cover what I call the psychology of unbelief and then subversive strategies or subversive tactics that we can put into place. You'll note at the top of the page that there's major sections of this where I've leaned very heavily on Os Guinness' book, Fool's Talk, which is a very good book. I can't endorse everything that he says in it, but there's some really helpful things that I've found, and I've kind of adjusted the way that he says things, and I've sort of modified a little bit, but I think that to give credit where credit is due, I want to at least acknowledge my indebtedness to Oz Guinness and his work, Fool's Talk. When we talk to any unbeliever, and of course we are now specifically thinking of atheistic unbelievers, but when we talk to any unbeliever, there is something going on in their mind, in their heart, at that time. And we have a tendency sometimes of taking the word of the unbeliever at times over the word of God. What I mean by that is that sometimes the unbeliever will say, well, I have genuinely searched for God and I find no evidence of Him. Or, I have honestly, truthfully cried out to the Lord and He has not shown Himself to me. He has hidden Himself from me. One of the famous statements of Bertrand Russell, and I've mentioned it before, is that he was asked in a famous debate that he had with a Roman Catholic apologist, you know, what would happen if he were to stand one day before the Lord? And he said, well, I would say to him, I would say, sir, why did you take such pains to hide yourself? Well, of course, that is actually not reality. So let's think about the psychology of unbelief, and I've divided the psychology of unbelief, or what's going on in the unbeliever's head, into two different categories. First of all, and there's no blanks for you to fill in, I just want to make sure that you get all this material yourself. You can fill in extra stuff if you want, but I want this to be in your hands. First and foremost, and we have to really grasp this, The central transgression of unbelief is a willful abuse of truth. We are thinking in this session about atheistic unbelievers. But there's a willful abuse of truth. Let's look at what the Bible says about this abuse of truth. First of all, unbelief abuses truth through a deliberate act of suppression. And what I mean by that is this. It refuses to allow the truth to speak in all of its clarity and all of its reality. It holds the truth down, or holds the truth away from itself, so as not to embrace it for what it really is. Let's look together at Romans chapter 1, verse 18. Romans 1, 18. Anyone have that one for us? For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Now some of you might have the Old King James, and in the Old King James it says, who hold the truth in unrighteousness. And the word, the specific kind of hold that we're talking about here, the word is in Greek a form of the word katekanton, a variation of that, but basically it's the same word that would be used of a wrestler pinning someone down. And so you can see, understand then why the New King James translates this, suppresses the truth. And you might have a marginal reading in your New King James where the word suppresses and it says holds down. Because that's what's going on here. The unbeliever suppresses the truth in a deliberate act. We won't look at all the verses, but I would encourage you to do that. But let me ask you this. What does someone have to have in order to suppress it? If someone is going to suppress the knowledge of God, what do they have to have? If someone's going to suppress the truth, what do they have to have in order to suppress it? Well, they're gonna exchange it for a lie. We'll see that in just a second, but they have to, if you're gonna hold someone down, you have to actually have that person to hold down, right? If you're gonna hold the truth down, if you're gonna suppress the truth, you have to have the truth or some, you may not have the truth in all of its fullness, but they suppress the truth that they do have. I'll give you an example of this. The heavens declare the glory of God. The firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard, the scripture says. So the knowledge of God, the knowledge of His glory is evident everywhere. But what does the unbeliever do? The unbeliever tries to bury that. The unbeliever tries to suppress that knowledge. Let's move on. So they abuse the truth through a deliberate act of suppressing the truth. Second, Unbelief abuses truth through a deliberate act of exploitation. When you exploit something, you are using it for your own agenda. And the idea is that the unbeliever twists the truth and uses it, or at least uses part of it, for its own agenda without embracing it in its fullness and its reality. Let's look at Ezekiel 28, verse 17. Ezekiel 28, 17. Does anyone have that for us? Ezekiel 28, 17. Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground, I laid you before kings, that they might gaze at you. Notice particularly, thank you, notice particularly that expression, you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. So here's this wisdom that they had. Here's this truth that they have. But what do they do? They corrupted it for themselves. The same idea is given to us in Micah 3, verse nine. And the idea there is that they abhorred justice and twisted equity, twisted what was fair and right and just. When I was a young man, someone contacted the school and the church that I attended, the church had a school, and they asked if there was someone there that could help a young child that didn't know English just to learn English. So some practice, some practical conversation skills, teaching them basics and that sort of thing. So I went to this place and there was a young Hispanic boy and so I started working with him. But the first day that I went there, that work environment was not good and here's why it was not good. I did not know the fullness of it. Looking back on it, I wonder if there was more going on, but I went into this house and there were pictures of women in various states of undress all over this house. In particular, in the one area that they had set aside with a desk and everything, right there is this big picture of Marilyn Monroe in her one-button suit. Not a good thing. And so, I asked the man that had hired me, I said, listen, while I'm here, would you remove those pictures, take them down? And he didn't really say anything, so I left, came back later, or came back another day. The next day I think he was gone, but the third time that I, the next day that I came back, the pictures were still there. So the third time, I think it was the third time I came back, and the man was there. And he met me at the door, and he said, I don't think I'm gonna have you continue doing this. He said, you asking me to take down those pictures, that was judgmental. He said, the Bible talks about how Jesus loved people, but you're being judging to me. You're judgmental to me to ask me to take those pictures down. And so he would have never condemned me the way that you did and asked me to take those pictures down. So I got fired from this job for asking him to take these pictures down. Well, here's the thing, okay? Does the Bible talk about the love of Jesus? Yes. But what he did was he took this bit of truth and twisted it to try to fit his agenda, to try to match his sin, to try to match his lust. Yes, Jesus loves. But Jesus doesn't love sin. And so that's an example of it from my own life that I can think of. Here was a guy, so he took, of all the things that could be said in scripture, Jesus loved people, and what you said to me was harsh and mean and it was unloving, so you're fired. Jesus would never have judged me that way. And so what he'd done, he'd taken that truth and he'd twisted it to suit his own goals. one Christian of years gone by talks about how an unbeliever has to borrow even from the Christian worldview, even truth from the Christian worldview in order to attack God, in order to even argue against God. And he talked about how it's almost like a child too short to reach their father's face climbing into that man's lap in order to slap his face because they can't reach him from where they're at. They have to climb up on him in order to strike out against him. And this is what happens when unbelievers take part of the truth and twist it to suit their own goals and suit their own agendas. So unbelief abuses truth through a deliberate act of exploitation. Third, unbelief abuses truth through a deliberate act of inversion. What I mean by that is the unbeliever takes the truth and all of a sudden the judge becomes the one that we condemn and we dismiss. The truth of God becomes one of many options that we have the right to judge as true or false, rather than recognizing the truth of God as what judges us. There are some great examples of this. Look with me at Isaiah 10.15. Isaiah chapter 10 and verse 15. Notice what the scripture says here. Shall the axe boast itself against him who chops with it? Or shall the saw exalt itself against him who saws with it? as if a rod could wield itself against those who lift it up, or as if a staff could lift up as if it were not wood. This is the idea, this is the psychology behind unbelief. All of a sudden, we, as pots, start critiquing the potter. We, as in the words of another Christian of yours gone by, it's almost like a bunch of cars in the Ford dealership sitting around discussing whether or not Henry Ford ever existed. Their very existence is owing to the fact that Henry Ford existed. And so our existence, our very existence is owing to the fact that God exists. And yet we flip things around and all of a sudden we become judge. Worse yet, look with me at Romans 1.23, we were back in Romans 1 earlier, Romans 1.23. Someone can read that one for us. So when man rejects God, and when man is willing to turn from God, according to Romans chapter 1 verse 23, what's the first image that they twist the glory of God into? God gets demoted, but God becomes like man. Or we could say it, man exalts himself as God. Man takes upon himself to critique God. Man takes upon himself to judge God. Man takes upon himself to somehow place himself above the creator of the universe. An example of this as well would be people that say the Bible's an evil book. And they're