[Note: This entry is written for Christians. Not that anyone else can't read it, but I'm not sure it will mean a whole lot outside of the Christian faith.]
In my
opinion, trying to "prove" Christianity through science is a
challenging endeavor that is not worth the effort. It's like visiting your neighbors to the east
of you by travelling west. Yes, you
might eventually get to your next door neighbor's house that way, but why?
Christian
apologetics, in my mind, should have the goal of showing that Christian beliefs are reasonable and logical within the new scientific findings of the day. This is extremely helpful and important for
Christians, because they need to know and be assured that their faith is on
solid ground. It can be useful in talking with those who do not believe, because a
major roadblock to belief can be the sense that Christianity is illogical and
primitive. But, in general, I just don't
see it being a great pathway to belief these days. There are shorter paths.
Let me
illustrate what I mean with an example. Specifically,
the effort to prove that God is the creator of the universe. There is a lot of apologetic work towards
fitting Christian belief into what science has discovered, or at least
theorizes, about the origin of the universe and the origin of life on this
planet. Or, alternatively, a lot of
apologetic work trying to expose the weaknesses of some of the scientific
theories. This is, in general, good and
valuable work, and worthwhile for Christians to engage in. But what is the goal? I feel like the (often unstated) goal is
this: to prove that science is wrong. In fact, it seems that the goal is to prove
science wrong to such a compelling extent that scientists will be drawn to
abandon their scientific beliefs and turn to Christianity. I believe that many Christians expect that
the arguments being mounted by Christian apologists are so air-tight that
everyone should become Christians based on the sheer force of these arguments alone. In my opinion, this is a misguided view
because: 1) the arguments aren't that convincing (i.e. there are always
counter-arguments to the counter-arguments), and 2) the arguments don't achieve
what we hope to achieve (e.g. convincing someone that the eye is too complex to
have evolved randomly is a long way from solus
Christus).
This does not mean that such apologetic work is a
waste of time. Far from it. But the focus should be on helping Christians
to see that their faith is reasonable and that they don't need to worry about
whether science has discovered some new thing that voids basic Christian
beliefs. It is important to show that
Christian faith is reasonable, as I have discussed elsewhere [here].
However, when
it comes to trying to help people who do not believe, I think Christians should
be more direct. To be a Christian means
to be a follower of Jesus Christ. It
means to believe that Jesus Christ existed and still exists today. It means to believe that Jesus Christ was God
and is still God today. It means to
believe that His death paid the penalty that was due from each one of us
personally. It means that we believe in
Jesus Christ so strongly that we commit to doing whatever He commands us to do. It's all about Jesus.
So, what's
the most direct way to Christian belief?
To meet Jesus in a personal and convincing way. That's as direct as it gets. How does that happen? Well, if you believe as I do, that Jesus is constantly seeking every person and trying to draw that person towards belief,
then the direct route is to try to remove whatever blinders there may be that
prevents[1]
Jesus from getting through to them. What
are the blinders that people have? When
it comes to the academic world, the biggest blinder, by far, is the complete
rejection of the miraculous. This is the
means by which God can communicate with the unbeliever (and believer too, for
that matter). Christian belief has, at
its very core, the miraculous resurrection of Jesus Christ. Without the miraculous, there is no
Christianity. Thus, when a person rejects
any possibility of the miraculous, there are no remaining options by which
Jesus can get their attention. Each
individual needs to experience Jesus in some personal way. If their eyes are shut to His work and their
ears are closed to His voice, then our only avenue to help them believe is
this: try to get them to open their eyes
and ears! Everything else is just wasted
effort.
It is true
that sometimes a big roadblock for belief in Christianity is the general idea
that Christian belief is illogical and/or primitive and that science has shown
that Christianity is demonstrably false.
This roadblock should be addressed, but only addressed with the
following goal: to show that Christian beliefs
are rational and could be true. We don't need to show that they are, in fact, true. Once you personally encounter Jesus and
realize that He really is alive and really is God, everything else will come
into focus and become clear.
Why not take the direct route? See Jesus at work. Hear
Jesus. To try to take the route that
passes through the path of: "you
can't rule out a God" to "there must be a God" to "God is
the creator" to "the Bible is true" to "Jesus was a real
person" to....it just seems to me to be a really really long road to take
when Jesus is already standing right next to the person and trying to get his
or her attention!
[1] I
know it seems weird to suggest that human beings can prevent God from
interacting with them (isn't God all-powerful?), but God chooses to allow
people to persist in their unbelief if that is what they choose. He doesn't force belief.
No comments:
Post a Comment