This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute, where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. I've put up here on the board a summary of our last lesson, just for those of you who may have forgotten over the coffee break. If it wasn't memorable enough in the way I presented it, I've written it out for you now here. Your notes should look something like this. Apologetics in the workplace or apologetics for every man begins by pointing out that apologetics, the defense of the faith, is a moral necessity, a moral necessity for all believers. We're under obligation to do this because God has chosen to use us to this end. to advance his kingdom and glorify his name. And it's all believers, not just these ivory tower intellectuals who go on for a PhD. Everyone is to present reason for the hope that is in them. And this is an answer that can be given to any man. We are to be prepared to answer anyone who wants to know why we believe the way we do. And in order to do that, we're going to use reasoning as a tool, not reason as a final standard or judge of truth, but reasoning as a tool, a God-given intellectual gift with which we serve Him and love Him. And now coming to our second session, I want to follow up on this early presentation by pointing out the inadequacy when we answer people who have questions or want to challenge our Christian faith, the inadequacy of falling back on subjectivism or relativism or a smorgasbord approach to things. Now what do I mean by that? Let's imagine you're at the office someday. I have to take some kind of environment for my illustration. Perhaps you work in an office and a co-worker has said something about your Christian faith to the effect Well, I don't believe Jesus is who he said he is, or I don't believe Jesus is God. Or, more likely, I don't see why the Bible is the only way to God and so forth. There are a lot of different religious options and so forth. And now, you're put in a situation where you're either going to be quiet, you're going to be silent, and therefore guilty before God for not glorifying his name and giving an answer for the hope that is in you, or you're going to provide an answer. Now, when you provide an answer, or many people when they provide answers, sadly, fall back on what we call subjectivism. They'll say something like, well, I believe the Bible is the Word of God, or Jesus is the Savior of men, and I have this inner conviction of it. I just feel that it's true and it's right. That is, I'm just confident I have this internal conviction. Well, that is not apologetics. Although what has been said is true. Christians do have an inner conviction, as in Paul tells us in Romans the 8th chapter, that the Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are the sons of God. And I'm so thankful that God has given us that internal conviction. That means a lot to me in my Christian life. I trust it has a lot to do with my piety and my prayer life and so forth. But you see, what God does in terms of giving me an inward conviction and assurance of the truth has nothing to do with the public defense of his word. People who fall back on subjectivism, that I have this inward assurance have confused one aspect of the Christian life with another. That aspect of the Christian life that deals with our personal walk with God, the assurance of our salvation, prayer, and so forth, yes, that has a lot to do with this inner feeling of assurance. But that's a private matter. That has nothing to do with a public presentation of the truth. For as you very well know, there are many people that have a high degree of confidence regarding something that proves to be notoriously false. The fact that someone feels confident that they have the truth is not an adequate mark that they have the truth. I don't want to take away the importance of that inner confidence of having the truth. That is crucial to us as Christians. All I want to point out is that has nothing to do with making a public defense of the Christian faith. When someone has a psychological assurance of something, we cannot be sure that what that person believes is true. That person may be motivated to act in terms of that truth. That person may even have kind of a life-changing perspective because of that inner conviction, but that still doesn't say anything about whether it is publicly true, objectively true, true out there in the public state of affairs, not just inside in this feeling that we have. We have not presented a defense of the faith. We may have said something important in terms of our testimony, but we have not presented a defense of the faith and we say, well, I'm just sure that it's true. I have this confidence within me that it is true. There's another way in which Christians, I think, often fall short of presenting an apologetic witness for the faith, and that is by the use of what we call relativism. Relativism. This is really a distinct mistake from subjectivism, but they are closely related nonetheless. Often people who take a subjectivistic approach are also relativistic with respect to the truth. What do I mean by relativism? Relativism tells us that there is no universal objective truth for all men, but that truth is truth for you. You've heard people talk like that, haven't you? You don't have to go to college to be infected with that kind of thinking. There are people who say, well, that may be true for you, but it's not true for me. And sometimes Christians fall into that way of speaking as well. They'll say, well, I understand that it's not true for you, at least not yet, but it is true for me. Or