just do an American accent with the word A at the at the end. Oh, right. Yeah. See, I I can do all the accents. Please don't offend one positive review.
SPEAKER_04Positive review, you butcher that language. But serious, serious, seriously.
SPEAKER_02Okay, I was gonna I was gonna take you on a tour of accents, but never mind. No, no, no, no. No. No, that's for another episode.
SPEAKER_04Alright, let's let's get to it, Glenn.
SPEAKER_02Okay, quick answers to quick questions. Are you gonna are you gonna give me the the qu the answers? Okay. No, you give me the questions. I'll give you the questions. Alright.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so here they are. Uh atheism isn't a belief, it's the absence of belief.
SPEAKER_02Oh, really? And I suppose anarchism is the absence of political convictions. Alright.
SPEAKER_04I need a sort of a drum roll.
SPEAKER_02This sounds very triumphalistic, and we we'll talk about how triumphalistic it might sound uh to just shoot down questions like this. But uh it might be handy to to keep going. Here we go.
SPEAKER_04Okay. If God made the world, who made God?
SPEAKER_02That's like asking if the sun enlightens the earth, what enlightens the sun? Think about it. Okay. I don't believe in God. I probably don't believe in the God you're imagining either. Let's talk about Jesus. I could never be religious. Many people say I could never be married, but then they meet the one. That's who Jesus is to me.
SPEAKER_04How can you believe in the virgin birth of Jesus?
SPEAKER_02How can you believe in the virgin birth of the cosmos? Talk about miraculous.
SPEAKER_04There's no need for God, science explains it all.
SPEAKER_02I can explain that sentence. Does that mean there's no need for you?
SPEAKER_04If you grew up in twelfth century Nepal, you wouldn't be a Christian.
SPEAKER_02And if you grew up there, you wouldn't be a skeptic. In fact, Richard Dawkins tweeted out almost precisely that yesterday, but I just didn't have the time to kind of wade into all that. But anyway.
SPEAKER_04You believe we're born sick and commanded to be well?
SPEAKER_02No. We're born hungry and offered bread. As with the physical, so with the spiritual. Suffering rules out God. Which God? To be sure, many gods are incompatible with suffering, but what about the crucified God?
SPEAKER_04To say Jesus is the one way is narrow.
SPEAKER_02But you it you insist on one way to consider all religions. That's narrow.
SPEAKER_04To 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 cause all wars. Uh no. About 7% actually. God is not the common denominator in war. Humanity is.
SPEAKER_04Why doesn't God just forgive?
SPEAKER_02Have you ever tried it? It hurts. It means self-sacrifice, because forgiving a debt means absorbing the cost. Christians are all Christians are hypocrites. Christians are sinners, and we're very open about that. The biggest hypocrisy is pretending you don't have any. If I recommend my doctor, you don't need my faith in her, you need her. You don't need faith, but Jesus.
SPEAKER_04If God knew there'd be suffering, why create?
SPEAKER_02Every parent knows their children will suffer. They still give life nonetheless. There we go.
SPEAKER_04Okay, lots of uh thought-provoking. You're a Christian now.
SPEAKER_02Are you are you overwhelmed with uh the short fire, quick fire answers? It's a funny exercise, isn't it? Kind of doing that quick quick question, quick answer thing. Um and it does sound very glib, or it could sound very glib and triumphalistic. Um certainly when you do it like that, it does sound like that.
SPEAKER_04When you've got 140 characters.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well that's true.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. On Twitter, you have to Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So I guess I guess you've got to think about what Yeah, what what are we trying to do when we're trying to think quick quickly on our feet and give quick answers? And I guess thinking more broadly, what are we trying to do in general when we're answering um questions of faith? So it'd be good to be good to talk about that, and then it'd be good to talk about, yeah, why is it good to have a quick comeback up your sleeve for those questions, because a lot of them will come up if you're involved in evangelism. Um But maybe maybe we can maybe we can think about what we're attempting with questions in general, because I think it's interesting, I was I was doing a um a seminar at U New Wine um just last week, and it was all it was called uh Reasons to Believe or Reasons for Faith. And so it was a room full of people really wanting to be evangelistic and really wanting to be able to answer people's questions. And um I did a sort of a pop quiz and I asked people um to vote um on various statements and to see which side of the room they fell on. And one of the one of the one of the sort of the the questions that I asked them is, do you think we should answer everybody's questions on their own terms as carefully and s and you know considerately as absolutely possible? Or on the other side of the room, do you think most questions come from a place of unbelief and it's basically because people don't want to believe, and they just throw up questions as kind of hurdles so that you don't press them on why they don't believe. Um so which is it? Do you know it's uh are we surrounded by lots of you know inquirers who are genuinely seeking after the truth and what we really need to do is sit down and answer questions on their own terms? Or do we see the questions as smoke screens for for not wanting to believe? Um and of course in a room like that everybody was on the side of you know, most people, you know, we we just go out of our way to really considerately answer every every kind of question. And I really, really, really understand that. But it is interesting when you look at how Jesus answers questions, isn't that? And there are there are a lot of people who he spends a lot of time with, the woman by the well spends a lot of time with her, patiently dealing with all her you know, and she throws up this issue about the mountain over there, and she throws up this issue about you Jews, and the truth throws up this issue about this and that. Um and Jesus kind of patiently does deal with her, but kind of not on her own terms, he keeps on bringing her back to the truth. So so he does, you know, patiently, you know, deal with her, or you think about the rich young ruler who comes up to Jesus and says, What must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus kind of deals with him, even though he's giving some horrendous answers, Jesus looked at him and loved him, and um but he's quite abrupt with him in in other ways and kind of confronts him with the truth. Um or you th or you think of the the lawyer who said, you know, which is the right commandment and which is the greatest commandment in Luke chapter ten and and Jesus throws the question back, how do you read it in the Bible? and and the the lawyer gives the right answer, but Luke gives us a psychological insight into the lawyer and says, But he wanted to justify himself. So Luke is saying, you know, actually his motives in asking the question are not he's not just seeking information. And so many people were trying to trap Jesus, and Jesus very rarely actually answers questions exactly the way that they're asked. He always reframes them or tells a story or these kinds of things. So I think we we should love all the people who ask questions, and we should really go out of our way to sacrificially love them, but that doesn't always mean answering them on the terms that they're asked.