Questions of the Day: "Does absolute truth exist?" and "In your opinion, what does it take for a person to go to heaven?"
Rejection Question
I want to talk a little about the "question of the day" and rejection. I've noticed that different questions lend themselves to more positive evangelistic encounters whereas others seem to cause people to cut you off. For instance, I've had several people cut me off (usually done politely) and tell me that they don't really want to talk to me anymore once I have started asking more penetrating questions about absolute truth. I've asked the above question of people hundreds of times, and each time the conversation goes South, it seems to almost always be with relativists who get caught affirming the very thing they just denied, and then because they end up making themselves look stupid in front of their friends, they get frustrated, and say, "I'm really not interested in talking anymore." I had this happen today when I spoke with my first two people and one girl got herself somewhat in a dither when she contradicted herself a few times, realized what was happening, and then gave up on the conversation. What's worse is that they think that you are trying to trap them even though you qualify with something like this, "I'm not trying to give you a hard time or trap you, I'm just interested in finding out how you answer this dilemma." Also, I think that conversations about absolute truth are too abstract for some people, and so they simply shut down intellectually after they have made themselves look and feel stupid when they really didn't understand the real issues to begin with. Given the fact that they have all of that working against them due to a combination of misunderstanding and nil philosophical self-reflection, I can't say that I blame them! Thus, I think that crafting more basic, less abstract questions might be helpful in the future and if and when the conversation gets further than the 1 minute mark, popping off with questions about absolute truth might then be helpful. In other words, my experience is teaching me that using a question to find out where a person is from a worldview perspective that gives them "permission" to express their opinion about issues of ultimacy seems to be more well received than other questions that almost immediately place them on the horns of a dilemma. As a result, any advice from experienced evangelists and apologists is certainly welcomed.
Being Thankful for Praying Christians cum Professional Philosophers
I was witnessing to a group of pleasant young ladies, and two of them said they thought they were good people. So I went through a modified form of the "Good Person Test" and one of them said "You can't go to heaven if you're gay" to which I admitted, "That's true, but God is an equal opportunity judge and will also condemn unrepentant liars, fornicators, adulterers, blasphemers, covetous people, and every other kind of sinner, including homosexuals." While I explained the gospel to this young lady, unbeknownst to be, I had a Christian sitting a few feet away who was walking by and overheard the conversation and decided to come back and pray for me while I was witnessing to this young lady The young lady listened attentively to what I said, thanked me for the conversation, and said she would call me to talk about these things later. It was then that I turned around from where I was sitting, and an older student came up and told me that he had been praying for me and the young lady almost the entire time. This was so encouraging. We then proceeded to enjoy some fellowship for at least 30-45 minutes and we learned that we had so much in common both from the standpoint of religious backgrounds to virtually the same theological and philosophical views. Thus, it was truly a pleasure to fellowship with this dear brother before he had to go to his mythology class. I am so thankful for people like this more than words can express.
An Existentialist turned Inquirer
Last semester I had a long conversation with a young, existentialist student named Adam. Adam and I had a conversation that lasted well over an hour last fall in front of Yum Yum hot dogs at the edge of campus. He listened well when I refuted his existentialism that day, and as I was leaving campus today walking back to my car, I recognized him walking toward me and I said, "Hey man, I spoke to you last semester in front of Yum Yums!" He warmly shook my hand and then told me that that conversation last semester changed his life! He said he was going to church with his girlfriend and investigating the truth claims of Jesus Christ. I was so encouraged. He then explained that after our conversation he saw the vacuous nature of his worldview and started looking into the claims of Christ. I gave him some apologetic materials that I had in my backpack and then told him to call me anytime if he wanted to chat or if he had any questions.
IN CONCLUSION, it is so important to be open, willing, and ready to talk to people with compassion and concern for their souls. Remember, Jesus too looked at the crowds who were distressed like sheep without a shepherd and had compassion on them. We too, should be willing to consider our next door neighbors, our co-workers, and our own family as Jesus did, for you may be the only source of spiritual light they are ever exposed to, so "let your light so shine."
"God is an equal opportunity judge and will also condemn unrepentant liars, fornicators, adulterers, blasphemers, covetous people, and every other kind of sinner, including homosexuals."
ReplyDeleteIs it possible to sin and offend God without knowing it? You can think you're worshipping God in a pure manner, only to find that He sees it as blasphemous. So how does one repent for sins one doesn't know one's committed? Seems likely. After all, Catholics don't believe their form of worship is idolatry.
This can extend to many other things besides idolatry, of course. Some people really don't believe that getting remarried is adultery in the eyes of God. They go to Church, believe in Jesus and so forth, but all the while, they're committing unrepentant and perpetual adultery if they divorced their first spouse for any other reason than infidelity (Luke 16:18).
