From the column, “What About It, Bob?” By Bob Siegel
© 2002 by Bob Siegel All Rights Reserved
This article is not to be reproduced without written permission from the author.
“What year did you live out here?” she asked me.
I was having lunch with a few college students at Arizona State University. The students represented Campus Ambassadors, an on campus Christian fellowship, and this same group had invited me out from San Diego to do some out door evangelism in the free speech area. The event had gone well. Many people gathered around this open forum to ask questions such as: “How can a loving God exist if there’s so much suffering in the world?” or “What makes the Bible truer than the Koran or the Bhagavad-Gita?”
I had once lived in Tempe, Arizona doing local ministry on this very same campus and now a young lady was asking me exactly when that was.
“From 1977 to 1979,” I replied.
In a very casual manor, she responded, “Oh…I wasn’t even born yet.”
Needless to say, her lightning laced statement struck me back into reality. Having been on campuses ever since I was a college student myself, I tended to think of students as peers even though I was now 46 years old with two college age offspring of my own. Walking outside and looking at the crowded quad, I said to myself, “When I lived out here, none of these people existed and yet they ask the exact same questions that their parents did, some of them just as arrogantly.”
“How can a loving God send people to hell?” “Why does Jesus claim to be the only way to God?” “What about all the people in Unga Bunga who never heard of Jesus?”
In my many years of visiting universities as an apologetics speaker and debater, I have found that there are really only a handful of questions ever shot forth by students. Certainly many tangents come up in religious conversations, but the variations stem from very few objections and you will find that these same questions pop up over and over again.
Actually, the questions are fair and painfully honest. For every one asked in a pompous way, there is always another asked with sincerity. All too often, Christians shy away from such scrutiny, feeling defensive or under the gun but is there really a need for all this paranoia? After all, if only a few questions are being asked and if good answers really are out there, we should welcome the opportunity to share. Remember, Christians are telling people that their view of the world is the true view of the world, or God’s view of the world. It would not be fair to make such statements without backing them up.
But it’s not enough to welcome questions. Indeed, I would like to see Christians get in the habit of raising their own questions, challenging skeptics to reconsider their own world views!
You see, everybody has a world view whether they admit it or not. If people are religious, that religion effects their values. If somebody subscribes to a certain philosophy like Rationalism, Humanism, Communism or Socialism, that too, is a world view. And it isn’t always quite so obvious. Many of my Atheist friends proudly brag about how they have removed unnecessary beliefs from their lives, but the truth is, Atheism is very much a world view. Some even call it a religious world view because it makes ultimate statements about reality supported only by faith, faith that life is filled with randomness and chance, faith that moral absolutes do not really exist but are rather, the inventions of some accidental creatures who just happened to evolve by a luck of the draw. Such viewpoints effect the way they look at ethics, politics, and life itself
Many philosophies sound so intellectual, that you may feel unqualified to confront them without being a scholar of some sort. But anyone can ask questions, even about an unfamiliar subject. Rest assured, most of the people asking you to defend the Bible know absolutely nothing about the Bible. It works both ways. So allow me to introduce three very simple but very effective questions. When you use them, you will find yourself making the obvious, obvious. You will literally see your friend’s world view unravel right before your eyes. In fact, it could happen so quickly and so effectively that you may need to pay special attention to your tone and manner just to make sure the “surgery” is done with gentleness.
Now I can’t take credit for these questions. They’ve been used by Christian apologists for years. In fact they are very ancient and they even pre-date Christianity. They are called The Three Questions of Socrates or The Socratic Method. 1
Question One: What do you mean?
Most people tend to repeat popular ideas they’ve heard without taking the time to really think about their meaning. But a nice sounding phrase can crack to pieces under the light of scrutiny. For example, much as people enjoy saying that all religions basically teach the same thing, the truth is, two people can use the same term, God and mean completely different things by the term. When Christians use the word, God, they mean, “The God of the Bible, a thinking, feeling entity who created the universe and who holds each of us accountable.” But there’s a much different and very popular idea of God: The notion that God and the universe are one and the same thing. In other words: God is everything! This idea, (commonly called Pantheism) is gaining quite a following in modern religious thought, even though its roots go back to certain sects of ancient Hinduism. A Christian says that God made that tree! A Pantheist says that God is the tree!” We couldn’t possibly have two more distinctly opposite views of God.