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean it's you know, very important the the context in which they ask. Um, you know, of what are their motives and sort of try and try and hit that really.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. And so the way, you know, if you're doing door-to-door work um and someone raises an issue, you deal with that a little bit differently to the way that you deal with your sister, who you've known you know, all your life, and um or the way you you deal with someone with a long-term relation, you know, who you have a long-term relationship with, or with someone who you know is really struggling with suffering, not as an academic issue, but um you know, personally in their life. So context is absolutely vital. Um and just because you've got short answers up your sleeve is no excuse to do hit and run evangelism, where you just unload on them and triumphalistically ride off into the sunset thinking you've done your job. You know, if these if these kind of quick answers to questions are uh any use to you, it's only because they arrest the conversation and put it back on a more gospel footing that enables you to move forwards in a way in which you can serve the person and point them to Christ and and love them. So don't use them to win the argument, but do use them to arrest the conversation and put it back onto gospel terms so that you can continue to love them in the way you handle the questions. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Well let's let's look at these uh f first few then. Okay. Um the first one, atheim atheism isn't a belief, it's the absence of belief. That's I I've heard that, you know, yeah uh before that people say, Oh, it's not a religion, you know, it's it's the absence of religion.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And like Ricky Ricky Gervais tweeted out uh quite recently, um, you know, just because I don't particularly like to go skiing doesn't make me an a-skiist. Right? And it's uh and yeah, and that's and that's absolutely true. But is the question of ultimate reality, is that more like a a a discussion of the hobby of skiing, or is it more like something like political beliefs, in which you have a an all-encompassing view of reality, and in which no neutrality is possible? It's perfectly possible to be neutral on the issue of skiing or not skiing. It's perfectly possible to do that. But on an issue that encompasses what what what is humanity like, what is reality like, where are we headed, what's the meaning of all this? How should we order society, for instance, or how is the cosmos ordered, those sorts of questions, um, you can't actually have a neutral position on on things, really. Um and so atheism is a lot closer, I say, to anarchism than it is to aschism. And when somebody says, I'm an a I I'm an anarchist, um, they've just expressed a political belief. They have not expressed the absence of belief in politics. No. Um they they say, look, I don't like the left wing, I don't like the right wing. Okay, cool, but what what you then buy into is another kind of way of of of seeing reality. And just as the anarchist is actually a political view, anarchism is a political view, so atheism is a kind of, it's a it's a brand of religious view. Um you don't like that, of course you don't like that, but that's because you want to brand questions of religion as like questions of skiing or not skiing. Yeah. That's not like that. You know. So yeah, so I think the the analogy with ana anarchism um can be quite helpful. Um if you want to take the stance that you are Yeah, I mean, you could say I'm apolitical. And that's more like saying you're an agnostic. That's more like saying I f I d I don't know really, I don't know really uh what I think about politics, I don't know really what I think about gods yet. You will at that stage, well, the conversation can keep going. And you sort of say, well, would you prefer democracy over mob rule? Would you prefer that? Yeah. Oh, okay, so you're stepping away from the anarchism thing, probably at that stage. And do you think the state should be big or small? And okay, so you're moving more towards this direction. And so you can have a conversation with someone who says who says they're apolitical, and you can have a conversation with someone who says they're they're agnostic about stuff, and keep on exploring those issues. Um but when somebody says they're an atheist, they're not in the position of neutrality. There's no such thing. They're in the position of the anarchist who has a political view, and they have a a they have a definitive view on religion, they really do. And we need to push them towards acknowledging that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, sometimes with their own churches.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, atheist churches, totally, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Um if God made the world, who made God? Yeah. This is um a question that my my children come to me with because they're they're friends in their school have have said to them, Yeah, yeah, but who made God who made God?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04So uh this is this is helpful, you know. I can take this back to uh to my kids and say, ask them this question.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. If the sun enlightens the earth, what enlightens the sun? Um and that's and actually analogies are really helpful, aren't they? Um because I think before I thought about this analogy, uh it became a quite involved philosophical argument. You had you had to say, well, you know, everything has a source of being, doesn't it? And and so you're either left with the universe is eternal or the universe had a beginning, which is, you know. Um and and then if the universe had a beginning, either that beginning was out of nothing or out of a source that is beyond the universe. Um but at some stage everybody has a beginningless source of all being. Whether the universe is the beginningless source of all being, or whether God is the beginningless source of all being, everybody's got a big and and so but you know I think I would have lost my kids at that point. Yeah, I lost myself half my trends. Um and so analogies are are really helpful, I think. So the sun um is is shines on the earth, but it's not it does not receive its light from another source. Is it own source of light. God is his own source of life. And when people th you know say, Well, God made the world, who made God, they're kind of thinking of God like the moon. And yes, the moon receives its light from the sun and reflects it towards the earth. Um they're thinking of God as though God is a created God. Um and they say, Oh, you Christians, you believe in created you know, created gods. But of course, you know, that's called idols in the Bible, and nobody believes in idols in the Bible. We believe in an uncreated creator. But a good way of thinking about that is just as the sun is its own source of light, so God is his own source of life and has forever been that way. Usually when you use that uh analogy, people say, Oh yeah, but somebody made the sun.
