“I’m With Jesus”: A Simple Approach to Apologetics

I don’t know how many escalators it took, but it was a long descent to the basement of the Louisville convention center. At the bottom of the last escalator an open door invited guests into a large room of chairs and tables. Off to the side of the room was a circle of 20 chairs. I was here mostly out of curiosity.

Upstairs a conference was taking place and pastor Mark Dever had invited anyone who was questioning the faith, or skeptical, to join him in the conference basement where they could ask him any questions they wished. I was here to listen.

The 20 chairs filled up quickly, mostly with college students, gathered in a circle of strangers, filling the room with awkward, anxious silence. But it didn’t take long for Dr. Dever to begin, to greet each individual personally, and to invite the questions.

The stories represented in the room were diverse. One young man had grown up in the church, but towards adulthood became increasingly skeptical towards the church. One young woman talked about her struggles in her transition from Eastern religions to Christianity and how she was not convinced Christianity was an improvement, or if the transition was worth the hassle. Another young man was interested in the faith but held tightly to questions that he believed contradicted the inerrancy and validity of scripture.

I don’t recall all the specific questions that were asked (there were many questions), but I clearly recall one moment when Dr. Dever responded to one question with a very simple answer—“Yes, I do believe in that, because Jesus said it happened, and I’m with Jesus.”

At that moment something in my mind “clicked.” Like the first marble dropping in a Rube Goldberg machine, Dever’s statement set off a series of mental and spiritual connections. I scribbled in my notebook one simple line: “I’m with Jesus.”

After the meeting I found my way out of the conference center basement and out onto a sidewalk, breathing the fresh air, and tossing around in my mind a new, simpler approach to apologetics. I call it the “I’m With Jesus” apologetics method.

Perhaps it would help if I demonstrated this by asking and hopefully answering a handful of common questions to illustrate how it works.

Question: In that silly story about Jonah getting swallowed by a whale, certainly you don’t believe that really happened, do you? Was he a real man or a fictitious character to begin with? Did he really spend a weekend inside a whale? Did he really go on to preach in Nineveh?

Good questions.

Answer: Yes, I believe Jonah was a real man, a prophet, who was also swallowed by a “great fish” (whale?), who spent three days inside that fish, before eventually finding his way to Nineveh. How do I know? I know because Jesus confirms these facts by the testimony of his own mouth (Matt. 12:39-41). Jesus assumes the validity of the story, so I affirm it, too. I’m with Jesus.

Let’s try another one.

Question: Did the Genesis flood really happen? Did Noah really build an ark? Did the flood really destroy the population? Wasn’t the flood story just a rip-off from some ancient flood myth told by the Babylonians?

Let’s ask Jesus.

Answer: “And he said to the disciples, ‘… Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all” (Luke 17:22,26-27). I’m with Jesus.

Let’s turn to the authenticity of scripture.

Question: How many authors composed the book of Isaiah? Some scholars would say the book has multiple authors (2 or 3), some doubt that any of the authors could have been the prophet Isaiah himself, thereby undercutting the authority of scripture in some ways. So how do we answer? Ask Jesus.

Answer: In the gospels we see that Jesus assumes that the prophet Isaiah wrote the book of Isaiah, citing Isaiah as the single author, and alluding to no secondary authors (see Matt 13:14 and Isa 6:9-10, Matt 15:7 and Isa 29:13). I’m with Jesus.

The same works on a critical issue of personal salvation.

Question: Is Jesus really the only way to God? Aren’t there multiple paths to heaven?

Answer: “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (John 14:6). I’m with Jesus.

That’s how it works.

Actually, consider collecting your own list of difficult questions and then go read the gospels. See if Jesus answers your questions or makes allusions that help to answer your questions. You may be surprised at what you learn.

This method of apologetics will not answer every question (I know) but it certainly helps out with some of the biggest questions.

Conclusion

C.S. Lewis famously said that Jesus was either a pathological liar who duped us, a lunatic nut case that should have been medicated, or he is the Lord over all creation who is to be worshiped and followed (my paraphrase). Jesus can be only one of the three—but he must be one of the three.

By arguing from his very own words we set forward the ultimate question that faces all of us, a question straight from the mouth of Jesus: “Who do you say that I Am?” We all must reckon with Jesus. We must all either reject his words or we must trust his words.

I’m grateful for the lesson learned in a convention center basement. This truth, so simple and yet so profound, has altered (and simplified) my understanding of apologetics.

I’m with Jesus.

