I was reading through the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 recently.

In the middle of Matthew 5, Jesus says that he has come not to abolish the law but to fulfill the law. And then he gives several examples of what that means. He uses this pattern, “You have heard that it was said… But I say to you…” And he talks about murder, adultery, divorce, oaths, retaliation, and our interaction with enemies. Here’s that last part, in Matthew 5:43-45.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”

You know, I’ve always interpreted this being-sons-of-the-Father business to mean that God would recognize and reward us for our actions. Love your enemies, and God will reward you.

But as I was reading that again today, I realized that I was missing the point. God makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and God sends rain on the just and on the unjust. In other words, God loves his enemies. Even though people defame his very existence every single day, God is still showering them with blessings.

And in that light, when we love our enemies, we are representing God. We become God’s instruments of blessing. God is just looking for ways to love his enemies, and when we submit ourselves to that calling, we become God’s messengers. We become God’s sons. And it’s not that we are God’s sons in the sense that we have earned some position, but rather that we are, as a functioning member of God’s family, representing God himself.

I don’t think Jesus is just spewing out baseless rules for us to follow. He is saying, “Look at what your Father in heaven does. That’s what I want you to do.”

And at the cross, Jesus proved himself to mankind by truly walking the talk. He actually submitted himself to human authority and allowed himself to be killed. He died for his enemies.

You know, there are many people who say that the morality of religion is what matters. Forget the dogma. Forget the stories. Just keep the ethics. But here’s the thing. Only with the dogmatic understanding and belief that God suffered and died for his enemies will we truly have the motivation to follow our ethics. There is no greater motivation for loving your enemies than realizing that you were an enemy of God, and yet you were loved by God.

The world said, “You come near me, God, and I’ll kill you.” And Jesus came near, and the world nailed him onto a cross. And as he was dying on that cross, he prayed for his persecutors, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

That is the Christian call.

- Larry

Our “knowledge” of history isn’t 100% fact, in the sense that “The earth rotates” is a 100% fact. Why? Because we cannot know anything for sure about history, especially if we are talking about a certain history of more than a few generations ago, because all of the eyewitnesses are dead today. All we can do is gather data and jump to conclusions. But there is no guarantee that this or that letter is not forged, or that this or that work was not mistranslated, or the like. For example, if an excavation shows that a certain city at one point in time was destroyed, and there is, say, an arrow of a certain type found at the site, it would lead the archaeologist to say that this city was destroyed by the culture that produced that type of arrow. But all of this is hypothetical. All I mean to say is that there is no way to make 100% foolproof conclusions from archaeology about history. And therefore, there is no way to make the 100% foolproof conclusion that the Bible is contradiction with history. However, there are many cases in which the Bible seems to provide a history that is different from the history accepted by modern scholarship. I’ll address a few examples of certain cases that have been posed as obvious contradictions.

One very common argument is that against Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. It argues that there are many things in the first five books of the Bible that point to the notion that Moses was not the author of at least most of the Pentateuch. Rather, it was put together over a period of time by different people. Alternatively, people have proposed that literacy at this level did not exist at this time.

Here’s my take on this. Even though most Christians today still argue for Mosaic authorship, I do not think that is necessary. I think it’s okay to say that we don’t know who wrote Genesis, just as it is okay to say that we don’t know who wrote Hebrews. And why would a Christian like me make such a claim? Well, because I think that even from a biblical stance, there isn’t sufficient reason to believe that Moses wrote all five books.

There certainly is evidence that Moses wrote something. The Bible refers to Moses’ writings. However, it is obvious that Moses did not write the last part of Deuteronomy, which records his death. It also doesn’t seem like Moses would have written passages like Genesis 12:6, which states, “At that time the Canaanites were in the land,” referring to the land of Canaan. The Canaanites weren’t driven out from the land until much after Moses.

I think arguments against authorship, unless the text directly says who the author is, are not very vital to whether or not the Bible is inspired. Essentially, many of these arguments against the Bible from history, like the one concerning Mosaic authorship, are not crucial at all. I consent that some of these arguments may be true. However, arguing against the assertion that Paul wrote Romans, for example, would be a different issue, because the author gives his name as Paul in Romans. That would be crucial. Another argument that would be crucial would be one that says that there are things recorded in the Bible that history has proven to be false. One criticized book is Daniel.

Many scholars today say that Daniel was written around the 2nd century BC, several centuries after Daniel, if he actually existed, lived. The main reason for arguing this is because there are many specific prophecies in Daniel talking of events in the 2nd century BC. It is much easier to accept that the writer was actually just recording events but forging them as prophecy than to accept that Daniel was actually divinely inspired. This argument rests on the presupposition that divine prophecy cannot exist, so it’s essentially circular reasoning. However, there are other reasons for proposing a 2nd century BC authorship, which I will address.

Firstly, some of the mentioned kings are seemingly inaccurate. King Darius the Mede is mentioned by Daniel a few times, who was responsible for the conquest of Babylon, but there is no Persian or Median record for such a king. They say that it was Cyrus the Great of Persia who conquered Babylon. The prophecy-posing writer must have made a mistake. However, I don’t think we need to jump to that conclusion. Many Christian scholars have offered solutions, which are largely ignored by the secular community.

