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Author Topic: Apologetics
Carol Swenson
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Hi Big Bro, it's nice to meet you. Welcome to the Christian BBS.

Yes, I like apologetics very much. The main problem I hear is that they believe the Bible is a myth, an outdated superstition. Jesus is not real to them because He is just a story in a fairy-tale.

Here is some great input from the Handbook of Christian Apologetics:

Why are many not compelled?

1. Not for rational reasons. No reason has ever been brought forth against Christianity which has not been refuted. The vast majority of those who disbelieve in Christ's divinity disbelieve for other reasons, not because they have confronted the arguments.

2. Often, the thing hated and rejected is not Christ but Christians. Chesterton said, "the only good argument against Christianity is Christians."

3. Often, it is fear of the church and its teachings and authority that scares people away. The church is a concrete, visible, present institution that makes demands on our intellect to believe and on our will to practice a whole way of life that conflicts with our natural inclinations. Exactly like Jesus, who did the very same thing. The church doesn't wield a club, but it does wave a Cross.

The reluctance is usually moral. To admit that Jesus is divine is to admit His absolute authority over your life, including your private life, including your sex life. Can a drug addict think clearly and objectively about moral truth when it comes to drugs? Why should a sex addict be different?

We are all addicts to something—to selfishness, at least. That is the meaning of sin, the very disease Jesus came to cure. Of course the cancer is going to fear the surgeon. That is exactly what you would expect. That is not a reason to disbelieve the surgeon's claim to be the specialist. Just the opposite.

The old self in us is no fool. It sees that Christ comes to kill it. It knows Christianity is not a harmless theory, but something alive and dangerous.

4. Some people are afraid of the supernatural because it is mysterious and uncontrollable. If there is a supernatural God, and if this God did such a strange thing as becoming a man, then reality vastly escapes the neat and comfortable little boxes that some of us like to stuff it into.

5. There may also be simple pride, refusal to loose control of the reins of our lives.

6. It is also not at all intellectually fashionable to believe in Christ as anything more than a human teacher. We Americans love peer acceptance, approval, and support. We fear nonconformity, eccentricity, "weirdness", and being "out of it" even when "it" is a society that looks increasingly like garbage swirling down the drain.

7. Finally, Americans' deepest religion is often equality. The notion that Christ alone is God—superior, authoritative, supernatural—and that Christ's teaching and person is far greater than Buddha's, or Muhammad's, or Moses', no matter how much great and good wisdom may be contained in those others, is scandalous. The notion that all religions are not equal offends our real religion of equality, which makes no demands on us to discriminate and choose one and to justify that choice (see Chap. 14).

None of these eight causes of unbelief is a reason, only a motive; that is, they are subjective, not objective; psychological, not logical. If everything we have said so far is true, a surprising consequence necessarily follows. It is that there are only two things that are needed for anyone to be converted, for the whole world be converted, and to worship Christ as God. (Grace is also needed from God, of course, but God is willing to give His grace to anyone who is willing to seek and receive it.) These two things are intellectual honesty and the moral honesty that goes with it. This is exactly the attitude most unbelievers praise and claim to have: tough-minded skeptical, scientific, logical honesty. Well, if they really have that, it will lead them to Christ.

It is exactly the opposite attitude that keeps unbelief alive, the attitude most unbelievers claim Christians have succumbed to—namely, wishful thinking, subjectivism, thinking not with the head but with the frightened heart or the quivering guts. For in light of all the above nonrefuted arguments, which of the two positions looks more like myth, fairy tale, wishful thinking, subjective projection, and human invention? And which looks like the cold, hard, objective truth?

Posts: 6787 | From: Colorado | Registered: Dec 2007  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Big Bro
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Hi! I just wondered if anyone has an interest in discussing apologetics, that is the witness to others that this man Jesus was more than a man.

What questions do you get from non believers about WHY they don't believe who Jesus was and the content of his message?

Posts: 1 | From: Illinois | Registered: May 2014  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator


 
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