Well, good morning and welcome. We are doing our last installment in the Apologetics series today, and we'll resume our study of Genesis beginning next week in chapter 23. So, just to kind of let you know, if you want to go back and kind of review what we covered last year and see where we're picking up. My task for today is to do sort of a wrap-up. There is so much more that I had in mind to try to cover this summer. So many more topics that we simply didn't have time for. But of course that leaves the door open for maybe picking this up next summer. So I'll have that in mind as we go forward. But my task for today is to kind of give you, I hope, a bit of encouragement as we undertake this task of apologetics. recognizing that it is difficult in many respects. So we'll look at that and then I'm also going to share with you today an example of the kind of conversations that I've been engaged in from an apologetic standpoint and use that to look at some of the challenges that are associated with that. So that's what we'll be doing today. Let's start with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you that you've given us this time during the summer to study the subject of apologetics, to sharpen our ability to defend the Christian worldview against the secularism that we're surrounded with. We pray that you would equip us for that task as we continue to do that in the days ahead. And I pray that you would be with us this morning as we gather together in your name. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. So today's lesson is titled, Speaking Boldly. And to begin with, I'll make the distinction between being bold and being obnoxious. Because sometimes that gets lost. And sometimes there is a tendency because of our fallen nature to resort to being obnoxious in the process of being bold. They're not saying the same thing, so we'll just differentiate between those two. Even though we do our best to speak in a winsome way, some people are still going to take offense. There's really no way to avoid that. And it's important to state that we can't hide the truth just out of fear that someone's going to be offended. And at this point I'll paraphrase something I heard MacArthur say, which was along the lines of, while we mustn't add anything to the offense of the gospel, we also have to be careful that we don't take anything away from it. Because the gospel is inherently offensive. How did Paul describe the gospel? Stumbling block to whom? To Jews and what? To Greeks. Foolishness. So, the Gospel is offensive to the fallen mind, to the unregenerate mind. We have to be aware of that. We can't avoid that, and we want to be careful not to water down the message to where the offense of the Gospel that's inherent to it is removed, because then what do we have? Yeah, we have no Gospel at that point. So as I was putting the lesson together today, I wanted to ask a few questions. The first one, and this is somewhat a reflection of process that I've been going through, especially the last couple of weeks or so. Why is apologetics so hard? What makes it so difficult? Chris? We don't like to apologize. Yeah, we don't like to apologize. I'm so sorry I'm a Christian. It's hard because it is offensive to talk about it to people that just think we're nuts, I guess. Yeah, so what do we face when we go into that kind of a discussion? The potential for ridicule. I'm glad that works for you. Yeah, maybe that works for you. It's good. I'm glad that works for you, Don. But, you know, this is what I believe. And we kind of get into that radical individualism, that radical autonomy that I'm a law unto myself and relativism that says we can all believe something different and that's OK. I think there are some people that you have to agree to disagree. Well, it's interesting you use that expression because I've actually included that in our conversation today. Some of the notes that I put down on this is, first of all, apologetics involves confrontation. Right? Because it implies that there are two worldviews that are in conflict. The Christian worldview and some form of a non-Christian worldview. And we're putting those together And there's naturally a confrontational kind of relationship between those two. So there's some degree of confrontation, even when we try to make it as friendly as we possibly can, we're still recognizing that it's a clash of worldviews. Another one, and this is no small matter, but this is spiritual warfare. It's spiritual warfare. And the way to think about that is when we go out into the marketplace of ideas with the Christian worldview, we're invading enemy territory. We're going into Satan's territory. And we should expect to get some resistance. And here's another point that when we go into enemy territory, to extend the analogy here, there's live ammunition in use. And that means there are going to be casualties. I hear you say something about live ammunition. That's right. Spiritual warfare is a dangerous thing. Another thought that I put down here is that Most of the time it feels like our side is losing. I don't know about you, but if you're surrounded by secularism and even a hostility towards a Christian worldview, going out into that, you kind of feel like you're out on an island. Is that because we may wrongly feel we have to win the argument versus present the truth? That may be part of it. We talked very early on about the importance of differentiating between proof and persuasion. Anybody want to review that for us? What's our job as an apologist? Truth. Truth, or proof. The Holy Spirit should persuade. Yeah, it takes divine intervention for the persuasion to take place. Alan? Paul used persuasion. in his ministry. Yeah, that was that was part of presenting that. That's what we would call proof. The proof is in the argument. And that's what Paul did when he when he contended with the Jews. He argued from the scriptures. He argued with the Greeks. He didn't shy away from engaging in those kinds of arguments. But the difference is presenting that argument versus someone actually changed their mind. But he sought to change their mind. He did. But they were willing to hear him on it. Yeah. I mean, I think you persuade as long as they're willing to hear you on it. Exactly. But when, you know, eventually you dust off your shingles and you walk away. So that's the whole, that's the rub, is going to do that. Right. And not be enough. Isn't it also that We feel like we're on the losing side because of our particular circumstance. This culture is on the decline. If we lived in the new, the Great Awakening in the 1740s, we'd have a different idea about what was happening. So we're influenced by our... We have a very narrow perception. Yeah. Right. There are places in this world where the gospel is on fire, and people are turning to Christ, but it's just not the U.S. anymore. Right. But in our culture, as we try to be witnesses and apologists in our culture, we're facing an uphill battle. We're rapidly becoming a post-Christian society. Very, very fine lines, and we can't become catalysts. But in the last days, there'll be many antichrists and many turning away. The