October 14, 2025 • 31 mins
In this special live Q&A edition of Faith Under Fire: Responding to Today’s Toughest Objections, host Jon Delger, the Executive Pastor of the Peace Family of Churches, tackles real questions from our class audience about some of the most challenging issues facing the Christian faith today. Join us as we discuss the Bible’s moral authority, evolution and creation, and the inerrancy of Scripture. This honest, gospel-centered conversation invites believers to think deeply, engage graciously, and stand confidently on the truth of God’s Word.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:08):
Hey, welcome to a special episode if that's a good
question. Today we're going to get to hear
a live question and answer session that we had at the end
of a class that I got to teach recently called Faith Under
Fire, tackling today's toughest objections to Christianity.
We received some excellent questions from that class.
Great chance to get to learn andgrow in our ability to defend
(00:28):
the faith. All right, John, you want the
hard stuff, One of these that came in tonight as you're
teaching is that what was the question?
Can there be morality without God?
(00:49):
Great question. Yeah, kind of 2 answers #1 I
think the short answer is no, that there's really not a
foundation for morality without God, right?
Where are you going to get that from it?
Where are you going to get that answer to what's right and
what's wrong without a law giver, without a designer,
without some kind of objective standard, right?
(01:09):
People have tried this throughout the years, tried to
say, well, you know, it's, it's what I think or what's, what you
think. Or people try to, to transcend
that and say, well, it's whatever's best for humanity.
But over the course of human history, we have not agreed on
what's best for humanity. Once Upon a time, not to use a,
a, a stereotypical story, but Once Upon a time, there was a
guy named Hitler who thought that it was best for humanity to
(01:32):
eliminate one type of people in the world.
It turns out the rest of us think that that was not so good,
right? If you just leave, it's a
majority vote. It doesn't work so well.
So the SO1 short answer is to say, can there be morality
without God? No, because we don't have any
kind of objective standard. But what I also want to quickly
say is that the Bible tells us that the law is also written on
every human heart. So if you're if you're asking
(01:53):
the question, can non Christianshave morality, the answer is
yes, because whether they know it or not, God has inscribed on
their heart some sense of right and wrong.
Yes, we're sinful human beings and so it gets warped.
We can ignore it. And yet every human being has
some sort of sense of good and evil of right and wrong.
(02:13):
They don't even, they don't always acknowledge where it's
really coming from, but it's butit's there.
Thank you. 2 questions were verysimilar here, one said is
Christian culture superior to others?
And this other one just asked are some cultures superior to
others? How would you answer that
question? I thought that's a hot question
(02:37):
in our in our moment right now. And I know that people aren't,
some people aren't going to appreciate the answer that I
have for this, but I think I think it's objectively true that
some cultures are better than other cultures.
Now notice that I did not say, Idid not say ethnicity or race or
anything like that. I'm saying I'm saying culture.
That's what the question was. It was about cultures.
(02:57):
Are some cultures better than other cultures?
Let me just ask a question if you've worked at multiple
workplaces, one of the things that's very popular to talk
about in workplace world is you know that to to cry out and say
the culture in my workplace is toxic or bad or things like
that. Right there.
You're telling me that that we can say that some cultures are
better than other cultures. We can talk about the culture of
(03:19):
a workplace, we can talk about the culture of a church.
We can talk about the culture ofa town or of a whole nation.
But what you're telling me is that some cultures are better
than other ones. That whole conversation.
OK, so just to broaden it out beyond workplaces to nations, it
doesn't change the equation. There are some.
Some cultures are objectively better, healthier, more close to
God's design, have some strengths instead of weaknesses,
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are better for the flourishing of humanity than other ones.
Again, that's not a statement about about the ethnicity of
that people of group of people or anything like that.
That's that's the statement of aevery group of people that
gathers has a certain has a culture.
OK. So whatever size that culture
is, we I think we can compare them to each other and say that
some are better than others. Great.
(04:04):
There was a follow up on the stats shared about communism
deaths versus deaths caused by Christian wars that was asked a
couple times. And so the question was, did
your statistics include deaths that come from things like
starvation? Isn't that apples and oranges
(04:25):
comparing it to the Crusades? Interesting question.
It did include deaths by starvation and things like that.
And I think the reason for that is because that's a result of
that worldview that the leadership of a guy like Mao in
China, it included killing of people who dissented to his his
view and to his leadership, but it also included results of his
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policies led to people starving and dying.
So I think it's fair to talk about those as deaths.
But I understand the, the question of are those exact
apples to apples? I think that's, that's fair.
I, I get what you're saying. There's a difference there, but
I don't have the data in front of me.
But I think when you think about65 million people dying in China
under Mao compared to between 1 and 3 million in the Crusades,
(05:10):
we're still talking about a large, a large difference there
between those two data points. So, but I also just want to say
I again, I'm not trying to minimize the vadnais of what
happened in the Crusades. I'm not trying to minimize that.
But I think the point stands that deaths in the most secular
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century of the 20th century are still far greater than some of
the deaths caused by these religious wars.
But again, even as I say that the comparison stuff, I'm not
trying to minimize those deaths.Yeah, lots of questions coming
in around the theme of Satan. I'll read one of them here.
Why did God, let's say in a higher being with more knowledge
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than humans, come to earth, deceive Eve and destroy his
beautiful creation? It's a great question.
My kids ask me that question. Sometimes that's that's tough.
Even young kids think of that one.
Well, the Bible doesn't give us a clear, specific answer.
And you know, and say this is exactly why I let Satan come
into the garden and deceive people.
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It doesn't say that, but it gives us other stories that talk
about God working through evil in order to bring about a good
result. So I think what we rest on is
that, yes, God knew that Satan was going to do what he was
going to do. Yes, God could have prevented
it. And this is this hard to
swallow, but I think we have to accept that somehow God knew
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that this would actually lead tothe better result.
Again, that's hard to swallow. I'm not, I'm not saying that's
easy. And there's, there's so much
more we can talk about about that.
But I think that's, that's what we see in the Bible is that we
look at God's character, we lookat his power, we say he's good.
He was totally in control. He let this happen.
(06:58):
And he must have done that because he knew that there was a
greater good that would result. Thanks.
Here's a good one based on I think, your previous answer
there. What is the best thing to say
when you're being asked a question about Christianity that
you don't know the answer to? That's a great question.
I say this, I, I, you just say, I don't know, but I'd love to
(07:24):
find out. Give me a couple of days.
I'll study it. I'll get back to you.
That's an answer that I give to people.
Sometimes somebody asks you a question.
If you're stumped, you just say,you know what?
That's a great question. Let me do some research.
Let me go to my Bible. Let me maybe ask my pastor.
Let me think about that and I'llget back to you.
I think that's totally fair, right?
