Look at all of the people here, in this place. Churches beg God for this kind of attendance on Sunday morning. I know, that’s part of the idolatry in the organized church. She’s jealous and hungry for her own popularity. That’s why she hosted all of those shallow evangelistic events for us while we were growing up. Do you remember? Not all of them had that motivation. A few really wanted people to see the life available in Christ. There is not one seat available at the bar. The lounge is full. The dining area is hustling. No, not that kind of hustle. There is actually more of a sense of community in this place than in most local church establishments. It’s just barely five-o’clock on a Tuesday. This apology is something that should interest every believer and every non-believer. I am under the conviction that if God is real and if the biblical account is true, that God would not keep either Himself or the validation of His Word from the people of the earth, from the people who fled the organized church to find sanctuary in this place. I have a new hope. Perhaps my believing friends will take advantage and will be strengthened in their faith. Just maybe my unbelieving friends, or friends who have placed their faith in anything or anyone other than Christ, will see that faith in Christ is the most reasonable faith to hold.
“Can I borrow your Bible?” The man sitting here with me, not surprised, answers, “Sure, but there is nothing in there that will make me believe.” I know that. I also know that it is not my responsibility to make anyone believe. I turn to 1 Peter 3:15-16. This particular verse states that we ought to be ready to give a reason for the hope that we have. Of course, the hope that we have as children of God is in Christ and in the eternal life that He has promised. In order to give a reason, we ought to know the reasons and those reasons ought to be truthful and good. It is amazing that a Biblical faith actually requires that we refuse to have a blind faith. A blind faith actually makes us look naive, even ignorant and stupid and belligerent when we try to argue others into submission. We now see where that gets us. Our absence is the evidence, it is the fruit that was borne. We ought to know the reasons. We ought to not only know the reasons why we have the hope that we have, but we ought to be able to communicate those reasons to others, not belligerently, but with gentleness and respect. Perhaps acting and communicating with gentleness and respect is the most important concept we can grasp. I know. I was once the argumentative and hot-headed Christian. Don’t believe me? Look at my twitter feed from 2011. Speaking truth means nothing if we do not do so in love. Our arguments ought to be made in peace with great love.
“I’m not here to convince you of anything, friend.” He looks surprised.
We see things that are wrong, or that we perceive to be wrong. Our first instinct, many times, is to treat others harshly or form an argument that will accomplish our will and make others out to be the “bad guy.” Nothing is accomplished, even if we do win some profound argument. Yet, we celebrate. What, may I ask, are we celebrating? If I am so concerned about winning, then I will never be interested in seeing others win the greatest victory. Our goal is to honor Christ and to witness others experience victory in Christ as we have, or as we claim to experience. Christ died for people by giving Himself. His first priority was not to make other people look bad so that He could prove that He was correct. We would do well to follow His example. The truth is, there are many times when we perceive ourselves to be correct on some idea or in some action and we simply are not; so we also make fools of ourselves because we have not spoken in humility and with gentleness and respect. Not only, then, do we show love by speaking with gentleness and respect, but we also safeguard our own reputation and our own relationship with Christ. Any argument we hope to have ought to be made in peace with grace, whether it is an argument for God's existence, a dispute at work, a disagreement in the home, or a plea for someone to come experience victory in Jesus. Why would anyone, after all, want Jesus if they feel persecuted by people who claim to be His people?
It is a miracle that I’m still here. If I based my faith on the action or inaction of people who claimed to be Christians, I would have forsaken the church long ago. I guess it’s a good thing Christ is real and that He is the one building His church.
I apologize,
because I’m sorry and because I think you need to be. What is the substance of this apology? Yes, content matters. You’ve had someone repent with no sense of remorse, haven’t you? You’ve experienced an empty apology? I thought so. There is substance, here, I promise.
On the one hand, I want to defend you against religious hypocrites. On the other, I want to defend Christ’s honor in the midst of a generation that has assumed dishonor. Jesus doesn’t need me to do this, please understand. I do this for your benefit and mine. My motivation is your good, your victory, not your defeat.
“Can I just share with you what I believe? Why I think you are justified in your anger against the church?” That is not what he expected to hear, “I’m listening.”
Your worldview, and mine too, is shaped by the world that nurtures us as we react to the things we see, hear, taste, smell, and touch. I say worldview and not religion for this reason: Religion is a set of practices, worldview is a set of beliefs that guide those practices. Those who come here to shoot billiards with their friends each week are practicing a sort of religious ritual. That man over there just poured some beer on the ground to honor a friend who is no longer present in his physical body. His worldview drives that ritual. There is a belief behind it that has shaped and been shaped by each one’s experiences, reflections, responses, and actions. Every person has a worldview because every person believes the world to operate a certain way. Every person practices religion because every person acts in the world according to his or her worldview. Every person believes deeply that his or her worldview is valid. When my generation was different from the previous in our thinking, our level of education, our need to know that there is justification for believing something, and our rejection of shallow belief, our worldview was immediately criticized. Do you realize that you are the ones who forced our entire generation to continue our education? Then, treated us in church as though we couldn’t handle the deep substance of the faith? We are your handiwork. “I’m sorry we were treated this way. There really is a deep, inset hypocrisy that is going unrecognized and undiagnosed. I think you are right in being angry about this. We all should be.”