way Jones brings up the great argument of that, we shouldn't feel like we're losing because of that. We should actually feel confident that God's word is true, and we should have the truth. Yeah, except I like to win. So I got faster that way. So the perception is based on where we are at our particular time, our particular place, in the world, and in the whole unfolding scope of redemptive history. That's part of the reason why we have to rely on the Scriptures to remind us that God is winning, and He is bringing the lost in day by day. But again, I'm making the statement that it feels like our side is losing, not that we are losing. Another that's been mentioned is that when we go into the marketplace of ideas, we're facing rejection and ridicule. Sometimes very intense rejection and ridicule. And on a more personal level, When we speak the truth, it creates division, and not just in the larger society, but in our most intimate relationships, within our families. When we bring the sword of the truth into that, it can create division even within families. So it's a difficult It's a difficult task, and I'm not going to do anything to minimize the difficulty of the task of apologetics. Next I ask the question, what are some challenging aspects of engaging with non-Christians? And there's quite a list, and we can probably add more to what is here in your notes. But a few that I've jotted down. One is that we find that people are not terribly interested in knowing the truth. There's a remarkable apathy about truth. Another, if you've engaged people, you may find that it's very difficult to pin people down, to really get to what it is they believe and they will affirm. I mean, how can you have a discussion or an argument with someone if you can't pin down what it is they believe? And that's kind of a product postmodern culture where anything goes. I think a lot of times people throw out red herrings too. That we're not really prepared to deal with. And so the discussion gets sidetracked. And then we feel defeated because we can't deal with their issue. It's not really the issue at all. That's one of my points here is that there's a tendency to go down rabbit trails or get sidetracked. To raise issues that are really not central issues just to kind of create a diversion. Another here says that there's a tendency for people to equate expressing an opinion with making an argument. Have you noticed that? And also a tendency to qualify what they're saying by saying, well, in my opinion, or in my experience, or in my view, or this is how I see things, yada, yada, yada. That also becomes very difficult to argue with. I think this is one of the reasons why in the research that's been done recently, so many young teenager, college age kids coming from Christian homes are falling away from the faith. Because even if they go to Christian schools or have grown up in these Christian homes, they're not learning logic. And I think God created logic for a reason. And this is a huge part of that, that you don't mistake opinions and facts, and that you know a red herring when you see one, and all those aspects of it. So I think logic has to be part of our Christian education, whether it's in the home or in the school. That's another thing that's notably missing in the larger society. two-second view of education, that the purpose of education is to teach you to think critically. That would be one purpose of it, and another purpose would be to teach you how to learn. We could argue about the rest of the content, but if it's not doing those two things, then something serious is missing. And one of the most important things that's missing today is the ability to think critically. And that's one of the things we run into. is that it's very difficult to get people to think critically about anything, particularly their own beliefs. And what goes along with that is defining your terms. Because you can talk to people and use the same words and you're not really talking about the same thing or you're not really communicating. Exactly. And that's, again, that's where relativism has crept into our language where we're becoming linguistically relative and we just start making up our own definitions for words. And that's part of the difficulty of engaging people and part of what we need to engage at that point is at the point of how we're defining the terms. When I say truth and when you say truth, are we talking about the same thing? Are we talking about something that's objective and concrete, that's outside of us? Or are we talking about something that you feel here in your heart? One of the things that we can easily get frustrated with, when we're trying to have these kinds of conversations, is in the question of how terms are being defined, because it sounds like we're using the same words, but the words mean something completely different. and we're not understanding each other because it's like we're talking two different languages. You know, the Mormons appeal to that burning in your bosom. You just ask your Heavenly Father and see if this isn't true. It's totally subjective. Yeah, as Jenny says, you can't argue with that. And that's what makes it... That's one of the challenges that we have. And that's probably why they're doing so well in the midst of this culture, in terms of their growth. Yeah, because under the right circumstances you can gin up just about any kind of feelings. One of the things too is that when you're dealing with people, you want to get your scripture out and they just throw the Bible out. They don't have anything to do with it. And that's what we base our truth on here. What I typically do when I'm trying to engage someone is ask lots of questions or just try to use logic as the primary tool. Because I agree with what Jenny is saying, if you just start quoting Scripture, people are going to say, that's the Bible, it doesn't mean anything to me, so I'm not going to pay any attention to what it says. That's not to say that we don't use scripture or shouldn't. We're still using a scriptural principle, which is a principle of logic, to show the inconsistencies of someone else's worldview or to raise questions. But yeah, just coming out of the gate with scripture verses in this culture, I don't think is an effective approach to apologetics. On the other hand, challenging someone, have you ever read the scripture? Well, they always say yes. I've read it through and through. I think that will be fewer and fewer people that will say that. Yeah, that's not foolproof, but again, there's not a formula that we use when it comes to apologetics. We can have some different approaches in mind, and then we kind of try to follow the conversation. use what is appropriate for a particular situation with a particular person. If someone is particularly interested in what the scripture has to say or the question of biblical authority, then we can go in that direction with the conversation. If somebody rejects out of hand scriptural authority, then quoting the Bible is probably not going to be the best starting point. Maybe that's... Could that be the reason that evangelism explosion is not really It's been