Through “Stranger” Eyes #5 – People Get Nervous

We’re still looking at the Stranger’s article where a group of journalists visited 31 houses of worship in 31 days.  One surprising observation is that people are really nervous about stepping foot in a “holy place.”

This one surprises me, especially in our cynical culture.  I don’t think that people are nervous because the presence of God is tangible … I tend to chalk it up more to the alien culture of many houses of worship.

Through the various articles, a string of nervous questions emerged like:

• Are they gonna make me confess my sins?
• Can I eat beforehand?
• Can I get up to pee?
• Why does God hate Saturday nights?
• Can I take my coffee into church?
• Do church people care that I didn’t brush my teeth, and that I’m still a little drunk?
• What if I fart?

I get the sense that these visitors expect the church to be filled with unspoken rules and expectations that they’re afraid to violate.  In normal situations, people know when to pee or drink coffee.  If you show up at work a little drunk from the night before, you know what to expect … but what will “those Christians” think?

Tip for the Church-Types: 1) Avoid Hypocrisy.  People don’t know what invisible rules there are on Sunday mornings because many Christians act differently on Sundays than they do the rest of the week.  In our hypocrisy, we act radically differently depending on the context we are in … leaving people to wonder how they need to act when they are around us in those contexts.  Your bar friends  should run into the same “you” if you bump into them (or invite them!) to church.

2) Lead with grace 24/7.  Don’t be the guy who looks at someone’s tattoos, earrings, clothes, job, etc first – either in church or anywhere.  If we develop a habit and reputation for grace in our day-to-day lives, it will be easier and more believable to show grace on a Sunday morning.

Through “Stranger” Eyes #4 – Visitors Don’t Want To Stick Out

This week we are looking at the Stranger’s article where a group of journalists visited 31 houses of worship in 31 days (here is the first article, click here to read day 2, and here to read day 3, and here for  yesterday’s article).

Observation #4 – Visitors Don’t Want to Stick Out

This was a common theme.  Visitors feel odd enough just stepping into a place of worship.  To be noticed as new and as an “outsider” just makes matters worse.

Davida Marion wrote, “There was only one point when I felt totally out-of-place: Toward the beginning, the pastor asked those of us who were guests to introduce ourselves. You’re not likely to find someone more reluctant to speak up than a bashful Jew at Sunday morning church services. So I didn’t, but the church is small enough that everyone knew I was a stranger, and that made my heart pound. But everyone was friendly, smiling at me and saying “Hello,” as I walked by.”

Being the only younger person or having an empty service doesn’t help.

One reporter observed of a 7th day Adventist Church, “There were 29 worshippers at the 11:30 a.m. Saturday service. The median age was 102. I stood out like a sore heathen thumb. To complete my sense of alienation, the sermon began with a pop quiz.”

People inside the church mean well … we want to be friendly and acknowledge the effort someone made by visiting church.  Well meaning people give me suggestions like handing everyone a name tag, having all the visitors stand up, or keeping the visitors in their seats and having the rest of the church stand.   For us, the goal is to learn some names and make some friends.  To many visitors, this is terrifying.  As one of our current deacons said, “I visited a church a few years and they asked me to put on a name tag.  I walked out.”

Tip for the Church-Types: Meet people at church the same way you would at the gym, coffee shop or work.  Strike up a conversation.  Ask their name.  If you don’t remember if you met them before, say, “I don’t remember if I met you before.”  It won’t hurt their feelings … that’s how people interact.  Just this morning at the gym I talked to a new guy who works out at the same time.  Since yesterday he forgot my name and the workout we were talking about.  I wasn’t offended, I just reminded him and we continued talking.  (By the way, he might be showing up one of these Sundays, so treat him like he treated me … with casual grace.)

Through “Stranger” Eyes #3 – We have to Watch Insider Language

This week we are looking at the Stranger’s article where a group of journalists covered (here is the first article, click here to read day 2, and here to read yesterday’s article).

Today let me share one of my churchy pet peeves, and my third observation from the Stranger article - We Have to Watch “Insider Language.”

Every group has its own jargon (aka insider language).  Be the only wine drinker at Seattle’s Beer Fest, or a former french horn player with a few members of a rock band and you’ll soon hear people talking in code.  No one does this to offend, but jargon makes conversation clear and concise.  A programmer can describe a problem to another programmer in a few sentences.  Describing the same situation to a Luddite friend could take an hour.

