Conversations with a Spiritist - Part I

Wow! During my last business trip my final connection home was held up in Denver due to flight delays. While I sat at the gate catching up on email an elderly lady sat down one chair away from me. We began to talk about the towns in Kansas we both were familiar with and about some of the places she has lived over the years. When she mentioned that her daughter sees the angel of death, I started paying more attention. Then she began talking about how she interacts with spirits and about the vast unseen spiritual world. It was then that I realized I had better shut off my computer and seriously engage this sweet little old lady about the truth.

It would take hours to unpack everything she talked about – things ranging from reincarnation to the lost city of Atlantis. There are a few main things that I focused on, however, and I would like to share them with you in this blog and in the next. First, I asked her how she knew if the spirits she communicates with are good. She admitted to the existence of evil spirits (which I will hereafter refer to as demons), but she was quite confident in her ability to discern between the two. Her means of discernment was based solely on how she felt inside. “You just know on the inside when something is true, when they are good spirits,” she said repeatedly. I challenged her on this subjective view of spiritual truth. I told her that Jesus Christ, as the risen Son of God, is the only one with the authority to speak on such matters. One should only rely on His objective teaching of spiritual truths instead of our personal subjective judgment. Since Satan masquerades as an angel of light, you cannot be sure if you truly are speaking to an angel or demon. Scripture alone contains the proper teaching on the spiritual world, and our limited, sin-influenced personal feelings can easily be deceived and manipulated by demons.

Another belief she had was that all religions serve the same god. This was a softball and an easy one to refute. I asked her why God would contradict Himself – why would He say Jesus is His Son and not His Son at the same time? Christianity (Jesus is God’s Son) and Islam (Jesus is not God’s Son) cannot both be true (this is the logical law of noncontradiction). This stumped her until she pulled out the “true for me, true for you” card. She promptly used a rose as an example – that she could believe it is a wonderful flower but I could hate it because I was allergic to it. Yes, I agreed that this was an illustration of the subjective quality of liking something, but regarding an objective truth such as color, could the rose be both red and yellow at the same time? The rose would either be red or not red – it could not be both, regardless of how much we each believed both to be true. This also seemed to stump her as well.

In my next blog I will share about her view of Christ and her response to the Gospel. I was reminded after this encounter that our command as Christians is not to win arguments but to win souls. There were a lot of things that I could have countered, but I tried to focus on such elemental beliefs as knowledge and truth during the short time we had together. Please pray for this dear old lady, that she would be delivered from Satan’s deception and be brought into the love and truth of Jesus Christ.

Sorry for the Silence

I want to apologize to you all for my long silence in this blog. Thank you to everyone who has spent their valuable time visiting this site -- I am humbled and I greatly appreciate your interest. I have been very busy with work lately, and consequently much of my free time has been spent with my wonderful wife. She is truly a God-send and I am very thankful that we have each other in this life. I love her very much!

I must confess that I grew somewhat discouraged knowing that not many people were reading this blog. The recent upsurge in views, however, has been refreshing and I am excited to share with you some things that have been on my mind. I would also like to answer any questions you may have regarding Christ, apologetics, or theology. I don't know it all by any means, but there are plenty of resources out there that we can find the answers together.

As always, to God be the glory. Until next time,
Chad

God's Work In My Life

There have been many times in my life when I have questioned God. The questions often arise during times of pain and suffering. Basically, I’m wondering “why?” During my most recent stroll through the valley of pain and despair, one question was posed to me that made me stop and think. The question was this – how has God worked in my life? I would like to share with you how I came to answer this question.

Now I am not a person who has ever had a vision or dream from God. Nor have I ever had a tangible miracle occur in my life. I have not had an impossible prayer answered in an extraordinary way that could only be explained by God’s intervention. So, to answer this question I first turned to other prayers that have been answered in one way or another. These entailed prayers and subsequent blessings of a wonderful wife and marriage, completing my graduate schooling, my wife and I getting our current jobs, etc. Such examples illustrated the indirect working of God in my life since my wife didn’t beam down out of heaven (although she is quite angelic), my diploma didn’t materialize on my office desk, and so on. To cite such instances as examples of God working in my life, however, requires a presuppositional view of God’s sovereignty in these matters. In other words, in order to cite my wonderful wife as evidence that God worked in my life I must first believe that God is sovereign over every area of my life and that He orchestrated our meeting and sustains our marriage.