fading, I think, in popularity because it's about every statement that 1 John says, Romans 3 says. Yeah, and it assumes, too, that the person you're talking to believes in God, believes there will be a day of judgment, and how do you get into heaven? I mean, it assumes so much that is still, I mean, in this culture, it's definitely a paradox. I've been rereading some Shea for the last couple of weeks, and one of the things that jumps out is where he talks about that prior to about the 1930s, when we were talking to an unbeliever, we could have as our starting point an understanding that there is some kind of objective truth. But since about the 1930s, that's all changed. In other words, what he said was that before the 30s, even unbelievers were operating on Christian presuppositions. And so we could have conversations from that starting point. And he says now, we can't make that assumption anymore. In fact, that's why he specifically says he doesn't think classical apologetics is the way to go. At the particular time where we're at now, because we've rejected this idea of objective truth, and we really have to go to the presuppositions, or to put it another way, how we're defining words, we can't assume that we're speaking the same language anymore. So we have to start at a different point. Our daughter, Gracie, who's 26, had a friend. She's moved to Portland now, but she came around to our home often for a couple years. So she must have been about 24, 25 at the time. And this girl had never, ever been to church, ever once. Her family had no belief system whatsoever. And so trying to engage in any kind of conversation, she had zero concept of God. She had zero concept of eternal life. You know, she just thought, no, when you die, that's it. When you die, you decay, just like anything else that rots away and it is no more. And so it, you know, it's just a whole new challenge. There was nothing, she had no knowledge of the person of Christ. She'd heard of Jesus, but to her, it was just a myth. She had no knowledge. She didn't think she needed to be saved from anything. I mean, it was just, you know, not once had she ever been in the church. not through grandparents, not through parents, you know, and that's just a new reality. And she was telling us there's a lot of people. She goes, you know, most people today are like me, in that age group, you know, 24, 25. That gives us an idea of where the starting point is. And going back a hundred years or so, there was a great deal more biblical literacy. Yeah, that's the big difference. Even among non-believers now, even among believers, we're incredibly biblically illiterate. One of the conversations I was having over the last couple of weeks with a non-believer, he raised the question of the Commandments and referred to the 12 Commandments. Now he says, there are 12 Commandments out there, but he doesn't believe in Scripture, so there's no God and so on. What we think we know, there's not that much to it. And it can either be a little bit humorous or kind of depressing if you see something like a man on the street interview that somebody like Leno or Letterman does from time to time where they just stop people on the street and say, can you name the Ten Commandments? And they fumble around and they might get one or two, but they have no idea. So we have to recognize what our starting point is and realize that there may be a lot of groundwork to do to get to a point where we can say, okay, now this is what the scripture reveals. So along the lines of opinions, a couple more points on this, is that I've noticed that oftentimes what people will do is they'll qualify their comments as an opinion so that they can avoid being critiqued. I think that's a way of avoiding raising or opening yourself to criticism for what you're saying. If you qualify and say, well, this is just my opinion, blah, blah, blah. How do you refute that? My question is, why should I care what your opinion is? And I'm being a little snarky when I say that, but I'm doing that for brevity. It's getting to the question of why should someone's opinion matter if that's all we've got are opinions? You know, it's just that they throw out that, well, you believe that this is truth, but the Muslim believes just as equally that that's truth. The Jew believes just as equally that this is truth. The atheist believes just as equally. And so it's difficult to get past that. I cannot say this is truth and you can explain why, what we believe, why we believe it, but it's difficult to get them to accept that as truth. That's post-modernism, you know, what's true for you. So, recognizing that there are many different ideas out there, views of truth, instead of saying, well, logic dictates that something is true and something else is not true, and if two people are saying, something that's opposite, then they can't both be right. Now let's work through that and try to filter out what's true from what's not true. That's not on the table at all, is it? Instead we have this pluralism that says, well, it's true for you, and it's true for you, and it's true for you, and it's true for you, everything's true, and that's all there is to it. What they react to mostly is that they know that most Christians, if they're really Christians, will say that I mean, one is there is no other God than the Fourteenth. We start there and we are exclusive. And so we are not allowed into that argument. And it's not just us. If you look at other religious systems, they also make exclusive truth claims that are mutually exclusive to what other religions say. So again, what I'm just saying is society at large today will take all, you know, the post-modern America will accept the into the room, but you can't bring the Christian perspective into that corporate work, for the most part. Yeah, and there's even a difference we see, a clear difference in the way Islam is dealt with in the public square versus the way Christianity is dealt with in the public square. There are no limits on how much you can ridicule Christianity or Christ, We can't ridicule Muhammad or Allah. Most Christians will kill you if you do. Yeah, that kind of gets down to the difference between Christianity and Islam, doesn't it? That raises a good point because the answer to that is a specific example that would affect that individual to show them that they can't live without some kind of authority. So, for instance, if one idea is as good as another, then the Islamist who says, if you don't become a Muslim, I'm going to shoot you. Why is that idea not as valid as our idea that, you know, love your neighbor as yourself? What we talked about when we covered multiculturalism is that it's cultural suicide for that very reason. If we try to put everything on a level playing field and say everything's good, then what's going to end up dominating? The religion that's a dominant kind of religion, like Islam, is going to come into that situation and take over. And a multiculturalist is going to say, well, that's just what they believe. We can't say any differently. It's not for us to judge. So how do we stop it? There's no way to stop it if you take that