Ehrman’s Problem: He’s Confused About the Free Will Defense

Posted on January 24, 2012 by clayjones

Ehrman says free will defenders often tell him humans would be like robots without free will (11, 12, 197, 229). Well, of course they tell him that. Rightly! And on this point Ehrman never disagrees because free will is essential to who we are.

Consider that God, if He had wanted to, could have created only creatures like otters or golden retrievers. There would certainly have been a lot less evil and suffering in the world (assuming He also made them both vegetarians). Now I like animals, but I’m glad that there are more significant beings around—human beings—that possess a much greater freedom than that.

Consider also that free will is one of the most popular themes of science fiction. For example, Bruce, in Bruce Almighty (2003), is told “don’t mess with free will.” Minority Report (2002), Pleasantville (1998), The Adjustment Bureau (2011), and Steven Spielberg’s dismal Artificial Intelligence (2001), are other examples of Sci-Fi exploring the free will concept.

One plot device has humankind create a computer/robot that begins to think on its own (that is, it becomes self-aware and exercises free will), and then said machine sets out to destroy humankind. The rest of the movie is about humankind trying to destroy the computer/robot. This is the theme of the four Terminator movies (1984, 1991, 2003, 2009) and TV show; the three The Matrix movies (1999, 2003, 2004); Eagle Eye (2008); i, Robot (2004); 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and a host of others.

Another plot device involves one being who tries to take away the free will of another being. For example, the Borg on Star Trek and the pod people in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie (1956 and its two remakes 1979, 2007) attempt to take away free will from humans. In the two The Stepford Wives movies (1975, 2004),1 the men of Stepford kill their liberated, free-thinking wives and replace them with realistic replicas. But with as much trouble as real spouses can be, would anyone really, I mean honestly, want a robot replacement? Isn’t a robot spouse just three steps above inflatable?

Could we really imagine wanting to live in a world in which we were surrounded only by beings that lacked free will? I can’t, and apparently Ehrman can’t either. Certainly science fiction writers have yet to do so.

Free will is essential to who we are and Ehrman is wrong about the free will defense. His book, God’s Problem, contains many more of Ehrman’s errors. We’ll examime them in future posts.

  1. There were also three TV sequels: The Revenge of the Stepford Wives (1980), The Stepford Children (1987), The Stepford Husbands (1996). Apparently the most poignant movie is yet to be made: The Stepford Teenagers. [↩]
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Ehrman’s Problem 5: God Should Intervene More to Prevent Free Will’s Evil Use

Posted on January 23, 2012 by clayjones

Finally we come to what seems to be Ehrman’s major objection to the free will defense. He asks, “If he [God] intervenes sometimes to counteract free will, why does he not do so more of the time? Or indeed, all of the time?” (13). Later he writes, “I can’t believe in that God anymore, because from what I now see around the world, he doesn’t intervene” (16).

This bothers many Christians and it used to bother me. But, thankfully, I began to understand that God has very good reasons for not intervening more than He does. First, if God intervened “all of the time,” then our actions wouldn’t mean anything. In fact, it would be a cartoon world. Johnny could be cutting his steak with a knife and the next moment jab it into his little brother, but the knife would turn to rubber and everyone at the table could laugh heartily. An embezzler could write a love note to his wife and then start to write a bad check but the pen wouldn’t work. He gets another pen, it too is out of ink, and on it goes. We wouldn’t need to take an elevator down; we could just jump out the window and float gently to the sidewalk. And why would we need to go to school because no one would ever suffer the consequence of not going?

If our actions are to mean anything at all, then natural laws must work in regular ways. Consider the words of Oxford’s Richard Swinburne:

If God is to allow us to acquire knowledge by learning from experience and above all to allow us to choose whether to acquire knowledge at all or even to allow us to have a very well-justified knowledge of the consequences of our actions—knowledge which we need if we are to have a free and efficacious choice between good and bad—he needs to provide natural evils occurring in regular ways in consequence of natural processes.1

Swinburne is right and no adult would really want to live in a world without consequences.

