Today on the Evangelist Podcast, we're thinking about how to answer questions about our faith.
SPEAKER_00The Evangelist Podcast from Revival. Find out what's new in telling people the good news about God, the world, and you. With Andy Brinkley and Glenn Scrivener.
SPEAKER_04Welcome back to the Evangelist Podcast. This is the show where we discuss everything regarding sharing the good news. And uh today, Glenn, we're going to be talking about uh some important uh questions that people ask sometimes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and how to go about answering questions.
SPEAKER_04Because uh at the moment you're doing some uh talks in uh Crowborough.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Um to some young people.
SPEAKER_01So there's a youth uh sort of a week of youth events happening at All Saints Crowborough, and I'm uh sort of addressing their big questions for God. They did a big survey at the local high school. Uh what's your big question for God if you got the the the chance to ask him one question, what would it be? And uh they collated together all the answers and came up with a top four, and I'm having a go at answering the questions one by one.
SPEAKER_04Right, and what what's kind of the general attitude there? Do they are they interested or are they kind of distracted with uh other things, or is it difficult what to tell us?
SPEAKER_01I think that age bracket are the most engaged with that question. I remember we did something similar in uh in ESPN, Ask Eastbourne in twenty eleven, and um and again we surveyed a whole bunch of people, what's your big question for God? And most of the people who we asked over the age of twenty one, um just it just completely took them by surprise and it was a sort of a thinking outside the box exercise that for most people, you know, uh thinking about who God is and what he might, you know, what wisdom he might have for me is just not part of people's thinking. Whereas you ask a teenager and and we got loads more responses from teenagers than we did from any other kind of person, and and I think it's proved the same up in Crowborough. Um so a lot a lot a lot of appetite for uh thinking about these sorts of things. Um But at the same time as the appetite, there's also you know a lot of ignorance about you know who God is and even what the what the what a God might be like. So the number one question, if you're just going for the number of times people asked verbatim the same question, uh the number one question was, how old are you? Right? Which is really interesting, you know. And I I I don't think that that's just them like having a laugh. I think that's genuinely, you know, uh people don't even know what we mean when we s when we say God anymore, uh in in a in a way that's markedly different from from previous generations, I think. So uh interestingly, on on Goggle Box the other night, one of the households, um, I want to say Chris and two guys from Brighton, the hairdressers. Anyway, Chris and somebody else. Uh and they were they were talking about the the Noah show on uh on BBC and uh and one of them said to the other, now is Noah before or after God? And then went, well God's before everyone, right? And the other one had to really think about that. Is God really before every oh I suppose I suppose he is. But like, you know, that's that's where we're at so often in terms of uh people's understanding of God. So so there's a real ignorance about who God is, but also a hunger, and we're trying to uh trying to match those things up.
SPEAKER_04So is this like a church youth group, or is it people that uh you know have been invited to a church youth group, or is it compu you know like a complete outreach from Yeah, it's inviting friends of the youth group to come in and uh and hear many, many being invited, many extra So yeah, I think there's probably there's probably as many guests as there are members of the youth the youth group.
SPEAKER_01Right, well that's really good. It is really good, yeah. Imagine you had an invitation Sunday at church and doubled your numbers. So, like I say, a real hunger and um so yeah, really interesting to kind of handle these questions with people. Um the same week that um I've just uh uh engaged in a blog debate um with Tom Price, who's an excellent apologist and evangelist with the Oxford Centre for uh Christian apologetics. And he and I have had a little back and forth on Twitter about the place of reason in our preaching, the place of um philosophy, the place of oh how we go about persuasively preaching Jesus. So uh so it's it's been interesting thinking through how I answer these youth at the same time as saying I think there's a legitimate way of handling questions and I think there's an illegitimate way of handling questions.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01So I've just been trying to negotiate that really. Okay.
SPEAKER_04Well let's let's dive into the first question then.