position. We had somebody come speak about Muslims. He lives in Seaspring. I don't remember his name. Thank you. So you wrote a couple of books and in one of them you keep coming back to the theme that we as Westerners forget that the Buddhists and the Muslims and whoever are spiritual people, where the spirit is active in their world, it might be the wrong spirit, it works for them because it's real. They weren't born atheists and evolutionists, they were born spiritual people. And we treat them as if they were atheists and evolutionists, and we don't connect. So when we come up and define Christianity, I'm afraid most of us in the churches of the Western world find Christianity as believing in creationism versus evolutionism, or some very side point. Because is Christianity about repentance and fellowship with God, or is it all of these other argumentative things? And they're looking for something to replace their spiritualness. One of the biggest reasons we failed was because they line up at our office everywhere with each other and tell each other why they reject each other's opinions and faith. That's all peripheral issues. Well, that's because you guys are hard-hearted Republicans. And we allow our Christianity to be defined by those spurious truths versus the central truth of repentance and real fellowship with God. And we train our children. What is it to be a Christian? To be a Christian is to be active for Christ. No, it's not. To be a Christian is to be changed by Christ, to have fellowship with Christ first and foremost. And that's a very difficult thing for us to communicate because it's very personal. and we allow ourselves to have more impersonal, safer conversations at work, that's not really the gospel. That's a safer conversation. Yeah, I might suggest that we can use some of those peripheral kind of things as a point of entry, but we have to get down to the fundamental difference. We make them portals where the other person can't get through. I'm just not going to talk to a scientist and have him fit through the portal of creationism versus evolution. I'm going to talk to him about God and sin. Because I don't think I can squeeze him through that portal. I don't think I need to. Just a thought. Anytime you're engaging the culture, if all you have is comparison, then you just have sin. If all you have is contrast, then you have no connection. So I do think that we're talking the same page, that we need to find ways to connect in order to then show the truth in the gospel. And I agree with you. That's got to be our number one focus. I don't know if you're a scientist or not, but I know you're a sinner. I can connect it. And why don't we waste our time with these virtual connections? Well, I don't think it's a waste of time, because if I try to speak German to you, you may not understand it. But if I speak the gospel in German, you're going to go, wow. So I kind of need to know the language of the culture in order to present the concepts. You know, like Paul did at the Areopagus. Or Jesus did at the woman at the well. He didn't start off with, you're a sinner, therefore, I know what you're doing. He said, oh, you come to get water. Let's talk about water. I don't want to land in your sin. So he used that as a gateway. So that's what we have to do. And I think that's what Gerard's talking about. I'm adding to what Jerry's saying, not contradicting. Yeah, I agree. That's what I'm saying. I think that it's all in the same sheet of music, and that's why it's important to make these connections. But bring it back to the gospel, like you're saying. Alistair Begg has a line that's, what is it? The main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things. And we can have our convictions about creationism and all those other things, but if that becomes our focus in our relationship with, you know, we really have lost the main thing, like what you've been saying. There's a time and a place to talk about those things. And I, you know, in Presbyterianism, we're, I would say this, that a credible profession of faith is all you need to be a member of Forest Gate Presbyterian Church. If you're going to be an officer in the church, we've got a different expectation for you theologically. And there's room to grow. And a lot of the stuff we talk about that are peripheral things, I guess I want to say, as you read your Bible, you're going to come to some of those conclusions. Maybe not Republican, although I'm very How can you support? Leave it alone. Leave it alone. Moving right along. Yeah, I think we could probably go a ways down that rabbit trail and probably stir up some strong feelings. But we won't do that. Let's kind of stick to the script that we have for today. What I want to show you is that these three ideas are pretty closely tied. The tendency to equate expressing an opinion with making an argument. The qualification of comments as opinion as a way to avoid criticism. And then the idea that opinions seem to be the only things that really matter. At least in some of the conversations I've had, those points really come out pretty strongly. Here's another one that tends to come out strongly. Why do opinions matter so much? Rather than us ridiculing that. I agree with you, it's frustrating, but why do opinions matter so much to everybody out there? What do we have left? It's the closest they have to resonating with anything spiritual. It works for them. What did I say at the breakfast yesterday when I wrote what we were together about the Mormon thing? Were you there then? The new leader. What are you talking about? I'm sorry. So the new leader comes and... Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. He's burnt out by the Mormon faith. All he knows is he feels a lot better now that he's stepped away from his parents' faith. This guy's a whopping 23 years old or something like that. And he's just detoxing, and he's never felt better in his life. Because he's rejected a long heritage of teaching, which frankly much of it is Republican and very Christian sounding in the Mormon church. Why? Because it was the essence of spiritualness that was missing from his legalistic, Mormonistic, you know, living. But that's everybody I think that we encounter. My opinion matters because that's what makes me resonate and feel good. Do you have something to offer that would compete with that spirit or just this cold hard legalistic, well here's what we do, these activities and we don't do these things. Would you like to come to church with us? Not really. Well I'll take your response. I mean if you want to hear about Christianity Which is very different than Mormonism. And he conceded that point, that he apparently may know that and will have to follow up next week and see. He's a frustrating case once again. I think opinions matter because everybody has a world view. And most people's world view is probably not very consistent. Doesn't have much integrity to it. But all that they think is built around opinions. So opinions are very important. It's part of their whole worldview. They probably wouldn't express it that way. But are worldviews spiritless or spirit-filled? Well, it