The first solution is that Darius was another name for a certain man named Gubaru, who was a provincial governor of Babylon during Cyrus’ reign. Archaeology says that Gubaru certainly was at least the son of a Mede. The second solution is that Darius was simply another name for Cyrus. Cyrus’ mother was a Mede, and Daniel could have emphasized that to show that God’s prophecy that Babylon would be captured by the Medes had been fulfilled. In addition, Daniel writes that Darius was 62 when he took over the kingdom, which lines up historically with Cyrus’ age when he conquered Babylon.

Furthermore, there is still much in history that we have not yet discovered. Many critics used to criticize Daniel for the mention of King Belshazzar, who had no appearance in archaeology. Later, it was discovered that he did exist. Now, however, critics are arguing that the Belshazzar in history was not a king, as Daniel records.

However, we know through archaeology that Belshazzar’s father was a king, that for a long period of time his father was at war, that Belshazzar was even given provinces to govern, and that Belshazzar even made sacrifices at the temple “as an offering for the king,” as written on ancient records. Moreover, Belshazzar’s actual position, a crowned prince, had no word in Aramaic, so Daniel might have felt that the word for “king” was the best choice. And even more, it is recorded in Daniel 6:12 that Belshazzar presented to Daniel the offer of being the “third highest ruler in the kingdom.” The logical conclusion is that there was another king of higher rank than Belshazzar, which would probably be his father, the actual king, and that Belshazzar, though he was a “king” according to Daniel, was second-in-command.

Some scholars also note that the name Belshazzar had basically been forgotten by the 5th century BC among Greek historians. The fact that it appears in Daniel suggests that the author of Daniel was a writer living around the time of the actual events. Otherwise, he would not have known the name.

For more info on the defense of the book of Daniel, you can visit this website.

I know that there are many more arguments against the historicity of the Bible, but again, that is not my place. All I mean to say is that there are many cases in which arguments are not as foolproof as they seem, and that none of our “knowledge” of ancient can be fact.

- Larry

1) There are contradictions in the Bible, either with itself or with external knowledge.
2) God would not write with contradictions.
3) Therefore, the Bible was not written by God.

Is this important? Why, of course. The Bible says that it is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16). If the Bible is in fact not God-breathed, then how can we trust anything at all in the Bible? Christianity isn’t just a hobby. It’s an all-in matter. How then can we bank our lives on a book that is riddled with falsehood? The only reason why Christians should be sold out for this lifestyle is because they are convinced that God is behind it.

In return, I would argue that there are actually no contradictions in the original Bible. Apparent contradictions are usually due to misunderstandings, misinterpretations, or false assumptions. Now, this might seem to be a stretch, but I stand convinced that it is true.

We can divide these contradictions into the categories of internal contradictions and external contradictions. Internal contradictions would be things in the Bible seemingly contradicting other things in the Bible, while external contradictions would be things in the Bible seemingly contradicting things outside of the Bible. This post will focus primarily on internal contradictions.

I have yet to find a single internal contradiction worthy of notice. I can think of four major categories in which these apparent self-contradictions in the Bible fall.

1. Copyist Errors

There are plenty of contradictions in today’s English Bible. There are probably plenty of contradictions in today’s Greek Bible. I think that any serious Christian who has gotten into a good number of these debates will admit to that. But all that does is reinforce the Christian position of the fallibility of human beings. One major misconception is that all Christians believe that the King James Version or the New International Version is infallible. Many websites bash this position, and I would probably do so as well, if I cared enough to do so. On the contrary, many Christians like myself believe rather that the original text is infallible, because the original text was inspired by God. Every other copy or translation that followed runs a risk of error or contradiction.

Along these same lines, there is therefore no infallibility in the chapter-and-verse numbering system or in the subtitle headings. These were added at a much later date.

Here’s a good example. 1 Chronicles 20:5 says, “In another battle with the Philistines, Elhanan son of Jair killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, who had a spear with a shaft like a weaver’s rod.” 2 Samuel 21:19 says, “In another battle with the Philistines at Gob, Elhanan son of Jair the Bethlehemite killed the brother of Goliath the Gittite, who had a spear with a shaft like a weaver’s rod.” However, there’s a footnote in 2 Samuel 21 that says, “Hebrew does not have the brother of.” Furthermore, there’s another footnote in 2 Samuel 21 that says, “Hebrew Jaare-Oregim” in place of “Jair.”

So in the Hebrew, 1 Chronicles 20 claims that Elhanan killed Goliath’s brother, while 2 Samuel 21 claims that Elhanan killed Goliath himself. Is it that these were two separate people, because their fathers had different names? Modern English translators didn’t think so. They inserted “the brother of” and changed “Jaare-Oregim” to “Jair” to prevent confusion. Most Bible readers know that it was in fact David who killed Goliath the Gittite, and “Jaare-Oregim” and “Jair” aren’t too different. So is this a contradiction? Yes. Does that mean the Bible is not infallible? No. It just means that human scribes are fallible. In fact, this error can easily be traced.

“Oregim” is actually similar to the Hebrew word for “weaver,” which also appears in the verse. It could very much have appeared in the very next line, and a scribe copying this manuscript could have mistakenly written it by “Jair.”

Furthermore, “eth lachmi,” the Hebrew combination for the terms “brother” and “Lahmi,” is relatively similar to “beith hallachmi,” or “Bethlehemite.” One can then see how over time, these two variant texts evolved. If “Bethlehemite” is replaced with the Hebrew combination for “brother” and “Lahmi,” we are left with an identical verse.