SPEAKER_01What is the first question? So going up from number four up to number one, because number one we're gonna address on Friday night as the last one, but the fourth most popular question uh was are you really there? Right. Which is a good one t to begin with. Yeah. Um are you really there? Now again, you know, there could be all sorts of things that you do you know, Thomas Aquinas had all sorts of arguments for the existence of God. He says, you know, if if there's something that's caused, then there must be a cause, and God is the first cause, and if there's, you know, something that's designed, then there must be a designer, and God is the first designer. Uh if there's law, then there must be a law giver, and so God is the great lawgiver, etcetera, etcetera. So there'd be all sorts of ways of arguing like that. But I I kinda think Thomas Aquinas, um, he got it wrong because he gets salvation wrong, actually. Uh for Aquinas, you do a whole heap of good stuff, and that gets you some of the way towards God, and then God tops you up with a bit of grace, and between your efforts and God's efforts, voila, you've got your hundred percent, you're across the line, you're saved. Um a very crude way of putting it. He's a much brighter guy than than all of us put together. But um that was that's kind of his his sort of theology, a synergy of our work and God's work. But he kinda he's very consistent about that, and he thinks the way to think about God is there's some of our thoughts that are good and right and work our way towards God, but they don't get us all the way, and we need a bit of God's revelation to top us up. And so there's a synergy between our thoughts that do point towards God and get us part of the way, but then we need a little bit of gospel preaching on top, and that gets us the full distance. So I think Thomas Aquinas, he's very consistent when when he does his evangelism this way around. He reasons his way to some kind of first cause, he reasons his way to some kind of designer, some kind of lawgiver, um, and then says, Ah, but let me also tell you about a few extra things about the gospel, and then you'll be saved. Now I just don't think that works. I I I think the arrow's got to come all the way down. And the way the arrow comes all the way down is we just need to proclaim Jesus who meets us in all our ignorance and stupidity. So what I did with with people last night as I was thinking about, you know, is there God or is there not, is I I just sort of said John chapter 1, you know, here is the word. The word was made flesh, here's the killer argument for God's existence. He showed up. He showed up, and there he is. And actually, when he showed up, it's he doesn't quite look like what you might imagine when you just think of the first cause. And he doesn't really look like what you might imagine if you just think of a lawgiver or if you just think of a designer. He comes as this like human sacrifice who's sort of laughing, crying, shouting, bleeding. Um you know, he's he's he's quite different to that. So I sort of began with um uh the illustration I'm always using about uh you know, imagine you wake up in this massive sort of warehouse and you don't know how you got there, and everyone else wakes up and how did you get here and what's on the outside and all this sort of stuff. And and you can have all sorts of opinions about what's on the other side. And you might try to reason your way to thinking what's on the outside of the room. But if a guy, you know, lands in the centre of the room and claims that he's come from outside and he wants to rescue us, that changes the conversation. And now we've got somebody who we can latch on to and talk about. We've got to find out what he's about. Exactly. Yeah. And you might not have been interested in what is on the outside of the room, but now when this guy comes in and he makes his loud claims, he's making it your business.
SPEAKER_04So here's Jesus, and I just wanted to uh you know I guess it's very difficult sometimes to um go into someone else's, if you like, mindset and try and answer and unfold their issues. Yeah. Um sometimes it's much j better just to invite them into yours. Yeah. And uh, you know, uh as as your book s says, show them the tour, you know, sort of explain explain things from the inside rather than trying off to explain everything from their point of view.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly. So the you know, the the illustration in the book is I don't want to throw stones at other houses, and I'm not really interested in building stepping stones from other houses. I just, you know, let me invite you in. And and one of the things I said, and and I think this is uh again a really legitimate thing to do if you if you want it to be our top-down proclamation of the gospel, is just to say, hey, according to the Bible, everyone's got a god. Everyone's got a god. Like maybe your god is karma, maybe your god is fate, maybe your god is um survival of the fittest, maybe your god is sex or money or power, or but somebody everybody thinks that something is in charge, something's calling the shots, something is a god. And so the real question is not, is there a god, the real question is which god is really God? And I want to make the case that this guy Jesus, doesn't he isn't he compelling as the God who is really God? And you know, I just sort of painted a picture of who Jesus is last night, and I sort of talked about in the early chapters of John and how he, you know, he goes to a a party and he brings wine, he goes to the temple and he brings a whip, you know, he talks to Nicodemus and says, You gotta be born again, buddy, but he goes to this, you know, Samaritan woman and he says, Have the living waters of my spirit for free and forever. This guy's interesting. Will you at least consider that this this one might be God? And wouldn't that be good news? Because I think what people are expecting with this question is, is there a God? Yes there is, there is a power above you and you must bow. Um and you know, that's that's one implication of there being a God. But what I really want to do is say, Is there a God? Let me show you Jesus. Wouldn't it be amazing if he was God? Currently, you you think that sex, money, or power is God, or you think fate is God, or karma is God, or Allah is God, or all these different things are God's. Wouldn't that be amazing if Jesus was God? Well, keep on reading John's gospel, and we pray that by the Spirit, you know, through the word you will see that Jesus is Lord, and bang, you're a Christian, you know. So that that's yeah. That that I think is a top-down kind of way of preaching is there a God?