worse, worse, you have Christians who will say, well, there are many truths. This is the one that I endorse. You should not overlook the perversion of the English language that is involved in the idiom true for you, true for me. Truth is not relative to people. It's not a matter of who you are, whether something is true. True for you, the expression true for you, or the expression true for me, is just a very misleading way of saying you believe it, I don't, or I believe it, you don't. To say that something is true for you does not affect what is true, it only affects what is believed to be true. You see the difference between those two? And because people collapse the idea of truth into the idea of belief, then it seems like we have a real peaceful way to bring harmony in our families and at the office party and so forth. When we get into these religious discussions, it seems like we all be happy by saying, well, it's true for you, but it's not true for you. But you see, that's just a long way of saying, and a very misleading way of saying, well, you believe it, but you don't. What does that leave us with? The question of truth. Whose belief is right? Whose belief is wrong? Apologetic is not a matter of saying it's true for me. It's not a matter of saying that truth is relative to individuals. If someone has tuberculosis and they refuse to believe it, do they have tuberculosis? As a pastor, I've dealt with people like this. people who do not want to admit something, a very unhappy truth. Now, when I have been faithful to them, I always say, well, then, for you it is not true, but for the doctor it is. Truth is not relative. There are truths about relatives, and there are truths, you know, about the way we respond to things, there are truths about our own particular feelings, but our feelings and our beliefs do not make things true. If they did, we'd all be wealthy, wouldn't we? Except for the masochists among us. We would all just believe that we have a lot of money and then we'd go to the bank and it would be there. Truth is not relative. And when someone has some dreadful truth about them, some condition that is ugly or unpleasant, they often do not want to believe it. And you know, that's what the Bible tells us about unbelievers. The Bible tells us that they are under the wrath and the curse of God. And if they were to admit God's existence, if they were to admit the truth of Scripture, if they were to admit the claims of Jesus Christ, they would also have to say something about themselves that they don't like, that they are guilty, that they should be ashamed of their lives. that they are not right with God and they will undergo everlasting condemnation. Now, are those the sorts of things, you know, people get up in the morning, just love to believe about themselves? I've led a shameful life, I have disobeyed God, I'm under His wrath and curse and will go to hell forever. All that makes me so happy. Of course it isn't. Why should we believe that unbelievers are going to readily accept this teaching? when what it does is insult their pride. It rains on their own parade. It says their lives are going to end up in destruction. Now, you've probably had friends that have cancer, tuberculosis, whatever, and they don't want to admit that. How much more than you understand that the sinner doesn't want to admit that he's wrong? He's not going to just say, oh, well, here's the teaching of God's Word. I know that it's true, but I don't like it. is going to have to say, I don't think it's true. And one of the ways for him to say, I don't think it's true, is for him to really relegate your faith to relativism by saying, well, that may be true for you, but it's not for me. And so let's just go to lunch and not talk about this anymore. True for you simply means you believe it. Not true for me means I don't believe it. And it still leaves the question of what's right and wrong. And then finally, a third way in which we inadequately defend our faith is by taking a smorgasbord approach to the Bible or to religion, a smorgasbord approach. If you go through the airport, do you ever run into Hare Krishna people, people who endorse Eastern mysticism or Hinduism, whether it's in the airport or not? People like this will often tell you after you present your religious testimony, or present the teaching of the Bible, they'll say, well, there are many ways to God. And you've chosen this way, I've chosen this way, but all roads lead to the top of the mountain. It's almost as though God has some kind of franchise system, and he's franchised religion out to the Hindus, and to the Buddhists, and to the Mormons, and to the Christians, and so forth and so on. so i call the smorgasbord approach to religion you all enjoy going to a smorgasbord not only because you get a lot of food to eat but the point is you don't have to eat anything you don't like i happen to dislike eggplant i dislike mushrooms and squash i tell you that in case i ever get invited to your house now you know this is a terrible time of year for me because you know people love at thanksgiving to have their yams and squash and pumpkin pie and I just don't like any of that stuff. I go to a smorgasbord, no social embarrassment. You take what you like, you leave what you dislike. Isn't that great? Now, do you think God has taken that approach to truth? Do you think God has presented a smorgasbord out there? Take what you like, leave what you dislike. God's under no obligation to take the cafeteria approach to truth, is he? But many Christians, when they defend the Bible or think they're defending the Bible, are willing to leave it at a smorgasbord level. Well, if you don't like that, then you can leave that. Johnny, you don't have to eat your yams today, but I do expect you to eat your turkey, whatever it may be. God doesn't take that approach. He doesn't say, some of it you can take, some of it you can leave. It's a package deal. And moreover, and that's looking at the Bible itself, it's true, you can't take a smorgasbord approach to them, but it's also true with respect to religions. God doesn't say, well, if you'd like to take the Hindu approach to me, that's fine. If you'd like to take the Islamic approach to me, that's fine. Or if you'd like to take the Christian approach, that's fine. God doesn't deal with men in terms of a smorgasbord of truth. He has presented the truth to us once and for all, as Jude says, the third verse of his epistle. And that's what we're to contend for. I say this because I know that many Christians find it awkward to defend parts of the Bible. They just as soon kind of leave them out. Let's see if we can think of some examples today. Well, we live in a day and age that's very egalitarian, a day that wants to present the view in society as much as possible that there are no distinctions and that everybody is exactly the same. And from a legal standpoint, I have no problem with that. But when you get around to saying such things as there's no subordination between men and society, what, no difference between police and those who are to obey the police, no difference between husbands and wives, and so forth. We have in the Bible things like a woman's subordination to her husband, and the world today hates that, despises that. And so when we defend the Christian faith, it would be very easy for us to say, oh, well, that's culturally relative, and we don't have to worry about that. That's not defending the faith. We have in the Bible other things the world doesn't like. The doctrine of blood atonement. How often have I been told by educated people, that's barbaric. That's old-fashioned. No one can believe that. How much easier it would be for me just to present the idea, well, there's a loving Father in heaven, and all of us are his children, and we need to love each other. Wouldn't that be a wonderful religion? But that isn't biblical religion. Biblical religion presents Jesus as the Messiah and the only way to God. And this notion that there's only one way to God is offensive to people. If you're going to defend the faith, you're going to need to bite the bullet and be willing to say things that your hearer does not want to hear. Now, there's a kind of a surprise built into this, though. I know that you would anticipate, and I have, and I do anticipate, that when I have to bite the bullet and tell them, no, it isn't a matter of you like Krishna, and someone else likes Buddha, and I like Jesus, that it's Jesus or nothing. God doesn't present a cafeteria of religions out here. You pick and choose what you want. Christ claims to be the only way. I have to bite the bullet and say that to people, and I expect them to be very unhappy with it, and often they are. But you know what? Often that's exactly what people need to hear, because in their heart of hearts, they know that's true. They know that God is not going to play games with contradictory systems of religion, all equally true. No one else, I mean, would a doctor say that? A contradictory diagnosis of some patient, all equally true. We don't believe that when it comes to medicine. We don't believe that when it comes to economics. I mean, have you ever had difficulty balancing your checkbook and you go to the bank to get things worked out? Wouldn't it be great if they all said, well, hey, there's all these different truths when it comes to money. You have your truth, we have our truth. People know in their heart of hearts that you can't take this smorgasbord, relativistic approach. And so when you tell them the truth, even though they may not like to hear it, you'll find there are people out there saying, I knew that was the case. You can't take a smorgasbord approach when someone says, I'm the only way. So apologetics in the workplace is going to call for you to go beyond a subjective testimony about, I have an inner assurance of Jesus' love for me. It's going to call for you to go beyond saying there's a truth for you and a truth for me. It's going to call for you to go beyond saying God presents a lot of different ways back to him. And to make the following claim, that in all humility, by the grace of God, I have to tell you, God has provided a way of salvation and it is the one and only way to get right with him. Now you may reject that, you may not like to hear that, but that's the truth. that I have to present to you. Now how are you going to do that? People are going to tell you, you're wrong. People are going to tell you they have a different idea. They're going to say they've got reasons for not believing. And so we want to lead now into our second main area of discussion this morning, and I put up here on the blackboard something of a synopsis of what I'm going to be getting at. Why not ask why? Do you want to know how to defend the faith? You need to catch on to this technique, learning to ask why. I guess, in a sense, what I'm calling for you to do is go back to your childhood days. All right. Those of you who have raised children, you know very well that's the sort of thing that kind of gets under your skin sometimes. You know, you'll tell a child to do something and he'll say, why? And then you'll give a reason and the child might say to that, why? And then if you're really