Along these lines, people sometimes might ask, “If there are contradictions, then why bother reading it?” Well, there are over 24,000 handwritten manuscript copies of the Bible, dozens of times, and in most cases hundreds of times, more than any other ancient work, including the works of Homer and Plato. Not only that, but many of these copies are dated close to the time of the original writing, when compared to other ancient writings. Many of these manuscripts are online for public viewing. It’s then pretty easy, if one has the time, to print them all out and find which characters or words in each section are the most popular. The manuscripts form a bit of a checks-and-balances system. It turns out that the manuscripts agree with each other 99.5% of the time, and there are absolutely no cases in which a difference in manuscripts causes any significant change to Christian theology or doctrine. It isn’t exactly crucial for Christian living to know how many horses Solomon had, another criticism that can be attributed to a copyist error.

2. Jumping to Conclusions

In many occasions, apparent contradictions are not actually contradictions at all, but rather the assuming of knowledge that connects the dots. Often times, these turn out to not be contradictions after all with a better understanding of the context. Of course, I don’t have time to go through every single apparent contradiction. There are plenty of Christian websites out there who do that. I’ll just select a random one.

2 Samuel 14:27 says, “Three sons and a daughter were born to Absalom. His daughter’s name was Tamar, and she became a beautiful woman.” 2 Samuel 18:18 says, “During his lifetime Absalom had taken a pillar and erected it in the King’s Valley as a monument to himself, for he thought, ‘I have no son to carry on the memory of my name.’ He named the pillar after himself, and it is called Absalom’s Monument to this day.” One might conclude that there is a contradiction here, because one passage says that Absalom had three sons, and the other says that Absalom had none.

But note the context of 2 Samuel 18:18. Absalom dies in 2 Samuel 18:15, and he is buried in 2 Samuel 18:17. 18:18, then, is more of a statement regarding his life. This is supported by the start of that verse, “During his lifetime…” Furthermore, the fact that the verse says “he thought” shows that the notion that he did not have sons was not a fact but just a thought. He could have been wrong. The reasonable explanation is that he didn’t have sons until after he built that monument. No contradiction there.

Another common argument regards the rooster crowing during the day of Peter’s denial of Jesus. Matthew, Luke, and John all record Jesus saying one thing, and Mark records another.

Matthew 26:34 says, “‘Truly I tell you,’ Jesus answered, ‘this very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.’”

Luke 22:34 says, “Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.’”

John 13:38 says, “Then Jesus answered, ‘Will you really lay down your life for me? Very truly I tell you, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times!’”

However, Mark 14:30 says, “‘Truly I tell you,’ Jesus answered, ‘today—yes, tonight—before the rooster crows twice you yourself will disown me three times.’”

Mark’s account has Jesus saying that Peter’s denial will come after two rooster crows, while the other accounts say that the denial will come after just one. At least, that’s what critics claim. However, note that only in Mark does Jesus mention the number of crows. And if Peter denied Christ after two crows, then surely he also denied Christ after one. There isn’t a strict contradiction.

But we can offer more. In the first century, roosters were accustomed to crowing several times during the night. Relatively few people even heard or cared about the first few crows. The second crowing, or the main crowing, happened at daybreak, and it was at this time that roosters crowed the loudest. If a man was called to be at work when the rooster crowed, it would be clear in that culture that this was a reference to that final main crowing that happened at daybreak. Problem solved.

Some manuscripts, as noted in the NIV footnote, actually do not have “twice” in Mark’s account. It probably is the case that certain copyists tried to make a more collectively consistent gospel account, but they were ultimately rejected because of the reverence people had for the original writings. If this is true, then it would make absolutely no sense to argue that the gospels were edited and compiled by the early disciples to form some kind of conspiracy theory, as commonly proposed by some scholars. The early disciples could not even bring themselves to change how many times the rooster crowed!

3. Theological Misunderstandings

Often, the Bible is accused of teaching contradictory doctrines.

Many non-Christians pull out justification by faith and justification by works in different parts of the Bible, think they made a great discovery, and throw it at Christians, saying that this is a self-contradiction. Ephesians 2:8-9 is often contrasted with James 2:14-18. However, that topic is probably the most discussed topic in church history. That topic was essentially the reason why the Protestant Reformation occurred. Are we justified by faith or by works? Well, whole books have been devoted to that very topic. The short answer is both. Functionally, humans are justified by faith. But demonstratively, humans are justified by works.

Here’s another one. Proverbs 26:4 says, “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be just like him.” Proverbs 26:5 says, “Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.”

Those seem pretty contradictory. Are we supposed to answer fools according to their folly or not? But just think for one moment. These verses are right next to each other. Do you think that the writer of these proverbs, whether he was divinely inspired or not, forgot what he wrote in verse 4 when he started writing verse 5? Rather, this seems more intentional than anything else. That’s what makes it beautiful. Perhaps the writer placed these two verses next to one another to illustrate the need for a balance in how we interact with foolish people. That probably is the case with many so-called theological contradictions.

4. Human Limitations

These apparent contradictions, if anything, would be true contradictions. However, they are only contradictions in a naturalistic world-view. The moment somebody accepts the possibility that there is a supernatural that supersedes natural law, these no longer become contradictions. So such arguments would be pretty successful when arguing against a person who holds the Bible to be infallible but does not believe in the supernatural, but I don’t think those people exist.