Equating God with nature may sound nice. “It’s not that God made the forest, God is the forest! It’s not that God made the sunset, God is the sunset! It’s not that God made the weather, God is the weather. He’s the rain, the lighting, the thunder! And he’s the crystal clear water which pours over every smooth stone in the bonny brook.” Doesn’t that sound nice? It’s almost poetic!
Here’s the problem. When we say that God is everything, we must admit that everything is a pretty big word. Everything includes, well, everything! When somebody tells me that God is everything, I reply, “You mean, I’m God? You’re God? Is my wristwatch God? Am I wearing God on my wrist? When I eat a hamburger, am I eating God? When I have my morning coffee, am I drinking God? When I empty the wastebasket, am I tossing God in the trash can? If I hike through the woods and step in some horse manure, am I scraping God off of my shoe?”
By this time, of course, I hear, “Oh no! I don’t mean that all those things are God!”
“You don’t?”
“No!”
“I see. OK. Well, then, when you say that God is everything, what do you mean?”
And they will make the horrifying discovery that they had no idea what they meant. It just sounded good.
Here’s a common statement: “I believe in the teachings of Jesus but I don’t believe in organized religion.” Sound familiar? “If everyone lived a life like Jesus, the world would be a better place, of course, but all this nonsense about going to church, evangelizing, telling people to accept Christ, well I have a problem with that!
“What do you mean?” I always reply. “Do you mean you’ve studied the teachings of Jesus?” Nine out of ten times I can guarantee you that they don’t mean that. “Do you mean Jesus never taught anything about organizing in a church? Jesus didn’t command us to preach the gospel?”
The very things people complain about are the teachings of Jesus.! And yet they’re claiming to believe in His teachings.
Question Two: How do you know?
This question is similar to the first because it is also very simple. Here you are being a good journalist who asks questions, who will not print the story without verification.
I used to do campus ministry at UC Santa Barbara. They had one of the largest Religious Studies departments in the country when I was there. But the department was dominated with liberals. They taught tolerance for all religions but what that really meant was, “tolerance for any religion other than Christianity.” When a professor lectured on Buddhism, Islam, or Hinduism the class always heard the disclaimer, “Now we aren’t here to judge or critique. We are simply going study what this religion teaches.” But on the day Christianity was taught, the students heard about how the Bible has been rewritten over the years and how it is full of errors and contradictions. They also heard that the Bible was a racist book, a chauvinistic book, you name it.
When class sessions were over, some of the students were so pumped up, they just couldn’t wait to meet some stupid Christian and teach him a thing or two. Often times, they came by our Christian information table at the Student Union.
One day an eager young lady approached us fresh from her Religious Studies class. I’m not sure what it was called, “Blasphemy 301” or “Heresy 208,” something like that. Leaning over my table, she said emphatically, “It is an established fact…”
Now, before I continue, I should comment that usually when a person uses such enthusiastic words, I know I am not really about to hear a genuine fact. But I still heard her out. “It is an established fact, that Jesus never claimed to be God, never claimed to be the Son of God, and never claimed to be the Messiah. He was a member of the Essene community and he taught nothing different than what he learned from them.
Now, if you’ve never heard of the Essenes, they were a Jewish cult that did exist at the time of Jesus. Unhappy with the direction of Israel, they annexed themselves from the rest of the nation and started a kind of commune up in the mountains. We got the Dead Sea Scrolls from the Essenes. You’ve probably heard of them.
“How do you know Jesus was an Essene?” I asked.
“I just heard this from my religious studies professor,” she proudly answered. “That’s how I know!”
