The Gospel Is A Good Argument
To purchase the entire Summit Lecture Series, Vol. 2 on DVD, visit summit.org.
So, what we’re here for is critical thinking, recognizing errors and reasoning. On your paper, you have a quote from the late Christian philosopher, Dallas Willard, late meaning he has recently passed away and he says this, “The gospel of Jesus directly repudiates all false information about God and therewith about the meaning of human life and it works to undermine the power of those ideas and images that structure life away from God. But for it to have this effect, for the gospel to have this effect, we must use our ability to think. What is thinking?” And he sets it into this context. He says, “It is the activity of searching out what must be true or cannot be true in light of given facts or assumptions.”
The gospel of Jesus has the power to refute all false information about God, right? I don’t think we necessarily think of it that way. I have to tell people, “Do you know that the gospel is a good argument?” What? It’s an argument? No, no, it’s the passion. Yeah, it is. It’s also a good argument. Thinking about the gospel of Jesus and what it does, it says that there is a problem in this world, that there’s a problem of evil, and that the problem, the source is humans. And I would relate it back down to the good gift of free will, but it says there is a problem and this problem is a problem of evil. And then the gospel message says that God didn’t just leave us in this problem, but that God has provided a way. He has provided a solution.
Here is the solution. When you accept the solution, this is what happens. Wow. There’s an argument in there, right? It’s not a traditional one you think of, but it is one. And yet people will look at you and say, “That’s nice for you, but not for me.” You’re saying, “I’m making an argument about the reality of the universe in which we live. That’s what I’m telling you when I share Jesus with you.” And you’re saying, “Wow, that’s nice, but that’s not for me. I have my own set, my own truth, my own way.”
It’s interesting that people don’t understand logic anymore. They don’t understand what arguments are or good arguments. Why should we engage in reasoning, good reasoning? Well, there was the first one, because you go out to a world that doesn’t. You’re in a culture that ceases to teach good thinking skills, critical reasoning, and then you present to them a good argument, namely the gospel of Jesus Christ, and they have no idea. They just reject it outright because they don’t deal in logic.
All right. So here’s one of my favorite atheist writers, Christopher Hitchens, who’s also recently passed away. “Take the risk of thinking for yourself.” Yes. Thank you. I love it. Much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way. I totally agree with him, but what Hitchens wasn’t allowing for was a real open investigation of the truth. He meant that it was away from Christianity that you are thinking for yourself. I’m lumping Christianity in there. Why? Well, Christians need to believe in good, they need to practice good reasoning because belief in God is not magic.
Now, I get a lot of internet atheists, nobody says this to my face, but internet atheists tend to relate my belief in God back down to magic, like it’s magic, like I’ve said some kind of in incantation, maybe thrown some incense or something, maybe I have a boiling cauldron, I don’t know, and all of a sudden, the divine does my bidding. Right? I’m manipulating God. That’s magic, manipulation of the divine. That’s what magic is. Okay? Christian belief in God does not dwell in manipulating the divine. It does not deal in that. In fact, those verses that you have are passages warning you away from divination and trying to manipulate the divine and practicing magic.
And that Acts 8 line is great. That Acts 8 passage, I’m sorry, 19. The Acts 19 passage is really interesting to me because you have believers who are practicing magic. They’re called believers. They were practicing magic. And when they figured out the power of God, the real power, they came and they brought their magical art books to the town and they burned them. They burned them up when they realized where real power was. So, we are not to participate in magic. You have to tell people, Christian beliefs is qualitatively different from practicing magic. We’re not trying to manipulate the divine. We would find that blasphemous. No one can manipulate the creator of all things. So it’s not magic, that’s one reason we need to engage in good reasoning with people and with ourselves. Remember my last session, it’s for us first and then outward?
Belief in God should not be based in faulty reasoning. I gave you some scriptures there as to why. Roman’s passage talks to you about transforming your mind. What’s the purpose? Discernment, knowing, its knowledge of what is good and evil so you can discern. Okay? So you can have good reasoning. That’s what the transforming of the mind is for. God created humans with a rational mind and in the image of God. You’ve been given a rational mind and made as in the image of God, we have a rational God. That’s why when people ask you, “Can God make a rock so big you can’t move it?” You go, “Well, no, God’s rational. So no. He doesn’t do things that are irrational.” Right? That’s silly, silly question.