Are they going to be condemned or not? Is it based on what you believe is a sin or what is a sin in fact?
James,
ReplyDeleteWill you worship God if I answer all of your questions to your satisfaction?
The news about Adam is exciting!! It's great to hear about some of the fruit of your efforts, it keeps us encouraged. Thanks for posting about what you're doing.
ReplyDeleteIs this stuff for real?
ReplyDeleteDusman, is this what goes for intellection?
Papalinton said:
ReplyDeleteIs this stuff for real?
Dusman, is this what goes for intellection?
All you do is emote, Papalinton. As well as make thoughtless, unsubstantiated assertions. (BTW, people can see him doing this here, for example.) In other words, you don't have anything reasonable to say. No good arguments. You just offer quick drive-by comments where you aim to kill but in fact miss your aim.
Perhaps you don't mind wasting your own time since you're a retired man of not so busy leisure. But the problem is you waste other people's time.
Or don't you expect a response?
"In other words, my experience is teaching me that using a question to find out where a person is from a worldview perspective that gives them "permission" to express their opinion about issues of ultimacy seems to be more well received than other questions that almost immediately place them on the horns of a dilemma."
ReplyDeleteIMHO, I think this is when presuppositionalism as an apologetic approach or method needs to take a backseat to other approaches and unsheathed at a time when it's more effective.
Papalinton,
ReplyDeleteYou said,
"Is this stuff for real?
Dusman, is this what goes for intellection?"
These outreach reports are necessarily *summaries* of detailed conversations that take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. I neither have the time nor desire to provide every detail of how I answer people's initial intellectual objections as I'm a busy pastor, evangelist, and father of several small children. If people want detailed rebuttals to unbelieving argumentation they can find plenty of that elsewhere on this blog.
As Patrick noted, it appears that you are simply emoting. Therefore, lest you be a hypocrite by doing the very same thing that you accuse me of doing (i.e., providing "non-intellection"), please provide some substantiation for your bare-naked assertions.
TUAD,
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more. I like the "Schaefferian" integrative approach, i.e., figuring out where people are coming from and meeting them there when all the while maintaining what Frame calls a "presuppositionalism of the heart."
Dusman asks: "Will you worship God if I answer all of your questions to your satisfaction?"
ReplyDeleteDepends on what you say that involves.
If by "worship God" you mean striving to live an ethical, honest, self-sacrificing life, well, I think I'm trying to do so now, insofar as I am able to discern what living an ethical life entails. Of course, I'm not always successful, but I do try. If it means study the Bible, I do that now as well.
I don't think God requires I enjoy or sing praise songs, so I'm not really sure what else you might mean. If it means that I must believe in doctrine "x" or "y" (such as limited atonement or whatever), well, I can't do that. While such dogma may be true, I can't honestly worship God for something I'm that uncertain about.
If by "worship God" you mean striving to live an ethical, honest, self-sacrificing life
ReplyDeleteI can tell you right now that's not at all what Dusman means.
It's interesting the difference between polemics and evangelism. Too many polemicists think polemics IS evangelism. However, we come to faith on an altogether different level than the apologetical constructs we create to defend what we believe.
ReplyDeleteIn India, we usually start out with some basic open-ended questions to see what they know about Jesus and what they believe about Him. Then, we don't usually address that in a direct way, but give a positive presentation of the gospel, not as something that we merely believe, but as something that is simply true - because it is. It's hard to read Indians, but we can often see if knowledge of the gospel makes an immediate impact.
Talking to Arabs in Western countries, it's about the same. they often have stock objections, but if we can get the gospel squeezed in there, then we have seen more fruit from the same positive presentation without getting bogged down in answering objections. The objections pretty much disappear as the Holy Spirit changes their hearts toward the truth of the gospel.
In other words, it's not that you have to believe that Christ is God before you accept the truth of the gospel. But accepting the truth of the gospel as one of faith is a work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration, and the knowledge of Christ as God will follow.
As far as prayer goes, we never go alone. At least two go so that one can pray while the other talks. If we have whole teams on the streets, then we rotate a couple at a time to pray for any conversations. When my church sends teams out into town, we have a whole team of prayer warriors to stay behind at the church and cover all our activities in prayer; these are especially older folks who are less physically mobile and have more wisdom to pray well.
It is told that Spurgeon had a basement room where people were always in prayer. We can't underestimate prayer or relegate it merely to the first and last word of a meeting as though to let everyone know when to settle down and be quite or when they can get up and leave. You'll know a great church by the way they pray.