patient, probably more patient than I have been as a parent, you give another reason, the child will again say, why? And that's all it takes for you to do apologetics. Well, it takes a little bit more than that. But if you will master the technique of asking why, then you are going to be on the road to presenting an effective defense of your faith. You may be thinking as you're sitting there, Unbelievers have the right to ask us why also. And so let me take you through one circle of answering the why questions from a Christian perspective. And then what I'm going to say is you need to then turn the tables on the unbeliever and make him start asking why or answering why, why, why, why, why. Let's say I'm at work and I've said something with respect to my Christian faith and somebody says, Why do you believe that Jesus is the Savior of men? Now, two that I can say, because Jesus presented himself in that way. He didn't come into this world and simply say that he was a good teacher, one more of the prophets. He came into this world and claimed remarkable things. For instance, that he would judge all mankind, that he created the world. that he has eternal glory with the father but all men owe him allegiance that one's ultimate destiny depends on his relationship to Jesus. Now those kinds of claims are the things that are said only by maniacs for the Son of God himself. I believe that Jesus is the Savior of men because he claimed to be the Savior of men. Somebody will say, well, why do you believe what he says? Well, I believe what he says because it's presented to me in the Word of God, which I believe to be God's own Word to man. And the Bible claims to be the Word of God. Well, why do you believe its own claim? Because if I don't believe its claims, not only am I going contrary to what I know to be the case from reading it itself, the conviction that I have inside me that God is speaking to me, but if I don't believe what the Bible teaches, I can't make sense out of my life. I can't make sense out of why I believe in moral absolutes. I can't make sense out of why I expect the future to be like the past, that is the uniformity of nature. why I use any kind of reasoning whatsoever. In fact, my most basic convictions about life regarding reasoning and science and morality and human dignity would all not make any sense whatever, unless what the Bible said about God and man, my sin, and Jesus as the Savior were true. Now at this point, the unbelievers would say, well, I don't believe that. I don't believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Why don't you ask them why? Because you see, at this point, what you have presented is a system of truth, an interrelated system of truth. And from within that system, your claims, if they've been presented consistently and clearly, are perfectly acceptable. You believe that Jesus is the Son of God because he claimed to be the Son of God. The alternative is that he's a maniac. You can't really go with that. The Bible presents him in this light without the teaching of the Bible. The rest of life doesn't make sense. Science would be impossible. So forth and so on. Here you have a system of belief. Now, the unbeliever at that point may not be willing to buy into that system. But the system's not arbitrary. You see, it's got reasons. You can offer reasons for what you believe. At this point, you turn around and you want to find out about the unbeliever's system, or lack thereof, by asking him, well, why do you believe what you do? Well, the unbeliever will tell you, I don't believe that Jesus is the Son of God because it's impossible for God to become a man. Now, as a Christian, you may feel stymied. You say, I don't know. How is it possible? for God to become man? Well, within your system of thought, you know that it's possible because God, who is the creator of heaven and earth, can do anything he wants. With God, all things are possible. That doesn't mean you have to be able to give an answer as to how God did it. That doesn't mean you have to be able to account for how a virgin had a baby. or Jesus walked on water, or any of those sorts of things. The mechanics of it is not the issue. From within your system of beliefs, God has all power, and he can certainly take on human form. But the unbeliever says it's impossible. Now what are you going to do? Why not ask him why? Why is it impossible for God to do that? Well, the unbelievers say, I just don't see how he can do it. And you're going to say, no, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Are you suggesting to me that your understanding is the limit of reality? That only those things can be true that you understand? Is that what lies behind all this? God could not have become a man because you don't understand how he would do it? You see the fallacy in that, I hope, right away. There are plenty of things in this world that anybody you talk to, even the most advanced nuclear physicist, they don't understand. And yet they know they are true. I'll give you one. I'm supposed to be an educated person. I don't really understand why the lights go on when you flip the switch. And you say, oh, well, you understand that. Well, I know enough about electrical engineering that I'll bet you don't understand why the lights go on, even though you think they do. We all have the general idea that it's kind of like water flowing through the lines, you know? It isn't at all like that. And yet I know the lights go on. My understanding is not the limit of reality, is it? And so when the unbeliever says, I can't understand it, what we need to say is, well, that's no reason