Residential Bible School: Apologetics & Basic Beliefs

<Basic Beliefs & Apologetics>

Why apologetics?

Principles Distinguish between tough questions and

tough problems “I don’t know” is fine! Unanswered

questions don’t mean Christianity is false! Love is more important than logic What can YOU learn? The “seeker” issue (or why ‘proof’ is almost

never sufficient); psychological certainty vs. epistemic certainty

Session #1

God is Real

Discuss!

1. Why did you become a Christian? “I became a Christian because _______.”

2. What are 1-2 of the most difficult questions you have heard about Christianity?

There are more than

1.5 million galaxies!

Two questions

• Did all this come about by chance or did someone have to create all this?

• Why is Earth the only planet where life (let alone intelligent life!) exists?

The Anthropic Principle

The Cosmological Argument

Let’s watch the vid!

The Teleological Argument

The challenge of evolution

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” (John 1:1-3)

Other ‘hot’ problems

• “There is no truth”, “The world is an illusion”, “Truth is determined by _____”

• How do I know I exist?

• Why doesn’t God do ‘sky-writing’? (Rejection of Cognitive Violence)

• Nature is all there is…you are being fooled by your brain (Argument from Conditions for Knowledge)

Session #2

God is Love

What isthe Trinity?

1 x 1 x 1 = 1

The best model I can think of thus far…

The Problem of Evil

• Why doesn’t God stop evil?

• Why didn’t God stop Hurricane Katrina, the Haitian Earthquake, etc.?

• Why is there pain?

• Why do bad things happen to good people?

The LORD will rise up as he did at Mount Perazim, he will rouse himself as in the Valley of Gibeon— to do his work, his strange work, and perform his task, his alien task. (Isaiah 28:21)

Yet by far the best ‘answer’ to the problem of evil…

Session #3

Jesus is God

What questions do you have about Jesus?

• Who did Jesus’ contemporaries understand Jesus to be?

• What was the ‘Jewish problem’ Jesus was addressing?

• What is the ‘kingdom of God’? (Session 4)

• Why all the miracles?

• Why does Jesus talk in parables?

• Why did He die?

4

Jewish groups during Jesus’ time

There were (at least)

#1 The Withdrawers#1 The Withdrawers

Qumran Community / Essenes

• Focus: Purity, separation, complete withdrawal

• Victims: Leave the country! Forget politics!

• Good: Holy and set apart

• Bad: Totally disengaged and thus irrelevant to the world

• Not a threat to the status quo

#2 The Assimilators#2 The Assimilators

Sadducees

• Focus: assimilation and accommodation

• Victims: Join the government, profit from those in power

• Good: Works well with the world and within the system

• Bad: Selfish and helps perpetuate injustice

• Not a threat to the status quo

#3 The Fault-Finders

Pharisees

• Focus: other people’s faults(!), distinguishing between ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’,

• Victims: “I-told-you-so”, “You-should-have-…”, “Your-mistake-was…”

• Good: Well-informed and very critical of all parties (except themselves!)

• Bad: Creates burdens for people, de-contextualised ‘solutions’,

• Not a threat to the status quo

“Life is like a forensic lab…”

Modern-day Pharisees?

#4 The Revolutionaries

Zealots

• Focus: revolution, violence

• Victims: Overthrow the government by force (other means are a waste of time!)

• Strongly opposed to injustice, courageous and action-oriented

• Bad: Perpetuates ‘violence’ and ‘hatred’, equates worldly justice with divine justice

• Threatens status quo

Into the midst of these four worldviews…

WITHDRAWERS

REVOLUTIONARIES

ASSIMILATORS

FAULT-FINDERS

“Behold I make all things new”(Rev 21)

Jesus

• Focus: aggressive kindness and love (for all), self-sacrifice, all-out giving,

• Victims: Liberation of the heart, really good news, compassion, hope, peace, joy, promise of resurrection

• Oppressors: Sacrifice, radical listening / friendship, forgiveness

• Everyone: A New Way of Being Human• A quiet but real threat to the status quo!

What happened on the Cross?

<Did it really happen?>

Did it really happen?

Consider…

• All evidence suggests that Jesus really died (water from body, unbroken legs, burial)

• Jewish leaders claimed the disciples stole the body but tomb was guarded by Roman soldiers (whose lives were at stake)

• More than 500 people saw Jesus resurrected, and who was present for days (hallucination cannot explain this!), see Acts 1

• The first witnesses were women! (not good for credibility or conspiracy!)

• What motives did disciples have for lying? So they could ‘look good’? So they could be persecuted and die as martyrs?!

More ‘hot’ questions

• What about those who didn’t get to hear the Gospel through no fault of their own?

• How do we even know Jesus existed?

• What about Da Vinci Code?!

• Why does God create all people sin-less? Won’t that be the case in Heaven?

Session #4

We Are Jesus

In 165 AD, a devastating epidemic swept through the Roman empire, killing 1/3 of the population, incl.

Emperor Marcus Aurelius…

In 251 AD, another

plague hit the empire,

this time both rural and urban areas were affected…

“Most of our brothers showed unbounded love…never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another…Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ…drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains…”

Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria, AD260

“The heathen behaved in the very opposite way. At the first onset of the disease, they pushed the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead and treated unburied corpses as dirt, hoping thereby to avert the spread and contagion of the disease; but do what they might, they found it difficult to escape.”

Bishop Dionysius

Result?

‘Miraculous’ healing

Huge Conversions

Growth of Christian population

Spread of Christian Spread of Christian love/principles throughout love/principles throughout

empire!empire!

What is your 1-minute

elevator pitch?

“A Christian is ______”

Key questions

• What/Who is Man?

• What is Sin?

• What is Salvation?

The kingdom of God is like a team of resistance fighters...

If a country starts mobilizing its troops, preparing its airplanes, testing its weapons, sending

spies to other countries, etc. – what does that tell you?

The kingdom of God is like a cigarette smoker…

Why Weird?!

• It’s “weak” and “foolish” (1Cor 1)

• It’s lowly and despised…it’s something that is NOT (1Cor 1)

• It’s not of this world (John 8)

• It’s perfected in our weakness i.e. we need to be very ‘teruk’ before New Creation becomes very ‘terror!’ (2Cor 12)

Session #5

The Temptations of Christ in the Wilderness:

A Study of Man & Sin

C

“I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak to her heart”

(Hosea 2:14)

The 1st Temptation

"If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread." (Luke 4:3)

The Devil doesn’t appear like this

“Man shalt not live by bread alone…”

Man…a creature who lives and works by every word that

comes from God(Ephesians 2:10)

Sin is the ‘Cutting Short’‘Cutting Short’

of a kingdom process!

The 2nd Temptation

"If you are the Son of God…throw yourself down. For it is written:

'He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone”

(Luke 4:3)

'He will command his angels concerning you…”

Sin = ‘Circus ‘Circus Stunts’Stunts’ to gain kingdom peace /

protection!

Thou shalt not BLACK-MAIL the Lord your God!

Man…a derivative being who finds life and meaning in

trusting God

Temptation is often a distortion of true vocation

The 3rd Temptation

"All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me."

(Luke 4:9)

“All this I will give you…”

Sin is a Short Short CutCut towards a kingdom goal!

Man…a worshipful agent who finds purpose in God alone

Idolatrous ‘victories’ Idolatrous ‘victories’ are the worst defeatsare the worst defeats

What’s the Common Thread?

The absence of the “sensational”…

Man…a Godlike being who refuses to rely on the world’s power and tricks and looks to

God’s power in all things(Psalms 20:7)