I have to be honest and say that in the midst of my valley of pain such examples seemed very weak to me. Would these examples really mean anything to an unbeliever who doesn’t acknowledge God at all? A lot of unbelievers have good marriages, nice families, good jobs, etc. To them, it was their own ability that acquired these things. Why would it not be the same for me? After all, it could have been my good looks and charm that won my wife over; it could have been my own intelligence that earned the diploma; it could have been our successful careers that lead to our new jobs. Even though these are arrogant statements and do not represent what I believe, nevertheless they do have equal explanatory power. Or, perhaps my understanding of God’s sovereignty is mistaken. Maybe He doesn’t have any control over the events of my life, in which case the latter reason would explain all of what I was crediting to God.

After some more consideration, though, I was able to find one proof of God’s working in my life that could not also be explained by my own abilities. That evidence is my coming to faith in Jesus Christ. You see, in the midst of my valley I saw how rebellious towards God that I really could be. My flesh wanted nothing to do with God; I was willfully defiant and angry towards Him. There is nothing in my natural self that would or could seek after God. That experience reminded me that apart from His work in my heart by the Holy Spirit, there is no way at all that I would even want to love Christ. Romans 3 clearly outlines the depths of my rebellion prior to His grace. My wanting to follow God is the one thing that could not be equally explained by my own abilities. My coming to faith in Jesus Christ as my Savior is the one undeniable proof of God’s working in my life.

The job, the diploma, even my wonderful marriage are just transitory and earthly. There have been Christians who have lived and experienced absolutely none of these things, let alone any miracles. Yet, God still undeniably worked in their lives by changing their hearts, calling them out of their rebellion, and answering their cry for help. That is the one thing no person has the ability within themselves to do. And now I have a much greater appreciation to Christ for my salvation – the undeniable proof of God’s love for me and His activity in my life.

A Wrong View of Faith

During a recent business trip I had the opportunity to sit next to a real American hero on the airplane. She was one of the National Guard soldiers who were wounded at the Ft. Hood shootings in Texas a while ago. She was wearing a bracelet with the names of her fellow soldiers who died in the assault, and she herself was still recovering from being shot three times.

Our discussion eventually turned to religion. Among other things, she talked about her faith in God and about her conversion from Catholicism to a mainstream Protestant denomination, which will remain nameless at this time. She chose this denomination specifically because it did not dogmatically follow certain teachings of Scripture, but rather was “open to discussion” about those issues that were important to her. She described her denomination’s approach to doctrine with the following analogy – Faith can be pictured as the seat on a stool, which is supported by three legs – Scripture, Tradition, and Discussion. All three of these, she said, need to be weighed in deciding matters of theology. I challenged her on this, but as usual I didn’t think of the best questions to ask until after we parted. With your patience I would like to share this rebuttal with you now.

Building on her analogy of Faith as a stool, let’s visualize this analogy as being drawn on paper. One of the first things that is obvious is that the stool is not resting on anything. Rather, it is just floating in midair. Since we are not on a spaceship, this stool must be resting on something. What is it? What are the legs of Scripture, Tradition, and Discussion resting on? In other words, what is the underlying authority that judges the conflicting claims that may arise between these three?

It should be pretty clear by now that the floor on which this Faith analogy rests is Human Autonomy. In this model, each person is allowed to study the Scripture, Discuss it, and compare it with Tradition to determine theological truth. If I appeal to Scripture for a theological truth claim, then she could simply explain it away with Discussion to reach a view of God that appeals to her. I hope you can see the relativism that this model produces. There can be no definite “right” or “wrong” view of God since man is the ultimate authority in judging what is true about Him and what He has really said about Himself. Furthermore, if God has revealed something to man in Scripture, it can be trumped by Discussion and/or Tradition by the one who is autonomously judging the claim in question. You may recognize this as the original sin of man, where Adam wanted to be arbiter of good and evil instead of God.

Let’s contrast this with another analogy that represents Biblical Christianity. Faith is still represented as a stool, but its three legs are Tradition, Discussion, and Church Government (I just needed a third leg, so this sounded good!). The floor, then, is Scripture instead of Human Autonomy. In this model, all elements that constitute Faith are governed by the objective revelation of God in His Scripture. Scripture serves as the arbiter and judge in matters of dispute between the three legs, not human opinion. This is the only model that accurately reflects the God of Scripture who claims to be the objective authority in all matters relating to Himself.