When we get together for a worship experience, it is tempting to lapse into Christian-eese (our own jargon).  We have to keep in mind that the church is the only organization that exists for the benefit of the outsiders.  We can’t allow ourselves the luxury of jargon.  Instead, we have to be extremely careful about our use of language.

About the Bible …

Jeff Kirby wrote: “Passages are read from the book of Colossians: I imagine Colossus from the X-Men.”

In our music …

Seth Kolloen mentioned that he’s, “getting some great pillow-talk ideas from the song lyrics, which are projected on a screen above the stage. “Deep inside, I’m crying for more of you,” goes one lyric. Oh, I’m using that.” or “Let your glory and honor fall on my face” (which he mentions could be taken as dirty talk)

Cienna Madrid wrote that the lyrics, ”We fall down/we lay our crowns/at the feet of Jesus…” could be turned into geriatric fitness program called “Jesurcise”

How do we avoid this?

The most helpful resource I’ve discovered on this is Tim Keller’s article Evangelistic Worship.  Keller writes:

It is hard to overstate how ghetto-ized our preaching is. It is normal to make all kinds of statements that appear persuasive to us but are based upon all sorts of premises that the secular person does not hold. It is normal to make all sorts of references using terms and phrases that mean nothing outside or our Christian sub-group. So avoid unnecessary theological or evangelical sub-culture “jargon”, and explain carefully the basic theological concepts, such as confession of sin, praise, thanksgiving, and so on. In the preaching, showing continual willingness to address the questions that the unbelieving heart will ask. Speak respectfully and sympathetically to people who have difficulty with Christianity. As you write the sermon, imagine a particular skeptical non-Christian in the chair listening to you. Add the asides, the qualifiers, the extra explanations necessary. Listen to everything said in the worship service with the ears of someone who has doubts or troubles with belief.

Tip for the Church-Types: Read the Keller article and listen to what you say.  Why pray “Bless Aunt Cindy” when you’re not exactly sure what sort of blessing you want Aunt Cindy to receive. Think about what sort of blessing you would like Aunt Cindy to receive, and pray for that.  So your prayer might be longer, but it will be more rich and understandable.

Through “Stranger” Eyes #1 – People Are Afraid of Communion

Yesterday we began a look at the Stranger’s article where a group of journalists covered (click here to read yesterday’s article).

Today I want to look at my first take away from the article … people are afraid of communion (aka the Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist).

One Stranger writer / church visitor, Ari Spool wrote: “At the end [of the service], everyone takes Communion, which I am scared to do because I don’t want to accidentally turn Christian, so I wander out of the room for a moment. When I return, the entire congregation is Singing in a Circle. Thank God they weren’t Holding Hands­­—I would have Thrown Up.”

Another skipped out on it, writing, “Communion involved being fed by either the scripture reader or the interim pastor, and then embracing them while they spoke into your ear. A better reporter would have gone up and been fed and hugged and whispered to, but I couldn’t do it.”

Despite skipping the sacrament, there are few who deny its power.  (Maybe it’s power is why they skip it? …though we can’t put too much stock in this, because many people won’t walk under a ladder or break a mirror, though they don’t actually believe in the superstitions behind those old sayings.)

Their experiences aren’t always negative though.  Writing about a Roman Catholic church, Bethany Jean Clement remarked, “On this Sunday, the Eucharist is, fittingly, the topic; the service is marked by humility, with discussion of feeding those in need, of spiritual hunger. The priest quotes Andre Dubus’s Broken Vessels. The fundamental, communal acts of eating and drinking—body, blood—are consecrated. More than one person remains behind, watchful, possibly reverent, as the feast of Corpus Christi is enacted. If one feels like a trespasser, there is the sense that one’s trespass is forgiven.”

Tip to Church-Types: Let’s explain what communion is and continue to fence the table (i.e., make it clear that communion is for repentant sinners and followers of Jesus).  Instead of worrying that these explanations will be off-putting, I think they will actually help the spiritually curious relax and engage.