This would include doctrines like the Trinity, that God is three in one, and Hypostatic Union, that Jesus was both fully God and fully man. There are many things in the Bible that simply do not make sense to human beings because all human beings know of is the natural world. So if all that ever existed was the natural world, then these would be contradictions. However, that is an unproven opinion, so these remain valid.

5. Contradictions with Science

We have moved on to external contradictions. It is commonly proposed that the Bible says many things about the laws of nature that we now know are not true. Critics have argued that the Bible argues for a flat, immovable earth, for example.

Isaiah 11:12, among other verses, talks of the “four quarters of the earth.” However, this does not imply that the writers thought the earth was flat. This is merely a metaphor, and readers can tell simply by reading from the context. The verse is in the middle of a prophecy. Prophecies, along with songs and poems in the Bible, are often given poetically, meaning they often include metaphors and hyperbole. Some people today even use that expression, and there is no need to believe that those people actually believe the earth is flat.

Psalm 104:5 is another example. It, among other verses, has been cited to prove that the writers of the Bible believed in an immovable earth. “He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.” However, there is no reason to believe that this was a physical foundation. It could merely mean that God has established the earth in its place. Furthermore, this verse, again, is in the middle of poetry.

God supposedly asks in Job 38:22, “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail?” There are actually people who use this verse to discredit the Bible. I highly doubt that Job actually believed there were storehouses of snow or hail in the sky. Job might not have known how to work a computer, but he was not a hallucinating idiot. This is also figurative speech.

And finally, we can look at a non-poetic example. The Bible seems to say that insects have four legs. Leviticus 11:20-22 says, “All flying insects that walk on all fours are to be regarded as unclean by you. There are, however, some flying insects that walk on all fours that you may eat: those that have jointed legs for hopping on the ground. Of these you may eat any kind of locust, katydid, cricket or grasshopper.” Well, what exactly is a leg? Recent scientists have even argued that the octopus does not have eight legs, contrary to popular belief. Rather, it has six tentacles and two legs. The six tentacles are for eating, and the legs are for moving. I’m serious. There is no reason to believe that, if some London scientists in the 21st century can make such an argument about octopi, surely the ancient Israelites, of a radically different culture, can make the argument that the grasshopper has four legs and two hopping appendages which are not legs. It’s semantics.

Many more of these supposed contradictions have been answered online. I was only able to write this because I looked these up. The Apologetics Encyclopedia at Tektonics.org is a good resource.

Next post, we’ll tackle supposed contradictions with history. That’s the toughest one. Stay tuned.

- Larry

1) They are actually not arguments against Christianity at all, but rather they are arguments against something totally different altogether.
2) They are actually not arguments regarding truth or validity at all. They merely consist of stating the content of Christianity and saying that they don’t like that content.
3) They are arguments regarding contradictions in the Bible, either with itself or with external knowledge. This is usually due to a misunderstanding or misinterpretation or false assumption.
4) They are arguments based on a self-contradicting platform.

We talked about the first category. Now I’m going to focus on the second one. Very often, people seem to make a very strong case against Christianity, but in reality they are not making a case at all. They are just stating some aspect of Christianity, and they don’t like it.

Argument #1: How can God send people to hell simply because they refuse to worship Him? That sounds like a tantrum child.

This argument doesn’t really rest on solid evidence. It is essentially an emotional appeal. It might seem to rest on logic, but it is an emotional appeal. Usually, emotional appeals regarding the nature of a human being are pretty effective. Why is that? Because we identify with human beings. We step into the shoes of human beings. We relate to human beings. We know many human beings, and we have a basic understanding of how human beings are to operate and go about doing what they do. And so when a child takes away a toy of another child, and that second child reports to an adult, saying, “It’s not fair,” the adult can go over to the first child and try to reason with him. There is a common-ground understanding of fairness. People expect certain things of each other, and there are social conventions and guidelines that people are expected to follow. That is why an emotional appeal is effective with human beings.

But the moment you try to have an emotional appeal regarding God, everything falls apart. Who are we to question the nature or the actions of God, if God exists? Even if God seemed to be the most absurd and the most unconventional being, who are we to question that? In fact, because God is not a human being, it would make sense that his nature or his actions would be different than our nature or actions. A friend of mine once said, “If you find that your God is perfectly agreeable, that’s a pretty good sign you have a man-made God.” If God exists independently of a man-made construct, then there would be aspects of him that we would question, because he is not man-made.

Thus, when we ask how it is that a God can do this or that, it would make sense that in some cases, we wouldn’t be able to understand. Tim Keller writes in The Reason for God, “Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination. So an authoritative Bible is not the enemy of a personal relationship with God. It is the precondition for it.” Of course, we cannot say that because the God we believe in has aspects that we don’t like, that God is true. That would be an even more ludicrous argument. All we can say is that if God exists, it is only logical that God has aspects that we don’t like, because God isn’t a regular human being. Therefore, the argument for the nonexistence of God merely stating that there are aspects that we don’t like about God is not really an argument at all.