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_01Right, well what what's the second uh the second one is question's question number yes, the third, the on the podium, in the bronze medal position, uh is the question what's the meaning of life? Um and now with this, I'm I'm really comfortable with you know, surveying what different people's opinions are about the meaning of life. And we're gonna, you know, do a little exercise where people are gonna, you know, talk to their neighbour and say what they think the meaning of life is or what they what their you know, what their friends would think the the meaning of life is. Um so it's it's really cool to engage with all that stuff. Um and and what I'm gonna do is I'm I'm expecting that people will say being happy is kind of the meaning of life. But what I want to do with that is just to show, well, that doesn't really tell you very much, does it? Because you know, some people get happy one way, some people get happy another way. Everyone's trying to be happy. The real question is how? You know. And then I want to go back and and just say, well, last night we saw that if Jesus is the God that everyone else is just arguing about, then he's the Son of the Father, full of the Spirit. He shows us a God who is love. If he is what life is all about, then joining him in the family is the meaning of life. And that that just makes sense, doesn't it? Now if it's if this is true, non-Christian, if this is true, then doesn't it make sense of the rest of your life? Doesn't it make sense of the fact that you think that love is the greatest thing? That you think that the way you get happy is to have, you know, great relationships with people? Isn't this doesn't this make sense of the fact that you think that personal connection and communication, conversation is the stuff of life? Doesn't this make sense of this the fact that you know this is the world that we live in? And again, I'm not trying to say um love is the greatest thing, therefore God must be love. What I'm trying to say is God is love, and doesn't this make sense of the fact that love you you experience love to be the greatest thing? It's it's that way around. But that's that's what I'm gonna do tonight.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Great. And number two. In the silver medal position. We need a drum roll. Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_01Uh it is what happened when you die? Um what happens when you die? Now it would be really difficult to f to sort of do a bottom-up kind of uh reasoning about what happens when you die. I mean, you could talk about life after death experiences and that kind of thing, but you know, that wouldn't get you very far, and I don't think anyone would think that that gets you very far, Christian or non-Christian. Um you've really got to say there was one guy who came back from the dead, his name's Jesus, and you know, trust him. He he ought to know what what's what's going on. Now at that stage, people want to say, ah, well, but what are the apologetic reasons that you give for Jesus um you know being alive? And and at that stage, um I'm very happy to say, like I'm like I'm gonna say on Sunday, um in a sermon that I'm preaching, I'm preaching on Matthew twenty-eight about you know the resurrection and the fact that in Matthew twenty-eight it says that uh the Jews were spreading a story that the disciples had stolen the body. And I'm gonna say, well, that's interesting that that's there in Matthew's gospel. The scriptures are telling us that the enemies of Jesus are you know, the enemies of Jesus aren't doubting that the tomb is empty. The enemies of Jesus are just pinning the blame on the disciples. And so, you know, the scriptures leave you with a choice. You can either think that the the apostles who wrote this New Testament are total liars and scumbags and villains, um, or you can think they're telling the truth. Um so what is what's it to be? You know, has has have the scriptures been written by total charlatans, or are they telling the truth, in which case Jesus rose from the dead? And at that stage I'm not I'm not trying to do um a bottom-up philosophizing towards the resurrection. I'm just saying, do you trust the scriptures or don't you? Um so that's that's what I kind of do in terms of is Jesus risen from the dead? And if he is, well then we need to get connected to him because we're all gonna face death and we need him on the other side.
SPEAKER_04So that's what it's interesting that you sort of young people are w are considering about that. I mean perhaps in in older life, yeah, people would sort of say, Oh, I'm not you know, not sure about you know, I'm thinking about what's happening next. Yeah. But for young people, yeah that's interesting, that's number two.
SPEAKER_01It is, and uh it's always the way young people think about death far more than older people. It's really strange, isn't it? That we we don't want to face the inevitable. Um I mean you know people got really angry. I I preached on our mortality um the other Sunday, two Sundays ago, and um people got really angry about this. Some non-Christian guests uh came to church, people got really angry about it, and even the Christians found it quite uncomfortable. Um mainly the older older people. Younger people think of you know, when I was growing up, I'm sure you were the same, you you thought there was gonna be a nuclear apocalypse every other day. You know, which sister would you eat first? I was always thinking of that kind of stuff. You can see why apologetics doesn't really work for me. Aren't you the same as me? Don't you don't you think about who you're gonna cannibalize first? Um no. So, yeah, younger people think about mortality quite a bit more. Um But yeah, we've got good news in the midst of it. Okay. Oh, and there you go.
SPEAKER_00Um I haven't told you, have I?