But Ehrman often complains about consequences. For example, regarding the disaster of sexually transmitted disease he writes: “It is not only homophobic and hateful but also inaccurate and unhelpful to blame this epidemic on sexual preference or promiscuity. Unsafe practices might spread the disease [that’s an understatement!]—but why is there a disease in the first place?” Well, we know the ground has been cursed because of Adam’s sin, enabling every kind of disease and pestilence, and Adam’s descendants who continue to disobey God by practicing sexual immorality (whether homosexual or heterosexual) bring suffering on themselves that obedience to His commands would largely prevent. Also, does Ehrman seriously doubt that if everyone in the world became Biblically chaste that we wouldn’t soon all but eliminate, if not entirely eliminate, AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases? Seriously?

Ehrman also brings up Hurricane Katrina as an example of a natural disaster where people are unfairly blamed. He complains that “some people are all too willing to blame other human beings for what happened. The levees were poorly constructed, and everyone knew it. What right did they have to build New Orleans there anyway?” (231). Now I surely wouldn’t blame the victims for what happened to New Orleans, but shouldn’t we blame the city planners and engineers? After all, the city was built below sea level, the levees were built incapable of withstanding a hurricane stronger than category three, while categories four and five hurricanes were already known to exist. Katrina’s extensive damage was due to humankind’s error. And if there is no God then, who, exactly, is there to blame? Is it not necessary to come to some conclusions of how this disaster happened in order to keep it from happening again? And if there is no God, what is the lesson? Could it be none other than, “We goofed! We built a city below sea level with walls we knew couldn’t withstand a peril that we already knew existed!” As Proverbs 19:3 says, “When a man’s folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the LORD.”

So Ehrman might take back the Toontown idea that God should intervene “all of the time” and vaguely opine that God should just simply intervene more than He does. But when would Ehrman be satisfied? If fewer died in the Holocaust would Ehrman be satisfied? Instead of six million, what if only 6,000 Jews died? 600? 60? Wouldn’t he still accuse God if only six Jews were gassed in Auschwitz? How much evil is God supposed to stop and yet still enable free creatures to learn how evil free creatures can be, thus preparing them to enter heaven having learned the horror of rebellion?

If God wants us to know not only that our actions are serious but that our actions mean anything at all, then, one more time: He must allow natural laws to work in regular ways.

Consider too that things could be much worse than they are. Hitler tried, but he didn’t get the bomb first! Wouldn’t that have been a game changer! Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Pol Pot and most of their henchmen are all dead. Genesis 6:3 reveals God’s decision to shorten human life to 120 years from pre-flood spans of hundreds of years. By limiting life spans, He limited both the amount of evil any one person could commit, as well as the amount of suffering any one would have to endure.

Of course, God could have made the world such that every time we looked up we saw a flaming sword dangling over our heads with the knowledge that the slightest rebellion would result in our immediate dismemberment. Then everyone would at least feign being a God-follower, wouldn’t they? But feigned loyalty is no more than rebellion waiting for an opportunity. And what would feigned loyalty accomplish? As the old saying goes, “A person changed against their will is of the same opinion still.”

If God wants people to learn the significance of their actions and to decide freely whether they are going to love Him and love their neighbors, then the universe must be such that there is enough evidence so that those who want to believe will have their belief justified; but not so much evidence that those who want to rebel will feign loyalty.2

  1. Richard Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil (Oxford: OUP, 1998), 188-189. [↩]
  2. Apparently it very takes little evidence to be an atheist since many of them are actually willing to believe that the universe popped into existence out of nothing. How does something come from nothing? As “new atheist” Victor Stenger put it: “Since ‘nothing’ is as simple as it gets, we cannot expect it to be very stable. It would likely undergo a spontaneous phase transition to something more complicated, like a universe containing matter. The transition of nothing-to-something is a natural one, not requiring any agent. As Nobel laureate physicist Frank Wilczek has put it, ‘the answer to the ancient question ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’ would then be that ‘nothing is unstable.’” From God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist (Amhurst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007), 133. Or, as Edward P. Tyron, Ph.D., Professor of physics and cosmology at City University of New York, wrote, “In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time.” As quoted in Marcia Bartusiak, Thursday’s Universe (New York: Times Books, 1986), 253. [↩]
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Ehrman’s Problem 4: Why Won’t We Abuse Free Will in Heaven?

Posted on January 20, 2012 by clayjones

Bart Ehrman’s fourth objection to the free will defense is this: “Most people who believe in God-given free will also believe in an afterlife. Presumably people in the afterlife will still have free will (they won’t be robots then either, will they?). And yet there won’t be suffering (allegedly) then. Why will people know how to exercise free will in heaven if they can’t know how to exercise it on earth?” (12-13). This is a common question and there are several reasons we can have free will in Heaven but not sin.

