On this episode of the Evangelist Podcast, we start looking at some big questions that often crop up when we talk about issues of faith.
SPEAKER_01The 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.
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SPEAKER_02Well, we we've had over two and a half thousand downloads so far. How about that? So not bad. This is uh our sixth episode.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Yeah. Feels like forever.
SPEAKER_02In a good way.
SPEAKER_00In a good way. In a heavenly way.
SPEAKER_02So today we're going to be looking at uh hot potatoes, big questions that people sometimes ask. Uh we did a large scale event some time ago that sort of sought to answer these questions called Ask ESportne.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Was that this time last year? Was it I think it was. I think it was just uh a bit over twelve months ago. Um was it a year ago?
SPEAKER_02Or two years two years, not two years ago.
SPEAKER_00It was um uh No, I th I think it was this time last year. Well anyway. Yeah. A while ago. A while ago. So Ask Eastbourne, we um we asked as many people in Eastbourne as we could the question, if you could ask God one question, what would it be? And we polled all the answers to that and and we had you all scores of different kind of categories of of questions that people would ask. But uh uh the top one uh no one will be surprised was was about suffering. I think it polled three times as many responses as uh the next three combined. So uh one in three people asked um some good question to do with suffering. Um and then there were other questions about the afterlife was a big one, what happens when you die and that kind of thing. And uh and what about science and what about other faiths? Uh so yeah, I kind of thought maybe maybe today we'll start off with the the other faiths thing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. So a question that some p sometimes people sa or say or opinion they come from is don't all religions lead to God? Isn't that a good analogy for different religions?
SPEAKER_00Um Different pathways up the mountain, there's I think there's a lot of problems with that, aren't there? Because um I mean for a start it assumes that every every religion is kind of heading in the same direction. It kinda ha it conceives of the top of the mountain in the same way, and it conceives of how to get to the top in the same way. Um and if you think that, I think that that only betrays how little you do know about sort of world religions. 'Cause I think if if if you even just sort of talk about who is God you know, a pretty fundamental question for for a religion, um and and take the top religions in the in the world, sort of population-wise, and they're coming up with massively different answers.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and even Buddhism that doesn't have a god.
SPEAKER_00Buddhism doesn't have a god, Confucianism that doesn't have a god.
SPEAKER_02So you're on this road that doesn't lead to You're on a road to nowhere, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And you know, I mean what do you and where do you class North Korea's kind of emperor cult, if you like, and and and things like that, and and so yeah, Confucianists don't have a god, many, many sects of of Buddhism, most of them don't uh have certainly don't have room for God, don't have time for God. You know, Hinduism, uh traditionally you've got 330 million gods, underneath, sort of Brahman who is this impersonal one, um or you've got uh Islam, which is just uh absolutely fiercely anti-Trinitarian, or you've got Christianity that says, you know, God is three and one, and uh and so you know, eve even at that level, the top of the mountain is very different. You know, where where are you where are we all heading as well in all these different religions? You've got you know Hinduism, um okay, you've got the cycle of birth and rebirth, reincarnation, and on on you go. And in Buddhism, you you you want to get off the cycle of samsara, you want to get you know into nirvana where you kind of escape that cycle. Muslim paradise is sort of a very uh unearthly, but in other ways very carnal kind of place where God is conspicuous by his absence. The new heavens and the new earth of of Christianity um a very different thing again. So to think that we've got one sort of destination betrays a kind of an ignorance of of what world religions are all about. But uh more than that, I think it's not just ignorant, I think it's also arrogance to say that all the paths up the mountain end up at the top, because how do you how do we know that? How do we know that, you know, this path heads up the mountain rather than going off a cliff? The only way you would be sure that all paths lead up lead up the mountain is if you you yourself were on top of the mountain. You know, if you yourself had a God's eye view, then you could say that all paths lead lead up the mountain. So actually the person who says, ah, all paths lead up the mountain, they might sound very humble. They're actually playing God. They're actually on top and and thinking that they, you know, they have the perspective on world faiths that everyone else must must listen to.
SPEAKER_02Um sometimes, Glenn, people have said to me, you know, you're the arrogant one because you're the one that thinks that you've got it all sassed, you've got it all organised. It's sometimes difficult to respond to that.
SPEAKER_00How do you come back at that one? Well, if if they really insist that you can't know, then at that point they are telling you what you can and can't believe, aren't they? If they really insist how dare you say that you know, nobody can know, of course the comeback to that is, well, how do you know that? You know, and who are you to say? Um, so I I mean I d I don't mind uh I don't mind the kind of agnostic that says, Oh, who can say? But that sort of person doesn't mind me bringing my truth claim. That sort of person doesn't mind me telling them about Jesus because you know, if they r if they really don't care, if they really, you know, don't think it can be known, then I don't think they're going to be dogmatic towards me. But if they're being very dogmatic about it towards me, I think at that point you just ask them, Well, who are you to say? Who are you to say that I can't know? And who told you? And on what what on what authority, you know? Um Which I think all goes to show that there is no sort of neutral position about these things. Every everyone has a take on reality. Everyone really has a take on this. And actually the person who says you can't know is being uh incredibly fundamentalist, aren't they? And they leave no space really for, I don't know, seventy-five per cent of the world's population who, you know, have fairly clear thoughts on the fact that there is a God and, you know, you can know him and all and all those sorts of things. So don't be bullied by people who say, How dare you say you can know, nobody can know? Uh it's self-contradictory.
SPEAKER_02And there's there was one chap that went round, did an illustration with an orange, and he peels the orange and he tastes a segment, and he says to the person now, what does that taste like? Hmm. They say, Well, I don't know, you tasted it. I say, Well, exactly. You know. And it it's uh it is in some ways a something that only revelation can reveal to you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know, is is the truth about about the Lord, about about what Jesus has done.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And you know, that age old adage, you know, evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread is I mean that's that's the kind of truth that we've come to know. We've you know, we've come to experience who the bread of life is, and in experiencing that we've come to realise that we're famished and starving and and don't have any resources of our own. So hopefully when we say that we we know the truth or w th that we can point to the truth, uh hopefully bound up in that whole confession is a confession about me and my sinfulness and me and my need and me and my ignorance by myself. So hopefully it can come from a humble place. Uh but I c I completely understand the non-Christian who hears Christians speaking arrogantly, because there are plenty of Christians who do speak arrogantly. Um and Christians should stop it. So that's my word to them. Stop it.
SPEAKER_02So if someone says uh asks about your opinion of other religions and says, uh, do other religions have truth in them? How would you respond to them?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I th I think um perhaps I'd start to think in categories like um uh Colossians one, in which, you know, Christ is the one through whom and for whom the universe is made. We live in Jesus' universe that's shaped by him, that bears all the hallmarks of his personality, his characteristics, you know. Therefore, if you're gonna come up with any kind of view of life, the universe, and everything, it's gonna be some kind of rearrangement of Jesus' universe. It's gonna be, you know, you've got the raw materials of Jesus' universe, and you're gonna build up some kind of worldview, some kind of belief from that. And and so you can point to all sorts of systems of thought that have many things that are true. Um I could I could quote to you Homer the Poet, or I could quote to you Homer the Simpson, um, and th both of those guys would have interesting and true and right things to say in certain contexts. But taken as a whole, I don't think Homer the Simpson or Homer the Poet um get you to God, and and they're not sort of oriented to the truth, Jesus Christ. Uh which is I think is why kind of Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 10 taking every thought captive and making it obedient to Christ. Paul does that again and again. He takes thoughts from other places and he makes them obedient to Christ. So so in in the uh Areopagus in Acts 17 he's preaching, and he quotes basically one of the sort of the hit pop songs of the day, you know, God, in him we live we live and move and have our being, right? Which, you know, on the lips of certain philosophers had a certain meaning and kind of referred to a certain God. On Paul's lips, he kind of takes that thought captive and presses it into gospel service and says, actually, you know, Jesus reveals a God who in whom we do live and move and have our being. And on Paul's lips, he takes that truth and he kind of reorients it to its proper orientation towards Christ and uses it in a gospel proclamation. So is there truth in other religions? Um I suppose, yeah. There's lots of really interesting and helpful and wise observations about life and the way the world is structured. Um, but can you use any of those as stepping stones to get you to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? Absolutely not. Jesus is the one way to the Father. Um and those truths need reorienting um in a kind of a Christian context in order to m to make true Christian use of them. Um but within you know within their own worldviews, yeah. There's there's lots of things that can be affirmed and and thought of as good as far as they go.
SPEAKER_02How would you sort of convey the exclusivity, if you like, of Jesus? Um I had a friend that uh went round some of the places in India and you know they had pictures, sort of idols of different gods, and picture of Jesus and you know picture of and uh he was one another one of many.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well it can't be that, can it? Because going back to Colossians one, you know, when Paul says he is before all things and in him all things hold together, and you know, through him all things were made, all these sorts of things, you know, Christ does not belong in the pantheon of other gods, he is Lord of Lords. He is he is the God of all other gods, uh all other spiritual powers are subservient to him. So um in no sense should we be putting Jesus alongside other religious figures and kind of doing a compare and contrast thing. Jesus made Buddha. Right? You know, Jesus Well exactly, you know, and and at and at that stage you're into an interesting conversation. You know. Um But I mean that but that that's another point to make about these these sort of discussions. If you if you sort of talk in mealy mouth terms about how, you know, Jesus and Buddha can be sort of correlated and and and compared, um, you have a really boring conversation that doesn't really get you very far. But when you say Jesus is God and he made Buddha and you know Buddha has had to stand before Jesus for judgment, you're into an interesting conversation.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And what what did Jesus say of himself?
SPEAKER_00Well, that's interesting, isn't it? Um how Jesus himself relates to to people of other faiths. So we think of the the Samaritan woman, there she is by the well, and and she's lost in kind of a spiritual ignorance, she's also lost in a kind of uh in in the immoral lifestyle that she's in. And and Jesus loves her apart from all her spiritual failures and all her moral failures, and almost his first move to her is to say, you know, I can give you the living waters. You know, his first move to her is, hey, I've come from God and I can give you the Holy Spirit if you want him, you know, which which is a wonderfully gracious and and beautiful first move to someone who, you know, morally and ethically and spiritually is dead wrong. And yet, you know, he sort of engages with the Samaritan woman and she's got these views about how, you know, we think God should be worshipped on this mountain, and you Jews say it's the other thing. And Jesus is not a sh you know not afraid to say, you know, salvation is from the Jews. Um there is a right answer here, and you're on the wrong side of that right answer. Nonetheless, I love you, I pour myself out for you, you can have the living waters now for free, just ask me. I think that's a beautiful way of interacting with uh other faiths. You got it wrong, you got it dead wrong, but I love you and I'm for you completely. That's what I try to do when I engage with other faiths. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And uh just recently this past week you've been doing some some door knocking um in parish round here. How's it gone? Have you sort of encountered people of different faiths?
SPEAKER_00Uh yes. So there's a there's a mosque in our parish. So I go to a central uh uh church here in Eastbourne, an Anglican church, and and uh we've been doing some door knocking. And uh door knocked the mosque as well. Um No no one was in, but there was a uh there were a couple of guys who'd just come out of uh prayer time. Yeah, got into conversation with them for for quite some time. And what was great about it is um we had these uh surveys where we were asking people in the community, you know, how can the church best serve the community? So it's it started off as quite a quite a soft level of evangelism, sort of, you know, what what can the church do to help you? And can we pray for you? Um that sort of thing. And so we came with this survey um to these two Muslim guys, and they were just straight in with the Trinity. Like they didn't they didn't want to talk about the survey, they didn't want to talk about you know the survey of spiritual beliefs or you know, or any of that stuff. They're straight in with the Trinity, and then straight into the cross, and then straight into the trustworthiness of the Bible, which is brilliant. Whenever whenever I I I always thank God for opportunities to talk to Muslims because instantly you're talking about the real stuff, the big stuff. And you know, and and in that conversation, uh hopefully there were opportunities for me to kind of do what I was talking about that Jesus did with the Samaritan woman, which is to lovingly disagree and and say, No no no, I I think you've got God wrong, like really fundamentally and significantly, like tell you about this very different vision of God that Jesus gives us. And they and they respect that actually. Um certainly these these two guys did. I respected that we were coming from a a very different position, but we were still able to have a a a good old conversation and and I think the issue of assurance of salvation was definitely the most fruitful line of inquiry. Um one guy in particular admitted to a real a real lack of assurance that that he was a good enough for Allah. So yeah, that led to a very fruitful conversation. So yeah, it's good.
SPEAKER_02Good. Well, I think we better carry this on uh next podcast. So just just tell us what uh what have you got coming up in the next few days.
SPEAKER_00So in the next few days, oh we've got Bible by the beach down here on uh in Eastbourne. It's it's kind of uh to describe it to people, it's like a kezzwick by the sea sort of thing. It's it's like a or a new word alive or that kind of thing by the sea, and it's uh it's a Bible teaching kind of conference. Um, I've got some great speakers going from Friday till Monday, and uh so I'm uh doing a seminar with my wife and hosting a few other things over the course of the weekend, so that that'll be good.
SPEAKER_02Excellent. So I look forward to hearing how that goes. So we'll leave it there then. Thanks for listening to the Evangelist Podcast. The web address for this episode where you can comment on this specific show along with any relevant links is simply revivalmedia.org slash TEP6.