(07:45):
We can't be expected to carry around every answer in our heads
to every hard question. There's nothing wrong with
admitting that. You could even say, let's look
into it together. There you go.
I like that. Find out if they really want to
know the answer. Yeah, you say.
Why don't you do some research and I'll do some research and
we'll get back together, Yeah. Great.
There. There's a lot of questions
(08:06):
around the topic of homosexuality.
A couple of these I think you answered and the that are along
the lines of why is it seem to be talked about more?
A very practical one came in with the church's position on
homosexuality. Would you encourage a Christian
to go to a wedding that was a gay couple, or would you
(08:29):
encourage them to decline? Yeah, it's a very practical
question. I'm sure people in the room will
probably face that. No, I would not encourage you to
go to a homosexual wedding. One of the practical things that
I've said to people before is I would encourage you to instead,
you know, I don't know what relationship this, you know,
there's a friend or a family member or whatever, whatever
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level it is. But I think a great step would
be to let them know that you love them and let them know
lovingly why you won't be attending.
A letter or an e-mail or something like that can be a
great way to do that, to say, hey, friend, I love you and I
care about you a lot. And I think the Bible is quite
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clear that what you're doing is not what's best for you.
I can't come and celebrate that with you.
But I want you to know that I care about you and that even
after this wedding ceremony, I'dlove to talk with you some more.
I'd love to still spend time together.
We're still friends. I just can't celebrate this
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because I don't believe this is what is best for you.
I think sharing that, that love and truth is a great way to
respond. But I think our presence at a
wedding like that, I think that,I mean, even just in the, that's
the symbolism of a wedding, right?
As a pastor, when I conduct weddings, I say to people, hey,
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all of us gathered in the room here, we're as friends and
family, We're here to support this union.
We're here to encourage them. We're here to bear witness to
this. We're here to celebrate this.
So if you're going to be in the room, you've got to be able to
affirm those things. And as Christians, we can't
affirm those things. All right, this question came in
Should only Christians serve in the government?
(10:15):
What is your opinion? On that Christians, no, I would
not say that's that's the case. I would not say that only
Christians can serve in government.
So the Bible gives, tells us that even whether it's
Christians in leadership or not,passages like Romans 13 tell us
that government, civil government has legitimacy, that
God has ordained government to be in place in the world, not
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just Christian government, but government in general.
And so government is a legitimate enterprise.
It doesn't have to be just led by Christians.
Now, as Christians, I think we should be quick to say, I think
it'd be best when Christians endup in leadership, not because
they're gonna, you know, legislate that everybody has to
become a Christian. That's, that's not it at all.
But instead, because we believe that Christians, they've got the
Bible, they're connected to the Lord, and so they ought to,
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they'll bring about the wisest and the best policies for all of
humanity. So I think we should want that.
And yet, no, I think looking at Scripture, the Bible does not
say to the Roman Empire, you're not a legitimate government
because you're not led by Christians.
You know, the Apostle Paul in Romans 13 is writing in the
midst of a of a Roman governmentthat is very opposed to the
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Christian faith. And still, and he's still saying
that this is legitimate, that Christians should submit to it,
those kind of things. So yes, we would love for
Christians to be in leadership again, not because they're going
to force the Christian religion on people, because they're going
to legislate according to God's good design.
But no, that doesn't have to be.That's not the only people that
God calls us to submit to. All right, here's one from the
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last session that we didn't get to.
How do you explain people livinghundreds of years in the Old
Testament? Did they age slowly or was time
measured differently? They just got really old.
No, I think, you know, so just thinking about it from so Adam
(12:02):
was 930 years old when he died. I mean, that's incredible.
Just, you know, just to try to even wrap our minds around that.
No, I don't think time was measured differently or anything
like that. I think, you know, just at that
point in history, the human bodywas was able to last that long.
You know, you think about the consequences of the fall in
Genesis 3, right? When the fall happened,
Scripture tells us that not just, you know, it wasn't just
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spiritual death. There was physical things that
happened. You know, prior to the fall,
Adam didn't have to toil againstweeds and stuff like that in the
garden, right? The world actually got affected,
the material world, the molecules and that, you know,
these things were affected by the fall.
And so it makes sense, I think that following from Genesis 3
that the life expectancy of human beings would go down.
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The effects of the fall caused that to come about.
Also, from the previous sessions, do you believe that
Christians can believe in evolution?
So I'm always hesitant to answerit when it's phrased quite like
that. I want to be abundantly clear
about my position on this. But I, I think sometimes people
try to trick us into saying, youknow, they're asking me to say
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that if you believe in evolution, then you're not a
Christian, that that's not what I'm out to say.
But what I do want to say is that, no, I don't think that
evolution in the Bible are compatible.
I, I don't. So again, saying if, if you're,
if you're somebody who's saying,well, I, I love Jesus and I
believe the Bible, but evolutionmakes sense to me.
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I'm not saying that you've lost your salvation because you hold
that belief. That's not what I'm saying.
But I'm saying that I think thatyou're holding a belief that is
not the best reading of Scripture, that's not compatible
with Scripture. And actually I, as I argued in
session 1, I don't think it's the best reading even of of the
scientific data, but yeah, so, so I think the question maybe
that's being asked is, you know,does the Bible support
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evolution? Can evolution fit in with the
Bible? And my answer is no.
We walked through some of those reasons in session one.
I would add to that a few theological reasons.
One would be that evolution requires death to happen before
the fall of Adam and Eve. OK, the Bible tells us that
everything was good and perfect prior to Genesis chapter 3.
Evolution is built on the idea that death is happening and
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that's how things are evolving and and coming about and so that
those two things don't align. I would add that evolution means
that human beings didn't come from just Adam and Eve, which
the Bible tells us they did. I would look even to an
important New Testament passage,Romans chapter 5, that tells us
that in Adam all of us died and in the same way in Christ, those
who put our faith in him can receive life.
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And so actually we've got a major problem for how sin comes
about and how salvation comes about if we don't believe in a
historical true single individual named Adam from which
the whole human race came. So I think it's session when we
talked about some of the scientific issues there.
I think there's there's in addition to that, there's some
biblical and theological issues as to why that doesn't make
sense and hold up. Thank you.
(14:59):
All right, here's another tough one.
How do we answer the question ofcivilizations that have lived
and died apart from communication of the gospel?
Is there eternal fate sealed, ordo you think God revealed
himself to them in a way that would allow for salvation?
Yeah, that's an incredibly, I think it's a painful topic to
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consider and yet I think Scripture is very clear on it.
Romans one tells us that all of us should know that God has made
himself clear enough. Now, not every civilization has
had the gospel preached to them throughout history.
Not every civilization has had access to the Bible.
But Romans one tells us that Godhas made in creation, he's made
himself clear enough to human beings that people should be
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looking for him. The Bible tells us that human
beings are accountable for theirsin.
So the way that the question is often posed to me is, what about
the poor innocent person out there and a faraway place that's
never heard the gospel? What we have to understand is
that there's no such thing as aninnocent person.
All of us are born into sin because all of us came from
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Adam. And even during our lives, we we
add to that sin, we sin ourselves.
And so yes, it's hard to swallow.
There are people out there who haven't heard the gospel, and
yet the Bible tells us they're accountable for their sin, which
is why we believe that we need to send missionaries to the end
of the earth with the gospel. It's why we don't say, well,
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hey, you know what? Those people over there, we'll
just leave them alone because they're fine on their own.
We don't believe that. We believe we need to send
missionaries there so they can hear the gospel and receive
salvation. So I know, again, that's hard to
swallow, and yet I think the Bible is quite clear on it
again, that justice is demanded for sin, that all human beings
are sinners. That's why we need to bring the
gospel to people. Here's another timely one that's
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very practical. When we recognize that tolerance
does not equal affirmation, whatdoes that look like with a
transgender person? Do you acknowledge them by their
new pronouns, or do you allow division by not acknowledging
them the way they want to be addressed?
Yeah, so as Christians, we want to communicate the truth in
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love. We want to uphold both of those
things. We can't compromise on either of
those things. The transgender phenomenon is an
incredibly sad phenomenon in ourworld.
It does incredible damage. The longer it goes on, the more
data collects about how damagingthis thing is to to people that
go through it, especially the incredible number of young
people that go through that. But as Christians, we affirm
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that God created man and woman. There's there's two genders and
that were born into one of thosegenders.
That's what we're created as. And so when somebody tells if
somebody was, you know, born as a, as a male and they're trying
to tell me now that they're a female, what we're talking about
is it's not reality. We're talking about a deception.
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They, they are self deceived andthat's super sad.
The most loving thing we can do though, is not to join them in
that false reality. It's to lovingly and kindly try
to bring them back to the truth.So no, I would say as Christians
that we shouldn't embrace the deception, the delusion.
We should try to call them back to the truth, but of course, do
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so lovingly. There's people out there, of
course, who just spew hate towards those people, might call
them stupid or, or whatever theymight say about them.
That's that's not helpful. But also compromising and
embracing a false reality is also not helpful.
Truth and love, it's a hard lineto walk.
And yet we got to do both of those things.
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Question came in about how we got our Canon of scripture.
The Bible said wasn't it put together in the first form not
until the three hundreds? How do we know the official
Canon wasn't influenced by theological or governmental
rule? Great question.
Yeah, so, so that's something people will often bring up, that
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while the Bible didn't come out till 300 AD, wasn't there a lot
of changes between then and now?I think an important thing to
realize is that the Canon wasn'tdetermined in the three
hundreds. It was recognized.
So the reason that in the three hundreds and 393, the Council of
Hippo and 397 the Council of Carthage, the reason those guys
are embracing the Canon as we have it now, the 66 books of the
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Old Testament and New Testament,is because they're saying this
is what's already been recognized for the last three
centuries. And now we're just writing it
down and affirming it. They're not saying here's a
whole bunch of books and we're going to pick them.
You know, in the late 3 hundreds, they're saying this is
what the Christian Church has been doing.
We're going to, we're going to affirm that and write that down
now. So that's an important thing to
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realize when we talk about some of the apocryphal books from the
Old Testament, what we're talking about is the difference
between the Jewish Canon and some books that that were
written and that people such as Catholics would affirm that were
written in the 400 year period known as the intertestamental
period. So the Old Testament is closed
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400 years prior to the birth of Christ.
The Jews affirm this is this is this is not just Christianity
that says this is Orthodox Judaism that said this.
So what we're doing in the Old Testament by excluding books
like Enoch and other intertestamental apocryphal
books is we're just affirming the Bible that Jesus had the
Bible that Paul had the Bible ofthe New Testament writers had
these guys knew that these bookswere not considered part of
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Scripture, part of the Canon. So we're just, you know, the cry
of the Reformation was adfontez back to the sources, back to the
originals. And so we're saying these books
that were written later that even the Jews said we're not
part of the Bible. We're just going back to the
original Bible. So that's the Old Testament part
of it, the New Testament part ofit.
The the Canon is being formed very early on.
You've even got writings, you know, about Paul being affirmed
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as Scripture in the New Testament.
You've got Peter quoting Luke inthe New Testament.
OK, so you've got these guys already before they die, before
the the apostles are dead, they're already recognizing that
these writings are Scripture. We've got the testament of guys
like Tertullian and Irenaeus anddifferent writers between 100AD
and 300AD affirming these thingsbefore we have it finally
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written down by a council in 393and 397.
So important to realize that these guys didn't just sit down
and said eenie meenie miney Moe with a bunch of ancient texts.
They they were affirming what the Christian Church has said
for a long time at that point. Great, you gave a list of some
of the historical mistakes that the church has made.
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What do you think is the biggestmistake the church is making
right now? Oh, that must have been a hard
one. I got a response.
I always, I always, I'm never a fan when I get asked a question
like that because I for a coupleof reasons. 1 is just 'cause I
never want to generalize about the church at large.
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That's such a, you know, there'sa lot of Christians in the
world. So that's a hard, I don't want
to criticize our, our brothers and sisters.
If you wanted to ask what are some of our biggest flaws right
here? What are some of my biggest
flaws or even us as a church, I could answer that much more
quickly. I'm very hesitant to answer for
worldwide Christians. You know, that's a that's a
that's a dangerous thing when you answer for a group of like 2
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billion people across the planet.
But I will, but I'll take one shot at it.
Is that OK? All right, I'll take you were
going to rescue me. I appreciate.
That I was going to ask if you'll list off some of your
biggest flaws that you're dealing with right now.
That's funny. Maybe that would be worse.
You're right. I think largely the the same
problem that is the biggest problem today is the same
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problem that's plagued the church from the very beginning,
that we stray from God's Word. The whole the the biggest
problem that the New Testament writers write about is false
teaching, false teaching and sin.
False teaching, though, the wrong teaching of the Bible is
the biggest problem now. And I think it's the biggest
problem then that people just want to stray from the hard
things that God says. We see it all over the place
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today and it and it's hard because I think for, for us who
embrace the Bible fully, we've got this.
This is something you'll encounter in in conversations
with non Christians, as they'll be saying, well, some Christians
say, you know, that homosexual practice is OK and is embraced
by the Bible or, or, you know, avariety of other topics, you
know, and it hinders our witness.
It makes it hard to say that Christianity says this.
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That's why I often just say the Bible says this.
And then you have to, you have to argue it, make it clear from
text. But yeah, false teaching is a
huge problem. It sucks so many people astray
Christians. And then it also creates a a
poor witness to the world. In one of your previous sessions
you spoke about is it discrepancy between some numbers
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in the scripture of 4000 versus A 40,000.
Could you explain this more? Are you saying that there's a
contradiction in the scriptures?Great question.
SO I can't remember exactly. I want to say that's a second
Kings reference. But I think what I shared was
that in both English numbers andin the original Hebrew, the
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difference is very similar. You know, if you're doing that
in English, you can see how, youknow, somebody copying down a
text could could make a mistake and have, you know, a difference
of a zero between 4040 thousand and the same thing.
If you look at it in Hebrew, it's really the same thing.
It's it's an incredibly small difference.
And So what I'm saying is not that it contradicts itself.
What I'm saying is that somewhere along the line in
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copying Scripture, somebody madea mistake.
And we know that happens every once in a while.
Your Bible footnotes that if youlook at a modern translation
like the ESV that we have here in this room, you'll find
footnotes that explain, hey, we've got multiple copies of
this and here's where we think, you know, here's a discrepancy
between two different copies of this passage.
And this is This is why we thinkthat happened and why we chose
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the translation we did. So, you know, the Bible is
copied down because we have so many copies of it.
We can see how incredibly faithful it is across the
centuries. It's amazing how faithful it is.
But the difference between the 40 and the yeah, the 40,000 and
the 4000, the best explanation is that that was a somebody
copying it down and they added too many zeros in there.
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So it's not a contradiction in Scripture.
It's a it's a copyist mistake. But again, like I said in in
session 2, I think that was, that's not a, that's, that's one
of those things that we can, we can see it easily.
We can see the solution easily. And it doesn't create, you know,
like a problem for us in the meaning of the text.
We can, we can see very clearly how this happened, why it's
there. And it doesn't change like a
(25:35):
like our doctrine in in any way we can.
We can see that. Great, here's a question.
Do this goes back to a earlier session.
Do you think Christian Scientists start with their
answer in mind and then just tryto find data to back it up if
they're following the Bible? Right, couple, couple ways.
(25:57):
I want to answer that. Number one, all of us come to
everything with our own bias. It's a good practice in science
to try to come and try to be as unbiased as possible.
But it's just true that all of us come with a bias.
So, so none of us come to us without any bias.
You know, we're coming to a set of data and we're trying to draw
an interpretation and conclusions from it.
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So I won't pretend that, you know, Christians come to it with
a bias, right? We we believe in God.
We believe that that's the best sense of the data.
And yet when we look at a great,a great documentary on this is a
documentary called Expelled witha guy named Ben Stein, famous
for in Bueller's Day Off Bueller, Bueller, he's that guy.
(26:39):
He's actually a really smart guy.
He's got like 2 pH DS and did a great documentary on the bias in
evolutionary science towards evolution and against the
existence of God. So we're all coming with some
level of bias, but the question is what is the best
interpretation of the data? Again, we're talking about the
unobservable past, right? We're talking about the origin
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story of the universe. None of us was there.
There's no eyewitness account tobe able to say this is exactly
what happened by a human who's living today.
You know, we have to look at thedata and make an interpretation.
And I think the, the best interpretation of the data
points towards a creator as opposed to a not creator.
So I, I understand why people would say that.
I still think that the creation reading is the best
(27:22):
interpretation of the data. And one of the beauties, though,
is that each of us, we can look at the data ourselves and ask
that question. You know that I, I don't invite
you to trust me for that. I don't invite you to trust, you
know, somebody else. I invite you to look at the data
yourself and, and consider the live options.
It's something I all I'd say to people all the time, you know,
don't just criticize one position.
Look at all the options and tellme which one you think the makes
(27:43):
the most sense. You can always throw rocks at
somebody's position, but what's your position?
What's the best interpretation of the data?
And again, I think the best interpretation of the data is
towards the creator. That's great.
Thank you. We have just a few minutes left,
so I'm going to ask the final question.
As a Christian living in 2025, how would you talk about
(28:07):
politics with non believers? That's our last question, huh?
Yeah, you got saved you. 2 minutes for the last question.
Yeah, right. That's awesome.
I actually got to teach a class called Christianity and Politics
last fall, so I talked a lot about that.
It was how do Christians? How was that the question?
How do Christians talk with non Christian?
How would you recommend we dialogue about politics?
(28:30):
Yeah, as Christians. Yeah.
So, you know, one of the traditional answers is, you
know, what do you not talk aboutat Thanksgiving dinner?
You don't talk about religion orpolitics.
And as Christians, we've alreadygot one strike, so how dare we
have a second one? It's kind of the philosophy.
So we're going to talk about religion or we should.
So don't talk about politics. I, I would disagree with that.
And, and politics are, are a position based on values, right?
(28:52):
You know, our beliefs as Christians or as anybody, your
beliefs about what we should do for different policies in our
nation are based on a set of values.
And so as Christians, we have opinions, you know, we, they're,
they're not all straight from scripture, but the principles
upon which they're based should come from scripture.
That's, that's all you know. So I invite you to check out the
class that's on YouTube, Christian and politics.
(29:14):
We go through some of the basicsof that conversation.
I think there's some helpful ideas that we talked about
there. But I think as Christians, we
don't need to be afraid of talking about politics.
I think we we do need to make sure that we are clear about
what things we're saying. The Bible says this and other
things we're saying. We think this is the best
practice. You know, there are, there are
(29:34):
certain issues that we can just say, you know what, two people
can have different opinions about how this, you know, maybe
economics, you know, let's throwout a, a controversial 1 to
tariffs. Does the Bible say exactly what
our, you know, our foreign economic policy should be?
No, there's some Christian principles that we take and then
we make our best judgement aboutwhat's wisest for the country.
(29:56):
So just be careful, you know, ifyou're, if you're speaking to
something like that, don't try to say, well, the you know,
Jesus would have said this abouttariffs.
Like that's a pretty, pretty bold thing to say now, but you
can say, you know, I think that this would probably be best.
And here's 3 reasons why. So if you're going to talk about
politics with non Christians, just be an example of what it
looks like to disagree and do itwith love to just, you know, you
(30:22):
don't have to yell. You know, I think a great
witness to the world is, is to not yell and scream at each
other, right? If you just say to somebody, oh,
you want to talk about this topic, well, hey, here's what
here's the position I hold. And here's a couple reasons why.
What do you think? Oh, that's interesting.
Here's a counterpoint. Have you thought about this?
You know, to be able to have that kind of level headed
(30:43):
logical conversation doesn't happen very often.
If you watch TV, you know, political news about politics,
right? It's that doesn't happen very
often. So, you know, be an example,
don't be afraid to say what you think is true, and do it with
grace and love.
Hey, welcome to a special episode if that's a good
question. Today we're going to get to hear
a live question and answer session that we had at the end
of a class that I got to teach recently called Faith Under
Fire, tackling today's toughest objections to Christianity.
We received some excellent questions from that class.
Great chance to get to learn andgrow in our ability to defend
(00:28):
the faith. All right, John, you want the
hard stuff, One of these that came in tonight as you're
teaching is that what was the question?
Can there be morality without God?
(00:49):
Great question. Yeah, kind of 2 answers #1 I
think the short answer is no, that there's really not a
foundation for morality without God, right?
Where are you going to get that from it?
Where are you going to get that answer to what's right and
what's wrong without a law giver, without a designer,
without some kind of objective standard, right?
(01:09):
People have tried this throughout the years, tried to
say, well, you know, it's, it's what I think or what's, what you
think. Or people try to, to transcend
that and say, well, it's whatever's best for humanity.
But over the course of human history, we have not agreed on
what's best for humanity. Once Upon a time, not to use a,
a, a stereotypical story, but Once Upon a time, there was a
guy named Hitler who thought that it was best for humanity to
(01:32):
eliminate one type of people in the world.
It turns out the rest of us think that that was not so good,
right? If you just leave, it's a
majority vote. It doesn't work so well.
So the SO1 short answer is to say, can there be morality
without God? No, because we don't have any
kind of objective standard. But what I also want to quickly
say is that the Bible tells us that the law is also written on
every human heart. So if you're if you're asking
(01:53):
the question, can non Christianshave morality, the answer is
yes, because whether they know it or not, God has inscribed on
their heart some sense of right and wrong.
Yes, we're sinful human beings and so it gets warped.
We can ignore it. And yet every human being has
some sort of sense of good and evil of right and wrong.
(02:13):
They don't even, they don't always acknowledge where it's
really coming from, but it's butit's there.
Thank you. 2 questions were verysimilar here, one said is
Christian culture superior to others?
And this other one just asked are some cultures superior to
others? How would you answer that
question? I thought that's a hot question
(02:37):
in our in our moment right now. And I know that people aren't,
some people aren't going to appreciate the answer that I
have for this, but I think I think it's objectively true that
some cultures are better than other cultures.
Now notice that I did not say, Idid not say ethnicity or race or
anything like that. I'm saying I'm saying culture.
That's what the question was. It was about cultures.
(02:57):
Are some cultures better than other cultures?
Let me just ask a question if you've worked at multiple
workplaces, one of the things that's very popular to talk
about in workplace world is you know that to to cry out and say
the culture in my workplace is toxic or bad or things like
that. Right there.
You're telling me that that we can say that some cultures are
better than other cultures. We can talk about the culture of
(03:19):
a workplace, we can talk about the culture of a church.
We can talk about the culture ofa town or of a whole nation.
But what you're telling me is that some cultures are better
than other ones. That whole conversation.
OK, so just to broaden it out beyond workplaces to nations, it
doesn't change the equation. There are some.
Some cultures are objectively better, healthier, more close to
God's design, have some strengths instead of weaknesses,
(03:43):
are better for the flourishing of humanity than other ones.
Again, that's not a statement about about the ethnicity of
that people of group of people or anything like that.
That's that's the statement of aevery group of people that
gathers has a certain has a culture.
OK. So whatever size that culture
is, we I think we can compare them to each other and say that
some are better than others. Great.
(04:04):
There was a follow up on the stats shared about communism
deaths versus deaths caused by Christian wars that was asked a
couple times. And so the question was, did
your statistics include deaths that come from things like
starvation? Isn't that apples and oranges
(04:25):
comparing it to the Crusades? Interesting question.
It did include deaths by starvation and things like that.
And I think the reason for that is because that's a result of
that worldview that the leadership of a guy like Mao in
China, it included killing of people who dissented to his his
view and to his leadership, but it also included results of his
(04:46):
policies led to people starving and dying.
So I think it's fair to talk about those as deaths.
But I understand the, the question of are those exact
apples to apples? I think that's, that's fair.
I, I get what you're saying. There's a difference there, but
I don't have the data in front of me.
But I think when you think about65 million people dying in China
under Mao compared to between 1 and 3 million in the Crusades,
(05:10):
we're still talking about a large, a large difference there
between those two data points. So, but I also just want to say
I again, I'm not trying to minimize the vadnais of what
happened in the Crusades. I'm not trying to minimize that.
But I think the point stands that deaths in the most secular
(05:30):
century of the 20th century are still far greater than some of
the deaths caused by these religious wars.
But again, even as I say that the comparison stuff, I'm not
trying to minimize those deaths.Yeah, lots of questions coming
in around the theme of Satan. I'll read one of them here.
Why did God, let's say in a higher being with more knowledge
(05:52):
than humans, come to earth, deceive Eve and destroy his
beautiful creation? It's a great question.
My kids ask me that question. Sometimes that's that's tough.
Even young kids think of that one.
Well, the Bible doesn't give us a clear, specific answer.
And you know, and say this is exactly why I let Satan come
into the garden and deceive people.
(06:13):
It doesn't say that, but it gives us other stories that talk
about God working through evil in order to bring about a good
result. So I think what we rest on is
that, yes, God knew that Satan was going to do what he was
going to do. Yes, God could have prevented
it. And this is this hard to
swallow, but I think we have to accept that somehow God knew
(06:37):
that this would actually lead tothe better result.
Again, that's hard to swallow. I'm not, I'm not saying that's
easy. And there's, there's so much
more we can talk about about that.
But I think that's, that's what we see in the Bible is that we
look at God's character, we lookat his power, we say he's good.
He was totally in control. He let this happen.
(06:58):
And he must have done that because he knew that there was a
greater good that would result. Thanks.
Here's a good one based on I think, your previous answer
there. What is the best thing to say
when you're being asked a question about Christianity that
you don't know the answer to? That's a great question.
I say this, I, I, you just say, I don't know, but I'd love to
(07:24):
find out. Give me a couple of days.
I'll study it. I'll get back to you.
That's an answer that I give to people.
Sometimes somebody asks you a question.
If you're stumped, you just say,you know what?
That's a great question. Let me do some research.
Let me go to my Bible. Let me maybe ask my pastor.
Let me think about that and I'llget back to you.
I think that's totally fair, right?
(07:45):
We can't be expected to carry around every answer in our heads
to every hard question. There's nothing wrong with
admitting that. You could even say, let's look
into it together. There you go.
I like that. Find out if they really want to
know the answer. Yeah, you say.
Why don't you do some research and I'll do some research and
we'll get back together, Yeah. Great.
There. There's a lot of questions
(08:06):
around the topic of homosexuality.
A couple of these I think you answered and the that are along
the lines of why is it seem to be talked about more?
A very practical one came in with the church's position on
homosexuality. Would you encourage a Christian
to go to a wedding that was a gay couple, or would you
(08:29):
encourage them to decline? Yeah, it's a very practical
question. I'm sure people in the room will
probably face that. No, I would not encourage you to
go to a homosexual wedding. One of the practical things that
I've said to people before is I would encourage you to instead,
you know, I don't know what relationship this, you know,
there's a friend or a family member or whatever, whatever
(08:51):
level it is. But I think a great step would
be to let them know that you love them and let them know
lovingly why you won't be attending.
A letter or an e-mail or something like that can be a
great way to do that, to say, hey, friend, I love you and I
care about you a lot. And I think the Bible is quite
(09:12):
clear that what you're doing is not what's best for you.
I can't come and celebrate that with you.
But I want you to know that I care about you and that even
after this wedding ceremony, I'dlove to talk with you some more.
I'd love to still spend time together.
We're still friends. I just can't celebrate this
(09:32):
because I don't believe this is what is best for you.
I think sharing that, that love and truth is a great way to
respond. But I think our presence at a
wedding like that, I think that,I mean, even just in the, that's
the symbolism of a wedding, right?
As a pastor, when I conduct weddings, I say to people, hey,
(09:52):
all of us gathered in the room here, we're as friends and
family, We're here to support this union.
We're here to encourage them. We're here to bear witness to
this. We're here to celebrate this.
So if you're going to be in the room, you've got to be able to
affirm those things. And as Christians, we can't
affirm those things. All right, this question came in
Should only Christians serve in the government?
(10:15):
What is your opinion? On that Christians, no, I would
not say that's that's the case. I would not say that only
Christians can serve in government.
So the Bible gives, tells us that even whether it's
Christians in leadership or not,passages like Romans 13 tell us
that government, civil government has legitimacy, that
God has ordained government to be in place in the world, not
(10:36):
just Christian government, but government in general.
And so government is a legitimate enterprise.
It doesn't have to be just led by Christians.
Now, as Christians, I think we should be quick to say, I think
it'd be best when Christians endup in leadership, not because
they're gonna, you know, legislate that everybody has to
become a Christian. That's, that's not it at all.
But instead, because we believe that Christians, they've got the
Bible, they're connected to the Lord, and so they ought to,
(10:58):
they'll bring about the wisest and the best policies for all of
humanity. So I think we should want that.
And yet, no, I think looking at Scripture, the Bible does not
say to the Roman Empire, you're not a legitimate government
because you're not led by Christians.
You know, the Apostle Paul in Romans 13 is writing in the
midst of a of a Roman governmentthat is very opposed to the
(11:20):
Christian faith. And still, and he's still saying
that this is legitimate, that Christians should submit to it,
those kind of things. So yes, we would love for
Christians to be in leadership again, not because they're going
to force the Christian religion on people, because they're going
to legislate according to God's good design.
But no, that doesn't have to be.That's not the only people that
God calls us to submit to. All right, here's one from the
(11:41):
last session that we didn't get to.
How do you explain people livinghundreds of years in the Old
Testament? Did they age slowly or was time
measured differently? They just got really old.
No, I think, you know, so just thinking about it from so Adam
(12:02):
was 930 years old when he died. I mean, that's incredible.
Just, you know, just to try to even wrap our minds around that.
No, I don't think time was measured differently or anything
like that. I think, you know, just at that
point in history, the human bodywas was able to last that long.
You know, you think about the consequences of the fall in
Genesis 3, right? When the fall happened,
Scripture tells us that not just, you know, it wasn't just
(12:24):
spiritual death. There was physical things that
happened. You know, prior to the fall,
Adam didn't have to toil againstweeds and stuff like that in the
garden, right? The world actually got affected,
the material world, the molecules and that, you know,
these things were affected by the fall.
And so it makes sense, I think that following from Genesis 3
that the life expectancy of human beings would go down.
(12:46):
The effects of the fall caused that to come about.
Also, from the previous sessions, do you believe that
Christians can believe in evolution?
So I'm always hesitant to answerit when it's phrased quite like
that. I want to be abundantly clear
about my position on this. But I, I think sometimes people
try to trick us into saying, youknow, they're asking me to say
(13:09):
that if you believe in evolution, then you're not a
Christian, that that's not what I'm out to say.
But what I do want to say is that, no, I don't think that
evolution in the Bible are compatible.
I, I don't. So again, saying if, if you're,
if you're somebody who's saying,well, I, I love Jesus and I
believe the Bible, but evolutionmakes sense to me.
(13:29):
I'm not saying that you've lost your salvation because you hold
that belief. That's not what I'm saying.
But I'm saying that I think thatyou're holding a belief that is
not the best reading of Scripture, that's not compatible
with Scripture. And actually I, as I argued in
session 1, I don't think it's the best reading even of of the
scientific data, but yeah, so, so I think the question maybe
that's being asked is, you know,does the Bible support
(13:51):
evolution? Can evolution fit in with the
Bible? And my answer is no.
We walked through some of those reasons in session one.
I would add to that a few theological reasons.
One would be that evolution requires death to happen before
the fall of Adam and Eve. OK, the Bible tells us that
everything was good and perfect prior to Genesis chapter 3.
Evolution is built on the idea that death is happening and
(14:15):
that's how things are evolving and and coming about and so that
those two things don't align. I would add that evolution means
that human beings didn't come from just Adam and Eve, which
the Bible tells us they did. I would look even to an
important New Testament passage,Romans chapter 5, that tells us
that in Adam all of us died and in the same way in Christ, those
who put our faith in him can receive life.
(14:37):
And so actually we've got a major problem for how sin comes
about and how salvation comes about if we don't believe in a
historical true single individual named Adam from which
the whole human race came. So I think it's session when we
talked about some of the scientific issues there.
I think there's there's in addition to that, there's some
biblical and theological issues as to why that doesn't make
sense and hold up. Thank you.
(14:59):
All right, here's another tough one.
How do we answer the question ofcivilizations that have lived
and died apart from communication of the gospel?
Is there eternal fate sealed, ordo you think God revealed
himself to them in a way that would allow for salvation?
Yeah, that's an incredibly, I think it's a painful topic to
(15:22):
consider and yet I think Scripture is very clear on it.
Romans one tells us that all of us should know that God has made
himself clear enough. Now, not every civilization has
had the gospel preached to them throughout history.
Not every civilization has had access to the Bible.
But Romans one tells us that Godhas made in creation, he's made
himself clear enough to human beings that people should be
(15:44):
looking for him. The Bible tells us that human
beings are accountable for theirsin.
So the way that the question is often posed to me is, what about
the poor innocent person out there and a faraway place that's
never heard the gospel? What we have to understand is
that there's no such thing as aninnocent person.
All of us are born into sin because all of us came from
(16:07):
Adam. And even during our lives, we we
add to that sin, we sin ourselves.
And so yes, it's hard to swallow.
There are people out there who haven't heard the gospel, and
yet the Bible tells us they're accountable for their sin, which
is why we believe that we need to send missionaries to the end
of the earth with the gospel. It's why we don't say, well,
(16:28):
hey, you know what? Those people over there, we'll
just leave them alone because they're fine on their own.
We don't believe that. We believe we need to send
missionaries there so they can hear the gospel and receive
salvation. So I know, again, that's hard to
swallow, and yet I think the Bible is quite clear on it
again, that justice is demanded for sin, that all human beings
are sinners. That's why we need to bring the
gospel to people. Here's another timely one that's
(16:50):
very practical. When we recognize that tolerance
does not equal affirmation, whatdoes that look like with a
transgender person? Do you acknowledge them by their
new pronouns, or do you allow division by not acknowledging
them the way they want to be addressed?
Yeah, so as Christians, we want to communicate the truth in
(17:12):
love. We want to uphold both of those
things. We can't compromise on either of
those things. The transgender phenomenon is an
incredibly sad phenomenon in ourworld.
It does incredible damage. The longer it goes on, the more
data collects about how damagingthis thing is to to people that
go through it, especially the incredible number of young
people that go through that. But as Christians, we affirm
(17:40):
that God created man and woman. There's there's two genders and
that were born into one of thosegenders.
That's what we're created as. And so when somebody tells if
somebody was, you know, born as a, as a male and they're trying
to tell me now that they're a female, what we're talking about
is it's not reality. We're talking about a deception.
(18:02):
They, they are self deceived andthat's super sad.
The most loving thing we can do though, is not to join them in
that false reality. It's to lovingly and kindly try
to bring them back to the truth.So no, I would say as Christians
that we shouldn't embrace the deception, the delusion.
We should try to call them back to the truth, but of course, do
(18:25):
so lovingly. There's people out there, of
course, who just spew hate towards those people, might call
them stupid or, or whatever theymight say about them.
That's that's not helpful. But also compromising and
embracing a false reality is also not helpful.
Truth and love, it's a hard lineto walk.
And yet we got to do both of those things.
(18:45):
Question came in about how we got our Canon of scripture.
The Bible said wasn't it put together in the first form not
until the three hundreds? How do we know the official
Canon wasn't influenced by theological or governmental
rule? Great question.
Yeah, so, so that's something people will often bring up, that
(19:06):
while the Bible didn't come out till 300 AD, wasn't there a lot
of changes between then and now?I think an important thing to
realize is that the Canon wasn'tdetermined in the three
hundreds. It was recognized.
So the reason that in the three hundreds and 393, the Council of
Hippo and 397 the Council of Carthage, the reason those guys
are embracing the Canon as we have it now, the 66 books of the
(19:26):
Old Testament and New Testament,is because they're saying this
is what's already been recognized for the last three
centuries. And now we're just writing it
down and affirming it. They're not saying here's a
whole bunch of books and we're going to pick them.
You know, in the late 3 hundreds, they're saying this is
what the Christian Church has been doing.
We're going to, we're going to affirm that and write that down
now. So that's an important thing to
(19:47):
realize when we talk about some of the apocryphal books from the
Old Testament, what we're talking about is the difference
between the Jewish Canon and some books that that were
written and that people such as Catholics would affirm that were
written in the 400 year period known as the intertestamental
period. So the Old Testament is closed
(20:08):
400 years prior to the birth of Christ.
The Jews affirm this is this is this is not just Christianity
that says this is Orthodox Judaism that said this.
So what we're doing in the Old Testament by excluding books
like Enoch and other intertestamental apocryphal
books is we're just affirming the Bible that Jesus had the
Bible that Paul had the Bible ofthe New Testament writers had
these guys knew that these bookswere not considered part of
(20:30):
Scripture, part of the Canon. So we're just, you know, the cry
of the Reformation was adfontez back to the sources, back to the
originals. And so we're saying these books
that were written later that even the Jews said we're not
part of the Bible. We're just going back to the
original Bible. So that's the Old Testament part
of it, the New Testament part ofit.
The the Canon is being formed very early on.
You've even got writings, you know, about Paul being affirmed
(20:52):
as Scripture in the New Testament.
You've got Peter quoting Luke inthe New Testament.
OK, so you've got these guys already before they die, before
the the apostles are dead, they're already recognizing that
these writings are Scripture. We've got the testament of guys
like Tertullian and Irenaeus anddifferent writers between 100AD
and 300AD affirming these thingsbefore we have it finally
(21:13):
written down by a council in 393and 397.
So important to realize that these guys didn't just sit down
and said eenie meenie miney Moe with a bunch of ancient texts.
They they were affirming what the Christian Church has said
for a long time at that point. Great, you gave a list of some
of the historical mistakes that the church has made.
(21:35):
What do you think is the biggestmistake the church is making
right now? Oh, that must have been a hard
one. I got a response.
I always, I always, I'm never a fan when I get asked a question
like that because I for a coupleof reasons. 1 is just 'cause I
never want to generalize about the church at large.
(21:57):
That's such a, you know, there'sa lot of Christians in the
world. So that's a hard, I don't want
to criticize our, our brothers and sisters.
If you wanted to ask what are some of our biggest flaws right
here? What are some of my biggest
flaws or even us as a church, I could answer that much more
quickly. I'm very hesitant to answer for
worldwide Christians. You know, that's a that's a
that's a dangerous thing when you answer for a group of like 2
(22:17):
billion people across the planet.
But I will, but I'll take one shot at it.
Is that OK? All right, I'll take you were
going to rescue me. I appreciate.
That I was going to ask if you'll list off some of your
biggest flaws that you're dealing with right now.
That's funny. Maybe that would be worse.
You're right. I think largely the the same
problem that is the biggest problem today is the same
(22:40):
problem that's plagued the church from the very beginning,
that we stray from God's Word. The whole the the biggest
problem that the New Testament writers write about is false
teaching, false teaching and sin.
False teaching, though, the wrong teaching of the Bible is
the biggest problem now. And I think it's the biggest
problem then that people just want to stray from the hard
things that God says. We see it all over the place
(23:04):
today and it and it's hard because I think for, for us who
embrace the Bible fully, we've got this.
This is something you'll encounter in in conversations
with non Christians, as they'll be saying, well, some Christians
say, you know, that homosexual practice is OK and is embraced
by the Bible or, or, you know, avariety of other topics, you
know, and it hinders our witness.
It makes it hard to say that Christianity says this.
(23:27):
That's why I often just say the Bible says this.
And then you have to, you have to argue it, make it clear from
text. But yeah, false teaching is a
huge problem. It sucks so many people astray
Christians. And then it also creates a a
poor witness to the world. In one of your previous sessions
you spoke about is it discrepancy between some numbers
(23:48):
in the scripture of 4000 versus A 40,000.
Could you explain this more? Are you saying that there's a
contradiction in the scriptures?Great question.
SO I can't remember exactly. I want to say that's a second
Kings reference. But I think what I shared was
that in both English numbers andin the original Hebrew, the
(24:12):
difference is very similar. You know, if you're doing that
in English, you can see how, youknow, somebody copying down a
text could could make a mistake and have, you know, a difference
of a zero between 4040 thousand and the same thing.
If you look at it in Hebrew, it's really the same thing.
It's it's an incredibly small difference.
And So what I'm saying is not that it contradicts itself.
What I'm saying is that somewhere along the line in
(24:32):
copying Scripture, somebody madea mistake.
And we know that happens every once in a while.
Your Bible footnotes that if youlook at a modern translation
like the ESV that we have here in this room, you'll find
footnotes that explain, hey, we've got multiple copies of
this and here's where we think, you know, here's a discrepancy
between two different copies of this passage.
And this is This is why we thinkthat happened and why we chose
(24:53):
the translation we did. So, you know, the Bible is
copied down because we have so many copies of it.
We can see how incredibly faithful it is across the
centuries. It's amazing how faithful it is.
But the difference between the 40 and the yeah, the 40,000 and
the 4000, the best explanation is that that was a somebody
copying it down and they added too many zeros in there.
(25:13):
So it's not a contradiction in Scripture.
It's a it's a copyist mistake. But again, like I said in in
session 2, I think that was, that's not a, that's, that's one
of those things that we can, we can see it easily.
We can see the solution easily. And it doesn't create, you know,
like a problem for us in the meaning of the text.
We can, we can see very clearly how this happened, why it's
there. And it doesn't change like a
(25:35):
like our doctrine in in any way we can.
We can see that. Great, here's a question.
Do this goes back to a earlier session.
Do you think Christian Scientists start with their
answer in mind and then just tryto find data to back it up if
they're following the Bible? Right, couple, couple ways.
(25:57):
I want to answer that. Number one, all of us come to
everything with our own bias. It's a good practice in science
to try to come and try to be as unbiased as possible.
But it's just true that all of us come with a bias.
So, so none of us come to us without any bias.
You know, we're coming to a set of data and we're trying to draw
an interpretation and conclusions from it.
(26:18):
So I won't pretend that, you know, Christians come to it with
a bias, right? We we believe in God.
We believe that that's the best sense of the data.
And yet when we look at a great,a great documentary on this is a
documentary called Expelled witha guy named Ben Stein, famous
for in Bueller's Day Off Bueller, Bueller, he's that guy.
(26:39):
He's actually a really smart guy.
He's got like 2 pH DS and did a great documentary on the bias in
evolutionary science towards evolution and against the
existence of God. So we're all coming with some
level of bias, but the question is what is the best
interpretation of the data? Again, we're talking about the
unobservable past, right? We're talking about the origin
(27:00):
story of the universe. None of us was there.
There's no eyewitness account tobe able to say this is exactly
what happened by a human who's living today.
You know, we have to look at thedata and make an interpretation.
And I think the, the best interpretation of the data
points towards a creator as opposed to a not creator.
So I, I understand why people would say that.
I still think that the creation reading is the best
(27:22):
interpretation of the data. And one of the beauties, though,
is that each of us, we can look at the data ourselves and ask
that question. You know that I, I don't invite
you to trust me for that. I don't invite you to trust, you
know, somebody else. I invite you to look at the data
yourself and, and consider the live options.
It's something I all I'd say to people all the time, you know,
don't just criticize one position.
Look at all the options and tellme which one you think the makes
(27:43):
the most sense. You can always throw rocks at
somebody's position, but what's your position?
What's the best interpretation of the data?
And again, I think the best interpretation of the data is
towards the creator. That's great.
Thank you. We have just a few minutes left,
so I'm going to ask the final question.
As a Christian living in 2025, how would you talk about
(28:07):
politics with non believers? That's our last question, huh?
Yeah, you got saved you. 2 minutes for the last question.
Yeah, right. That's awesome.
I actually got to teach a class called Christianity and Politics
last fall, so I talked a lot about that.
It was how do Christians? How was that the question?
How do Christians talk with non Christian?
How would you recommend we dialogue about politics?
(28:30):
Yeah, as Christians. Yeah.
So, you know, one of the traditional answers is, you
know, what do you not talk aboutat Thanksgiving dinner?
You don't talk about religion orpolitics.
And as Christians, we've alreadygot one strike, so how dare we
have a second one? It's kind of the philosophy.
So we're going to talk about religion or we should.
So don't talk about politics. I, I would disagree with that.
And, and politics are, are a position based on values, right?
(28:52):
You know, our beliefs as Christians or as anybody, your
beliefs about what we should do for different policies in our
nation are based on a set of values.
And so as Christians, we have opinions, you know, we, they're,
they're not all straight from scripture, but the principles
upon which they're based should come from scripture.
That's, that's all you know. So I invite you to check out the
class that's on YouTube, Christian and politics.
(29:14):
We go through some of the basicsof that conversation.
I think there's some helpful ideas that we talked about
there. But I think as Christians, we
don't need to be afraid of talking about politics.
I think we we do need to make sure that we are clear about
what things we're saying. The Bible says this and other
things we're saying. We think this is the best
practice. You know, there are, there are
(29:34):
certain issues that we can just say, you know what, two people
can have different opinions about how this, you know, maybe
economics, you know, let's throwout a, a controversial 1 to
tariffs. Does the Bible say exactly what
our, you know, our foreign economic policy should be?
No, there's some Christian principles that we take and then
we make our best judgement aboutwhat's wisest for the country.
(29:56):
So just be careful, you know, ifyou're, if you're speaking to
something like that, don't try to say, well, the you know,
Jesus would have said this abouttariffs.
Like that's a pretty, pretty bold thing to say now, but you
can say, you know, I think that this would probably be best.
And here's 3 reasons why. So if you're going to talk about
politics with non Christians, just be an example of what it
looks like to disagree and do itwith love to just, you know, you
(30:22):
don't have to yell. You know, I think a great
witness to the world is, is to not yell and scream at each
other, right? If you just say to somebody, oh,
you want to talk about this topic, well, hey, here's what
here's the position I hold. And here's a couple reasons why.
What do you think? Oh, that's interesting.
Here's a counterpoint. Have you thought about this?
You know, to be able to have that kind of level headed
(30:43):
logical conversation doesn't happen very often.
If you watch TV, you know, political news about politics,
right? It's that doesn't happen very
often. So, you know, be an example,
don't be afraid to say what you think is true, and do it with
grace and love.
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