Jim,
ReplyDeleteThanks brother. This is good advice/recommendations. As an evangelist/apologist, I too am finding that simply giving out the gospel and providing a positive presentation is the ticket and when and if the intellectual objections come, we can answer those or provide a brief response or give out information to help, but remind these folks that the gospel is true because God has spoken and that is sufficient.
James,
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean by certainty?
Rhology is right, that's not what I meant by worship. Here's what I mean (http://bible.org/seriespage/worship-part-1-john-41-26) and if you aren't a believer, you can't and won't desire to do the things contained in the linked article.
Dusman: In regards to worship, some of things I mentioned are actually listed in your link. Did I not mention sacrifice and self-awareness (which is necessary for humility, after all)?
ReplyDeleteI just don't find the orgy of emotional masturbation known as the modern evangelical "worship" service to be either reverent or reflective of the God of the Bible that they claim to worship. Most Pentecostal churches are filled with people just looking for a "high" and an endorphin kick. I can go running for that.
But this doesn't address my original question regarding repentance and whether unconfessed but unknown sins can land a person in Hell.
James,
ReplyDelete"In regards to worship, some of things I mentioned are actually listed in your link. Did I not mention sacrifice and self-awareness (which is necessary for humility, after all)?"
Sacrifice and self-awareness are understood in that article to be *within the context of the Christian faith*. But of course, you already know that, so I don't know why your statements are relevant to begin with. To be a "living sacrifice" according to Holy Writ isn't simply being philanthropic, although it may include those things; it is primarily speaking of dying to your own fleshly desires to follow Christ's desires and be pleasing to Him (cf. Luke 9:24). It should be obvious that this isn't the same humanistic self-sacrifice that you are speaking of. There's a lot of God-haters who perform acts of charity and are involved in philanthropic works, yet they are on their way to Hell. If you are not rightly related to God by faith in Christ, your "good works" can be likened to a pile of dung on judgment Day, so don't comfort yourself.
You don't get into heaven by what you do, you get into heaven by receiving what *Christ* has done. The self-sacrificial lifestyles that true believers live after they are regenerated are the result of their expressions of love, gratefulness, and devotion to God, not works whereby they try to earn post-conversion merit with Him.
cont. . . .
ReplyDelete"I just don't find the orgy of emotional masturbation known as the modern evangelical "worship" service to be either reverent or reflective of the God of the Bible that they claim to worship."
I agree, but I have a standard by which to measure such things as nonsensical. What's your standard? If it's not Scripture, it's yours or somebody else's opinion. If so, then why should I or anybody else care about your opinion?
No contributor to Triablogue is Pentecostal, so your critique doesn't apply to us. But you should know that since you've been commenting here for quite some time so I don't even know why you brought it up to begin with. We are all soteriologically Reformed, attend conservative Reformed churches or other churches that have church services in a non-Pentecostal way, and none of us subscribe to Pentecostal understandings of "worship". Also, for the Reformed believer, worship takes place all the time, seven-days a week, it isn't something that's done on Sunday only, hence, the "living sacrifices" of Romans 12:1-2.
"Most Pentecostal churches are filled with people just looking for a "high" and an endorphin kick. I can go running for that."
Agreed. They scream and holler and flop around for their "emotional masturbation" whereas you go running for yours. But if no God, then why does it matter? To each his own right? After all, given humanism, what's the difference other than personal preference?
"But this doesn't address my original question regarding repentance and whether unconfessed but unknown sins can land a person in Hell."
That's because your original question is a smokescreen designed to distract from the real issue by attempting a reductio ad absurdum. I've spoken face to face with atheists, agnostics, humanists, and other God-haters thousands of times in one-on-one evangelism and after answering all their questions, they still won't believe. This is because their rationale for unbelief isn't ultimately intellectual, but moral.
Nevertheless, to answer your question, of course it is possible to offend God without knowing it. People do this all the time and that's why cleansing through prayer, repentance, and confession to God is part of the life of a true Christian. What I believe is sin should be consistent with what actually is sin. Determining such things comes from reading the Biblical text in context and doing the relevant exegesis.
Re: remarriage after divorce, your views are myopic just like many fundamentalist Baptists. You have to read the *totality* of New Testament references to this to get the whole teaching, for the Bible allows for divorce and remarriage in cases of *unrepentant* adultery (Matthew 19:9) and abandonment (1 Cor. 7:15).
If people marry in an unbiblical fashion, they are to repent, stay married, and glorify God with their marriage. The way you are thinking is just like a fundy, for your hypothetical failed view would commend divorce instead of repentance. This is typical of your type of myopic thinking.
Either way, why do you care? After all, all you want to do is attempt a reductio so that you can somehow convince yourself that you "have an excuse" not to believe when according to you Christians can't tell you what you should believe.
If so, then your condemnation is just.