SPEAKER_04I was just thinking like my kids were going, yeah, but Yeah, but but somebody made the sun.
SPEAKER_02But that's to take the analogy out of its context. The analogy is not about who made the sun, the analogy is uh it's purely about light. Yeah. The sun does not receive its light from another source, it is its own source of light. In that in that sense, God does not receive his life from outside himself. He is himself a source of light. Yeah. Of life. Yeah. There you go.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Third one then. I don't believe in God. Yeah. And you know So the question defines God in a in a way that, you know, I don't believe in God. You've Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You've stated Yeah, what do you mean by God? Yeah. Yeah. And so you and and that's exactly what we need to do with questions. Just explore them. Okay, well, what do you mean by God? Which God are you talking about? And um, you know, rip this off from from Tom Wright, you know, he would always ask students who said, I don't believe in God, to say, which God don't you believe in? And then explore that. Um and then at the end, you know, say, I I don't believe in the God that you're imagining either. Let's talk about Jesus. Um and and yeah, and really that's that's what all of answering questions is about. Let's explore what you mean by the question, and let's go, Ah, okay, but what about Jesus? In a sense, that's that's all of evangelism. Explore the question and then say, but what about Jesus?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I could never be religious.
SPEAKER_02And I yeah, and who doesn't sympathize with that? Um especially explore the question. Well, what do you mean by being religious? And usually they've got, you know, there's a personality type that really likes long, boring church services, and I just you know, I just don't haven't happened to that kind of person. Yeah, I wasn't dealt that hand. And you're like, well, I don't think I was dealt that hand either. But you know, it's it's it's it's very much, you know, this this analogy of um, you know, I once said I could never be married, but then I met the right person, and here I am. Um that analogy was kind of burst out of, you know, playing cricket and being late, you know, in the bar as a single man, and and whenever the married men would go off home to their wives, we'd all go and say, You're under the thumb, and ha ha ha, and then wish we could had somebody to go home to. Um and and you know, we always sort of thought that they were Yeah, that that was that was a weird personality type that they had that, you know, it meant that they, you know, had to go home early from the pub. How ridiculous. But then you meet the one and that's something that you start wanting to do. And that's what Christianity is. You start you meet Jesus and he doesn't convert you He doesn't convert you to religion in the same way that meeting the right person doesn't necessarily convert you to marriage per se, because you don't you don't just believe in marriage as the in an institution, you believe in this person. And so you get married in the same way you believe in Jesus. And so I guess you could call me religious now because I'm a Christian, and if that if that label helps you to figure out who I am, fine. Alright. But it's not because I love religion that I've I'm with Jesus, because I'm it's because I love Jesus. Let's talk about him. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04A lot of these you kind of you're just going back to what do you mean by religious? What do you mean by God? Yeah. Which God? Yeah. You know. Yeah, yeah. Going a little bit f a little bit deeper and and perhaps changing the question slightly.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Yeah. Explore, dig deeper. Um and and and so much of what we're doing here might mitigate against that because what we're saying is here's the silver bullet to use No, we're not saying this is a silver bullet to use. But it you know, you might you might think, oh, we know the answer to this one now. Glenn's all of that analogy Glenn said. Oh yeah. Um look up speaklife.org.uk slash TV, whatever you want. Um so you know, learning learning these answers as rote answers is not the idea. Um having them to hand can be very handy. Um but uh really where they're birthed out of is not that you give a glib ad hoc answer to you know questions that are just thrown at you. But what these come from is just the desire to explore the question a little bit deeper and then direct things towards Jesus. Um so if they help you to do that, then they've done their purpose.
SPEAKER_04Yep. Excellent. Well, we go on next time to look at some more. Uh, but we're going to close there for this time. So, as I said at the beginning, if you want to see all the episodes in the big long list of the Evangelist podcast, just go to speaklife.org.uk slash tep. That's it for this week. See you next time. See ya.