What Is Apologetics?

In my coming six-session Apologetics class (live at Redeemer, and zoomed online) I will:

1. Talk about what the Bible teaches (Christian doctrine). 

2.  Talk about how to defend what the Bible teaches (Christian apologetics).

$10 for six 90 minute sessions.

Register HERE.

The Constant Blamer Is the Perpetual Victim

 

(Sleeping Bear Dunes, Michigan)

(I'm re-posting this to keep it in play.)

Linda and I strongly recommend John Townsend's book The Entitlement Cure: Finding Success in Doing Hard Things the Right Way.

One of the bitter fruits of entitlement is externalization. Townsend writes: "People with an attitude of entitlement often project the responsibility of their choices on the outside, not the inside. The fault lies with other people, circumstances, or events. They blame others for every problem." (p. 61)

The worship songs of externalization are...

"It's Them, It's Them, It's Them O Lord, Standin' in the Need of Prayer," and...

"Change Their Hearts, O God." 

Externalization-people fail to look at their part in their problems. "Instead, they default to answers outside their skin. The result? They tend to be powerless and unhappy. They tend to see life through the eyes of a victim. And their suffering is unproductive — it doesn’t get them anywhere." (Ib.)

The classic victim mentality is:

"Yes, I did what was wrong. But you forced me to do it." This is a testimony to human character weakness. The characterless "victim" persists in recruiting other characterless people for the self-justification of evil. They engage in perpetual destruction of others, not to mention their own soul.

"Blame," writes Townsend, "is a first cousin to entitlement." 

The constant blamer is the perpetual victim. The antidote to this bondage is to reject forces outside yourself and take responsibility for your own choices and attitudes. Be open to seeing yourself as the problem. Reject a global victimization that views yourself as someone who is always being "done to," and own your own part in your problems. 

Forgive those who have trespassed on your heart. Take responsibility for your own trespassing.

Five Peacemaking Principles

 

                        (Linda and I bought these two coffee mugs on our honeymoon 50 years ago.)

I have been in many discussions about peacemaking and relationship reconciliation. And, Linda and I have been in plenty of (52 years together in ministry!) situations where we have been asked to help people come together. 

Here are five Peacemaking Principles we do our best to operate by.

1. We love all involved in the conflict.

2. We never take sides. We are for the relationship.

3. We focus on behaviors. We don't psychologize or mind-read.

4. We don't take counsel from the counselees. We present the way towards peace and reconciliation, as best we can.

5. If someone objects to these principles, then we are not their counselors. (It has happened.)

Note: I often refer people to James Van Yperen's excellent Making Peace: A Guide to Overcoming Church Conflict.

MY APOLOGETICS CLASS - Join me this fall!

 

Join Me This Fall in Renewal School of Ministry

 

Go Deeper...Go Higher

To grow your roots deep and increase your knowledge of the Lord and His Kingdom know what you believe and why. It's time to go deeper and higher. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Register today!

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT RSOM

FALL TERM SEPT. 17 - Oct. 26, 2023 Classes run on Sun, Mon, Tues, Thurs evenings: 8 PM ET, 7 PM CT, 6 PM MT, 5 PM PT. Course descriptions can be found HERE.    1.   Prayer - Pastor Ross Lieuallen     Sunday night @ 8 PM ET starting September 17, 2023 2.  Apologetics - Dr. John Piippo    Monday night @ 8 PM ET starting September 18, 2023 3.  The Study of Jonah - Pastor Billy Ford    Tuesday night @ 8 PM ET starting September 19, 2023 4.  Properly Interpreting Scripture - Dr. Clayton Ford    Thursday night @ 8 PM ET starting September 21, 2023 2-Hour Saturday Seminar -  Saturday October 21, 2023 Examining Trends in the Charismatic Movement - Dr. Clayton Ford 8am to 10am (PT), 9am to 11am (MT), 10am to noon (CT), 11am to 1pm (ET)  TO REGISTER

Laying Personal Eminence Aside

(Monroe County)

The apostle Paul was short, bald, and according to Tertullian, had a large nose. He was, by his own admission, a lousy speaker. Sometimes people died while Paul spoke. (See here.)

In spite of this, God used Paul to revolutionize Asia Minor, the effects of which spread and are still felt today. 

I find this encouraging. God can capture and wield a willing heart, even when (or maybe especially when?) there is minimal physical attractiveness and little intrinsic ability.

Truth be told, our physical appearance and natural abilities are not up to the task. While it is true that, as Richard Lovelace said, a "Spirit-baptized intellect" is powerful, none of our relatively ignorant intellects are up to the God-sized tasks every Jesus-follower is called to do. (See Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life) 

One example of this is D.L. Moody. Dallas Willard writes:

"Moody was a constant source of wonder precisely because the effects of his ministry were so totally incommensurable, even incongruent, with his obvious personal qualities. He was a man of very ordinary appearance, unordained by any ecclesiastical group and quite uncultured and uneducated—even uncouth and crude to many.