I am still praying for that hero I met on the airplane. I am not questioning her faith, her relationship to God, or her sincere devotion to Him. Rather, I am questioning how she knows what she knows about Him, which is something we all must deal with. We could have debated the surface issues we disagreed about, but that would have been uproductive given her misunderstanding of Faith. Rather, we must dig deeper to find out why she believed what she believed, in hopes of showing her the problems inherent with her beliefs.

Presuppositions for All

A presupposition is an underlying assumption that influences a particular set of beliefs. Webster’s defines a presupposition as something that is supposed beforehand or that is required beforehand as a condition. Therefore, a presupposition is an assumption that is required before anything can be concluded. You’re probably asking, “what does this have to do with apologetics and Christianity?” Well, I’m glad you asked that! It has everything to do with it.

We all have presuppositions. They are starting points for everything we believe about the nature of God, the nature of reality, how we know what we know, and how we are to live our lives. You may not believe that you have such presuppositions – that you don’t “assume” anything, and that everything you believe can be carefully explained by something else. On the contrary, I challenge you to explain something you believe that does not first rely on a set of assumptions. For example, no scientific experiment can be done without a pre-existing set of conditions. Moreover, the scientific method, which governs the entire experiment, must be assumed beforehand to be true. What tests have been done to prove the scientific method? One must also assume the cause and effect nature of the universe to be true. Otherwise no experiment could be repeatable. One must also presuppose that the human senses are reliable in recording the experiment, and that the human mind is capable of using logic and reason to come to a conclusion based on the results. You see where I’m going with this…

Christians, atheists, and everyone else has fundamental presuppositions regarding the nature of God, nature of reality, how we know what we know, and how we are to live our lives. As Christians we must be aware of our presuppositions. First and foremost, we assert that God exists, and the record of His personal revelation of Himself to mankind is found in the Bible. The Bible, which is the Word of Christ, is self-validating and is the basis for knowledge, morality, and reality. We believe that knowledge begins with Jesus Christ, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossian 2:3). Any knowledge that does not presuppose the Word of Christ will ultimately end in confusion (Proverbs 1:7). For example, only Christianity can give solid grounding for trusting our senses, and for the use of reason and logic to evaluate propositions.

In terms of morality, only Christianity can account for the presence of universal and objective moral standards that all men know to be true in their heart of hearts. Therefore, the commandments of God, both explicit and implicit, are the absolute standards for human morality. Without this objectivity, morality crumbles under the shifting sand of relativism (who says, for example, that murder is wrong?). And finally, in terms of reality, Christianity affirms both the material and immaterial, the physical and non-physical. Therefore, Christianity accounts for the human conscience and for the innate questions about life after death. Christianity also accounts for the physical nature of the universe – its fine tuning to harbor life, the uniformity of nature (which is what allows for the repeatability of experiments), and the presence of fixed physical laws.

When one’s presuppositions do not begin with Jesus Christ and His Word, however, his own set of presuppositions will eventually contradict each other and be shown to be arbitrary in their grounding (an example of this is in my blog “Bad Religion?”). Only when he repents of his rebellion and turns to Jesus Christ for forgiveness will he be able then to coherently explain such things as reality, morality, and knowledge. How about you? Have you asked Jesus Christ to be your Lord? If not, I encourage you to do so. Please, accept God’s offer of peace and forgiveness through Jesus Christ. Otherwise, you will have to pay the penalty for sin yourself.

Bad Religion?

Recently my wife and I were enjoying lunch together at a nice sandwich shop when I saw a young man wearing a provocative T-shirt. It bore the words “Bad Religion” and had a red circle and hash over a cross. At first I was indignant at his overt slam on my Savior. After a little bit, though, I began to wonder about what he believed and why he believed it. It’s perfectly natural for people to rebel and hate Jesus Christ – I did up until He saved me and opened my eyes.

He left shortly afterwards with his friends, so I was unable to talk with him about his beliefs. If I had the opportunity, though, I would have liked to ask him a couple questions. If you would be so kind as to indulge me, I would like to share my questions with you now.