arguing, as an atheist, from a purely evolutionary, materialistic background. By what standard in that worldview do you even get a category of evil, let alone then try to apply that to the scriptures? If we are all here as a result of random chance and time acting upon matter randomly, where do you get the categories of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, evil and good? And so there's an idea where they take part of it and then try to use that and switch it around. They become God. They become the one who judges God and judges God's truth, whereas, no, no, no, it's the other way around. Number four. Unbelief abuses truth through a deliberate act of deception, which ends in self-deception. Now, there are people who genuinely believe that they believe, at least on some level, they believe that they believe that there's no God. On some level. Why? Well, on one level, they've lied to themselves enough that they've come to believe that it's true. Now, there's another level to it, and we always have to remember that as we talk to people who are claiming to be atheists. There's another level to it. But there are people who are self-deceived. No one has lied to you as much as you have lied to yourself. Let me read from Guinness' book Unbelief seizes God's truth, twists it away from God's purposes toward its own, and is therefore forced to deny the full reality of the truth it knows. But in the futile act of trying to deny the undeniable, it both deceives others and deceives itself, and so becomes self-deceived. Unbelief, therefore, manufactures not only idols, but illusions. He goes on to say, in that sense, all unbelieving worldviews are not only a shrine to those who hold them, but a shelter from God and his truth. The logic behind this drive to deception and self-deception is simple. If sin is the claim to the right to myself, and it includes the right to the claim, sorry, it includes the claim to the right to view, to my view of things. In other words, I have the right to have my own view of things. That's my right, my own view. And since we are each finite, my view of things is necessarily restricted and simply cannot see the full picture. We therefore turn a blind eye to all other ways of seeing things that do not fit ours, and especially to God's view of things." So we're like, this is the way I see things. And then we turn a blind eye and we reject anything that would challenge or undermine our worldview. Look with me at Romans 1.25. We're still there in Romans 1. And Romans 1.25, it says, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie. And by the way, I think the lie there is the original lie. You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever." And the scripture goes on to describe God giving people over to their own vile passions. Verse 28, and even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind to do those things which are not fitting. Unbelief is a rebellion against God's truth, but there's a sense in which it's also a judgment from God. When a person says, I want it my way, rather than saying to God, have thine own way, after a while, God gives them over to their own way. And people end up in all kinds of horrible places as a result of that. Proverbs 12 verse 15 says, the way of a fool is right in his own eyes. And that really is the place of the unbeliever. They think they're right. And in order to think they're right, they have to exclude any other evidence, or twist it, or manipulate it, Just get rid of it if it doesn't fit with what they've decided they want to think and what they want to do. The best Roman Catholic writer you can ever read is G.K. Chesterton. I don't want you to become Roman Catholics. But he did have a lot of wisdom on some levels when it came to the basic Christian worldview, for example. He talks about how people, a madman, in his own mind seems completely logical. And he gives the example of a person who believes that there's a conspiracy, that everyone around him is in a conspiracy against him. And he kind of hypothesizes how he would talk to someone who believes that everyone is in a conspiracy against him. And this is what he says. If we could express our deepest feelings of protest and appeal against this obsession, I suppose we should say something like this. Oh, I admit that you have your case and have it by heart, and that many things do fit into other things as you say. I admit that your explanation explains a great deal, But what a great deal it leaves out. Are there no other stories in the world except yours? And are all men busy with your business? Suppose that we grant the details. Perhaps when the man in the street did not seem to see you, it was only his cunning. Perhaps when the policeman asked you your name, it was only because you knew it already. But how much happier you would be if you only knew that these people cared nothing about you. How much larger your life would be if yourself could be smaller in it. If you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure, if you could see them walking as they are in their sunny selfishness and their virile indifference, you would begin to be interested in them because they were not interested