There’s much to say on this, but I’ll be brief here.

First, the Bible says that one day all the things that cause sin will be destroyed: “The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil.” (Mat. 13:41). This includes Satan and his minions, as well as all those who tasted of good and evil and ultimately chose evil. (Rev. 20:10, 13). There will be a new earth (Rev. 21:1) so that the corruptions of this earth will be forever gone; we will no longer be “one-click” from evil. Our bodies will be redeemed and we will no longer know the lusts of the flesh. (Phil. 3:21). But God waits to accomplish these things until all those who will come to Him, come. (2 Pet. 3:9).

Second, the eternal punishment of the eternally unrepentant will serve as an eternal reminder of the peril and horror of sin.

Third, I suspect that lessons learned here and at the Judgment will make sin too ridiculous to commit.1 In other words, God couldn’t just create beings with a significantly free will and not let them ever use it wrongly, but that doesn’t mean that this world and all the evil we experience here won’t be sufficient, in conjunction with the other things I just mentioned, to make us realize that sin is something we simply won’t want to do—ever.

I use the following illustration when I teach. I will hold a pen, or other sharp object, up to my eye and ask the class if they would like to see me jab it into my eye?2 Holding the pen even closer I’ll stress, “I could do it!” Then I’ll ask, “But I’m not going to. Do you know why?” No one ever answers. Finally I tell them, “I’m not going to do it because I’m too smart for that; that would be stupid thing to do.” Consider that we don’t give pens to babies because, sure enough, sooner or later they’d jab them into their eyes. But, even if I lived a billion years on this earth (as long as I still had all my marbles), I would never, ever, intentionally jab a pen into my eye because I know that would be stupid.

That is what is going on in this world. We are learning to distinguish between good and evil (Heb. 5:14). We are learning that sin is not only rebellion but that sin is stupid, hurtful, hateful, and counterproductive. We are learning that God is right, was right, and always will be right. And at the Judgment, where everyone’s evil thoughts and deeds will be exposed, we are going to get an amazing education about the horror of sin. In other words, this life prepares us to be able to use our free will responsibly in Heaven. Just like so many rebellious teenagers, we are learning the hard way—through experience—that our Heavenly Father has been right all along.

And finally, in Heaven, those who persevere in their faith, having learned here that rebellion is inane and insane, will see God who will give them the Kingdom (2 Thess. 1:5; Luke 12:32) where:

No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. ~Revelation 22:3-5

  1. William Lane Craig makes a similar point in a debate with Ray Bradley. Bradly asked why God didn’t just create heaven and forego this world.

    Craig: “No, Heaven may not be a possible world when you take it in isolation by itself. It may be that the only way in which God could actualize a heaven of free creatures all worshiping Him and not falling into sin would be by having, so to speak, this run-up to it, this advance life during which there is a veil of decision-making in which some people choose for God and some people against God. Otherwise you don’t know that heaven is an actualizable world. You have no way of knowing that possibility.”

    Bradley: “You’re saying, in effect, that when I characterize heaven as a possible world in which everybody freely receives Christ, I’m wrong insofar as that had to be preceded by this actual world, this world of vale of tears and woe in which people are sinful and the like.”

    Craig: “I’m saying that it may not be feasible for God to actualize heaven in isolation from such an antecedent world.” See: http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/craig-bradley3.html [↩]

  2. I got this illustration from a doctoral class I took years ago from Dallas Willard. [↩]
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Ehrman’s Problem 3: God Could Have Made Us So We’d Always Do Right

Posted on January 19, 2012 by clayjones

Bart Ehrman asks why God didn’t give humans “the intelligence they need to exercise it [free will] so that we can all live happily and peaceably together? You can’t argue that he wasn’t able to do so, if you want to argue that he is all powerful.” (13)1 This objection is Ehrman’s slant on the more commonly stated argument: God should have been able to create free beings who would always do what was right.

There are two problems with Ehrman’s idea.

First, it would seem that Ehrman sees a strong correlation between intelligence and goodness. Personally, I see absolutely no correlation whatsoever. I do not believe for one minute that intelligence is any indicator of goodness. Those with higher IQs aren’t more moral than those with lower IQs. After all, it was the Nazi doctors who began the genocide in Nazi Germany by killing the disabled and mentally retarded. It took great intelligence to arrange the systematic murder of six million Jews and five million of Slavic descent.