“God ordered the killing of thousands of people in the Bible!” “God is a selfish God!” “God is a jealous God!” “God does not view men and women equally!” All of these arguments fall under the same category. When we approach these ideas with our own ideas, sometimes there is conflict. But that says nothing about the validity of the belief.

On a different note, I often find that many things that people don’t like about God are actually based on misunderstandings. And if things were placed in a more accurate light, or if people were given a fuller picture, people might dislike God less. I think that it is such a case with the jealousy of God. I think that it is such a case with homosexuality. I’ll focus on that one. It is true that the God of the Bible condemns homosexuality, but it is also true that the God of the Bible condemns looking lustfully at women, that he condemns envy, that he condemns taking personal pride in achievements. The God of the Bible draws more moral lines all over the place. But that is not the central message of the Bible. And without the central message of the Bible, God seems a bit like an unreasonable dictator. However, even if that was it, we would have no reason to question God, because, again, he is not a human being.

And here’s the central message of the Bible. It is that even though all human beings are more sinful than they would dare to admit, they are more loved than they would dare to dream. God is in the business of loving condemned sinners. And so, because this key message of Christianity is sometimes overlooked, it is assumed that God is nothing more than a judge with high standards. On the contrary, not only is he a judge with high standards, but he has also sentenced himself to the condemnation that we deserve, dying in our place.

With that said, I think that there is one more kind of argument I would like to address.

Argument #2: Can God create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it?

One writer, I don’t remember who, once noted that even a human being can build a boat so heavy that he cannot lift it. Why, then, does it seem strange that God cannot? But I won’t go there.

I think that if you carefully examine this question, it is essentially arguing on the presupposition that all things are finite. But there really is no reason to believe that.

God and human beings are different. The concept of a human being, existent or nonexistent, assumes that the human being is finite. That is what a human being is. The concept of a God, existent or nonexistent, assumes that God is infinite. That is what God is. Therefore, when we approach this question, we must take care, because we are talking about an infinite God.

This argument is basically comparing two infinite measurements. One regards God’s creating power. The second regards God’s lifting power. And the argument says that the concept of God is contradictory, because either God’s creating power is limited, or his lifting power is limited. On the contrary, neither of them is limited. Why? Because God is infinite. You see, the only way this argument can be answered is if we say that God is an infinite God. And that’s the proper assumption, because the concept of God already encompasses that God is infinite.

The only reason why God’s creating power seems to be limited is because it’s being compared to an infinite lifting power. And the only reason why God’s lifting power seems to be limited is because it’s being compared to an infinite creating power. Essentially, the argument goes, “God’s lifting power is less than infinity. Therefore it is not infinity.” Or the other way around. But that’s not right. In the realm of infinity, there is no more than or less than. Things are just infinite.

Another thing to note is what exactly is doing the limiting. God is limiting himself! One aspect of God is putting limitations on another aspect of God. How is that contradictory? Or how does that take away from the nature of God?

It seems that one can only argue, “I don’t like the idea of an infinite God.”

And there are very many of these types of “paradoxes,” if you can call them that. There is the paradox regarding God’s omnipotence and God’s omniscience. If God truly knows everything, including the future, then is God really free to choose what to do? Or is God’s restrained by the fact that he knows what he will do? There is the paradox regarding God’s omnipotence and God’s holiness. Is God less than all-powerful because he cannot sin?

In such paradoxes, and in others like them, I believe that the moment we insert the idea of infinity, things fall into place. One infinite aspect of God is limited by another infinite aspect of God, but that is meaningless, because having infinity as a limit means not having a limit at all, and that is God-centric, because it only shows that, if there is any limiting to be done, God limits himself.

- Larry

I think that perhaps all arguments against Christianity fall under four categories. I don’t think I’ve ever come across an argument that falls outside of these categories, and I’ll show how they do. These are the categories.

1) They are actually not arguments against Christianity at all, but rather they are arguments against something totally different altogether.
2) They are actually not arguments regarding truth or validity at all. They merely consist of stating the content of Christianity and saying that they don’t like that content.
3) They are arguments regarding contradictions in the Bible, either with itself or with external knowledge. This is usually due to a misunderstanding or misinterpretation or false assumption.
4) They are arguments based on a self-contradicting platform.

I’ll give you a few examples of each. This post will be dedicated to the first category.

#1: They are actually not arguments against Christianity at all, but rather they are arguments against something totally different altogether.

One common argument goes something like, “Christianity claims that God is perfectly good, and Christianity claims that God is all-powerful. However, evil exists. Therefore, Christianity isn’t true.”

The issue is that this argument assumes something else about Christianity, and that assumption is actually not a part of Christianity. What is that assumption? The arguer assumes that because God is perfectly good, it is also God’s #1 priority to rid the world of all evil at every moment. But that doesn’t follow. Christianity, rather, claims that God’s #1 priority is to glorify Himself. If you don’t like that, then you might consider reading my soon-to-be post about Common-Arguments-Against-Christianity Category #2.

“Why isn’t that assumption a good assumption?” one might ask. Well, if I were to draw a picture, and I was wearing a blue shirt, I wouldn’t necessarily make it so that everybody in the picture was wearing a blue shirt. There’s no reason for that. And God, just because He is good, is not compelled to create a universe in which everything was good (He did make it good in the beginning though, but He was not compelled to do so).

So this argument actually isn’t against Christianity. It’s against the religion that claims that God’s #1 priority is to rid the world of all evil at every moment. If that’s the case, then this is a pretty good argument. I would probably use that myself against that hypothetical religion.