in you. You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theater in which your own little plot is always being played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky in a street full of splendid strangers. In other words, yeah, they can explain everything. Everything, yeah, oh, well, the reason why he, you know, that person did a conspiracy against you. Well, why didn't he know your name? Oh, he's just pretending not to know my name. You know, well, that policeman there, he was just asking you where you lived. Oh, he knows. He's part of this conspiracy, too. And what Chesterton is pointing out is what you're really doing, you have this vicious little tiny world where you exclude all kinds of other options and possibilities of reality. So in your mind, it seems so logical, but it really doesn't explain much. Whereas Christianity is a big worldview that touches on everything. So let me move on though to what I talk about here As I talk about the psychology of unbelief, first of all, we talked about the transgression, that central transgression is this abuse of truth. Every atheist that you're talking to, every atheist that you encounter is abusing the truth in one or more of these ways. Now, that's a central transgression. The continual tension is this. Continual tension of unbelief is that because it abuses the truth unrighteously, but because truth is always truth, unbelief can never escape it. It's true. There is true truth that the unbeliever knows on some level. So what the unbeliever, particularly in this context, the atheistic unbeliever, he has to live in one of two different directions. If he goes one way, it's what Guinness calls the dilemma pole. If you're gonna be completely logically consistent, There is no God. We're here as a result of random chance. All of the processes of this world and of life are ultimately of no moral value. You're gonna end up in a place that is meaningless, hopeless, and as I mentioned here, morality-less. So we are an accident. What we do is just brain gas. Our thoughts are just brain gas. And neurons firing. There's no ultimate meaning to that. We're just matter. And this is what matter does under these conditions. Okay, well how, where does that lead to? If you push it all the way, you put your finger on that, There's no meaning to your life. There's no ultimate hope to your life. And you really have no standard for right and wrong. Most people don't go there because it's a pretty despairing place. It really is. There are some who go there. The most consistent of them will say, like Nietzsche, you just do your thing, but recognize that at the end, it's meaningless and hopeless, and don't fool yourself. He also said that madness is the ultimate state of mind, apparently, or something along those lines. And God granted him his request, and he died a raving lunatic. That's where that can take you, all right? Now, most people don't live right there, but maybe they tend that way in their more logical, consistent moments. Or they go the other way, which Guinness calls the diversion or the distraction pole. In order to divert themselves from the dilemma of hopelessness, meaningless, truthless, life, they distract themselves. So they make up a meaning for their life. Well, I want to have pleasure. I want to pursue the party life, or I want to pursue friendships, or I want to gain degrees at the university. I want to do this, this, or this. It takes their mind off of that ultimate reality. It's distracting them from that. But again, that person can be pushed on their inconsistency. Life is meaningless. Why are you spending all your time shopping? Life is meaningless. Why are you pursuing these degrees? Life is meaningless. What does it matter? whether you have a boyfriend or girlfriend. Life is, you know, and so there's on this, you know, there's these two sides. One, okay, you wanna go completely logically consistent, hopeless, meaningless, truthless, morality-free existence. But that's a pretty bleak lifestyle. And some people have actually gone that far all the way to suicide. On the other side, there's people like, okay, I'm an atheist, but I'm gonna make up my own meaning for life. Well, that's not really consistent. But they're doing it to run from that dilemma. So any atheist that you encounter not only is abusing the truth, but they're also kind of living between one of those two extremes in their mind. One hand, if they're gonna be perfectly consistent, Life is hopeless. Life isn't worth living. On the other hand, well, let's just make up a meaning for life. Let's distract ourself from all this other bad stuff. And so that's where the atheist is mentally in their mind. So I think it's good for us to recognize these things even as we talk with an atheist. Now let me bring you back to what we talked about last week. We're gonna talk about strategies now. Just because you have a strategy in place does not mean that the person is going to fall on their knees and trust Christ the moment you have a reply to them. The heart of unbelief is a wicked heart, it's a delusional heart, and it's a heart, the way of the fool is right in his own eyes. When you think you're right, you