At the height of Moody’s effectiveness, between 1874 and 1875, Dr. R. W. Dale, one of the leading nonconformist clergymen in England, observed Moody’s work in Birmingham for three or four days. He wanted to discover the secret of Moody’s power. After his observations were completed, he told Moody that the work was most plainly the work of God, for he could see no relation between Moody personally and what he was accomplishing. A smaller person might have been offended at this, but Moody only laughed and replied that he would be very sorry if things were otherwise." (Willard, Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God, pp. 65-66).

Both Paul and D.L. Moody viewed their personal unimpressiveness as evidence that it must be God working through them. 

Two Relationship Lies

Holland State Park, Michigan

The idea that every person has a "soul mate" who they must find is rooted in two relationship lies. Which are: 

1. I need this person to be complete.

2. If this person needs me, I'll be complete.

- From Real Relationships, by Les and Leslie Parrott.

The Parrott's write: "If you try to find intimacy with another person before achieving a sense of identity on your own, all your relationships become an attempt to complete yourself." (Ib.) That is bad news for your soul mate, which they will eventually discover as their ship crashes on the shores of your incompleteness.

"It is only when we no longer compulsively need someone that we can have a real relationship with them."
- Anthony Storr, in Ib.

Sean McDowell Interviews Colby Martin

Linda and I listened to Sean McDowell interview Colby Martin (the "unclobber" guy).

See if you can make any sense of Martin.

A note: I find Martin's dismissal of the importance of what we believe to be absurd and self-contradictory. McDowell gently tries to get Martin to comprehend this.

Bizarre Progressive Biblical Interpretation

 

(Rain on our driveway)

I am posting this, from my book, for two friends.

Remember that one of progressive Christianity’s beliefs is that beliefs are really not that important. A belief is a statement that is either true or false. Such as, It is raining where I live. (Happens to be true!) Or, Hail the size of watermelons is falling where I live. (Happens to be false!)

Every statement houses a belief. Did Jesus have beliefs? Yes. Did Jesus think beliefs are important? Of course. To many progressive Christians, what we believe about Jesus is not what counts. Indeed, to the progressive Christian, Jesus is someone we know very little about.

Remember how, in the last chapter, Colby Martin seemed mostly incapable of saying anything about God? Apply this now to Jesus. This is postmodern skepticism enthroned in progressive Christianity.

Jesus, on the other hand, made all kinds of belief-statements about himself, about his disciples, about the Pharisees, about morality (see Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of Jesus), and about me and you. Progressive Christians seem interested in Jesus, even though they are skeptical about having beliefs about Jesus. And yet, Jesus has beliefs about himself. Look at what Jesus is up to, in Matthew 16:13-16, when he asks Peter an identity question, a credal question. About himself!

13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” 

14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 

15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” 

16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” 

17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. 

It sure looks like Peter got it right. But not so, says Colby Martin. Here is Martin's postmodern interpretation of what he thinks is really going on here. Note that Martin believes he has the correct belief about this passage, which is a progressivist no-no. He claims that Jesus did not tell Peter that he answered correctly. That, says Martin, wasn't the point of Jesus' question. If that wasn't the point, what was it? Martin writes,  "Upon hearing Peter’s belief that Jesus was the Christ, Jesus said, “Happy are you . . . because no human has shown this to you.”" According to Martin Jesus wasn't looking for orthodoxical accuracy. Instead, Jesus is thrilled that Peter came up with his answer on his own. (See The Shift, pp. 66-67).   

Jesus didn’t affirm that Peter got the answer right? There are two "Yeses" here. Yes, Peter got the answer right. Yes, Jesus affirmed this.   No human has told Peter the correct answer? That’s true. 

Peter said, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!" Correct. But, according to Martin, that's not the point. Martin believes Jesus doesn't care if Peter is correct or not. Martin claims all that Jesus cared about is this: "Peter! You arrived at this conclusion on your own! The conviction in your heart - that came from inside you! Yay! You be you!" 

But what about the line in the text that says, "my Father in heaven" has revealed this to Peter? Martin writes: 

"When Jesus says, “my Father who is in heaven has shown you,” he’s naming that the conviction in Peter’s heart and mind—that Jesus was the Christ—came from within him.""  [To begin to make some sense of Martin's objective claim, see below.**]

Yikes.  

No, he’s not. The correct answer Peter gave about who Jesus is came from outside of him. Martin is saying that this conviction of Peter's didn't really come from the Father, who is in heaven? Wow. Now I am thinking of New Age theologies, where Jesus becomes an ever-evolving Rohrshach test. One wonders if even God got it right at Jesus' baptism,  when God said, “This is my beloved Son.” That’s a belief God has, right? That’s an identity statement, worthy of being carved into a creed.  Martin gives us a postmodern Jesus, a “whatever-you-want-Jesus-to-be Christology.” Look at how he concludes his chapter on "Who Is Jesus?" 

"In seeing the full humanity in Jesus, we wake up to the full humanity in us. Fully loved by God, just like Jesus.  

“Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks.

We reply, “You are the human one, the loved child of God.”  

Jesus smiles and says, “And so are you. How great is that?”” 

Welcome to Room B. There is so much bad Christological reasoning going on here that it’s hard to know where to begin. I could never identify with progressive Christianity if Martin is representative of it. I cannot help thinking of an imaginary dialogue that goes like this. 

Jesus: "Who do you say that I am? Remember, you don't have to get this right. All that counts is that it comes from you." 

Me: "You are a waffle chicken sandwich." 

Jesus: "And so are you. How great is that?" (“How authentic!”) 

Can we know who Jesus is? We can. Imagine how weird it would be to say, “I don’t really know who Jesus is, but I am one of his followers.” Can we ask the question, Who is Jesus? Yes, of course, we can.

Piippo, John. Deconstructing Progressive Christianity (pp. 92-95). Kindle Edition.

**  

Martin claims that God does not "exist," but instead "insists." God is an insisting force that calls people to action. God is this strange "force," but is not some object  external to us who relate to God as subjects. (See Martin, The Shift, p. 48).

And Jesus? Martin writes: "Jesus desired that people trust him, more so than trust in him." (The Shift, pp. 57-58) Note how and why Martin devalues trusting "in him." It's because the postmodern idea is that we cannot really know objective reality, to include who Jesus is. And if we cannot know who Jesus is, then it's not important to trust in this unknown figure.

Martin here confesses his indebtedness to the philosophical theologian Paul Tillich. 

Martin: “God does not exist in the sense that God is an object, separate from you and me. God is that which insists humanity show up for justice and mercy...  To speak of God as Event is to say that God is what happens when grace emerges.” (Ib., p. 49)

Piippo, John. Deconstructing Progressive Christianity (pp. 80-81). Kindle Edition. 

To Martin, a la Tillich, God is not some independently existing object outside of us. In famous Tillichian fashion, God is "Ground of Being."

If there is no God outside us who addresses us as subjects, then God as some external "Father in heaven" did not reveal this to Peter. Which is, as is Tillich's God as Ground of Being, heretical. Because profoundly unbiblical.

For more detail see chapters six and seven of my Deconstructing book.

The Gospel (No Distracting Theatrics Needed)

 

                                                  (Our son Josh with granddaughter Harper)

This coming Sunday morning (8/20/23), at Redeemer, I'll preach on the story of Peter and Cornelius, out of Acts chapter 10.

Near the end of this chapter Peter is in the home of the Roman soldier Cornelius. Peter is sharing the gospel with Cornelius and his family and friends.

Note that Peter is just stating the orthodox truths, unaccompanied by stage lights, fog machines, donuts - no theatrics involved, or needed. Because...  look what happens in Acts 10:44.

Here it is, from Acts 10.

THE GOSPEL 

• God preached the good news of peace through Jesus Christ. 
  
• Jesus Christ is Lord of all. 
• God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power.
• Jesus did good and healed all who were oppressed by the devil. 
• Jesus was killed by being hung on a cross.
• God raised Jesus from the dead on the third day, and caused him to be seen by many.
• God commanded us to testify that Jesus is ordained by God to be the judge of the living and the dead.be the judge of  
• Jesus is ordained by God to be the judge of the living and the dead. 
• Everyone who believes in Jesus receives forgiveness of sins. 

And then...  (Acts 10:44)...  While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message.

Freeing Pastors from the Culture of Personality

 

                                                                      (Lake Erie, Monroe, MI)

We speak as those approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. 

We are not trying to please people but God, who tests our hearts.

1 Thessalonians 2:4 

In this Age of Entertainment, pastors have a lot to prove, and pressure to perform. These needs came into being in a great cultural shift. Susan Cain describes this in her excellent book Quiet.

"America had shifted from what the influential cultural historian Warren Susman called a Culture of Character to a Culture of Personality—and opened up a Pandora’s Box of personal anxieties from which we would never quite recover. 

In the Culture of Character, the ideal self was serious, disciplined, and honorable. What counted was not so much the impression one made in public as how one behaved in private. The word personality didn’t exist in English until the eighteenth century, and the idea of “having a good personality” was not widespread until the twentieth. 

But when they embraced the Culture of Personality, Americans started to focus on how others perceived them. They became captivated by people who were bold and entertaining. “The social role demanded of all in the new Culture of Personality was that of a performer,” Susman famously wrote. “Every American was to become a performing self.”"  (Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (p. 21). 

Pastors: You have nothing to prove, and no one to impress. May I now free you from this?