I think she was expecting this to end our conversation. I was supposed to fall out of my chair enamored by the wisdom of her professor. Instead I asked, “How does he know? How do you know that he knows?”
“Well the man has a Ph.D in Christian Studies, so I assume he knows what he’s talking about.”
“Your right. You are assuming. I could show you people who have Ph.D’s in Christian Studies, Textual Criticism, Archaeology, or Ancient History and they’ll tell you something quite different. Then how will you know who’s speaking the truth? In fact,” I went on to say, “I’ve studied this era of ancient history myself and I can guarantee you that there is no document that’s ever been discovered, from any archaeological dig that exists in any museum which says that Jesus was an Essene. If you know of such a document, I’d like you to tell me where it is. Because I’d like to take a look at it.”
Then the subject was changed. (a common tactic) “Well,” she said. “If you’re going to talk about history, we don’t even know that Jesus ever really lived at all.”
“Oh? Well if we don’t know that he lived at all, then how do you know for an established fact, that he was an Essene?”
On another day a student skeptic was really laying into me. “You Christians are so stupid! Always walking around with your little Bibles! Do you believe everything you read? Just because something’s written in a book, that doesn’t necessarily make it true! Step into the modern world! Besides, we know for a fact that the Genesis story is a myth!”
Here we go again. Another fact. “Oh we know that for a fact, do we? Tell me, how do you know for a fact that the Genesis story is a myth?”
He stopped. He smiled. He took off his back pack. He pulled out his science text book, opened it up, jammed his finger down on the page and said, “There you have it! In black and white?”
“Do you believe everything you read?” I asked. “Just because something’s written in a book, that doesn’t necessarily make it true.”
Once again, we see a statement working both ways.
Question Three: So What?
This is my favorite of the three questions but we need to be careful using it. We don’t want to get all snotty and curt with people by blurting out the phrase, “So what?” The idea is that somewhere in the conversation you may politely ask, “ So what is the point you are making?”
This is a fascinating question because frequently people will say something that in and of itself is true but has nothing to do with the argument. For example, one common objection to Christianity is the hypocrisy of organized religion. It’s a fair challenge. There has been a lot of hypocrisy but I might ask “So what does this have to do with Jesus? Did Jesus command the Crusades and the Inquisition? Was Jesus responsible for some of the tele-Evangelist scandals?”
Jesus hated religious hypocrisy and spoke out against it constantly. He even predicted that on judgment day, He personally, would send many who professed Christianity to hell!
Matt 7:21-23
21 “Not everyone who says to me, `Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, `Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, `I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’
These words were spoken early in Jesus’ ministry. Can you imagine some mere man trying to start a movement by preaching a discouraging thing like this? Obviously this was painful honesty and an accurate prediction: Hypocrisy in the name of Jesus actually fulfills the words of Jesus!
Ideologies get misrepresented all the time. Would we judge other beliefs by the same standard with which we judge Christianity?
“Is Abraham Lincoln responsible for the Watergate Conspiracy?” I often ask.
“No, of course not.”
“Well why not? Follow the logic. Abraham Lincoln and his associates created the Republican Party. Nixon was also a Republican. So Lincoln must be responsible for everything Nixon did.”
“Well Nixon lived a hundred years later.”
“And Jesus lived quite some time before the Crusades, the Inquisition, the tele-evangelist scandals etc.”
Conclusion:
There are many skills related to evangelism but I always like to start with these three questions because they are easy to learn and profound in their simplicity. It is time for Christians to wake up and realize that we are not the only ones who have to take the witness stand. The best way to interest somebody in your world view, is to challenge theirs. It can be done in a friendly manner and it can be extremely effective. We’re also promised that the Lord will be with us. (Matt 28:19-20) This should be encouraging and exciting. Take heart and fight the good fight!
Footnotes:
1) I first heard these questions organized as a threesome, when a group called Christian Research Associates spoke at the Campus Ambassadors Summer Institute in Denver, Colorado. Their clever presentation inspired my own personal study of Socrates and gave me the idea of illustrating my own seminars with personal conversations which utilized these questions.
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