Now I suspect that Ehrman would say that he meant something different than just raw intellectual horsepower. But what would it be? How does God educate beings, like humans, who have decided that He doesn’t know what’s best for us? That He is just holding us back from something good? That He is not looking out for our best interest? That He is spoiling our fun? One student got angry with me: “There must be a way!” My reply was, “Okay, what do you got?” which only made him madder. My point is that it is one thing to just divine, “I know God could have made us so that we would be free creatures but not sin,” and another to actually explain how that would work.

Second, if I understand Ehrman correctly (again, he doesn’t develop these thoughts very far), his argument boils down to: If God can do all things, He could have created only free beings that would always choose right. But, if I do understand him correctly then I’m surprised he doesn’t know better: his argument fails because it requires God do the logically impossible.

When Christians say that God can do all things, we mean that God can do anything that is logically possible. We do not mean that God can actualize contradictory states of affairs. Indeed, Ehrman’s argument commits the fallacy of contradictory premises. Even God cannot make square-circles, two-sided triangles, married-bachelors, or a rock so big He couldn’t pick it up. And neither can He logically create significantly free beings and guarantee that they will never use their freedom wrongly. If we were “engineered” to only choose right, then we wouldn’t be free–we’d be robots. Think Stepford Wives and you’re the wife.

Perhaps this world is precisely the place where free beings are getting schooled that God does, in fact, know best. And this leads us to Ehrman’s next objection, which I will examine in my next post.

  1. Ehrman only has these two sentences for this point and one summary sentence that occurs a little later on the same page. Thus it is hard to know what he means, exactly, by “intelligence” (does he mean IQ, a certain type of knowledge, some other kind of ability, or all of the above?). [↩]
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Ehrman’s Problem 2: Free Will and Natural Evil

Posted on January 18, 2012 by clayjones

As I mentioned yesterday, Ehrman admits that free will can explain much human evil, but he asks how it can explain malaria, dysentery, drought, hurricanes, mudslides, or a “tsunami that kills hundreds of thousands overnight.” (12) In other words, how does the misuse of free will explain “natural” evil?

Although there are other answers to this question, here I’m going to briefly give the two major answers.

Adam’s Sin Brought Natural Evil

The first reason is natural evil exists because Adam and Eve rebelled against God. Adam ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and God told Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.” (Gen. 3:17) I ask my classes all the time, “What natural evil couldn’t have been enabled by God looking at the ground and saying, ‘You are cursed’?”

Then, after God cursed the ground, He banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and thus removed them from the rejuvenating power of the Tree of Life. This ensured that they and their descendants would die. No specification was made as to when or how death might come. One might die at eight-months, eight-years, or eighty years from drowning or heart disease. Regardless, most natural evil arose because of Adam’s misuse of free will.

Saying that we all suffer and die because of a decision that some couple made long ago, although perfectly Biblical, brings up a problem that Ehrman doesn’t ask, Why is it fair that we all suffer so terribly for their decision?

The Bible gives two answers here.1 First, the Bible says that we all inherit Adam’s sinful nature and so all of us grow to become sinners: “sin entered the world through one man [Adam], and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men—because all sinned.” (Rom. 5:12.)

Second, the Bible teaches that Adam and Eve were not just some disconnected couple who happened to live thousands of years ago who just happened to sin, and now, for some strange reason, we suffer for it. No. It teaches that they are our first parents, our original parents, and that they made a decision that resulted in our deaths and the suffering that our deaths entail. In other words, free beings named Adam and Eve made a decision that adversely affected us—their family. God commanded them not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for doing so would bring death. They ate; death came—and we’ve been attending funerals ever since. We, their children, have all ratified their sinful choice by choosing evil ourselves. Adam and Eve tasted of good and evil, and we’ve been tasting it ever since.

We all understand being hurt, sometimes even injured, by a parent’s decisions. What I mean is, we all know of families where a parent has driven drunk and injured a child, gambled away the family’s future, abused or molested one or more of the children, or abandoned the family to run off with someone new. Free beings hurt their families all the time and Adam similarly hurt his family. Adam did it, of course, on a much, much larger scale, but it was the act of a free being. Much of natural evil resulted from Adam’s free will choice.