My first question would have been, “What standard of morality are you using to call Christianity ‘bad’?” For him to say that anything is “good” or “bad” implies that there are moral truths. There are things that we can all agree are evil – incest, murder, extortion, rape, etc. Christianity can call these things evil because God declares them to be. In other words, morality is grounded in the objective character of God. The atheist, however, has no such grounding. Atheists rely on subjective morals, i.e. “it’s OK for me but not for you” morality. For example, I would suspect that this young man would claim that sex outside of marriage is a subjective moral decision – it depends on what the person wants to believe. Would not his declaration of Christianity’s immorality be just as subjective? If his moral standard is true, he has no reason to be so vehement against Christianity because it is just a matter of personal taste.

So to conclude my first point, the young man explicitly believes in morality based on the wording on his shirt. If pressed, he would have to admit his moral standards are subjective and have no weight in a real world application.

Secondly, I would like to ask him, “Why is Christianity so bad?” He would probably cite such evils as the crusades, Salem witch trials, the Inquisitions, etc. (As a side note, these charges have to do with murder, which is declared as evil in Christianity. Notice how the atheist has to borrow from Christian morality to argue against it, since his moral standard would allow murder as a matter of personal taste.) This is a common charge against the validity of Christianity. If Christianity is false because of the evils that so-called Christians have committed, then atheism must also be false. Atheists such as Hitler, Stalin, Pol-Pot, and Mao Tse Tung have killed far more people than any so-called Christians have. Using this line of reasoning, then, atheism must also be false.

There is a second flaw to this argument, however, and it is a logical one. It is called the ad hominem fallacy, or an argument “against the man.” It is when someone attacks the person rather than rebutting the person’s argument. To say Christianity is false because Christians do bad things is an ad hominem fallacy. It does nothing to nullify the truth claims of Jesus Christ or the New Testament. On the contrary, Christians doing bad things is consistent with the New Testament, since much of the epistles are devoted to teaching and correcting Christians who have made choices that were inconsistent with their faith.

I wish I would have had (or made) the opportunity to visit with the young man who was so opposed to Christianity. I would have liked to question him on what he believes and why he believes it. Maybe he would not have responded the way I’ve postulated here. But, then again, maybe he would. If so, the truth claims of Christianity would stand firm against his weak arguments against it.

God is Not Fair

"God, you're not fair!"

This has been a common complaint from my lips at various times in my life. We all know bad things happen to "good" people, and often times good things happen to "bad" people. Funny how we always think of ourselves as good, never deserving of the misfortune that inevitably comes upon everyone at one time or another on this earth. This is where we as Christians may feel betrayed by God. "God", we may say, "I've obeyed you, sought you with all my heart, and want to glorify you with my life. Why am I dealing with [fill in the blank] while Jeff, who doesn't care about you at all, doesn't have any problems? You're not fair!"

One day while I was thinking about this statement, it dawned on me what I meant by God not being fair. I actually was accusing God of not being just. If God was just, he would see my righteous desires and reward them with the absence of troubles, whereas unbelieving Jeff would have to pay for his willful rebellion. Through this, though, God has taught me a valuable lesson about His justice and mercy.

I should not be so quick to call for God's justice. You see, it would have been perfectly just for God to send me straight to hell for my sins. God did not have to save me from His wrath - He would have been fair to let me suffer the due penalty for my rebellion. Thankfully, though, God also excercises mercy with His justice. He decided, out of love, to send His Son Jesus to pay the penalty for my sin, thereby satisfying God's justice while at the same time extending His mercy to me as an undeserving sinner. He chose to save me out of no merit of my own, but rather because of His sovereign decision.

So when I look upon the fortune of unbelievers and compare that to my misfortune, I have no right to say "I deserve [fill in the blank]!" In actuality, the only thing I truly deserve is the fire of hell. The earthly fortunes of unbelievers are only temporary; unless they repent, their good times will quickly be forgotten in hell. I find myself actually pitying the unbeliever who has no regard for God because of his good fortune in this life.

In conclusion, we should not be so quick to say God is not fair and call for His justice. We must remember what we truly deserve for our sins. No, God is not equal in how He apportions His blessings. The Bible says that He sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous (Matthew 5:45), implying that God does not withhold His blessings based upon how "good" somebody may try to be. But I should not complain about His unfairness, because if He wanted to be truly fair (and excercise His justice), I would have my ticket for hell in hand. Our misfortune as Christians in this life is only temporary, and it will be used by God to shape us into Christ's image (Romans 8:28-29), and our perseverance through the trials will result in greater reward in heaven.