for you to say it can't be true. Well, now what if the unbeliever pushed further and says, well, it's not just that I can't understand it. It can't be true because it's illogical. It's contradictory to say that God is man, because God and man are different categories, and so you can't bring those two together like that. You're going to say, well, how do you know that you should trust the laws of logic? Now, I don't happen to believe there is a logical contradiction here, but even if there were, why are you depending upon the laws of logic? Mendler says, everyone counts on the laws of logic. And right at this point, you need to press your advantage. Dave, you follow me to this point? Because this is where apologetics is really going to become forceful. When the unbeliever says, well, everyone relies on the laws of logic, everyone tries to be consistent in his thinking, you want to say to that person, from a Christian perspective, that makes sense. But I don't know why you think everyone should depend upon the laws of logic. Why should you be relying upon the laws of logic? I do, and I do so because God is a consistent, truth-telling God. But why do you? Why not ask why? The unbeliever is finally going to get to a place where he thinks everyone knows the following is the case. Let me give you another kind of example. You believe Jesus rose from the dead. Let's say after some Easter Sunday, You go back to work and in conversation, you make some remark about that, and someone says, oh, I don't believe that. That's just a story to try to glorify Jesus. You say, well, why don't you believe it? Well, the person might say, you can't trust everything in the Bible. Why not? Well, because it was written over all these years by all these different people. Yeah. And if, as the Bible says, it was written under the sovereign superintendence of the Holy Spirit, I don't see why you should expect there to be any difficulty with that. Well, sometimes people will say things which are just uneducated bias and ignorance. They'll say things like, well, we don't know that some medieval monk didn't write some of these things in the Bible. And I'm sorry, people do say really silly things like that. And so you need to be prepared to tell them you need to go back and look at the evidence about that there's absolutely no reason to think that people slipped things into the bible now you may believe it was made up at the beginning but for you to suggest that it was inserted along the line it's just not the case and there are books that will tell you about that and so forth but you know there are a lot of people that just make up these things they just have this prejudice that the bible can't be true somebody must have made these things up But let's get beyond this. You have somebody who says, OK, it was written long ago, it's always been in the Bible, but I don't think it really happened. Why? Why not? Well, because I don't think dead men can rise. Now, at that point, the Christian says, well, of course, from within my system of beliefs, that's no difficulty. The sovereign creator of heaven and earth, who grants life to all things, can certainly raise the dead. He can do anything. So for a Christian, you can't say it's impossible that the dead would rise. But why do you think the dead cannot rise? Keep asking. Why? On what basis do you say that? What's your authority for saying that? Now the unbeliever is going to be pushed to say something like, well, because I know that from a scientific standpoint, miracles don't happen. Everything that takes place in this world takes place in terms of a regular pattern. And that regular pattern of causes and effects in this world is such that dead people don't come back to life. An unbeliever might say, I've been to many funerals. I've never seen a dead person come back to life. We know that it's impossible. And at that point, you're going to use the reasoning ability God's given you to say, no, wait a minute. Do I understand you right? You're saying that because you've never seen it happen, it cannot happen? Now, any unbeliever who's worth his or her salt is going to immediately jump back and say, well, I don't want to say something that silly. Because many things are true that we did not witness or see ourselves. And so now the unbeliever has to go beyond, I've never seen it happen, to it cannot happen. cannot happen? What would a person have to know to be in a position to say what can and cannot happen? I'm not telling you just a Christian, giving you a Christian prejudice here. Anybody, Christian or non-Christian, what would they have to know to tell us what is possible? They'd have to know everything, wouldn't they? For the unbeliever to say it's impossible for something to happen, you need to point out, well, you'd have to have omniscience to say that it's impossible. But then if you had omniscience, you'd be God, and so then you'd be reputing yourself because you'd be admitting there is a God and making a silly claim that you are that God. But nevertheless, you can't tell us what can and cannot happen. The unbeliever says, well, OK, I don't know everything, but I do have this belief about the world. It always operates with regular succession. Causes and effects are always the same, day to day, week by week, year by year, forever. Why not ask why? Why do you believe that? What's your basis for saying that? Now, and here's where you press your apologetical advantage, from a Christian perspective, I know why we expect nature to be uniform. Because I believe in a sovereign God who controls all things. But just because God sovereignly controls