If we are offended that sin can lead to so much death and destruction, then we should hate sin! “Hate sin!” is perhaps the biggest lesson of this life. Hate sin! One sin killed us all. Let’s learn from that. The trouble is that we humans rarely hate sin (at least our own sin anyway) until it affects us adversely. Because we don’t hate sin, God’s punishment for sin seems terribly severe (I’ll talk more about this in future posts).

Spiritual Forces Cause Natural Evils

The second answer is that the Bible teaches that diseases and natural disasters often arise through the actions of spiritual beings who can and do wreak havoc upon humankind. The classic example is Satan’s killing Job’s children with gale-force winds and then afflicting Job with boils. Ehrman grants that this is indeed a Biblical perspective:

One of the virtues of the apocalyptic perspective embraced by many (most?) of the New Testament authors is that it insists quite vociferously that God does not bring disasters; his cosmic enemies do. Not just earthquakes and hurricanes and tsunamis, but sickness and disease, mental health problems, oppression and persecution: it is the Devil and his minions, the demons, who are at fault…. This is an age in which they have been given virtually free reign. (232)2

But “virtually free reign” is just another way of saying that they had a lot of opportunity to exercise their free will, and this is an example of how free will can explain many natural disasters.

There’s much more to this issue, but that’s enough for now. Suffice it to say that the misuse of free will has brought into our world most of the suffering we endure.

  1. For more on this see: Clay Jones, “Original Sin: It’s Importance and Fairness” Christian Research Journal (December, 2011), 24-27. [↩]
  2. Emphasis mine. [↩]
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Ehrman’s Problem: He Misreads the Bible and Impugns God’s Fairness

Posted on January 17, 2012 by clayjones

In his book, God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer, Bart Ehrman makes the case that neither Christians nor the Bible can answer why God, if He were to exist, would allow “the cesspool of misery and suffering” that many people endure. Ehrman says that he was once an evangelical Christian pastor but since he couldn’t reconcile his faith with horrendous evils, “I started to lose my faith, I now have lost it altogether. I no longer go to church, no longer believe, no longer consider myself a Christian. The subject of this book is the reason why.” (2-3)

But Ehrman errs.

I’m going to start responding to his book, beginning with a series on his first chapter, which largely concerns free will.

Throughout God’s Problem, Ehrman is correct when he says that most Christians, if asked why God allows evil, will appeal to free will. And they should! That God would desire to create significantly free creatures does explain much of the evil and suffering that humankind endures and inflicts upon each other. The free will defense, simply stated, is that evil and suffering entered our world because God created beings that could freely choose between good and evil.1 In other words, God wanted to create beings with the ability to truly choose to love or hate, be generous or selfish, be courageous or cowardly, and do good or evil and these things, as potentially wonderful or perilous as they are, can only be possible for creatures with free will. Free will, at its very core, means that we actually can choose between two alternatives; that we can do otherwise. If you can’t do otherwise, then you don’t have free will.2

Ehrman does grant that free will can explain much evil: “Yes, you can explain the political machinations of the competing political forces in Ethiopia (or in Nazi Germany or in Stalin’s Soviet Union or in the Ancient worlds of Israel and Mesopotamia) by claiming that human beings had badly handled the freedom given to them.” (12) Indeed. Much human suffering and evil can be immediately explained by humankind’s free choice to do evil. In fact, if you look at the rest of Ehrman’s chapters, you will see how the free will of created beings underlies the other biblical answers Ehrman discusses.

Ehrman presents five problems with the free will defense. First, he says the free will defense plays only “a very minor role in the biblical tradition.”3 (12, see also 229) Second, he asks, “If suffering is entirely about free will, how can you explain hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, and other natural disasters?” (229) Third, he asks, “Why will people know how to exercise free will in heaven if they can’t know how to exercise it on earth?” (12-13) Fourth, he asks why God didn’t give humans “the intelligence they need to exercise” free will properly. (13) Fifth, he complains that if God “intervenes sometimes to counteract free will, why does he not do so more of the time?” (13)

Let us examine Ehrman’s objections one post at a time.