Here’s another argument. “God cannot be all-powerful, because humans have free will.”

There’s two ways to take this. One is to say that this argument comes with the assumption that humans have free will, which is ultimately false. All of our decisions are no more free than a rock choosing to fall, because all we are are molecules following the laws of nature, under the instruction of God. That’s probably the position I held a year or two ago.

Recently, I’ve been putting this in the Trinity category, which is the second way to take this. The concept of the Trinity is that God is one Being in three Persons. The Trinity category is the category of all things that seem like contradictions, but they are only contradictions when God is assumed to conform to natural logic and reasoning. However, Christianity claims that God does not need to submit to natural logic and reasoning, because He is supernatural. Something that is supernatural is not natural by definition. It is pointless to denounce that a square has three sides. The square never intended to have three sides. Similarly, it is pointless to denounce that God does not fit natural logic and reasoning. God never intended to fit natural logic and reasoning.

Here’s another argument. “The Christian church has done so much injustice.” And then people point to the Crusades or the Spanish Inquisition and the like.

I wouldn’t consider that an argument, because you can’t arrive at “Christianity is not true” from that premise. Why? Because Christianity does not claim that the Christian church does not do injustice. There is no such claim to disprove! In fact, there are stories in the Bible of both Israel (the Old Testament “church”) and the actual church doing injustice. In Acts, there’s a story of the church neglecting the widows in the distributing of food. That does nothing to disprove Christianity itself.

If you give a student a math question, and he can’t figure it out, that doesn’t mean that his math teacher is bad at math. This isn’t an argument against Christianity but rather a religion that claims that its followers are 100% moral. Rather, Christianity claims that everybody is immoral.

Note: If the claim is rather “God performed many unjust acts in the Bible,” refer to Category #2.

Another example. It’s pretty common to say things like, “Christianity promotes racism,” or “Christianity promotes slavery.”

Firstly, even if Christianity did such things, that does not disprove Christianity. Rather, it just puts this argument under Category #2. With that said, Christianity, contrary to popular belief, does not promote racism or slavery.

Rather, Christianity promotes anti-racism. It claims that God is in the business of redeeming for Himself a people from every tribe and every nation. Paul even rebuked Peter once for essentially being racist (Galatians 2:11-14).

And rather, Christianity promotes anti-slavery. Isaiah 58:6 says, “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?” 1 Timothy 1 actually says that slave traders are ungodly and sinful. There is no such verse that says anything of the sort, “You shall own slaves.” There are stories in which slaves exist, but that doesn’t say anything about Christianity itself, just as we wouldn’t say that Frederick Douglass promoted slavery for talking about slavery. There are also specific commands to slaves, but that doesn’t mean that the Bible supports slavery either. It just means that the Bible is not so ignorant about slavery that it neglects slaves altogether. In such commands, it says to submit to masters, but it is in the context of submission in light of Christ’s submission, and it is often (and I might even say always) among a whole list of relationships in which submissions ought to occur, for the sake of Christ. Slaves are to submit to their masters because all Christians are to turn the other cheek, not because slavery is good. The Bible says that slavery is sin.

In addition, throughout history, it is often because of Christianity that slavery has been abolished. St. Patrick denounced and preached against slavery. In the post-Middle-Age period, the Quakers were perhaps the first group to be aggressively abolitionist. William Wilberforce led the abolitionist movement in Britain, and he attributed his passion to Christianity. Charles Spurgeon, often considered the greatest modern Christian preacher, and John Wesley, the founder of the Methodists, were outspoken abolitionists. John Finney and Lyman Beecher (father of Harriet Beecher Stowe) were Presbyterian preachers during the Second Great Awakening who often denounced slavery for their pulpit as well.

And on a similar note, one last example concerns the ambiguous quoting of some portion of Jewish law and using that to disprove Christianity. Again, disagreeing with the morality or justice of a law does nothing to discredit that the law is divine. And furthermore, this is not an argument against Christianity but a Jewish law. The Jewish laws served a specific purpose, and that was to show the inability of human beings to be moral (Romans 1-7). Christians today are exempt from these laws (Acts 15).

I’ll be back. If you want to read more of my writings concerning the defense of the Christian faith, you can go to thereasonforfaith.wordpress.com.

- Larry

I did not understand that concept at all. And I don’t think most kids back then did. I don’t even think most Christians, at any age, actually do. Recently, this revelation has been running me over and over like a train, and it has been convicting me of the hypocrisy in my life. I cannot believe now how blind I was, and how blind I still am, to be uttering those seemingly primitive words. And so I realize that this post is immersed with hypocrisy. However, the role of any Christian is not to point to himself but to Christ. And that is what I will do.

What does it mean to follow Jesus? Does it mean doing good things? Being nice?

If so, then the whole world is following Jesus. Following Jesus actually doesn’t turns out to be a big deal after all. You play your video games. You take your tests. You go to your parties. And you make sure that you’re nice to those around you while you’re at it. Piece of cake.

What a joke.

Guys, Jesus calls us to suffer. One of the aspects of following Jesus, and I might even say the most important aspect of following Jesus, is to suffer. Do you need proof?

Luke 9:23
And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”

1 Peter 2:20-21
For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.

2 Timothy 3:12
Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

Philippians 1:29
For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake.