Looking at Houses of Worship Through “Stranger” Eyes

Recently The Stranger, Seattle’s “alternative” newspaper, sent 31 reporters to 31 houses of worship to see what people who are “into Him” put themselves through on a weekly basis.

The intro to the article said:

“Seattle is godless.

We are, rather famously, one of the least churched cities in North America. It seems that most of us have better things to do on a Sunday morning than go to church. Seattleites would rather take a hike. Or nurse a hangover. Or fire up the bong.

We’re just not that into Him.”

As someone who is “into Him” and wanting others to experience the grace of Jesus, I read through their observations to see what I could learn.

Over the next few days we’ll look at observations I gleaned from reading this.

For now … let me know what you expect their issues / questions / snarky comments to be?

Spurgeon: God will not Force Usefulness on Any Man

As soon as Zion was in labor
she brought forth her children.  Isaiah 66:8

“If any minister can be satisfied without conversions, he shall have no conversions.  God will not force usefulness on any man.  It is only when our heart breaks to see men saved, that we shall be likely to see sinners’ hearts broken.  The secret of success lies in all-consuming zeal, all-subduing travail for souls.  Read the sermons of Wesley and of Whitfield, and what is there in them?  It is no severe criticism to say that they are scarcely worthy to have survived.  And yet those sermons wrought marvels. . . .

In order to understand such preaching, you need to see and hear the man, you want his tearful eye, his glowing countenance, his pleading tone, his bursting heart.  I have heard of a great preacher who objected to having his sermons printed, ‘Because,’ said he, ‘you cannot print me.’  That observation is very much to the point.  A soul-winner throws himself into what he says.  As I have sometimes said, we must ram ourselves into our cannons, we must fire ourselves at our hearers, and when we do this, then, by God’s grace, their hearts are often carried by storm.”

C. H. Spurgeon, “Travailing for Souls,” 3 September 1871.  Italics original.

(HT Ray Ortlund)

A Swift Kick in the Pants From Jesus, Piper and Godin

Jonathan Parnell over at Desiring God offers some a few swift kicks in the pants for people like me to get off our butts and into the mission…

Seth Godin:

Fitzgerald nailed it when he described Jay Gatsby’s attitude: “What would be the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do?” It’s easy to fall so in love with the idea of starting that we never actually start. (Poke the Box, 75)

One of Godin’s goals in this little book is to expose the truth about failure — it’s not as bad as we all think.

And yet, the fear of failure is paralyzing. It’s the great deterrent to our starting things, to our taking risks. It is, as Godin explains, the dirt that buries us in the status quo program of the world around us.

Now, in my opinion, the biggest and simplest takeaway from reading Godin is how much more what he says applies to the Christian than to the secular professional.

Godin is brilliant in trying to convince his readers to step forward, to fly in the face of fear, to “start.”

And Jesus says this:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:18–20)

Whatever it is caught in the brain storm of your starting, let it have this verb in its sights: make disciples. Be about sharing the gospel and your very own self with people in order to present them mature in Christ (1 Thessalonians 2:8; Colossians 1:28). Jesus has given us the commission, with all authority in heaven and earth. And he is always with us, always, with all authority in heaven and earth.

Pastor John Piper writes,

When the threat of death becomes a door to paradise the final barrier to temporal risk is broken. When a Christian says from the heart, “To live is Christ and to die is gain,” he is free to love no matter what. . . . To every timid saint, wavering on the edge of some dangerous gospel venture, Jesus says, “Fear not, you can only be killed” (Luke 12:4). (A Call for Christian Risk)

How can we be afraid?

Go.

Sharing the Gospel During the Holidays – 10 Tips

I found this great advice over at DESIRING GOD’s blog.

1) Pray ahead

Begin praying for your part in gospel advance among extended family several days before gathering. And let’s not just pray for changes in them, but also pray for the needed heart changes in us — whether it’s for love or courage or patience or kindness or fresh hope, or all of the above.

2) Listen and ask questions

Listen, listen, listen. Perhaps more good evangelism than we realize starts not with speaking but with good listening. Getting to know someone well, and specifically applying the gospel to them, is huge in witness. Relationship matters.

Ask questions to draw them out. People like to talk about themselves — and we should capitalize on this. And most people only enjoy talking about themselves for so long. At some point, they’ll ask us questions. And that’s our golden chance to speak, upon request.