Answering Problem 1: The Free-Will Defense Plays Only a Minor Role in Biblical Tradition

Ehrman says, “In any event, as it turns out—much to the surprise of my students—this standard explanation that God had to give human beings free will and that suffering is the result of people badly exercising it plays only a very minor role in the biblical tradition.” (12) He also says that the free-will argument, though “very popular today, it was not heard nearly so often in biblical times.” (230) Here Ehrman seems to be saying that although we Christians commonly appeal to free will as the major answer to why God allows evil, we are somehow out of step with the Bible since, to Ehrman, the Bible doesn’t give it nearly that emphasis.

Ehrman agrees that “the fact that people are held responsible for their actions—from Adam and Eve, to Cain and Able, to David and Solomon, to Judas and Pilate, to the Antichrist and his minions—shows that the biblical authors had some notion of free will.” (120)4 But only “some notion”? That people could choose to sin or not to sin and would then be held responsible for that choice demands free will’s existence. Ehrman himself spends two chapters developing the concept that he calls “one of the most common [Biblical] explanations” (27) as to why people suffer: God is punishing them for sin. But one of punishment’s major purposes is to motivate people to make different free will choices in the future.

Also, doesn’t every command in the Bible pre-suppose free will? I mean, isn’t any command, whether Biblical or not, basically telling the hearers that they should choose to behave in one way and not another? I would think that Ehrman would agree that the concept was so obvious to the Biblical writers that it would go without saying. It wouldn’t even occur to them that they should bring it up any more than Joshua would think to instruct those that were to march around Jericho that marching could only be accomplished by putting one foot in front of the other. The Bible treats those who sin as if the sin was their choice and always holds them accountable for it. This is the very nature of free will regardless of whether those two words were used together in Scripture. Similarly, Christians consider the doctrine of the Trinity to best represent the teachings of Jesus and his apostles even though neither Jesus nor his apostles ever used the term.

The Bible teaches that moral and natural evil entered our world at the Fall. In Genesis 2:16 we read: “The LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it you will surely die.’”

That’s about free will, right?

  1. Many works are valuable for a more technical examination of the free will defense. Alvin C. Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974). This is a seminal work on the free will defense but not an easy read. John Feinberg, The Many Faces of Evil: Theological Systems and the Problem of Evil (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004). This is the best technical book I have read on the problem of evil but many will also find it difficult. Also helpful is Richard Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil (Oxford: OUP, 1998). The book is easier to read and has a great section on the significance of free will. Of course, C. S. Lewis does a great job discussing free will in The Problem of Pain. [↩]
  2. Some Calvinists define free will differently but that will have to be taken up at another time. [↩]
  3. Emphasis mine. [↩]
  4. Emphasis his. [↩]
Posted in Apologetics, Ehrman, Why God Allows Evil | Tagged , , , , , | 49 Comments

Fasting and Rewards

Posted on January 10, 2012 by clayjones

If Bill Gates, who used to be the richest man in the world but is still extremely rich, told you that if you did not eat anything for a while and kept it to yourself that he would reward you, would you take him up on it? I’ve asked a lot of people this question and the response so far is overwhelmingly Yes. After all, who wouldn’t be curious as to how Bill Gates might reward them?

Well, Someone infinitely wealthier and infinitely more powerful than Bill Gates has made you an offer. Here’s the contractual language:

When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. (Matthew 6:16-18)

Observe several things.

First, although fasting can involve other things, it is typically about not eating any food for a designated period. You can skip certain foods you enjoy (for an amazing example read Dan. 10:2-21) or you can go all-in and do a no-calorie fast (but drink plenty of water).1 Also, you can choose the time you like to fast: you could skip breakfast, lunch, and dinner (and snacks!) and break your fast the next morning at, you guessed it, break-fast. Or you might eat breakfast and then skip lunch and dinner that day and breakfast the next morning and eat again at lunch. Or something like that. Of course, you could always do a half-day fast or a two- or three-day fast. And so on.

Second, the contract is clear that you should keep your fasting between you and God. In other words, don’t tell others you’re fasting. The Pharisees wanted others to appreciate their piety but God deemed them paid in full. Now, that being said, many years ago Jean E. and I thought we should keep fasting from each other. That turned out to be silly:

“What do you want for breakfast?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“Nothing!? Are you sick?

“No, I’m just not eating.”

“Not eating? You’re not hungry?”

“No, I’m hungry, I’m just not eating.”

“Okay, I’m going to the store in a few minutes, what do you want for lunch?”

