My friend and I lived several miles away from each other. For fun, he and I met one Saturday morning at a pistol range half-way between where we each lived. After we shot off a couple hundred rounds, he mentioned he might come to church with me on Sunday morning.
Well, that startled me because even though my friend had made a profession of faith in Jesus when he was a teenager, he hadn’t been to church for a long time. As well, he never really wanted to talk about church.
I told him I'd love to have him come with me. But then my mouth got ahead of my brain; I said, "I thought you didn't believe in Christianity anymore." Ever wanted to take something back as soon as you said it? I could tell I had offended him.
To figure out where he was coming from, it occurred to me that I could ask him some questions I had learned from Bill Faye in his book Share Jesus Without Fear. Mr. Faye recommends asking five basic fact-finding questions. The questions are:
- Do you have any kind of spiritual belief?
- Who do you think Jesus is?
- Do you believe there is a heaven and a hell?
- If you died right now, where would you go? If heaven, why?
- If what you believed were not true, would you want to know it?
So I said to my friend, “It’s been a long time since we’ve talked about spiritual things. Tell me, what are your spiritual beliefs?”
My friend glanced down then looked me in the eye. He said, “I don’t have any spiritual beliefs.”
I knew about his previous profession of faith, but I asked, “To you, who is Jesus?”
“A fictional character,” he replied, with a hint of a shrugged shoulder. He seemed to be leveling with me at honestly stating what he felt was true.
Nodding my head I went on, “So do you believe in heaven or hell?”
“Nope,” he said flatly.
“If you were to die, what do you think would happen to you?” I prodded, not sticking to the questions.
He grinned, “Just dead, worm food.”
I laughed at his pragmatic answer. Skipping one of Mr. Faye’s recommended questions, I caught my friend’s eye and we held our gaze; I asked seriously, “If you were wrong, would you want to know?”
You could tell he was thinking as he nodded his head slowly. He then said, “Yea, I really would want to know.”
Since I was feeling hungry and figured he was too, I suggested, “Let’s go get some lunch and talk.”
Over lunch my friend talked some more while I listened. It took a couple of restarts when I couldn’t keep quiet and let him talk. But when it was my turn to talk, I opened my Bible to the New Testament book of John, chapter 3, verse 16 (also written “John 3:16”). I asked him to read that verse aloud. (Bill Faye recommends reading aloud since scripture says, “faith come by hearing”. I like people reading aloud because I know where they are in the text.)
He read aloud, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”
When he stopped, I looked at him and I asked, “So what does that verse mean to you?”
“It doesn’t mean anything to me since I don’t believe God exists.”
After reading some other verses it became clear that God wasn’t real to him and my friend wasn’t accepting the Bible. At the time I had to consider where my friend was spiritually and thought: If God isn’t real for him, if to him God is non-existent, then he can’t accept the Bible as the word of a non-existent being. If a person believes the bible is just made up, then could that person believe in Jesus? Whether God exists is a reasonable question and requires a reasonable answer. We discussed this briefly.
The verse in 1 Peter 3:15 came to mind; it is the foundational verse to this book. I wanted to provide to my friend a reasonable explanation about why the Christian belief is better than any other belief. I wanted him to not just know and have faith in Jesus Christ as the Truth, I wanted his faith well grounded in truth. So my friend and I started with the basics. This blog represents that conversation, with a little extra included for you who may have friends or acquaintances who might ask some different questions.
Getting Started
Each of us wants to believe in what is true, so we ask ourselves, “Why do I believe what I believe?” That’s a good question. Perhaps Christians were, and are, misled. Perhaps Christians do in fact believe in myths and fairy tales as some people claim. There are a lot of claims different than Christian claims; can we know which claims are true?
What I hope to provide in this blog are answers to the claims and questions that raise doubt about the Christian faith. This book should prepare you to provide reasons, to yourself and sometimes to others, why the Christian faith is true. I’m not talking about claims, but reasons. A reason, that is – a statement supported with rational, analytical, and logical thought.
People want and deserve reasoned answers to tough questions: What did Jesus teach? Who was Jesus really? We quote a verse from the Bible with the assumption that the words we have today are the words originally given by the author. People believe the words of the Bible come with the authority of God; and this is based on the assumption is that God exists. If we can show that everything originated from random events, do we even need a god? For that matter, this would require there to be such a thing as truth; forget about asking whether or not God exists; does truth exist? Where can we start discovering where to start?
At one time, I wondered if anyone ever came up with sound reasons why Christianity should be believed. I found out that minds much more gifted than mine have pondered and prayed about the hard questions. Some of these people began as hardened skeptics; but, after intense study of the evidence, they became Christians themselves. Many intelligent people have recorded their reasoned thoughts on these matters, and I've tried to consolidate and summarize a few of those thoughts within this book.
Self-Evident Truth
As a place to begin, let me suggest a well-known, but often poorly-remembered document that uses the term self-evident. Included within that document is the sentence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
These of course are the words of the second sentence of the unanimous Declaration of Independence of the thirteen united States of America. This sentence grounds that declaration in self-evident truth; it provides us a good example in our quest to determine whether the Christian faith is reasonable. We too will begin with self-evident truth. We will then let each truth build upon the last. Please consider a map of the United States as a reminder of this Declaration and the use of self-evident truth.
Other truths are split into several basic categories in this blog including philosophical truths, truths about our origins, truths about God, truths about Scripture, truths about Jesus, and truths about salvation. Along the way, I’ll see which non-Christian beliefs we can reasonably eliminate. Of course, if there is something that you specifically want to read about now, you'll have to wait until it is posted; but once posted, just find a similar question in the table of contents and turn to that section.
Quick Review
On the front cover (well, whereever I figure out the right way/place to post the picture) are pictures of a map of the United States of America and six cups of coins.
The Founding Fathers of the United States of America wrote a declaration of independence in which they refer to truth as “self-evident”. We too, can start with self-evident truth.
Let us always be ready with our answer as we are so told: “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear” – 1 Peter 3:15
This makes me want to have a conversation with your friend. I'm not convinced that he doesn't believe there is a God but rather that he isn't sure if there is. From your account here of his responses it sounds very much like he has questions in his heart over the matter and that he might be searching for the Truth.
ReplyDeleteYou will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:13
If he doesn't believe in God why would he want to go to church with you?
The fact that he considered going to church with you indicates that he likely believes that if there is a God then Jesus is the One to follow as opposed to other religions.
I was an agnostic in my teen years. In my case, I was not open to any thoughts that anyone presented to me simply because I had already heard so many different religious views that I no longer believed that any person really knew the Truth. I believed that people just had opinions and wanted everyone else to believe what they believed. This viewpoint of mine stemmed, in part, from people not having answers to my questions.
But even though I didn't know if there was a God, I decided I wanted to know the Truth of the matter. I reasoned that if He was real then He was quite capable of telling me so without the help of people. So I asked Him. I didn't ask for specific sign or anything, I just trusted that He could get His message across to me in any manner He chose so that I would have no doubt. If He couldn't, then He wasn't much of a God by my reasoning.
Long story short(er), God told me that He was real and I knew it was Him.
My point in this is that as we plant seeds of knowledge, and seeds of doubt about what the non-believer does believe, it is also imperative to encourage them to take their questions to God while we remain open and available for the discussions.
I would be inclined to find out if he wants the Truth of the matter, to know for sure without doubt. And question what kind of God he thinks God would be if there was a God.
Okay enough of my input. LOL! Sorry this is so long. I really enjoyed the read.