One of the best times to tell the gospel with clarity and particularity is when someone has just asked us a question. They want to hear from us. So let’s share ourselves, and Jesus in us. Not artificially, but in genuine answer to their asking about our lives. And remember it’s a conversation. Be careful not to rabbit on for too long, but try to keep a sense of equilibrium in the dialogue.

3) Raise the gospel flag early

Let’s not wait to get to know them “well enough” to start clearly identifying with Jesus. Depending on how extended our family is, or how long it’s been since we married in, they may already plainly know that we are Christians. But if they don’t know that, or don’t know how important Jesus is to our everyday lives, we should realize now that there isn’t any good strategy in being coy about such vital information. It will backfire. Even if we don’t put on the evangelistic full-court press right away (which is not typically advised), wisdom is to identify with Jesus early and often, and articulate the gospel with clarity (and kindness) as soon as possible.

No one’s impressed to discover years into a relationship that we’ve withheld from them the most important things in our lives.

4) Take the long view and cultivate patience

With family especially, we should consider the long arc. Randy Newman is not afraid to say to Christians in general, “You need a longer-term perspective when it comes to family.” Chances are we do. And so he challenges us to think in terms of an alphabet chart, seeing our family members positioned at some point from letters A to Z. These 26 steps/letters along the way from distant unbelief (A) to great nearness to Jesus (Z) and fledgling faith help us remember that evangelism is usually a process, and often a long one.

It is helpful to recognize that not everyone is near the end of the alphabet waiting for our pointed gospel pitch to tip them into the kingdom. Frequently there is much spadework to be done. Without losing the sense of urgency, let’s consider how we can move them a letter, or two or three, at a time and not jerk them toward Z in a way that may actually make them regress.

5) Beware the self-righteous older brother in you

For those who grew up in nonbelieving or in shallow or nominal Christian families, it can be too easy to slide into playing the role of the self-righteous older brother when we return to be around our families. Let’s ask God that he would enable us to speak with humility and patience and grace. Let’s remember that we’re sinners daily in need of his grace, and not gallop through the family gathering on our high horse as if we’ve arrived or just came back from the third heaven. Newman’s advice: “use the pronouns ‘we’ and ‘us’ far more than ‘you’” (65).

6) Tell it slant

Some extended family contexts may be so far from spiritual that we need to till the soil of conversation before making many direct spiritual claims. It’s not that the statements aren’t true or desperately needed, but that our audience may not yet be ready to hear it. The gospel may seem so foreign that wisdom would have us take another approach. One strategy is to “tell it slant,” to borrow from the poem of the same name — to get at the gospel from an angle.

“If your family has a long history of negativity and sarcasm,” writes Newman, “the intermediate step of speaking positively about a good meal or a great film may pave the way for ‘blinding’ talk of God’s grace and mercy” (67). Don’t “blind” them by rushing to say loads more than they’re ready for. As Emily Dickinson says, “The truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind.”

7) Be real about the gospel

As we dialogue with family about the gospel, let’s not default to quoting Bible verses that don’t really answer the questions being asked. Let’s take up the gospel in its accompanying worldview and engage their questions as much as possible in the terms in which they asked them. Newman says, “We need to find ways to articulate the internally consistent logic of the gospel’s claims and not resort to anti-intellectual punch lines like, ‘The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it.’”

Yes, let’s do quote Bible when appropriate — we are Christians owing ultimately to revelation, not to reason. But let’s not make the Bible into an excuse for not really engaging with their queries in all their difficulty. (And let’s not be afraid to say we don’t know when we don’t!)

8) Consider the conversational context

Context matters. It doesn’t have to be face to face across the table to be significant. “Many people told me their best conversations occurred in a car — where both people faced forward, rather than toward each other,” says Newman. “Perhaps the indirect eye contact posed less of a threat” (91). Maybe even sofas and recliners during a Thanksgiving Day football game, if the volume’s not ridiculous. Be mindful of the context, and seek to make yourself available for conversation while at family gatherings, rather than retreating always into activities or situations that are not conducive to substantive talk.

9) Know your particular family situation.

In some families, the gospel has been spoken time and again in the past to hard hearts, perhaps there has been a lack of grace in the speaking, and what is most needed is some unexpected relational rebuilding. Or maybe you’ve built and built and built the relationship and have never (or only rarely) clearly spoken the message of the gospel.