SPEAKER_01I haven't told you what the number one is. No. Do you want to guess? Suffering. Suffering, indeed. Correct. Gold star to you. Um yeah, if you're a good god, how can you uh allow so much suffering? Such a big issue, isn't it? Such a big issue. Yeah. And should we should we groan when we hear, oh, I've got to, you know, I've got to address the suffering question again? Or should we go, brilliant? You know, this is the stuff of life, it's the stuff of the scriptures, you know, the oldest book in the Bible is Job. Um, from you know, the j the the Bible might begin in the Garden of Eden and end in the new creation, but for like sixty-six books in between, it's a story of suffering and death. And and how do we go from that suffering and death to the new creation through the suffering and death of Christ? So goodness me, it's the question that allows us to get real and it allows us to preach Jesus in a in a big old way. And and actually what's interesting is when I address the suffering thing, quite often I take pot shots at the God of philosophy that actually philosophy puts us in the bind. Philosophy gives us the problem that that doesn't really exist in that same form in the scriptures. In f in philosophical terms, Aristotle's God is omnipresent and omnipotent and omniscient and omnivorous and ambidextrous and trifocal and double-jointed and all these other things, you know, and this this is the way that I make fun of the kind of philosophy. Um but but God is imagined as a perfect being, as though we all know what it means to be a perfect being, and of course the Greek mind knows what it means to be a perfect being, it means to be non-bodily, it means you know, just a a life of pure contemplation and all that kind of stuff. The world is not like that, the world is full of death and blood. But according to the Bible, what does God's perfection consist in? Actually, his cross, his suffering, death, you know, in what way is God lifted up in all his godness on the cross? In what way is Jesus glorified on the cross? And so just when you start from Jesus Christ and Him crucified, you get just a a f um a fundamentally different starting point to address the suffering question. If you just begin with philosophy, then you would imagine that God and suffering are oppress opposites. When you begin with Jesus, you see they're they're not opposites actually. Um how do God and suffering fit together? Good Friday. Have a look. See. And see this one who has come to join us in suffering and risen again to get us out of out of the suffering. So So again I think I think suffering the way we address suffering is so much helped by beginning with Jesus Christ and Him crucified. In a way that when we begin philosophically, um we just we end up not being able to to give the biblical witness to to the question of suffering. Um and we end up giving a quite philosophical answer. And I'm sure every apologist will say this as well, that you need to answer questions according to where someone has asked them from. You know, so if someone is going through suffering, you don't just you know give them a philosophical argument. And nobody wants to do that. But I just think when you start with Jesus Christ and Him crucified, you begin with a God who suffers, who's with us in suffering.
SPEAKER_04Which is uniquely different from other religions where there's suffering and um you know it's because you haven't submitted enough to the God or it's because you haven't karma, you know. Whereas uh having a God that suffered is a big part of the answer.
SPEAKER_01Massively different. And so in in all this stuff, like it's really how when when I when I say the word apologetics, and in this article it sort of happened, you know, you say the word apologetics, and what people hear is if they're favourably disposed towards apologetics, they hear, oh, Glenn's having a go at all my favourite preachers, and Glenn's having a go at what I like to do, and not necessarily, I'm not necessarily doing that at all. But I am saying that in places like 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, and in Colossians 2, and in 2 Corinthians 10, and uh in other places, the scriptures seem to say that there's an illegitimate way of proclaiming the truth, and there's a way of buying into the wisdom of the world, and there's a way of encouraging people to trust in the wisdom of the world, and that would be a bad thing to do. And I'm just I'm just trying to say, is there a way of being persuasive and of being contextualized and of being heartfelt and of answering people's questions from really from where they're coming from and really trying to get alongside of people, but doing it on the assumption that the scriptures are true, that Jesus is Lord, that we preach Christ and Him crucified, that He really rose from the dead, and that's that's a truth that we argue from, not a truth to be argued to. Is there a way of doing it? I think there is. And if you know, and if I'm wrong, then that's fine. I'm I'm just deluded. But if Paul is arguing against anything in 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, then let's at least try and figure out what that is. Let's make sure that we're not doing it.
SPEAKER_04Okay, well uh let us know how uh how you get on. Yeah. Perhaps next time you can uh give us a bit of feedback on on that. Yeah, love to. Okay, well, we've better leave it there. If you want to make a comment on this uh episode, just go to the rev to the web address for this show, which is revivalmedia.org slash tep91. Um and if you have any questions for Glenn, maybe uh maybe you have a a burning issue on your heart and you think, why doesn't Glenn ever speak about about cows? So get in contact and uh and we'll see. Maybe we could do like a a listener question episode.
SPEAKER_01Gardener's question time. Yes. Or uh harvester's question time, wouldn't it be? If we're evangelists. Um hey, hey, that's on the spot as well. I just thought of that. Um or yeah, and and and on the show notes we'll put a link to this discussion we're having about apologetics and the place of reason in uh preaching the gospel.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, excellent. Okay, thanks very much, and see you next time. See ya.