Dogma and Church Unity

“It seems to me that the ‘extremist’ elements in every church are nearest one another and the liberal and ‘broad-minded’ people in each body could never be united at all. The world of dogmatic Christianity is a place in which thousands of people of quite different types keep on saying the same thing, and the world of ‘broad-mindedness’ and watered-down ‘religion’ is a world where a small number of people (all of the same type) say totally different things and change their minds every few minutes. We shall never get re-union from them.”

-C.S. Lewis, Answers to Questions on Christianity.

Sinclair Ferguson on the Puritans

Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids is home to the largest collection of Puritan works I have ever seen with my eyes. Recently Sinclair Ferguson christened the Puritan Resource Center. His message is now available for download here. Listen here:

Tony’s Barnstorm

Saturday night was the fantasy baseball draft (10 team mixed AL+NL). My team is coming together nicely on paper:

Atkins, Garrett 3B COL
Aviles, Mike SS KC
Baker, John C FLA
Bruce, Jay RF CIN
Burrell, Pat LF TB
Cantu, Jorge 3B FLA
Devine, Joey RP OAK
Ellsbury, Jacoby CF BOS
Escobar, Yunel SS ATL
Floyd, Gavin SP CHW
Galarraga, Armando SP DET
Garciaparra, Nomar SS OAK
Giles, Brian RF SD
Gonzalez, Mike RP ATL
Hardy, J.J. SS MIL
Howard, Ryan 1B PHI
Lester, Jon SP BOS
Lincecum, Tim SP SF
Lowe, Derek SP ATL
Matsuzaka, Daisuke SP BOS
Ortiz, David DH BOS
Pedroia, Dustin 2B BOS
Polanco, Placido 2B DET
Ramirez, Manny LF LA (drafted as trade bait)
Tejada, Miguel SS HOU
Varitek, Jason C BOS
Vazquez, Javier SP ATL
Wieters, Matt C BAL
Zito, Barry SP SF

Easter and pop culture

From a favorite Slate Magazine article:

“…Despite the awesome theological implications (Christians believe that the infant lying in the manger is the son of God), the Christmas story is easily reduced to pablum. How pleasant it is in mid-December to open a Christmas card with a pretty picture of Mary and Joseph gazing beatifically at their son, with the shepherds and the angels beaming in delight. The Christmas story, with its friendly resonances of marriage, family, babies, animals, angels, and—thanks to the wise men—gifts, is eminently marketable to popular culture. It’s a Thomas Kinkade painting come to life.

On the other hand, a card bearing the image of a near-naked man being stripped, beaten, tortured, and nailed through his hands and feet onto a wooden crucifix is a markedly less pleasant piece of mail.

The Easter story is relentlessly disconcerting and, in a way, is the antithesis of the Christmas story. No matter how much you try to water down its particulars, Easter retains some of the shock it had for those who first participated in the events during the first century…”

-James Martin from the article “Happy Crossmas! Why Easter stubbornly resists the commercialism that swallowed Christmas” in Slate Magazine (3/20/08).

Praying for Awakening

I took advantage of an opportunity on Wednesday to spend two hours with church historian Dr. John Woodbridge. Much could be said about this deeply gifted scholar. But I love his humility, joyfulness, and his love for the Church. His love for the Church is communicated by his words and by the facial expressions he displays when speaking of church history, contemporary evangelicalism, and of doctrine. I don’t think I know another man who more consistently displays a desire to see the Church grow in humble unity and global witness.

And so it was no surprise Wednesday that our time focused on the topic of prayer, of the importance of praying for revival and awakening (a topic he is currently writing on). Prayer is how God’s people anticipate God’s power being poured out upon the Church, not through general and vague prayers, but via patient and specific prayers, prayers that whole cities would be overtaken by the awakening power of Holy Spirit.

He also re-emphasized the importance of reading literature that captures a glimpse of the awesome power of God’s Spirit, books written by previous generations that watched (with their own eyes) the awesome power of God at work. He recommended George Whitefield’s Journals.

Dr. Woodbridge’s words were humbling and convicting. Having not lived through anything resembling the multi-national awakening of the 18th century, I find it easy to forget about God’s awakening power, blind to the unseen wind of the Holy Spirit that rushed through whole towns, transforming the dry eyes of passive church-goers into wet eyes of a gospel affected hearts, and breaking through the hardest recalcitrant hearts resisting the gospel.

I was reminded that I am too apt to expect from God what I have already seen Him accomplish in the past, being too limited in my vision of the Spirit’s power, and too inhibited by unbelief. On Wednesday afternoon I realized that I am too focused on blog statistics, too focused on my puny life, too easily distracted by the temporal, too apt to forget the Holy Spirit’s power, too limited to pray for the awakening of whole cities, too selfish to pray beyond what I can accomplish on my own in one good day, too influenced by unbelief to see prayer as a priority over the distracting churning trivialities of this life.