Let’s think and pray ahead of time as to what the need of hour is in our family, and as the gathering approaches pray toward what little steps we might take. And then let’s trust Jesus to give us the grace our hearts need, whether it’s grace for humbling ourselves enough to connect relationally or whether it’s courage enough to speak with grace and clarity.

10) Be hopeful

God loves to convert the people we think are the least likely. Jesus is able to melt the hardest of hearts. Some who finished their lives among the greatest saints started as the worst of sinners.

Realistically, there could have been some cousin of the apostle Paul sitting around some prayer meeting centuries ago telling his fellow believers, “Hey, would you guys pray for my cousin Saul? I can’t think of anyone more lost. He hunts down followers of The Way and arrests them. Just last week, he was the guy who stood guard over the clothes of the people who killed our brother Stephen.” (53)

With God, all things are possible. Jesus has a history of conquering those most hostile to him. We have great reason to have great hope about gospel advance in our families, despite how dire and dark it may seem.

When We Fail

And when we fail — not if, but when — the place to return is Calvary’s tree. Our solace in failing to adequately share the gospel is the very gospel we seek to share. It is good to ache over our failures to love our families in gospel word and deed. But let’s not miss that as we reflect on our failures, we have all the more reason to marvel at God’s love for us.

Be astonished that his love is so lavish that he does not fail to love us, like we fail to love him and our families, and that he does so despite our recurrent flops in representing him well to our kin.

Keller on Defeaters

The following is the text of the end of a sermon given by Tim Keller at Covenant Seminary. You can download the rest of the sermon here. The topic of the sermon is preaching and this section deals with how to talk with people about our culture’s six biggest objections to Christianity. I have found it very helpful and think it’s worth reading or listening to.

“Every culture has a set of defeater beliefs. A defeater is “Belief A” that if true then “Belief B” can’t be true. For example, if it is really true that there can’t be just one true religion, then I don’t really have to listen to Christianity. In a culture in which people hold a defeater belief, when you try to talk to them about Christianity their eyes glaze over and they stop listening. Every culture has a different set of defeater beliefs. For example in America one of the defeater beliefs is there can’t just be one true religion, or that all religions are equally valid. This is a kind of common sense thing now in our culture, but if you go over to the Middle East that’s not a defeater belief at all. Go there and say “There can’t just be one true religion” they will all look at you and say “Why not?” In the Middle East the defeater is that Christianity can’t be true because so many Americans believe it. When you see this you immediately begin to realize that your objections to Christianity are culturally relative.
Now, what are these objections?

I did a survey two years ago of young 20-somethings who had just come out of Yale, asking them their biggest objections to Christianity. Many of them worked in the city, had never been Christians, were raised secular, many of them were Jewish, many of them were lapsed Catholics or mainline Protestants. We distilled it down to six objections and here they are:
1. The Other Religions: There cannot just be one true religion.
2. Evil and suffering: This is going to continue to be a problem for people because we live in a consumer society where we think we should have designer lives. There has never been a bigger group of crybabies then Americans. We are so set on the idea that “I have rights to a happy life” that the question of why God allows the things to happen that he does will increasingly be a problem for people.
3. The Sacredness of Choice: One of the things that came out in my survey was that many young people not only feel that it is important to have personal choice, they believe that if I obey the ten commandments simply because I am told I have to then I am just a zombie and a robot. You are not a human being unless you decide what is right or wrong. There is the belief that unless it is my choice what is right or wrong I am not an authentic person and therefore any institutionalized religion is by definition ruled out.
4. The Record of Christians: The injustice and the genocides and the corruption that the church or Christians have been involved in throughout history.
5. The Problem of Anger: In spite of the fact that we live in a culture where anger is more affirmed than in any culture that has ever been (we demand to have our rights and needs, and to be outraged and angered is considered a great sign of authentic personhood) the idea of a God being angry is absolutely problematic for people, particularly the Cross. I would say that my biggest question I get from non-Christians is “If God wants to forgive me why can’t He just forgive me” and “Any God who has to have blood in order to forgive me I don’t want any part of.”
6. Untrustworthiness of the Bible: This is the idea that the Bible is socially regressive. If we follow the Bible we will never get away from social oppression and the putting down of other races. The Bible is seen as promoting holy war and genocide. It is seen as promoting the subjugation of women and the subjugation of homosexuals and so on.