"This is because their rationale for unbelief isn't ultimately intellectual"
ReplyDeleteYou say this based on what? What actions are they committing that they would have to cease were they to become Christians? Sure, some might be engaging in drunken orgies on their front lawn after they sacrifice newborn babies to Baal, but some of them might be living as moral lives (if not more so) than you are. What is their moral block?
Look, you've chosen to embrace a set of ideas as true and to live by them. You've done so not based on undeniable evidence but evidence that is sufficient for you. Good for you. That's all any of us are doing. However, people such as myself are simply willing to confess that our knowledge is imperfect, that the truths we embrace (even if we are willing to die for them), may, in the end, be not true at all.
You've admitted that it's conceivable one could offend God and not know it (no matter how committed or earnest a believer one is). Why is it inconceivable that one could also believe things that are not true about Him and not know it? Somehow, you seem to have risen above that possibility. How is that?
BTW, I don't recall ever explicitly saying "God does not exist". Don't put words in my mouth.
"You say this based on what?"
ReplyDeleteBased on God's own word concerning the condition of the unbeliever (Romans 8:7-8; 1 Cor. 2:14). I trust God's evaluation of sinners rather than their own self-description.
"What actions are they committing that they would have to cease were they to become Christians? Sure, some might be engaging in drunken orgies on their front lawn after they sacrifice newborn babies to Baal, but some of them might be living as moral lives (if not more so) than you are. What is their moral block?"
My friend you just don't get it do you? They can be sweet Dutch grandmothers that bake and give away sugar cookies for free to little red riding hoods but if they stand before God on the Day of Judgment in their sins (i.e., little white lies, covetousness, lustful thoughts, grumbling, ungratefulness to God, etc.), then they will be damned.
"Look, you've chosen to embrace a set of ideas as true and to live by them. You've done so not based on undeniable evidence but evidence that is sufficient for you. Good for you."
It wasn't ultimately my choice (John 6:44; 1 Cor. 2:14; Eph. 2:1-10). I love Him because He first loved me (1 John 4:19). Were it not for God's electing grace, I would have continued down my path of atheism, moralism, and hedonism as a happy, content, God-hater. The "evidence" that convinced me that God's word was true was ultimately the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. Once regenerated, I immediately saw my sin for what it was, felt the tremendous guilt and burden of it, and immediately repented and clung to Christ as my only hope. Without that type of Spirit-wrought conviction, you'll run from the gospel like a cockroach scurrying away from the light of day for fear of being exposed for what you really are (John 3:19-21).
"That's all any of us are doing. However, people such as myself are simply willing to confess that our knowledge is imperfect, that the truths we embrace (even if we are willing to die for them), may, in the end, be not true at all."
I've never said that my knowledge is perfect nor do I think it has to be, but my Savior's righteousness is perfect and its in His merits that I cling to and not my own moralism to justify me before God on the Great Day. Paul said it well,
". . . that I may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith." (Phil. 3:9)
"You've admitted that it's conceivable one could offend God and not know it (no matter how committed or earnest a believer one is)."
ReplyDeleteOf course, no Christian denies this. This is why Christians have historically been known to repent and pray for forgiveness and cleansing concerning sins of omission (things we have failed to do that clearly ought have been done) as well as sins of commission (sins we have clearly and knowingly committed). But don't think that this means that Christians are running around living lives of habitual sin; quite the contrary, they are progressively growing in holiness, albeit imperfectly. That is what Hebrews 10:14 and 1 John 3:4-9 are all about.
"Why is it inconceivable that one could also believe things that are not true about Him and not know it? Somehow, you seem to have risen above that possibility. How is that?"
Its simple, not all doctrinal error is on the same level. Some sins have greater consequences than other sins (John 19:11). Just as you don't go to death row for getting a speeding ticket because you were going 9 mph over, so you don't go to Hell because you were wrong on secondary doctrine (i.e., the timing of the rapture, the nature of the millennium, etc.) When you get who God is and what the Gospel is wrong, that's damnable because its unrepentant idolatry. Worse, since you have a false gospel, it cannot save you from your idolatry and the litany of other sins that you've committed against the One True God. This doesn't mean that you have to have exhaustive knowledge of God in order to know Him at all; but only that you need to know Him sufficiently as He's revealed Himself to us in Scripture (i.e., personal, monotheistic, Trinitarian, vs. impersonal, polytheistic, unitarian, etc.).
"BTW, I don't recall ever explicitly saying "God does not exist". Don't put words in my mouth."
My intention was not to put words in your mouth, but only to respond to the unbelief I detect in your responses. I mean no disrespect, but if you don't want to be reckoned with the humanists, then stop writing like them and come clean on your religious/philosophical views.