depends. You can have a non-spiritual worldview. I think everybody's worldview is spirit and power, whether it's their self-spirit, their selfishness, or Satan. There's a spiritual dynamic in anybody's worldview. It may not include a spirit, like you're saying, But what you're doing is when you attack their opinion is you're attacking their spiritual nature. And we need to recognize that. That's why I say my spiritual nature says this is important. This is very important to me. I get satisfaction and peace out of it. And we're about to dismantle that. We have to be careful how we do that. Does anybody who is spiritually dead have a spiritual nature though? I don't connect with the idea. Here's what I'm trying to do here, is to point out that for the non-believer, their opinion is their truth in a post-modern culture. That becomes the truth for them. And I think this next point connects with what Dan is trying to say, is that people really take it personally when you start to raise questions about their beliefs. Have you seen that happen? I see it up there, I see it in here. I mean, I'm going to react that way, so it makes sense. Yeah, even we do that, don't we? We're going to say exactly, I'm going to tie my identity to my beliefs, and therefore if you attack my beliefs, then I'm going to feel... Yeah, it becomes a personal attack because of the way that we associate those beliefs with our being. Yeah, and so they're going to do the same. Well, I know we're getting talkative after all of ourselves, Diversity is the huge buzzword at the academy and in the Air Force. And one of the examples that was shown as to how not to do training at the academy is all the basic cadets get on the bus, and that's when they start getting yelled at, and they drop them off. And when they get dropped off, one of the statements that eventually made its way back to training, coming on and whatever, is, you will leave your identity on this bus. you know, this is, you know, you're a cadet. Well, that, you know, to the, maybe to the Caucasian, you know, member of society, that's no big deal, but to other ethnic groups, that's a huge deal to say that statement, and so now, it's, we've gotta, we've gotta force ourselves to include everybody, but at the same time, we also don't wanna be made different, where there's special rules, they want to be just like everybody else in the same, so it's a catch 22. You can't make it work, ultimately. So what do you say to those who are sensitive to their ethnicity, and they're getting off the bus? You are zero! I mean, what do you say? They realize that everybody must conform to what we're about to go do training-wise, however, We are never to tell, I mean, what I heard from this, you know, the implications, we're never to tell anybody their identity doesn't matter. Their individual identity. Because what that translated is, well, the Muslim can't be a Muslim. Well, they can't handle that, but then you're going to put them in a war zone. Correct. It just makes no sense. If they can't handle that small thing, how are they going to be in the military and handle a war zone? We've got a one-star equivalent civilian that says diversity is important to our whole academy now. Yeah, and I suspect you would spend a lot of time and effort just trying to define what that means and what that implies. It's such a fluid idea. Alex? It seems like we're fighting the logical consequence of the push for self-esteem, where people's individual value, however that's derived, is more important than performance, or finding truth, or in the case of the military, the value of the unit. I mean, everything is down to your importance, and once we establish that, then everything else will follow together. Yeah, the whole world gets to revolve around you at that point. And we're feeding narcissism when we do that. Scott? I think you go back even further to the Humanist Manifesto that we went through. Because what you're seeing is their goal is not to have a military. If you just negotiate and you educate, then you can solve the world's problems. So what do you do to the military? You get rid of it. And how do you get rid of the military? You destroy the unit. Because if you have just a bunch of individuals, you won't have that cohesive unit that is fighting for each other to survive. Interesting. Yeah, and it could be an example of how, in many subtle kinds of ways, these ideas infiltrate our institutions and over a period of time undermine our institutions. You remember some time ago the Army's motto was, an army of one. I always wondered about it. Yeah. Well, that was the new Democratic budget plan. Yeah, and when I was younger, the motto used to be, Army, be all you can be. And that changed from that to an Army of One. And again, that's a reflection of how our cultural values have changed and become more and more individualistically centered. Alright, back to the script. One of the things we see is that there is a tendency to appeal to secular authorities, and I put authorities in quotation marks. appealing to philosophers or appealing to scientists, and we've seen examples of that as we've looked at this during the summer. There's no recognition at all of the Bible as being authoritative, but then they'll pull in some authority from somewhere. They're still going to appeal to outside sources of authority to help support their own beliefs. Something else that comes up is the tendency to either ignore or dismiss your points of argumentation. Have you seen that happen before? You make a point and you think, boy, I made a great point here, and then they just cruise right past it like you never said it. You know, JR, just to touch on that portal again, the evolution-creation, I would use that portal if I thought you were a creationist who didn't believe in God. Maybe you do. Now that we've established that God did create it, why aren't you engaged with God? But if I thought you were an evolutionist, why am I going to bother with that? That's a brick, that's not a portal. So we find those touch points that we relate to versus what we don't relate to. And I like what you said, Dan, about you have to be careful when you tread those places, because you're right, spirituality, it's going to be a tender spot. And your top quote here is great, J.R. MacArthur, you know, not to be offensive about it, but not take away from it. So that's great. But don't jump from spot to spot. That's the postmodern way. You engage here, they're over here now. It's for real. We're at warfare. They're not going to stand it. You line up all your tin soldiers, and they're just going to run. And the other thing I've seen too is a tendency for postmodernists to agree with you. Oh, we're really saying the same thing. Oh, yes. No, we're not. Alright, next, there's also a tendency for us to be viewed as arrogant for claiming that we have an exclusive knowledge of the truth. We used to have a thing in academia that went something like this, it's okay to search for the truth as long as you never claim to have found it. Yeah, that really describes several thousand years of philosophical thought, doesn't it? We're always searching for the truth