Now what you have got to do is find ways of undermining these six all the time. You have got to help people understand just how to deal with those six or they will never talk to their non-Christian friends because they will throw these up and they will not know what to say. Let me give some ideas about each one.

1. No other religions: Basically the way you have to talk and preach about this objection is you have to point out that western inclusivism is really covert exclusivism. You hear people something like this, “No one should insist their view of God is better than all the rest” or “Every religion is equally valid” But that can only be true if there is no God or there is a God who is an impersonal force and who doesn’t care what your doctrinal beliefs about him are. That is a very particular view of God and you are basing your entire life on it, and you are asking me to change my view of God to your view of God. That is the very thing you just told me I am not allowed to do to you. That is absolutely inconsistent. What looks like inclusivism is basically a covert exclusivism. What you’ve actually done is to say that all religions are equally valid is itself assuming a particular view of God (which is a leap of faith) and you are insisting that everybody out there must believe your view of God or else they will be unenlightened. William Willamon says this, “To say that all religions are equally valid is itself a very white, western view based on the Europeans enlightenment’s idea of knowledge and values…” Why should this view be privileged over everybody elses?
Of all the objections that are out there it is by far the weakest. It makes no sense at all. There is a place in one of Alvin Plantinga’s essays where someone comes up to him and says, “If you were born in Madagascar you wouldn’t even be a Christian” and he said, “That’s probably right. Are you telling me that therefore Christianity can’t be true? If you were born in Madagascar you wouldn’t be a religious relativist. Does that mean what you are saying isn’t true?” There is no intellectual integrity to the idea that all religions are equally true.
2. Evil and suffering: Here is a brief response to the idea: If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn’t stopped evil and suffering in the world then you have to have at the very same moment a God who is great and transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue which you do not know. You can’t have it both ways. If you are talking to a non-suffering person who just thrown the problem of suffering at you that is probably the best answer, provided you unpack it a little bit. If you are talking to a suffering person that would be very cruel. Here is what you have to say: Eastern religions say that suffering is an illusion, other western religions say that God is up there and he has his reasons but only Christianity has a God who has himself come into the world of suffering. If God himself has suffered then he must have reasons for allowing it to continue that aren’t a matter of remoteness and distance. If God has himself experienced suffering then he can be with in you in the suffering. You just have to say that Christianity has better resources for believing that God is involved and cares about our suffering than any other worldview. In the secular worldview who cares about suffering? The strong eat the weak and it doesn’t matter. If you are morally outraged by it, so what? If you go to every other religion the view of suffering is less poignant and immediate than the idea that God would come and get involved in this worlds suffering. You should always talk about evil and suffering in terms of the Cross.
3. The sacredness of choice, or the ethical straightjacket: For those who say “I have got to make this decision for myself” or “Nobody can tell me what is right or wrong for me” You basically have to do two things. First ask if is there anybody anywhere in the world doing something that you think is wrong whether they believe it or not? Well, yes, of course, those people over there murdering those other people. Oh you are saying they are wrong even though in their heart of heart they think it is ok? In other words you do believe there is a moral standard above us that we are being held accountable to? What happens, then, to your sacredness of choice? What you really want is choice for you and not for everybody else. That is just not fair. The other thing to point out is something very important to say, that everybody has to live for something. Whatever you are living for is your master and lord and therefore you are not free. This is a Becky Pippert quote from out of the salt shaker, she says, “If you live for people’s approval then you are enslaved to what they think of you. If you live for power you are enslaved to power. If you live for your own independence then you are enslaved to you independence and you can’t commit to anybody, but what you need to realize is that none of you belong to yourselves.” What ever you live for is your master, and here is the advantage of Jesus Christ, he is the only lord and master who if you get him will fulfill you and if you fail him he has died on the cross for you. Human power can’t do that, your job can’t do that, romance and love can’t do that, the boys at school can’t do that.
4. The record of Christians: I have to tell you that all I ever try to go for on this one is a tie. I’ll give you my trump card on this. When people say what about all the injustices Christians have done, if you start to say well look at all the good we have done (ex. The abolition of slavery in the British Empire and William Wilberforce), well then they can come back with all these other evil things Christians have done. Here is what I suggest doing: when Martin Luther King Jr. confronted injustice in the white Christian church in the south what did he say? Let’s loosen our Christianity? Let’s get rid of our Christianity? Did he say that the reason that injustice is wrong is that everybody should be free to say what is right or wrong for him or her? No. He used the Bible’s provision for self-critique and called them to truer, firmer, deeper Christians. He says that the solution for the bad record of Christians is not to get rid of Christianty but to be true to it, to be true to the gospel to be true to what the Bible really teaches.
5. The Angry God: On the cross God does not demand our blood but he offers his own. That is the answer. Here is the best way I try to explain why the cross was necessary when people say to me “Why can’t God just forgive.” If somebody has really wronged you you can’t just forgive either. Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t just forgive. You can either pay back or you can forgive, but forgiveness is painful. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “The forgiveness of real wrongs is always a form of suffering.” To not pay back when you want to, to not cut them down when you want to, to not think nasty thoughts when you want to hurts. You can pay them back and then evil wins, or you can forgive them in which case there is suffering. And on the cross all you see is a cosmic example of what happens in our hearts even for us little flawed human beings. God had to suffer in order to forgive us. On the cross he is not demanding our blood he is giving his own and anyone who is really forgiven understands that. Jesus had to die. God had to suffer in some way to forgive us.
6. The unreliable Bible: When people say things like “We now know that the Bible is socially regressive” here is my best answer. I say what do you mean “we now”? You mean in the year 2004 we’ve hit the ultimate year? 60 years from now we will all look back and say “back in 2004 we had it just right and ever since then it has been downhill”? Do you realize that your grandchildren are going to be incredibly upset by many things you think everybody knows? Do you want to miss out in the gospel and the possibility of eternal life with God on the basis of some problems you have with parts of the Bible that are going to be obsolete? Be very careful! Don’t let that happen. Did you ever see the original Stepford Wives movie? It was about men who wanted wives who never talked back to them. So they had their wives killed and then they created these robots and the robots always said “yes dear” and never talked back. There are advantages to that, but you can’t have a personal relationship with a robot. If you have a God who can never contradict you… If you look through the Bible and say “This part I like, but this part is no good. This part is ok but this part we can’t believe anymore” how will you ever have a God that you haven’t created yourself? How will God ever be able to say something to you that totally offends your cultural sensibilities? If you get rid of the parts of the Bible you don’t like, you have absolutely no way to have a personal relationship with God. You have a Stepford God. The only possibility of being sure you haven’t created a God in your own image is to take the word of God as it lay and let it come after you.