will do everything in your power to convince yourself and everyone else around you that you're right. So even as we talk about, okay, here's some strategies that we can deal with an unbeliever or we can deal with an atheist, please don't yourself become delusional and think, hey, if I plug this specific statement in, they're just gonna say, oh yeah, yeah, what must it be to be saved? We talk about some of these things that I'm calling subversive strategies, and I'm doing that based on what we said last week, where we're casting down things that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God. What we're doing is we're trying to shake the foundation of their worldview. That doesn't automatically mean they embrace Christ, but sometimes these things make them question what they're assuming to be true. That's a good place to steer toward the gospel. So we don't want to ever, okay, take these strategies and completely divorce them from gospel witness. But sometimes these things are precursors for an opportunity to share the gospel or an opportunity for people to even hear. One of the things that we often assume is that people just want to hear the gospel from us. People want to hear our arguments for the existence of God. Most of them don't. And so there's a sense in which what we're trying to do here is we're trying to have people listen and have people grasp your point almost in spite of themselves. And we're not trying to be manipulative here. What we're trying to do is we're trying to cast down things that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God. We're trying to shake their worldview and show them for themselves that their worldview is really not explaining reality. So let's jump into these. I think, I hope you'll find these helpful. And even as we then go from here to look at specific arguments against God's existence in the next coming weeks, I hope that you will use your imagination and think about how can I plug these kind of things in when I'm talking with an unbeliever. So let's talk about subversive strategies. First of all, humor. Jerry Seinfeld once said that humor is a bogus form of proof. Well here, we're not using humor as proof. What we're trying to use humor for is to get them questioning. get them thinking more deeply about their own worldview. Let's look at the Acts 2.15 one because I think this is a good example that we read the Bible with our sanctified eyes. We don't really grasp the humor that Peter throws here. Acts 2.15. We sometimes get to this verse and we read it in our holy scripture reading voice, and we forget that there is some humor laced throughout scripture. And here's, I think, a good example of this. Acts chapter two and verse 15, if someone could read that for us. Okay. What's happening here is Day of Pentecost. People speaking in languages, other tongues, as God gives them utterance. And there are some people that are looking at them and saying, these guys are tripping, is what we'd say today. These guys are drunk. And Peter gets up, and he diffuses it with humor. You know what he's saying? He's like, they're not drunk. It's only 9 o'clock. That's what he's saying. He's diffusing this objection to the work of the spirit by using humor. Hey guys, it's only 9 o'clock in the morning. Who gets drunk by 9 o'clock in the morning? And that's the humor that he's using to try to diffuse this. Now, yes, there are people who do get drunk at 9 o'clock in the morning. They have problems that need to be addressed. But what Peter's doing here is, this is a very hostile crowd. They're completely opposed to any idea that what's going on here is a work of God. Peter stands up, and he throws a little bit of humor in there, and then goes straight from there to scripture. He goes straight from there to the Book of Joel. It's good to have a sense of humor. as you talk with atheists. Now, sometimes that's hard because they're going to say things that are offensive to you. We don't want to laugh in a condoning way because there's a way you can laugh at someone that says something that makes it seem as though, oh yeah, I believe that too. We don't want to do that, but we have to be able to laugh and be able to try to help them laugh as well. because we're recording these things i can't play clips uh... different debates and so forth that i have but because those are under copyright but there is uh... there's one documentary about the series of debates between uh... a christian and uh... named doug wilson and an atheist named christopher hitchens and they're debating about is christianity good for the world and christopher hitchens the atheist says he's you know kind of Casting doubt on the Bible, and he's like well look at the Bible You know this whole idea of Jesus and arranging for this young donkey for him to ride to Jerusalem on you know Jesus had read the Old Testament. He's just completely set this up himself and and so you know all of these claims are self-fulfilling prophecies and and Doug Wilson says in response I'll give you the donkey the donkey could have been arranged and and kind of diffuses it that way. And he says, but then again, if you've had someone that's, and then he goes on to talk about if Jesus is making these claims. He's not just some regular madman. You recognize that once he has risen from the dead. This is not just some self-fulfilling prophecy. But he's able to chuckle. Oh, I'll give you the donkey. The donkey could have been arranged. Not that it was. He's not claiming the donkey was arranged. But he's saying, hey, the donkey could have been arranged. He also goes on to talk about how Jesus predicted the destruction of Jerusalem. Not quite so easily arranged. But be able to have a good sense of humor as you talk with atheists. Second, stories and parables. Let's turn to the best example, I think, that we encounter in all of scripture, 2 Samuel chapter 12. 