and never finding it. What scripture does that sound a lot like? Always learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth. Is that described as a biblical virtue? I don't know. And that seems to be part of the deal. We can talk about stuff as long as we want to. We can talk until we're blue in the face. But I step into that kind of a conversation, I say, wait a minute. Even if I can try to be completely objective here for a minute, I'm really not interested in discussing opinions. I want to know what's really true. What's the endgame? If there's no endgame, if we're not getting to something that's concrete, if we're just talking and everybody's sharing their opinions, I'm just asking, what's the point? So how do we overcome this one? How do we best mitigate our arrogance or our impression of arrogance to others? What's the strategy? The only thing that I know that we can do is to try to be as winsome and disarming as we can in the way that we deal with others. But, going back to the quote, the truth is offensive to the fallen mind, and there's no way to avoid that. I think a relationship in which you express your humility over some time is helpful in overcoming this, because then they won't be so quick to quickly put up the arrogant defense. It seems like if you've earned the right to be in the living room of someone's soul, then you can talk. Well, I mean, we all remember Christ himself in front of Pilate, calls Pilate to say what is truth, meaning the greatest human that ever lived that had the perfect apologetics understood that every human soul wasn't going to be safe. And so we have to understand that we're separating sheep and goats by bringing the kingdom to bear. And if they hear, they hear. Dialogue, otherwise, I mean, we don't give up easily, but at the same time, we have to understand that everybody's not going to come to us. And I think there's, this is all good. If I'm a soccer coach and I just watched my son play yesterday, there are probably 15 things he did wrong repetitively. I'm not going to reach him if I tell him all 15. You might mention one thing to him or something. And so I think one of the huge values we need to be aware of, hold your truth to yourself. I mean, how many times did Jesus limit very carefully the truth that he exposed the people to, that they don't need to know all of that? We already know it's a battleground, so limit the truth that they need to know versus the truth they don't need to know. And that's where a timely placed question has a lot of potential. to change hearts and minds. Just asking a question to where they begin to doubt what they've held to be true can be not offensive. And they're not going to commit to Christ in the middle of that conversation. But you might plant a question here and a question there and a question there that begins to eat away at their heart. And all of a sudden, they're asking questions from you about what you believe, because they've seen their worldview crumbled to pieces by a few well-placed questions. And for those of you who are wondering, I haven't even told Danny number one yet. Because he's still enjoying the game that was yesterday. Maybe today we'll get to it. There's also timing, you know. Did they win? No, they did not. They played four games and lost all four. Oh, no. He's enjoying that? He couldn't be happier. Because he doesn't realize he's part of the whole deal. Something else for us to keep in mind is that as we're having these kinds of conversations, and even if it doesn't end particularly well in the way that we might like for it to, we don't know what the long-term impact of that is going to be. Maybe we need to think in terms of ourselves as planting a few seeds here and there, and it's going to be up to the Holy Spirit to make those seeds grow. And it may happen in a few days, it may not happen for decades. Some of you all remember David Palmer and Josh Nelson. Josh was his roommate, and Josh was on a junior year abroad from the Coast Guard Academy and was stuck in Dave Palmer's room as his roommate. And Palmer was very antagonistic about Christians and his experience with Christians. And Josh came to our Saturday night study and asked us to pray for his roommate. Long story short, at one point Josh just asked him, well, what is your purpose in life? Why are you? Look, and it hit Dave right between the eyes. Now mind you, God's Spirit had prepared Dave And Dave became a Christian. We baptized him here. But sometimes it's a big question that gets asked. And in the providence of God, Palmer had no answer. I don't. And he came to the Saturday night Bible study, saw a different, he saw people digging into scripture. I don't know what we were doing. a very different impression. He never missed another Saturday or Sunday, unless he was out of town. I mean, the kid was just pulled over by a simple question, what's your purpose in life? Yeah, one of the consequences of this secular humanistic worldview is that there really is no purpose. And so when we go to those questions of purpose, when we go to the questions of guilt, Those are a couple of places where we should be able to resonate with anybody. All right. Something else I've observed is that there's an implicit demand to be conformed to a certain way of thinking. And we've described this before when we talked about the irony of tolerance is that it's not very tolerant. You notice that there's kind of a monolithic belief, and if you don't go along with that, And especially if you're a Christian, boy, there's really something wrong with you. And so I'm saying this in the context of you have people who are discussing these kinds of issues. And they'll talk about anything, but as soon as you bring in the idea of absolutes, it becomes a conversation stopper. So you see how open-minded somebody is when you bring in the idea of absolutes They just can't handle it. This is something we're struggling with today, the ability to stay on point. But I've also observed a tendency for people to ramble and go down rabbit trails. I was engaged in a network discussion group about a year or so ago with a guy from New England. And every response he wrote was about a thousand words. You know, you ask one question or raise one point and you get this long response and it's like, how do you deal with that? How do you even know where to start with that? Maybe you've seen some of these tendencies as well. When you raise a point and they can't give an answer, one of the things that you may see is that they want to agree to disagree. To me that's just a cop out. That's just saying we're just going to cut the conversation off at this point because There's not going to be any resolution between your point and mine. I think it's also a way of them saying, I need more time to think about it. And again, biblically, I think Christ often let them go away. He respected that and realized, I've sowed some seed, I have a choice now to let it take root or maybe sow a few tares and turn it into an argument. We don't need to sow the tares. I think you just let them disengage at that point. Yeah, and it is a way of disengaging. Another is a resort to ad hominem