Dr. Woodbridge reminds me of the greatness of God’s power on display in church history, and reminds me of the great God we serve, whose power is greater than we have seen and greater than we can imagine. May God give us eyes to look beyond the moment, to look back into the past, and to pray again, hope again, expect again, that God will once again answer the pleas of his children and pour out his awakening grace.

March Madness Bracket

What happens when I arrive 12 minutes late for a meeting? Today one colleague claimed control of my office whiteboard:

For the record, I prefer Dutch people over caffeine. If I was forced to choose between Bavinck and Starbucks I’d give up Starbucks. But Dutch people against Mr. T? Hmm. I’d say that’s too close to call. Although Mr. T wins easily over spelunking (cave exploration).

Glory and Goodness

What comes to mind when I mention God’s “glory”?

The reference to God’s “glory” may cause some of us to run to a dictionary. It’s not the easiest term to comprehend. For others we may think of “glory” along the lines of something more trivial like the phrase “glory, hallelujah,” a filler phrase, a cliché dried of all meaning and spiritual value.

However we speak of glory, Scripture prohibits us from speaking of God’s glory in impersonal terms. It is not that.

To fully understand glory will require that we see it with our own eyes. This was the request of Moses on that quaking mountain of fire and smoke. Moses asked of the Lord, “Please show me your glory.” And the Lord complied. But notice the response: “I will make all my goodness pass before you” (Ex. 33:18-19).

How often do we think of God’s glory as a synonym for God’s goodness?

Jonathan Edwards wrote: “The glory of the Lord in Scripture seems to signify the excellent brightness and fullness of God, and especially as spread abroad, diffused and as it were enlarged, or, in one word, the excellency of God flowing forth.” (Misc. 1082)

The glory of God, in other words, is the fountain or sun in which all our eternal enjoyments originate. Edwards would go on to say that glory is the source for all eternal blessing, a synonym for the waters of life and pleasures forever. And central to all of Edwards’s theology is an understanding that the shining forth of God’s glory is a fundamental purpose behind the act of creation.

We could go on in many directions. But the simple point is that Exodus 33 convicts me of my low view of God’s glory. God’s glory is His means to communicate to us His goodness. Banish the unaffected and impersonal thoughts of God’s glory. His glory is my goodness.

Free Hymns

What?! Free hymns? Yep, and if that headline doesn’t clasp your collar and shake a little excitement into your browsing experience, I don’t know what will. The album is by Page CXVI who somehow mixed classic hymns and indie rock and this album was the result. No, the album is not for everyone. But for a limited time the entire album is free. Good stuff. [Hats off to our friend JT]

Page CXVI / “Hymns” album

1. Come Thou Fount
2. In Christ Alone
3. Joy
4. My Jesus I Love Thee
5. Nothing But The Blood
6. Solid Rock
7. When I Survey The Wonderful Cross

Download the album here.

A Conversation with Jonathan Edwards

I’m not alone in saying that Jonathan Edwards was likely the greatest theological mind in American history. Yet for a man who carefully dissected his terms, and frequently lamented the limitations of the English language in allowing him to express his thoughts (!), Edwards can be frustratingly complex and often too deep for many readers. So what is the best entry point into Edwards’s theology?

One book I return to frequently is A Conversation with Jonathan Edwards by Gary Crampton (Reformation Heritage Books). Crampton assembled the book in a Q&A format, posing theological questions and then writing answers, which are citations of direct quotes from the works of Edwards. Crampton book, which is just over 200 pages, provides a comprehensive overview of Edwards’s theology in way that I find very engaging. Chapters include Edwards thoughts on man, knowledge, Scripture, God, angels, man, soteriology, the Church, the family, eschatology, and heaven and hell.

I use A Conversation with Jonathan Edwards as an index and field guide to the  complete works of Edwards now available online from Yale University. Using Crampton as my map, I can more easily and efficiently find my way around Edwards’s works and locate specific writings in a snap.

Partly because it was produced by a small publisher (RHB), I don’t think this book has received the publicity it deserves. But if you are looking for a jumpstart into the theology of Edwards, or if you would like a map to help you sift through the online works of Edwards, this may be the best single volume overview available. I highly recommend it.

————–

Title: A Conversation with Jonathan Edwards
Author: Gary Crampton
Boards: paper
Pages: 202
Topical index: no (it’s arranged topically)
Scriptural index: no
Text: perfect type
Publisher: Reformation Heritage Books
Year: 2006
Price USD: $16.00 / $12.00 from publisher
ISBNs: 1892777762