Romans 8:16-17
The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

2 Corinthians 4:8-11
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

Christians talk about trying to be Christ-like all the time. Do they even understand what they are saying? Christ died naked and unrecognizable on a tree. Being Christ-like is to die.

So the next time you think about saying “I have decided to follow Jesus” to the people around you, remind yourself that that doesn’t mean that you have decided to be friendly to your roommate. That means that you have decided to suffer and die.

Jesus did not come to earth to be friendly. Jesus came to earth to die. So don’t water down his actions just so you can say that you’re a follower of Jesus.

- Larry

And so when I see this quotation attributed to Ghandi going around, mostly to Christian circles, I get skeptical.

“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christans.” Supposedly, Ghandi said that. But there’s a chance he didn’t. But I don’t know.

Anyway, I probably first came across this in high school. And since then, I’ve seen and heard it a bunch of times, usually complemented by an encouragement to live more like Jesus. In fact, I think that I myself used this several times.

I was talking to this friend today, and he said something pretty interesting. Essentially, it is that many people often equate fundamental disagreement with qualitative judgment. In other words, if you disagree with somebody, and especially if it is a disagreement relevant to the very identity of that person, you are looking down on that somebody. If you think that the government is providing too much social welfare, and you come across a recipient of that social welfare, you look down on that person. If you are all about protecting the environment, and you come across a person who crushes rabbits with Hummers for fun, you look down on that person. If you think that being attracted to somebody of the same gender is morally wrong, and you come across somebody who is attracted to somebody of the same gender, you look down on that person.

However, that’s not how Christianity works. Christianity says that every single person in the world is the worst sinner of all, but some people are given the grace to know God nonetheless. And so there is nothing at all separating me and a part-time stripper and part-time pedophile, except grace. Therefore, I cannot look down on anybody. However, that philosophy is a little difficult to understand for non-Christians, so there naturally is this miscommunication.

I was in a discussion yesterday that involved people in the LGBTQ community and people in the faith community. And one issue that was going around concerned whether it was possible to love somebody who disagreed fundamentally with you. And it seemed like many people in the LGBTQ community found it very difficult to believe that you can fundamentally disagree with somebody without looking down on that person. It is a huge hindrance to building a relationship when you disagree with somebody’s very nature. On the other hand, those in the faith community found it very easy to accept. Many said that it is very possible to believe that somebody’s very identity is morally wrong and to still love them.

I found that interesting. Where does that dichotomy come from?

I think this is how it works. Love without action is worthless. I think that’s the view that most people have. I would probably say that love without action still exists, but that the love is revealed or made known through action. It’s not that God loved the world any less before Jesus died on that cross. However, to regular human beings, that’s impractical. It’s much easier to say that love without action is worthless.

And so the way people determine how much somebody loves them is by how much action they put into it. Consequently, some of the worst people of all are those who talk about love all the time but don’t have any action. They’re walking contradictions. They’re hypocrites.

If you don’t talk about love, and you don’t love, that’s okay. But if you talk about love, and you don’t love, that’s hypocrisy. That’s the philosophy that many people have.

And consequently, Christians, who build their identity on a religion of love, are in a very dangerous position. It is so easy to become a hypocrite. And consequently, people find it hard to believe that you can love somebody even though you think they are living in sin. And consequently, people say, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians.”

What’s the fundamental difference between Christ and Christians? It’s that Christ wasn’t a hypocrite. He talked about love, and he actually loved. He said he came to serve, and he washed his disciples feet. He said that he was willing to forgive, and he allowed himself to be killed on a cross.

Christ alone is able to both disagree fundamentally with people and to love those same people to death. He drew moral lines all over the place. Just read the Sermon on the Mount. At the same time, he was often criticized for spending too much time with prostitutes and lepers. He talked love, and he walked love.

Here’s something we as Christians should realize. We can’t do that!

Christians aren’t supposed to talk about their love. They’re supposed to talk about God’s love. Evangelism is not done through pointing to your love but through pointing to God’s love. Evangelism is not done by convincing people of the good that Christians have done for the world but by convincing people of the good that God has done for the world. Christians gave the world orphanages and hospitals, but Christians also gave the world tyranny and war. God gave the world his Son as atonement for our sin.

“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians.”

That’s the whole point!

If I’m a hungry beggar, and I found this man offering free food down the street, and I tell you about it, don’t refuse the free food because I smell, or because I’m dirty, or even because I punched you in the face yesterday. That’s irrelevant. Just go and get your free food.

- Larry

I was talking to a friend yesterday on the phone. He was sharing to me about this revelation he had concerning 1 Corinthians 15:19.

Imagine that at the end of your life, you find out that Jesus Christ was not the son of God, and you had essentially wasted every second that you spent praying, or reading the Bible, or going to church. Imagine that. Now imagine what people would say about your life.

Would they say, “It’s alright. Even though he wasted some of his time on Jesus-following, he had a pretty decent life”? Or would the say, “What a waste. What a pitiful life he had.”

When my friend told me that, I realized something about myself. If I were to die today, I don’t think I would be pitied, by Christians or by non-Christians. I think that people who don’t even believe in Jesus Christ would say that I had a pretty decent life. Why? Because I’ve invested enough in this life to make this life worthwhile.