Neither of us work for NASA but we still figured out the other of us was fasting. So now we just tell each other. Also, since it affects the other person (“What, we’re not having dinner together?”), it is important to talk it out in advance. But we don’t tell others except on a need to know basis and hardly anyone else, ever, needs to know.

So, don’t tweet it.

One more thing about keeping it a secret: sometimes groups of people fast over particular things (e.g., Acts 13:1-3) so obviously they are going to know they are involved in a group fast.

Third, if we give something up (like food) and don’t tell anyone, the contract’s Author says that He will reward you. Aren’t you curious as to what the Creator of rainbows, the Caribbean, galaxies, and all wisdom and all understanding might give you? Insights gained, doors opened, opportunities knocking, spiritual growth. I really encourage people seeking direction for their life or ministry to do this.

Now, I’ve had Christians complain that we can’t earn anything from God and that this sounds all too mercenary. They’re wrong. Of course you can’t earn your salvation. You can’t earn getting into God’s good favor. Duh! But that doesn’t preclude God from rewarding your fasting! After all, similar contractual language applies to prayer: pray in secret and your Father will reward you (Matt. 6:5-6)!

So, if you want to be rewarded by the One who spoke the universe into existence…

What are you waiting for?

Eph. 3:20: He “is able to do more abundantly than all we can ask or think.”

Amen.

  1. If you drink coffee every day then go ahead and have a cup of coffee. [↩]
Posted in Ministry, Spiritual Growth | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

How to Start an Apologetics Ministry in Your Church

Posted on January 4, 2012 by clayjones

Over the years I’ve talked with many people who have successfully started apologetics ministries in their churches and others who tried but failed. What follows are some suggestions on how to do it (these suggestions apply to other types of ministry too).

First, find a church that you enjoy and whose doctrine you agree with and whose leaders will agree with your doctrine. What I mean by this is that you need to make sure there is specific agreement on just about everything (no one is going to agree with anyone 100%). This is important because if you disagree with the pastor on any but the smallest of points (and then you’d better do it humbly), sooner or later that is going to come out and can cause a rift in the church and you are going to be the one who needs to go. Whatever you disagree with should be so small that you won’t feel the need to teach against the pastor.

Second, after you have found a church, humbly introduce yourself to the pastor but don’t tell him on your first meeting that you want to start a ministry. That’s like asking a person to marry you on the first date–it’s creepy. Any pastor worth his salt will want to confirm you’re not a critical curmudgeon before you get the classroom keys.

Third, hang out for a while. Get to know some people so that the church leadership will see you’re an okay person. This hanging out thing is muy importanté! The leaders need to see you are wise and not a wiseguy.

Fourth, don’t begin your relationship with the pastor by confronting him unless it is extremely serious (and if it is extremely serious, be prepared to look for another church). Several years ago Craig and I had lunch with a frustrated fellow who said that the pastor of his church refused to let him start an apologetic ministry. We soon learned that when brand-spanking-new to the church he had confronted the pastor about the way the church was spending its money. From what I could see the church wasn’t in sin; it was just a matter of this budding apologist thinking he knew better than that pastor on what the church’s financial priorities should be. My advice to this guy: find another church and don’t do that again! He didn’t like my advice.

Fifth, ask the person in charge of the appropriate area in the church (e.g., outreach, adult education, etc.,) if you could do a one-time teaching or maybe short series on an apologetic topic. In other words, don’t begin the relationship by asking to teach a regular apologetics study. The leadership needs to know you aren’t an arrogant blowhard and can actually lead a short-term ministry before they will let you have a regular ministry. I suggest you ask to speak on a recent apologetic issue (perhaps the “new atheists”) that might grab people’s attention. This being said, there are some churches that they might let you begin by teaching a regular class once they get to know you, but don’t count on it.

Sixth, and related to the third point, don’t be confrontational with other members of the congregation unless it is extremely serious. For more on this, see my blog “Humble Apologist.” What pastors rightly fear is that you will be a nattering nabob of negativism out to set everyone straight regarding miscellaneous minutiae. If you’re that kind of a person, frankly, you’re not ready to minister—anywhere.

Seventh, fast and pray. Remember that apart from Jesus you can do nothing (John 15). I’m going to talk more about fasting in a future post.