2 Samuel chapter 12, verses 1 to 17. As soon as we start reading it, you're going to recognize the context of it. Someone want to read those seven verses for us? Then the Lord sent Nathan to David, and he came to him and said, There were two men in one city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had exceedingly many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing, except one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished, and it grew up together with him and with his children. It ate of his food and drank from his own cup and lay in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. And a traveler came to the rich man, who refused to take from his own flock and from his own herd to prepare one for the wayfaring man who had come to him. But he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him. So David's anger was greatly aroused against the man. And he said to Nathan, As the Lord lives, the man who has done this shall surely die, and he shall restore fourfold for the Lamb, because he did this thing and because he had no pity. And Nathan said to David, You are the man. Thus says the Lord God of Israel, I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. That's a classic example. Here's a parable. Here's a story. And David, he starts to get into it. Oh, man, this person deserves to be punished. And Nathan's, you're the man. Now, I will admit, it takes some thinking and some imagination to be able to have what they call in philosophy thought experiments, where you can A particular kind of thought experiment is the parable thought experiment, where you have a story that tells a truth. But if you can do that, not everyone can, but if you can do that, it can be a very helpful thing. You might say, imagine a man, and go on to tell a story like that. And the person starts to see from the story. People like stories, right? We're a world that enjoys stories. We don't need to be afraid that using stories is somehow an unbiblical thing, because how many stories does scripture use to point us to truth? So using stories and being able to sort of think through and imagine scenarios where you're plugging in different details, but you're pointing that person to the truth. live their worldview for a moment. Notice there, for a moment. Live their worldview for a moment. A great example of this is 1 Corinthians 15, 32. Does someone have that one for us? If in the manner of man, I have fought with beasts and Now, did Paul really honestly mean that what we should do is go out and drink and carouse and be gluttonous party animals? No. But what he's doing is he's climbing into their world view. And he's saying, OK. Corinthians that are doubting the resurrection, why don't we all just go partying and get drunk tonight? The dead aren't going to rise anyways. What does it matter? Of course, you keep on reading and you'll see that Paul doesn't stay there forever. He goes from there to point them to the truth of the resurrection. But this is a very good thing to be able to do, to be able to live their worldview or pretend to live their worldview for a minute. One of my favorite YouTube clips was this conference where, during this conference, they have a number of pastors at the front that are being asked questions from the audience. The audience is given the questions ahead of time. And so the one, you know, they're all prim and proper in their suits and so forth. The man reading the question goes something like this, my roommate doesn't believe in sin, doesn't believe in the existence of sin and evil, what can I do to convince him? And one of the older pastors sitting there, he just says, steal his wallet. How do you convince someone in the existence of sin to steal his wallet? All of a sudden, he'd believe in the existence of right and wrong then. Why'd you steal my wallet? And none of the other pastors, by the way, wanted to chime in. They thought that was pretty much the best answer that could be given. Author N.D. Wilson. He went to college, and I think he majored in philosophy as a Christian, which is a hard thing to do. But he went to university, and in university, the teacher asked them to write a paper, a three-page paper, on why hedonistic nihilism was the best worldview and the worldview that everyone should embrace. And hedonistic nihilism basically, this is an oversimplification, but basically it's hedonism is do whatever you want to do and nihilism is in the end it doesn't even matter. as certain of their own prophets have said. So do whatever you want to do, because in the end it doesn't really matter. And part of her lecture was about, you know, defy authority, don't submit to authority. And so she gave them this paper, write three pages why this is the best worldview and this is the best worldview to live by. So what N.D. Wilson did was he went back to his room and he wrote a paper and it was something along the lines, I used to be a Christian, but now that I've listened to this lecture and heard what you have to say about this, I've decided I'm going to embrace what you're teaching us. And since hedonistic nihilism says don't do what you don't want to do, I don't really feel like writing this paper. So it was about a paragraph long. He stapled two blank sheets to it and handed it in. He got called out of class. And he's like, wait a minute. Didn't you teach me to reject authority? Didn't you teach me to do what I feel like doing and not to do what I don't feel like doing? I'm living it. And he said, everyone else in the class was trying to write these papers, it sounded all philosophical and everything, and trying to make sure they got three full pages in, incomplete submission to what the teacher told them to do, and he's actually living it. And it's a good way, I think, for us to be able sometimes to open people's eyes to, hmm, this is where your worldview lands you. This is where your worldview takes you. Another really good one, questions. Jesus used questions. God the Father used questions throughout the scripture. In a great example of this, Genesis chapter four, for sake of time, I think you guys know the story, Genesis chapter four, the story of Cain and Abel. God comes to Cain, not with an immediate accusation, does he? He says, where's your brother Abel? And later, well, even before that, even before that, before Cain's even killed his brother, after God's rejected Cain's sacrifice, Cain's all angry, and God comes to him, why are you angry? And of course, why is your countenance falling? Here's a principle that I learned long ago. It's not a hard and fast rule. It's just a principle. Accusations harden the will, but questions can convict the conscience. It's not a hard and fast rule. Sometimes people can be very hardened, and even the right kind of questions Like Cain, you know, God is the one who talks to Cain, and Cain's heart still is hardened. Then he goes and kills his brother, and God asks another question, where's your brother? Where's your brother Abel? But questions can be very, can be very good strategies to help people see the folly of their worldview. There was a, this is going back about seven years now, I think it was on CNN, they hosted some night where they had various representatives talk about religion. And one of the people they had was a guy named Deepak Chopra. who's a spiritualist and uh... anyways he's quite popular as all kinds of books that he sold one of the things that this guy says in in in the midst of this talk about world views and what you believe in all that uh... this man said on the stage all of our beliefs are masks for insecurity Our beliefs are simply masks for insecurities. So later on, they had a question. An audience could ask questions. And so they called on one guy. He walks up to the microphone. He said, my question is for Deepak and for this other reverend beside him. He said, you said earlier that all of our beliefs are masks for insecurities. Do you believe that? And then walked away from the microphone. all of a sudden, hmm, ah, okay. And of course the whole audience sees it, right? If that's the case, what you have said betrays your own worldview. It's a good thing to be able to ask an unbeliever, particularly an atheist, If-then type questions. If this is true, then what? Or why questions. If what you believe is true, why? One that is not original to me, and I mentioned it last week. If we are all here, and I've used this one before, it's not original to me, it was original, I think it was N.D. Wilson. If we are all here as a result of an accident, When did the accident start making sense? And why do we have the Special Olympics? Where does order and compassion come from in a world that's come as a result of random chance? So it's good to be able to ask questions. Questions sometimes can lead to further questions. Questions can sometimes lead to people questioning their own beliefs, shake the foundation of their own delusions, One more here, what I call their own prophets. Acts 17, 28, Paul at Mars Hill is in the middle of his sermon, and he says to these philosophers that are assembled around him, he says, in him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring. So what does he do there? He actually quotes from a poet that these philosophers knew. In fact, the reason why I said some of your own poets have said it was a statement that one poet had mentioned and others had also quoted it in their writing. So this was something that was in common. It was common knowledge. It'd be like quoting a song today. lyrics of a song. Now, was Paul endorsing everything that their prophets had to say? No. But he has this point of contact with their world and God's world, their worldviews and God's reality. And he's not shy about drawing a connection, quoting their own prophets. Sometimes we can do this positively. And sometimes we can do it negatively. What I mean by that is sometimes their own profits can be a positive example, and sometimes their own profits can be a terrible example, and you can put your finger on why it's terrible. And I'll give you an example of this. Let me go back to Oz Guinness here. Make sure that I... Os Guinness wrote a book called The Dust of Death, and he's basically critiquing Eastern religions. And he says this, I included the story of Isa, the 18th century haiku poet from Japan. Through a succession of sad events, his wife and all his five children died. So imagine that, wife, five children, all died. But this is embedded in the Eastern worldview, Eastern religions. Grieving each time, he went to the Zen master and received the same consolation. Remember the world is due. Due is transient. Sun rises, the due is gone. So too suffering and death in this world of illusion. The mistake is don't become engaged. Don't become too engaged. It's all an illusion. Remember the world is due. And basically, the idea is don't be so attached. Be more detached. Transcend the engagement of mourning that prolongs grief. After one of his children died, Isa went home unconsoled and wrote one of his most famous poems. Translated into English, it reads, the world is due. The world is due. And yet, and yet. First two lines express the Eastern mystical philosophy, but the second two lines express the longing of his own heart. Is there not something more to it than this? Hey, I know some of you are raised in exactly the same context that I was raised in. If you heard a song with a beat in it and you saw a movie with a swear word in it, you were probably barely saved, if at all, and on your path to a very, very dim, dark, and possibly hot future. But as Christians, it's not always wrong for us to know what's going on in the world of art and philosophy and music around us, not because we're trying to embrace that worldview. We always should be guarded. But knowing some of those things can provide for us points of contact where we can quote their own prophets. We can quote their own poets, as it were. So, Sometimes that positive example, like this one, you could say, hey, here's this guy, here's this worldview that he's imbibed, and yet, he realizes that it doesn't explain everything. There's still longings that cannot be accounted for in his worldview, and take something like that. Another example is this. And this would be more of a negative example, where you climb into a worldview that's expressed in a song and say, this may be popular, but is this really what you want to embrace? Example that I have here and again, this is One that I heard another man speak about is the example of John Lennon's imagine Some of you might know that song and some of you might know that just about every time that there's some kind of a tragedy People gather around they light thing, you know, they have their lighters or in our cell phone age they have their cell phones and they gather around they sing imagine Well, have you ever thought about the words to imagine? Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. No hell below us. Above us, only sky. Imagine all the people living for today. No heaven above us. No hell beneath us. In that kind of a world, How could you possibly have any problem with Auschwitz? By what standard could you critique it? What possible warning could you give to a Hitler who might want to set up a death camp? Above us only sky. No heaven, no hell. In that kind of a world, all things are permissible. And of course, you can further critique. I mean, the other, no religion. Imagine all people living in peace. And on and on it goes, right? Everybody living, no possessions, brotherhood and all that. But you put your finger on this and you say, is this really what you want? Because above us only sky, below us no hell, Stalin would have been perfectly happy with that kind of a worldview. There's no judgment coming. But the Christian worldview says, no, no, there is heaven, there is hell. And that makes all the difference in this world. People who truly believe in heaven and people who truly believe in hell are not the people, hopefully, who have the right view of God and the right view of heaven and hell. In that worldview, Auschwitz is condemned. Murder and rape are condemned. But in a world without those things, and yet, and yet, And I think that we need to push. We, a lot of times, I think, go wrong in our strategies with unbelievers in assuming that they want to hear the gospel. So sometimes we have to get them questioning their beliefs. But secondly, I think we play a little bit too much defense. We respond to their objections, which isn't wrong, but in responding to their objections, it's good to step back to them in your worldview, where does this land you? And one of the ways you can do it is quoting their own prophets using your knowledge of what you can assume they probably have some idea of. And anyways, so that is psychology of unbelief and strategies. Let's see here.