attacks. What does that mean? Yeah. Shoot the messenger. Yeah, instead of... I can't help it, that's my world view. Instead of engaging the argument and trying to debate the argument or the points of argumentation, this is kind of a last resort of name-calling. What's an example of that? What's one very common example we see almost on a daily basis? Homophobes. Yeah, if you disagree with the homosexual agenda, you're slapped with a label that says you're a homophobe. You're a hater. Yeah, you're a hater. Or if it's climate, then you're a skeptic. Or a doubter. Stupid. Oh, yeah, and it gets much worse. It can be very nasty. Why do we do apologetics anyway? We have to, don't we? We're called to be witnesses. Part of what we need to keep in mind is that we're the ones that have the good news. Nobody else has the good news. Nobody out there in secular society has an answer to man's spiritual problem. Another is that truth matters. Not just in the present, but especially eternally. There's a need for us to defend the honor of Christ. I would count that as part of it. For example, when we pray the Lord's Prayer and say, Thy kingdom come, what's implied by that? The advance of God's kingdom implies the overthrow of Satan's kingdom. And Jared, I think it's also about my advent, too. Because I think that that gets in the way. Often I'm defending my honor by defeating the argument versus defending the honor of Christ. I'm very convicted of that. We have a tendency to do that. But it's not our message, it's not our truth that we're called to defend. That shouldn't silence us, it should just redirect our motives. Yeah, it should give us an opportunity to examine why we're doing it. Yeah. What's the end game here? The end game is to help rescue the lost. We're called to a divine rescue mission. To go into the enemy's battlefield and to preach the message that is the message of rescue for those who are perishing. So I put those in there to give us some perspective and then also what are some of God's promises that come into play when we're doing apologetics and evangelism. And these are just a few that I jotted down. You may be able to think of a few others. One is that Christ says, I am with you always. He also says, My peace I leave with you. He promises that His Spirit will be with us. God in the Old Testament says that His Word will accomplish all its purposes. Everything that He sends His Word out for will accomplish. And that doesn't mean, in every case, the salvation of the lost, does it? So God's Word can accomplish His purposes even when it doesn't result in what we would most like to see, which is the conversion of the lost. Another promise, which is kind of a cryptic one, but it is a promise that a man's enemies will be the members of his own household. That should help prepare us for the difficulty of what we're facing. I have a big enough family that there is considerable spiritual division. within my family. And I suspect you've probably seen that too. But to go along with that, Christ also promises that we'll have a new family here on earth, and we'll also have treasures in heaven. That even what we count as a loss in earthly terms will be made up for not just on a one-to-one basis, but what? Exceedingly. He says a hundredfold. in this life and the life to come. And then, one of the most precious promises to us should be that when we acknowledge Christ before men, Christ acknowledges us before the Father. And you touched on it, but you kind of lag on it, that we're promised the persecution, the hatred, the rejection, the despising, and those are all wonderful promises. that we would be more Christ-like and that we recognize that. And Christ can present that in the context of the blessing that occurs because what? He says, you will be persecuted but, they persecuted me, but you will have treasures in heaven. those persecutions come against you. So what is winning now, Jim? Winning is being persecuted and rejected, not winning the shallow argument. It's planting the seed, loving it, and moving on. That's what Tim talked about last week. We're winning, Jim! Yes, we are. I was going to say, I think what's really important is, you know, Paul tells us, for I am not ashamed of the gospel. for it is the power of God's salvation. And, you know, I think that holds us back so often, you know, that we don't want to stand out, we don't want to be ridiculed, we don't want to appear different. But when I was a young girl, I grew up in a Christian household, went to church, went to Christian school, but I had no knowledge of the gospel, pretty much none. And I was working in this really big office building in college, and I thought I was very hip at the time. I just thought I had everything going for me. There was this guy that got on the elevator. I worked on the sixth floor, and every day I had to ride in the morning the elevator. And there was this guy, he had bright red hair. He was totally on hip. And every morning, he was a young guy, but he was just totally on hip. But every morning, when we all got into this huge elevator, he would say, glory to God. It was the oddest thing in the world. It was just really, and everybody kind of was uncomfortable, and people would snicker and roll their eyes. But he faithfully did this every morning. And I worked there, you know, summers. It was part of my scholarship and stuff. But, you know, God used that in such a mighty way in my life. I knew there was something different about this person. And, you know, when I reached this point that the Holy Spirit was leading me to church, I just thought, I want to know what causes, what compels this man. to stand up and say, glory to God in this public forum where he is ridiculed. There's something so strong that he is declaring, you know, the statement and he is willing to put himself out there. And it was just such a witness to me. Yeah. And it sounds like be cautious about that. Are we willing to do that? Are we willing to stand out? And it's been totally unhip, and totally nonconforming, and totally wrong. But we don't know how it might affect someone. Yeah, that was a seed of... It was a huge seed. It really was. I mean, I just... Nothing else had ever made me wonder. And I was a very young girl, like I said, you know, I was 19, 20, and he was so unhip. What could be worse, to be young and unhip, right? I thought I was really hip. Yeah, I didn't include that, but yeah, being unhip is part of it. Part of the risk we take. On the back of your page here, I've included a portion of a recent discussion I had on an internet discussion group. And the irony is that this discussion group, the title of it is Success Through Integrity. So this group is all about people who are interested in integrity and ethics and the importance of good integrity and so on and so forth. And yet when you start engaging in some conversations, you run into some obstacles pretty quick. And particularly what I run into is that as soon as I start to express that there is an absolute standard, that there is an objective standard for integrity, the wheels come off the cart. and you can kind of see that in the discussion that follows. What I'd like