all things, He can also do miracles. He can change that regular succession from time to time. You can have something like a resurrection take place because God controls everything. But now on your worldview, why do you believe that there's any regularity at all? Keep pressing them to give a reason for what they believe, and eventually, Unbelievers will always get to the place where they have to assert something like, I believe nature is uniform. I believe in the laws of logic. I believe this, that, and the other, which everyone takes for granted. And at that point, you want to show the unbeliever. As Christians, we believe that too. but the way in which we believe it allows for the truth of Christianity. It makes perfectly good sense to say nature is uniform and yet there are miracles. But on your way of looking at things, none of this makes sense. On your way of looking at things, why should you expect nature to be uniform? You might be sitting there thinking, Dr. Bonson, isn't there an obvious answer to that question? We expect nature to be uniform for things to happen tomorrow the way they did in the past, because it was always that way in the past. Hasn't the unbeliever had repeated experiences of planting corn and seeing it grow? He knows what happens when you plant corn, you treat it in a certain way, and it grows. He's done that for years. He may have been a farmer for 30 years. When you say, how do you know the future is going to be like the past, that when you plant the corn and treat it in the same way it's going to grow, he's going to say, because I'm an expert at it. I've done it for years and years and years. But unfortunately, that answer doesn't deal with the real issue. The real issue here is not, has it been this way in the past, and are you an expert on the things that have happened in the past? The question is, will the future be like the past? And when someone says, well, in the past, it always worked that way, they haven't even touched the question of what it's going to be like in the future. Unbelievers have no basis for believing that the way things have happened in the past is the way they're going to happen in the future. And when they refer to the past as being that way, they are just repeating the problem. Yes, in the past it was that way. The question is, what about the future? Unbelievers will say what they know they know on the basis of experience. And so you're going to ask, well, what experience do you have of the future? What experience do you have of things that have not taken place yet? Well, none. Well, then if what you know is based on observation and experience, you have no way of knowing what the future is going to bring. And therefore, you have no way of expecting the future to be like the past. I hope that it doesn't begin to sound to you right now that we've gotten back to that ivory tower kind of argumentation, rather than what takes place in the workplace. It's not at all, because what I'm talking to you about is one of the most fundamental assumptions of any thinking person. whether they're educated or not, everybody expects that their past experience will be a guide to how they should live their lives in the future. People who have stubbed their toes in the past try to avoid stubbing their toes in the future. You don't have to go to college to learn about that. And the reason why they try to avoid stubbing their toe in the future because they didn't like the pain that it brought in the past, is because they have an unspoken assumption about the way the world works. And that's what you want to exploit, their unspoken assumption that the world works in a uniform way. Not because you disagree with that. As Christians, we think the world does work in a uniform way. What you want to exploit is the unbeliever's arbitrariness in believing it. The unbeliever doesn't have any reason to expect nature to be uniform. The Christian does. And so when we go to work and we find people who don't agree with the Christian faith, Not only are we to give them our reasons within our worldview, as we put it, within the system of truth that's found in the Bible, not only do we give our reasons for believing what we do, we have to turn around and ask the unbeliever, well, why do you believe what you do? And then when an answer is given, ask about that answer, well, why do you believe that? And why do you believe that? And I don't know how many whys it's going to take. It may be 16 in some cases, and it may be 6 in another, and it may be 2 in another. But eventually, the why question, on what authority do you believe this? What's the basis for this? And then, on what authority do you believe that? What's the authority for that? This pressing of the why question is eventually going to get you to a place when the unbeliever says something about the nature of human knowledge, that it must be logical, for instance, or the nature of the way the world works, or the nature of how we should live our lives. Now in philosophy we have fancy words for those things. And I haven't given you the fancy words because I think that would frighten you, that would scare you off. But the fact is everyone has a certain understanding of what knowledge is. Everyone has a certain understanding of how the world works and what man's place in the world is. Everyone has a certain understanding of how we're supposed to live our lives. Let's say you're at work Well, I'll tell you what, let's say you're working at a fast food outlet. Any of you aspiring to be managers of a fast food outlet? Let's say you work for Taco Bell. And in order to get ahead at work at Taco