It may not be to them, so don’t say that. “Well that’s a silly question,” you’ve turned them off right there and then, but that’s what’s going on. God’s a God of rationality, created people with rational minds so he doesn’t do irrational things like that. We are to love God with all we have to offer, including our minds. All we have, is heart, all your soul, one of the passages also includes strength, and your mind, you are to love God with all your mind. And I love this passage from 1 Corinthians 13, it’s the love passage, people like to put it on their first married Bible. I have it on my first married Bible. It says Roger and Mary Jo Sharp 1 Corinthians 13. It’s so pretty, but if you look in there, what is Paul actually talking about? He’s trying to define what love is. He’s trying to show you what love is. And in there in verse seven, “Love delights in the truth.”
You and I are to be delighters, rejoiceres in what’s true. We’re not to wallow in falsehoods, to build up our own egos or because we’re proud or whatever, or because this is the way we want the world to be. We’re supposed to delight in the truth. That’s why we should gauge in good reasoning. And then there’s Romans 12:2 again, “So that we don’t conform to the world and therefore we’re able to discern what goodness and truth are.” That’s why we need good reasoning. God has given us these faculties as one way of knowing who he is, one way, right? Not the whole, but one way.
So what we’re going to do today is we’re going to see that every Christian can recognize errors and reasoning by following some basic steps. I like three points, so there’s three. We’re going to analyze, we’re going to ask, and we’re going to engage. These are not the only steps, but they’re some. Before we get into this, some of you have had logic. I teach logic to freshman at Houston Baptist University and in there we get into formal Aristotelian logic, syllogisms, things like that. We’re not going to do that in whatever time we got left here, we’re not going to do that in our short time together. We’re going to look at some of the immaterial, or the material, sorry, material fallacies, the informal fallacies that you will notice on a daily basis with people. You may even catch me making some of these fallacies while I give my talk because I like to use hasty generalization. So we’re going to look at those today, along with just some basic ways that you can catch errors in reasoning.
Okay. So, you ready to go? This goes really fast and yeah, that’s what it does, goes really fast. All right. First is always analyze what you see and hear. Do not be a passive receptor for sound bites, imagery, or suggestions coming at you. Receptor just means receiving, you’re a receiver. And I had a question on your paper, we’re not going to do that out loud, but think about some of the problems that are created when people are not good thinkers, makes a lot of things harder than they should be, right? So are you carefully thinking about the things you read, see, and hear?
When I go out to a movie with my family, they have a rule, I’m not allowed to talk until 30 minutes after the movie because I’m always going, “Ugh, that movie. Right? Did you see what they were trying to tell us?” The one that really got me was the movie Doubt. I don’t know if you’ve seen this movie, but it was somebody’s really big idea, right? They’re going to make this movie about this nun and the Catholic Church and she starts to have some experiences with some things that shouldn’t be in the church and the big lead up at the end, what’s the big issue? “I have doubt.” And the movie ends and I was like, “What? Everybody has that. There’s a whole movie on something that everybody has, that’s common to mankind and that was the big lead up.” I felt so let down.
And my husband was like, “All right, you get five minutes of comments and then you got to shut it down.” Because it bothered me that they thought it was that shallow. It bothered me because I’m constantly analyzing what I’m seeing and hearing. I don’t just take things in. Okay? I analyze them. And so movies pushing their shallow philosophy on me is disturbing, is disturbing. I end up being that person that I either want to watch Lord of The Rings with you or I want to watch the stupidest movie I can possibly watch, right? Let’s have either awesome, great, wonderful, or we’ll just do something that’s not trying to push any philosophy on me.
All right. So I’ve created a dichotomy.
Follow Christian Podcast Central on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to see our ongoing discussion with Dr. Jeff Myers regarding worldviews.
(This podcast is by Summit Ministries. Discovered by Christian Podcast Central and our community — copyright is owned by the publisher, not Christian Podcast Central.)