to do is give you just a couple minutes to read through this and then we'll have a little bit of discussion before we dismiss. Okay. It's just a dream. It's just a dream. Yeah. so So here is a group whose purpose is to talk about the importance of integrity. And yet, what do we see in this exchange? A lack of integrity? A couple of discussion questions I put on here is how would you critique the exchange? And a question that also jumps out is do you see that David and Peter are just as certain of their own beliefs? in what they say here. They're not leaving any room for disagreement with their beliefs. They're taking, to use an overused expression, a hard-line position. And yet, when I present a biblical view that integrity is objective, that there is a standard that's outside of us, what kind of response do we get? Yeah, I'm out of here. That's it for me. You know, it was an attack first, and then I'm out of here, so you don't have a chance to respond to what I've said to you. You'll get in a run for it. Run away bravely. Oh, I have an argument. Oh, that's so... The educated have already gone way beyond that one, by the way. Here we go again. But did I not raise a valid point by saying if integrity is a completely individual thing, then how do you differentiate between Hitler on one extreme and Mother Teresa on the other extreme? How can you say one is better than the other if everybody determines integrity for themselves? And obviously you can't. If you could find a way to ask that question without using the polarizing word Hitler, he might have continued to engage with you, but I think he closed the door on it. I wouldn't use the word Hitler again in my future conversations with Harvey. Because that's a door-closer-friend conversation. And maybe, same thing, I wouldn't use Obama. If you want to read somebody, you've got to be very sensitive to not polarizing and shutting them off. But I think David was still going to end this way no matter what. And what you're not seeing here is that there were a couple of other people involved in the discussion who made some other comments and whom I interacted with in a completely different way. Because I saw more of an open door. But when David took a hard position, I came right after him. Well, I think he sensed that you're coming after him, and that's probably what I wouldn't have done either, is come after him. But maybe Romans 1, 2, 3 would talk about, why is there condemnation for the believer, the non-believer, the Jew, the gentile, everybody? Maybe he's internally, you could ask him, why do you think that your internal standard is so like others' internal? Is there a God that created all of us? Or what would give us that same sort of baseline that would make him or such an aberration? Why would it be so far out there? when the bottom line is the same as that guy. So, I don't know, I think there's probably more engaging ways that you could have kept them on the hook a little bit longer, and, darn, you're right, maybe we would have left, but I think you plan to tear the river versus a sea. Sometimes the extremes help to clarify the issues, to show that you cannot hold a view because the extremes are so extreme. I don't see anything wrong with using the Hitler and Mother Teresa. But what's also interesting is whether you agree with that or not, it's not being rude. That's what he claims. All of a sudden you're rude. Where'd that come from? Because it's a polarizing word. But they argue the logic, though. I think one of our downfalls is we think that people are coming from a point of stability. I mean, what kind of stable person is going to be this guy anyway, right? And so he's not stable. There's something flying in his logic already. So stop arguing with people as if they're logical. Realize that they're emotional. And you've got to be careful not to push the emotional buttons. So would it have been better for JR to say, to carry your, everybody has their own internal integrity to its logical conclusion? Yes, I think asking questions would be better. I think there's room for both, because I was just thinking about your example of the phrase, get out like that, didn't know if it would annoy the snot out of me. And I'm a Christian, right? So, right? Maybe not today, but when I was a hip young person, thought I was hip, and I was. So, that, you know, but it plants a seed, right? And then, so even something that is, absurd and irritating and frustrating. They make me angry at the time. Later, God can use that too. So I think there is, that's the beauty of the gospel. It's not me. It's not my abilities. It's not my... But I hear you. I mean, at the same time, we can get better and better at how we engage. But there is room for, I mean, for all of us. As long as we're going into that mode of good and getting to the Kingdom of Christ and reaching the right way. I would say that my response here was pretty salty and pretty brief. And again, I would say there are going to be cases, there are going to be people, especially those who are close to you relationally, where you're going to cultivate more of a relationship and your outreach is going to be more based on that. In other cases, we don't necessarily have the time to do that. I chose in this particular case to come back with a pretty hard-hitting response to see what he would say. And Jesus did the same thing with the Pharisees. So I think you've made the point before, you take different avenues with different people sensing where they're coming from. And again, a couple of other people that I was conversing with on the same thread I dealt with very differently. in a much softer kind of way because it was one guy that I could sense he had the right idea but he didn't have a really strong basis for it. And so I was trying to draw that out a little bit. Yeah, I'm not afraid of saying that quote. I didn't say this, but you do it. I would just caution us to be careful what you write. Because you don't know. Secondly, email is like an impossible form to ever engage with somebody's soul, because you can't even see them. It's a very different world. We should all be careful if we use the Hitler argument. It's almost always going to be a conversation of the word. All right, we are very late, but thank you for your time and for the discussion today. I also want to thank you for having such an engaging study this summer and making it so much fun. And I hope you found it profitable as well. So I would encourage you to continue to think about this. There are lots of good resources out there if you want to go deeper into the study of apologetics. And if you're interested, I can certainly talk to you about that sometime. So continue your study, and perhaps we'll have an opportunity to pick this up again next summer. Let's pray. Father, thank you again for the time that you've given for us, and I pray that you would continue to give us wisdom as we seek to engage the lost world, to know how we are to speak, and to help us to speak boldly and yet in a way that will be as winsome as possible, without compromising the truth of the Gospel. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. Thank you, Robert.