(HT http://veritasmizzou.wordpress.com/2008/01/15/kellers-six-defeaters-2/)

Talking About Our Reasons for God

Yesterday we wrapped up a sermon series at CGS called “To Boldly Go…”.  We’ve looked at why we need to share our faith and how we can do this in a helpful, gospel-centered way.

Yesterday we looked at how we can overcome objections to the faith.  One of the most helpful resources I’ve come across is Tim Keller’s book “The Reason For God.”  Just recently I came across a few free sermons and handouts from Keller’s church.  If you’re not a reader, consider listening to these on the treadmill or during your commute.

The Reason for God:
Click “Download” to listen to sermons related to Tim Keller’s book The Reason for God from the series The Trouble with Christianity: Why it’s so Hard to Believe it.

Exclusivity: How can there be just one true religion?	1 John 4:1-10	Download	Study Guide
Suffering: If God is good, why is there so much evil in the world?	1 Peter 1:3-12	Download	Study Guide
Absolutism: Don’t we all have to find truth for ourselves?	Galatians 2:4-16	Download	Study Guide
Injustice: Hasn’t Christianity been an instrument for oppression?	James 2:1-17	Download	Study Guide
Hell: Isn’t the God of Christianity an angry Judge?	Luke 16:19-31	Download	Study Guide
Doubt: What should I do with my doubts? (AM)	John 20:1-18	Download	Study Guide
Literalism: Isn’t the Bible historically unreliable and regressive? (AM)	Luke 1:1-4; 24:13-32	Download	Study Guide