This apology is important,
If I did not believe it so, then I wouldn’t waste my valuable time. I would not have poured hours and hours into preparing it and making sure it was substantial. I care too much for you. If God does not exist, the Christian faith is worthless. If Christ is not God, the Christian faith is a lie. If Scripture is not accurate, then it does not reveal God. If we are not sure that we can believe the validity of the Christian claim concerning these three things, then we waste our time with the Christian faith and with belief in the God of the Bible. If people hurt us, that has no bearing on who God is or on the veracity of the Bible’s claim. Apologetics is important. My sorrow is real. My heartache, profound.
My arguments don’t change the truth. No matter what arguments are made, what is true is true and what is not is not, though some philosophers may disagree. My worldview, or yours, has no bearing on reality. Ask me about a dream I had sometime. Just because something sounds good does not make it so. Any valid apology, then, will serve a very specific purpose: It can help us to have more confidence in what our worldviews claim to be true and they can convince us of what may be true and what we believe to be true. Apologies also help us to realize what about our worldviews might be wrong or invalid or weak. If God is indeed real, they can also help us to know God more. My apology cannot prove my worldview to be true, but it can and will prove that it is valid. “Are you ready? Let’s question what we believe together.”
Are our beliefs valid?
There are very few things that we can know beyond the shadow of a doubt. Can I, for a moment, try to convince you that that there is reason to doubt everything you believe? Name anything that you believe to be true. Here is mine.
I cannot prove that my I inherited my wedding ring from my father. Even if there was documentation, it is possible that it could have been forged. We could try another experiment:
It is even questionable, then, that I am actually participating in the activities that I believe myself to be participating in at this moment. The same is even true for speculations like Darwinian evolution. Species may change over time and there may be a multiplicity of species on the planet, but Darwinian evolution is not provable because it is not observable from beginning to end. The fact of the matter is that we can doubt most things that we believe ourselves to know. Many have questioned whether people can actually obtain any true knowledge at all. If we can reasonably create any doubt about the things in our lives, then those things cannot be proven to be true. So, we do not set out to prove things to be true beyond the shadow of a doubt. We set out to prove that we are rational in making certain truth claims. Humility is important for reasonable living and reasonable conversation. Gentleness and respect? I am sorry that so many people have presumed to have achieved all knowledge and to have a perfectly configured worldview.
I can’t empirically prove my worldview,
and that statement may surprise you. You know this. You’ve known it. That is why you forsook an organization that claimed to prove God because ‘the Bible says so.’ I have a handicap, here, because of the nature of knowledge and the nature of any worldview. A worldview is a belief system that makes certain truth claims concerning reality. It is by our worldviews that we interpret reality. No one that I know of or have seen actually develops a worldview based on reality because a worldview is necessary first in order to interpret reality. So, worldview is developed first based on what we hear from others and what we philosophize for ourselves. How we define reality, then, is always an interpretation of what we see, hear, feel, smell and taste. If anyone’s worldview is wrong, then his or her interpretation of reality will most likely be wrong. So, we should be very humble. In essence, no worldview can be proven to be true beyond the shadow of a doubt. There are facts that can be proven, more or less. These, though, are the evidences that must be interpreted in order to make arguments concerning one worldview or another. Worldview must be argued for on a more philosophically abstract level. If anyone ever claims that he can either prove or disprove God's existence beyond the shadow of a doubt, he is placing God's existence in the wrong category because God is not a physical or an empirical being. Instead, we must prove that belief in God's existence is a valid belief to hold. This is why we needed Christ to come and reveal God to us. It is why we must rely on the Holy Spirit to travel with the words that are preached from the church stage. It is why we need Scripture in order to know God more fully. It is why we are unable to simply come to have faith. It is why Christ must intervene to save us. We are slaves to our nature. We cannot see God and no one has ever seen God (John 1:18). So, we learn that if anyone ever claims to have seen God, he is a liar according to God’s own word. We must remember that we have not seen God either. So, we speak about Him with humility. Gentleness and respect.
This book is honest about this.
1 Peter 3:13-17 says, “And who will harm you if you are deeply committed to what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear or be disturbed, but honor the Messiah as Lord in your hearts. Always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you. However, do this with gentleness and respect, keeping your conscience clear, so that when you are accused, those who denounce your Christian life will be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil.”
The call in Scripture, then, is simple and we’ve ignored it. I’m sorry. We ought to always pursue truth and goodness no matter the cost. If we are not pursuing truth, we are not honoring Christ, the Messiah. This, and we always ought to be ready to give a reason for the hope that we have based on the truth that we have discovered. Our hope is eternal life in Christ. We are challenged not to have a blind faith. While it is possible to have faith in the right thing or person without a valid reason, the challenge here is for us to actually explore the reasons for our faith and know them. We should believe, yes, but we should also strive to know why that belief is valid. We should always communicate our reasons, whether those reasons are philosophical, evidential, or experiential, with gentleness and respect. According to Peter, this is how we keep our own conscience clear and how we honor God. Any argument we choose to make should be made with peace and grace. We often don’t. My generation is just in its anger concerning much of the organized church. Again, I apologize.
I’m still sitting here,
because I want gain a greater understanding. Shouldn’t we seek that first? Second, I want my brothers and sisters to gain a greater confidence in Christ philosophically. Third, I desperately want you to realize that a Biblical worldview is reasonable and not without merit. God is God despite the sins of the organized church. Am I only thinking or are these words actually coming out of my mouth. Are you hearing me? Are you staring into space because you are thinking, because you’re bored, or because I am having that nightmare again?
Sip.