And that’s exactly what we’re not supposed to do.

1 Corinthians 1:18 says, “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing…” Most of my non-Christian friends don’t really think that I’m living a life of folly. Now, I don’t think folly is something that we should be going around asking for, but I think that this thought definitely says something about where my priorities are.

==

The ironic thing is that I recently made a website to explain why I believe in Christianity. I’ll be updating it semi-regularly. There is this huge desire within me to justify my position as a Christian, and not only that, but to justify my position in non-Christian terms. That side of me is polluting me with pride and self-righteousness. At the same time, I feel that the vast majority of the human race is largely ignorant to this intersection of faith and reason, simply discarding it for the sake of convenience. I cannot just keep what I believe to myself, because my convictions have brought me to the belief that there is no fuller life than the life that is invested in God and God alone.

Regardless of how pure my motives are, if you’re interested, check out thereasonforfaith.wordpress.com.

- Larry

That puts human beings in a very unique place. We should not treat humans as if they are less than an image-bearer of God, but we should not treat humans as if they are more than an image-bearer of God. So therefore, in the Christian life, our first commandment is to love God, and our second commandment is to love human beings. Therefore, we go wrong when we don’t love humans enough, and we go wrong when we love humans too much.

If we don’t love human beings enough, we would be objectifying them. That is taking a human being, created in God’s image, and treating him as if he or she was nothing special. External results of objectifying people include lust, racism, and slavery. This is why people use others.

On the other hand, if we love human beings too much, we would be committing idolatry. That is taking a human being, created in God’s image, and treating him as if he or she was God himself. This leads to an abandonment of personal identity and calling, as well as a devaluing of God and His attributes. That is very dangerous.

So, to keep it simple. 1) Love God. 2) Love people. Just some food for thought.

- Larry

What a question! People have been asking this since the very beginning of history, and all sorts of answers have surfaced.

- To create a better society
- To pass down our genes.
- To be moral.
- To be happy.
- To have a happy family.
- To love others.
- To love yourself.
- To be yourself.
- To prepare yourself for the afterlife.

And on and on. Ramble time.

Recently I’ve been noticing something. All of these purposes are decided by the very people who are to live these purposes. So what? Well, is that okay? I think that perhaps the worst person to decide a purpose for one’s life would be the very person who would be living that purpose, because that very person would have the strongest bias in the matter.

Would you leave it to a student to calculate his grades to assemble a transcript? Would you leave it to a defendant to be the judge of his trial? Of course not. They would be extremely biased. In the same way, it would be ridiculous to allow ourselves to choose our own purposes.

“Wait a moment,” people might say, “those illustrations are very different. Students cannot assemble their own transcripts, and defendants cannot judge their own trials, because these are official matters, and they have official rules and regulations, and they have official consequences. It’s a right-and-wrong issue. However, the purpose of life is more up to the individual, and there really isn’t anything official about it. There is no purpose that is right, and there is no purpose that is wrong.”

Is that so? Who decides morality?

The “I will choose whatever purpose suits me best” attitude is set on a huge presupposition, and that presupposition is that we have the final say.

Where does that presupposition come from? I think that if you really break it down, it falls into one of two categories. Either 1) God does not exist, or 2) God does not care about my purpose.

That’s really what it comes down to. “I think the purpose of life is to create a better society” rests on either “God does not exist” or “God does not care about my purpose.” “I think the purpose of life is to love others” rests on either “God does not exist” or “God does not care about my purpose.” If God exists, and if God cares about our purpose, then what he says about our purpose goes, because he is God, and we are not. If God exists, and if God cares about our purpose, then we cannot choose our purpose. We cannot say “I think the purpose of life is this or that.” We can only say “God says that it is this. Therefore, it is as true as gravity.”

Perhaps someone would say, “What’s the deal with free will then? A clock has to fulfill its purpose of telling time because it doesn’t have free will, but we have free will. We’re different. Free will means that we can choose to have a different purpose.” I would say, no, we will always have one true and correct purpose of life. Free will does not mean that we can choose another purpose. It only means that we can choose to not comply with that purpose of life.

We can choose to disregard gravity, but we cannot choose to disregard the reality, or the consequences, of gravity. We can choose to disregard our purpose, but we cannot choose to disregard the consequences of our purpose.

Of course, all of this rests on presuppositions as well, that 1) God exists, and 2) God cares about my purpose. So it seems that everybody is in the same boat. And with this, I will leave a William James quote, from his essay The Will to Believe.

“We cannot escape the issue by remaining skeptical and waiting for more light, because, although we do avoid error in that way if religion be untrue, we lose the good, if it be true, just as certainly as if we positively chose to disbelieve. It is as if a man should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly sure that she would prove an angel after he brought her home. Would he not cut himself off from that particular angel-possibility as decisively as if he went and married someone else? Skepticism, then, is not avoidance of option; it is option of a certain particular kind of risk. Better risk less of truth than chance of error—that is your faith-vetoer’s exact position. He is actively playing his stake as much as the believer is; he is backing the field against the religious hypothesis, just as the believer is backing the religious hypothesis against the field. To preach skepticism to us as a duty until “sufficient evidence” for religion be found, is tantamount therefore to telling us, when in presence of the religious hypothesis, that to yield to our fear of its being error is wiser and better than to yield to our hope that it may be true.”

- Larry