Bell, you need to show a certain level of sales or profit, something like that. And you haven't seen that level of sales or profit that would impress your overseers and put you in the management track. And so what you do is at the end of the week when you're reporting, you know, that week's activity, you kind of fudge the figures a bit. You kind of add a bit to what you actually sold, you know, 300 more tacos than you really put out that week, whatever. Is that okay? But at the end, the believer says, that's not fair. You can't do that. What are you going to ask them? Why? Why not? Why shouldn't we live our lives this way? Well, because it's not true. We didn't sell 300 tacos more than this, this week. Now, from a Christian perspective, we can explain why in the workplace, honesty is called for. Can an unbeliever explain why honesty is called for in the workplace? Sometimes when I teach this seminar on apologetics, I use the illustration for students who are at school. I'll say, you know, you'll have professors in school that will teach you everything is relative. There are no moral absolutes. No one can tell you what is right and wrong. Every culture has its own outlook on that. And everybody has the right to choose for themselves. It's kind of what we in Southern California call the different strokes for different folks attitude. now if you have a college professor the teachers in this relativistic approach why shouldn't you cheat on his exam at the end of the term let's go ahead and and and then when he got caught what do you say to this professor any of his floppy right back and say professor i've learned so well from you it's different stroke for different folks i decided not to study i thought i would use susan's work over here she's so smart Now the professor is going to do what? Say, you may not cheat on an exam. And then you're going to say, you taught me that I could. Because you said no one can tell me how I have to live my life. Who are you to tell me not to cheat on an exam? Unbelievers cannot give a reason for what they do. On the one hand, they believe in moral absolutes, and they turn right around and tell you. On the other hand, they don't. They'll tell you that God didn't create this world, it's just a big chance affair, and then they expect science to work, and they hold to the uniformity of nature. So much so that they say miracles can't happen. You know, if we live in a chance universe, everything's a miracle. And so that Jesus rose from the dead shouldn't be any problem to an unbeliever. You ever have something to think about that? You've got to learn, if you're going to defend the faith, then, to turn people's beliefs against themselves. They will not be consistent, and they will end up being arbitrary. Okay, we're moving to the end of our second session, and so you might expect I'm giving you some heavy ammunition now. If you're taking notes, unbelievers will not be consistent with their beliefs. once you get down to the level of what they take for granted. They will not be consistent with their beliefs once you get down to the level of what they take for granted, and they will end up being arbitrary. They'll have no reason for saying they believe in the uniformity of nature. They'll have no reason for saying they believe in moral absolutes. They'll have no reason for saying that people should be consistent in what they say and not contradict themselves. They'll have no reason for holding out for human dignity, or man's place in the universe, or what have you. And when you point out that they fail to have a reason for these things, and that they are contradicting themselves in what they actually do believe, what are you doing? You're closing the mouth of the critic. Closing his mouth. Why do I believe what I do? Because God has revealed it to me in His infallible Word. I believe the Bible to be what it claims to be, because without the Bible, nothing makes sense. Now, you don't happen to see it that way, so let me ask you, why do you believe what you do? On what basis do you know anything? Or do you say we should live our lives this way? Or this is the way the world functions? And when you force the unbeliever Why, why, why, why? To answer these questions. What eventually emerges and what you're trying to expose is that the choice is between vowing to the Lord and being able to know things and refusing to bow to the Lord and not being able to know anything at all. Not being able to know anything at all. The choice is between the wisdom of the scriptures and foolishness. Professing themselves to be wise they became fools. That's the teaching of God's Word, and this is what you are playing out, even in the workplace, when you learn the technique of asking why. Now, there's a problem that emerges from all this, and that is that if you took this approach to apologetics, we might have the idea that our believers don't know anything. Because what you are doing in asking them why, why, why, why, and showing, one, their arbitrariness and their inconsistency, that might suggest, well, then they don't know anything at all. And so after we take another break, this time I'm only going to give you five minutes for your break. Maybe you'll come back in 10. As we take this break, I want you to be thinking, how do we account for the knowledge of unbelievers? This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute. Duplication, sharing and distribution is encouraged. For more information about the life and ministry of Dr. Greg L. Bonson, visit our website, www.bonsoninstitute.com, where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.