Eighth, don’t be afraid to start small. I taught Bible studies for years with just a few people in attendance. That’s where you learn. If you do well, others will come.

Ninth, when your time to teach comes, nail it! Be prepared! Work hard to glorify God with your ministry.

James 3:13-18: “Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”

Amen.

Posted in Apologetics, Ministry | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

If You’re Sick, Maybe It’s Because You’ve Sinned

Posted on December 6, 2011 by clayjones

I know what many of you are thinking: “The last thing those who are sick need to be told is that it is because of sin!” But, I agree. To do that would be dumb. How would I know if their sickness is the result of some sin they have committed?

But it’s not that simple and El Diablo is at work.

Many Christians err by completely disconnecting sickness from sin, and Christian apologists need to speak up at any and every point that the truth of God is distorted and this is one of them.

Of course, not all sickness is due to our personal sin–in fact, most of it is due to the fall of Adam. After all, Job was very sick indeed, but was falsely told his sickness was the result of sin. John 9:1-3 is another example: “As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.’” The take away from these two passages is that we aren’t in a position to pontificate that someone’s sickness is due to sin.

But, as I said, it’s not that simple.

Notice that Jesus doesn’t rebuke the disciples in the John 9 passage. Jesus could have said, “How long do I have to remain with you? Why even ask such a stupid question? Sickness is never the result of sin!” But He didn’t.

Jesus didn’t rebuke them because Scripture regularly portrays sickness as the result of sinfulness. I’m going to give just two passages. In 1 Cor. 11:27-32 we read:

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.

Notice two things. First, not honoring what Jesus accomplished on the cross may result in weakness, illness, and even death! Isn’t it too bad that every sin doesn’t come with a warning label? Second, and this is huge, although only a few had died, it says that many of the Christians in Corinth were weak or sick because of sin! Many! God will use weakness and sickness to discipline us and apparently He has done that a lot!

What this means then is that when someone else is sick we can’t judge that it is because of sin, but if we ourselves are sick we should ask God if, perhaps, it is because of sin, and, if so, then confess and forsake it! Of course, the last thing Satan wants you to do is examine yourself to see if you are living a life worthy of God. He’d rather you blundered through life like a drunken pirate on high seas.

Then there is James 5:14-16:

Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

Amen.

Posted in Uncategorized, Why God Allows Evil | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Let’s Not Run From “Apologetics”

Posted on November 29, 2011 by clayjones

Someone suggested recently that perhaps our apologetics program should change its name to something less confrontational—like “religious studies”—so that it would be more palatable to non-Christians. Upon hearing that, Craig and I rent our garments, threw dust on our heads, and refused to eat until lunch.

But seriously, here’s why we like the word “apologetics.”

First, we find that prospective students actually like a name that suggests standing up for what you believe in. And why not? Paul argued daily in the temple. Jesus confronted the Pharisees non-stop (see my post “Arguing Doesn’t Do Any Good? Sure It Does!”). Our students want to defend the faith, not study the differences between religions.

Second, we are doing apologetics and any other suggestion that we’ve ever heard makes the program sound like it is something it isn’t or like it isn’t something it is.

Third, we want to be controversial in the sense that we want everyone to know that we are defending the truth of historic Christianity against all attacks. We want the skeptics to know that we exist and will answer them (see point one).

Fourth, other names sound like we are trying to hide (which we’re not, by the way).

Fifth, I find it a wonderful witnessing tool to have to explain to non-Christians what we are “apologizing for.” This has opened up many doors for me to share the Gospel.

Sixth, it also happens to be the biblical term for what we do. After all, the Greek word for “defense” in 1 Peter 3:15 is “apologia.”

Seventh, the problem for the average American Christian isn’t that they are too bold. Most Christians are extremely passive in communicating the Gospel. I’m reminded of C. S. Lewis’s comment that we always run to the side of the ship that is already gunwale under the waves. If we are going to err, then let us err on the side of boldness since many Christians err on the side of meekness (I don’t think we are in error, by the way).

Eighth, of course many non-Christians dislike that we actively, fervently, logically, and evidentially strive to proclaim that Christianity is, in fact, true and that because Christianity is true no argument can stand against it. Many don’t like that.

But that’s the way we roll.

Acts 18:27-28: Apollos “was a great help to those who by grace had believed. For he vigorously refuted the Jews in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ.

Amen.

Posted in Apologetics, Evangelism | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments