In his book, Mere Apologetics, Alister McGrath points out that “one of the most familiar criticisms of Christianity is that it offers consolation to life’s losers.”(1) Believers are often caricatured as being somewhat weak and naïve—the kind of people who need their faith as a “crutch” just to get them through life. In new atheist literature, this depiction is often contrasted with the image of a hardier intellectual atheist who has no need for such infantile, yet comforting, nonsense. This type of portrayal may resonate with some, but does it really make sense? (2)

Firstly, it is helpful to define what we mean by a “crutch.” In a medical setting, the word obviously means an implement used by people for support when they are injured. The analogy implies, therefore, that those who need one are somehow deficient or wounded. In a sense, it is fairly obvious that the most vulnerable might need support, but as the agnostic John Humphrys points out, “Don’t we all? Some use booze rather than the Bible.” (3) As this suggests, it is not so much a question of whether you have one, but it is more of a question of what your particular crutch is. This is an important point to make, as people rely on all kinds of things for their comfort or self-esteem, ranging from material possessions, money, food, and aesthetics to cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, and sex. Rather than being viewed as signs of weakness, many of these are even considered to be relatively normal in society, provided they don’t turn into the more destructive behavior associated with strong addiction. Nevertheless, many of these only offer a short-term release from the struggles of life and they sometimes only cover up deeper problems that a person might be suffering from. To suggest, therefore, that atheists are somehow stronger than believers is to deny the darker side of humanity, which is only too apparent if we look at the world around us. As McGrath explains:

“[I]f you have a broken leg, you need a crutch. If you’re ill you need medicine. That’s just the way things are. The Christian understanding of human nature is that we are damaged, wounded and disabled by sin. That’s just the way things are.” (4)

Moreover, Augustine of Hippo compared the church to a hospital, because it is full of wounded and ill people in the process of being healed. (5) As is the case with any illness, this treatment cannot begin, however, until someone has admitted they are sick or need help. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that religious belief does have an advantageous effect on both mental and physical health. Andrew Sims, former President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, writes that a “huge volume of research” confirms this, making it “one of the best-kept secrets in psychiatry and medicine generally.” (6) In a culture that often seems to exalt health, well-being, and happiness above other things, this would seem to render religious belief very appealing both to the weak and the strong in society.

Many believers testify to the transformative effect that becoming a Christian has had on their lives and this can include being delivered from some of the crutches they had previously relied upon. Yet, the idea that coming to faith is somehow either liberating or empowering is, of course, anathema to many people. Christopher Hitchens, for example, spoke of the totalitarian nature of Christianity that keeps its followers in a state of constant subservience. (7) G. K. Chesterton saw it differently, however, as he suggested that the “dignity of man” and the “smallness of man” was held in perfect tension, allowing people to have a strong sense of self-worth without becoming big-headed. (8)

Yet God clearly offers much more than this. In 1 Corinthians 12:9 it says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” The idea of strength flowing from human powerlessness may seem counter-intuitive in today’s risk-averse culture, but as Simon Guillebaud points out, “Paradoxically, our waving the white flag of submission to God’s right over our lives is the key that unlocks the gate to many future victories in his name.” (9) Nevertheless, as C. S. Lewis observed, people will still choose to cling on to their crutches, even though something much better is being offered to them:

“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (10)

It can be helpful, therefore, to reflect on what we really rely upon in our own lives and what impact this has upon us. As the blogger and former atheist, Daniel Rodgers, reminds us, we do not want to miss out on the fullness of life that God offers all of us, whether we think we need it or not:

“The truth of the matter is that Jesus never offered a crutch, only a cross; it wasn’t a call to be a better person with high self-esteem or a plan to help us scrape through our existence. It was a call to acknowledge that the forgiveness we all seek is to be found in him by following him onto the cross… It’s because Christianity is true that it has something to offer every person in every circumstance, regardless of their background or intellectual capabilities.” (11)

 Footnotes

We are pleased to announce that the next Engaging Culture Seminar
will be held on Saturday, May 25, 2013
at Tyndale University & Seminary

“A very informative and useful seminar. Looking forward to the next one.” (Derek, Toronto)

The response to Engaging Culture has been phenomenal — the last few seminars have sold out and we have had to turn people away. Many have said that these training sessions have been vital in their quest to talk about their faith and answer tough questions..

What do you do when confronted with questions like; “Is the Bible reliable?” “Is there such a thing as Truth?” “Aren’t all worldviews essentially the same?” These are questions you may encounter when trying to talk about your faith in Christ with friends, neighbours, colleagues or classmates. It’s vital that we’re equipped to engage in conversations where these deep questions may arise. 1 Peter 3:15 encourages believers to revere Christ as Lord and to always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks about the reason for the hope one has in Christ and to do so in a gentle and respectful way.

RZIM Canada would like to help you feel more confident in engaging the culture, more relaxed in answering questions you encounter and better able to stay in the conversation with those you talk with.

To this end, we’d like to invite you to take part in the Engaging Culture Series. Come, learn from expert speakers, ask your burning questions, get practically equipped, share ideas, make new friends — and enjoy a great breakfast.

Engaging Culture Seminar
Saturday May 25, 2013 @ Tyndale University and Seminary
25 Ballyconnor Court, Toronto, Ontario M2M 4B3

For more information, speaker bios, or to book your place at Engaging Culture, please click below:

Evil is all around us. It is on the news, it is on our streets, in our shops. It is so common that much of it is not the breaking news that it once was. We have become overwhelmed with bad news and have lost the capacity to be shocked by horrible acts that once kept us up at night. After a white supremacist’s murderous rampage at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin, Rene Lynch wrote in the Los Angeles Times that the American response to these crimes is one of “weary resignation: Yet again.” From the news of the killings in Wisconsin to the gun rampage at the movie theatre in Aurora these massacres just don’t get the attention they once did because they happen all too frequently.

But this doesn’t mean that people are not appalled by these acts. Canadians were shocked and outraged when Graham James received only a two year sentence earlier this year after being found guilty of repeatedly molesting boys. Much more recently, the United Kingdom was horrified by the honor killing of Shafilea Ahmed. Husband and wife, Iftikhar and Farzana were found guilty of suffocating and killing their daughter in front of their four other children. “Is there anything more evil than killing your own child?” wrote Paul Byrne in the Daily Mirror.

Stories like these strike fear in us and leave us feeling helpless. When we hear the word ‘evil’, we feel the weight the word carries yet do not want to believe that such a thing is real.

But there comes a point at which there is no denying the existence of evil. The late Polish journalist, Ryszard Kapuściński, wrote after the slaughter and bloodshed in Rwanda,

Estimates of the number of victims vary. Some say half a million, others one million. No one will ever know for sure. The most terrifying fact is that people who only yesterday were guilty of nothing today were murdering other completely innocent people. And so even if the number of victims was not one million, but, let us say, just one, would it not be proof enough that the devil is among us, and that in the spring of 1994 he just happened to be in Rwanda? [1]

We cannot read those words and still believe that evil is an abstract term. We can, of course, still wish the idea away but our beliefs will continue to bump up against reality. Evil is real, but is goodness just as real? The Rwandan genocide or experiences of suffering cause us to question whether goodness is still possible. This is where God enters the conversation. Christians believe that goodness is something inherent to God’s character. But surely, one should ask, ‘If God is good, then why did he not do anything about the Rwandan genocide? Does he even care?’

In order to understand how God views suffering and whether he even cares about evil we should start by looking at God’s own son Jesus Christ. There is a story in the Bible relating the death of Jesus Christ’s friend Lazarus.[2] Two friends come to Jesus and tell him that Lazarus is dying. Knowing that Jesus had performed miracles in the past, they ask Jesus to come and see Lazarus with the hope that Jesus will do something about it. But Jesus arrives too late. Lazarus has already died. Jesus’ response gives us insight into how God understands evil. The writer of the story relates that when Jesus was given the news of Lazarus’ death, he wept. Jesus was deeply sad but that is not all. The narrator tells us three times that Jesus was angry. So, Jesus’ immediate reaction to the premature death of his close friend was both sadness and indignation.

Jesus knew that this was not the way things were meant to be. Something had gone wrong in the world and he was mourning it in this moment. However, the story does not finish there. Jesus actually raised Lazarus from the dead!

The Lazarus story tells us that God not only hates evil, but identifies it as wrong. But his feelings and thoughts toward evil do not stop there. God does not always raise people from the dead like he did Lazarus, but he has done something about evil. The cross of Christ shows us the enormity of evil that needed to be dealt with but it also shows us a God that cares. The theologian, N.T. Wright beautifully calls the cross, “God’s no to evil”.[3] In the cross of Christ we see that God is not distant from suffering or evil but one who got involved in the problem. The crucifixion and resurrection of Christ tells us that the real evil we see around us is not the end.

The problem of evil, as we are witnessing locally and globally across the world today, is immense and sometimes feels far out of our control. Indeed, many of the problems that take place globally are beyond our scope, but by looking to Christ we can have hope—hope in a God who knows better and did better. Once we understand who God really is—a God of justice, love and mercy—we should at least want to know Him. Evil does not have the last say. God has the last say, the last word. And that last word is “love”.

[1]  Ryszard Kapuściński, The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life, trans. Klara Glowczewska, New Ed. (Penguin, 2002), 181.
[2] See John 11
[3] N. T. Wright, Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (Harperone, 2008), 87.

A charge that you’ll hear some people make is that religion in general and Christianity in particular is irrational. It’s ridiculous to believe in God, they say; there’s no evidence that he even exists! Richard Dawkins, in his best selling book The God Delusion makes this very claim, saying that faith in God is just like belief in Santa Claus!

But of course, there’s a major problem with comparing faith in God to belief in Santa Claus. I don’t know anybody who came to believe in Santa Claus in adulthood. Yet I know plenty of Christians — often former atheists — who discovered God as adults. This alone would tell you that Santa and God are utterly different. (If they weren’t, one wonders why Richard Dawkins didn’t write a follow up booked entitled “The Santa Delusion”). Furthermore, thousands upon thousands of great thinkers — now, and throughout history, have believed in God. That suggests that belief in God is hardly “irrational”.

But what about the other claim: “you can’t prove God exists!” What might we say to sceptical friends who say this? Well, we can start by gently pointing out that there are many good arguments that, whilst not proving God exists, certainly suggest that his existence is extremely likely. There are philosophical arguments, such as the cosmological argument: (i) everything that begins to exist had a cause; (ii) the universe began to exist; (iii) therefore the universe had a cause. Most philosophers would say that’s a powerful argument.

There are also arguments from design. The universe and the laws of nature look, as one physicist once put it, suspiciously like a put up job. Or we might talk about the purpose that seems to be inherent in life. Most of us intuitively know that life has meaning and purpose. Indeed, a question one might fire back at our atheist friend concerns this very point: how does the atheist avoid nihilism, that’s the view that life is meaningless, pointless and nothing that one does really matters. The question for the nihilist becomes “why not suicide”?

The Christian would also want to note, too, that the deepest things that matter to us as human are all things beyond the physical and the material: morality and meaning, love and friendship, beauty and truth. All of these don’t fit happily with atheism: “Darwinian mistakes”, Richard Dawkins once called them. That to me is tragic.

But perhaps the most powerful evidence for God is what the Bible points to consistently. The Bible doesn’t offer an argument for God, but rather points to his involvement in the world, especially how, in the person of Jesus Christ, the creator God took on flesh and stepped into our world to rescue and save it. That is not a distant, remote, theoretical God, but a God who is very much alive. If that God exists, that changes everything. As C. S. Lewis put it: “I believe in Christianity in the same way as I believe that the sun has risen. Not because I see it, but that by it, I see everything else.”

We’re delighted to be able to announce that registration for the first Canadian RZIM Summer School, which we’re organising in partnership with McMaster Divinity College (MDC) in Hamilton, Ontario, is now open.

The RZIM/MDC Summer School is an intensive week of exploring contemporary issues that challenge the Christian faith. The morning sessions include a daily Bible study led by Stuart McAllister and a series of lectures exploring what apologetic lessons can be drawn from the deep wells of theology and philosophy. In the afternoon, there are a wide range of workshops to choose from, looking at answers to some of the common challenges to the Christian worldview. We also have an entire track of workshops taught by John Patrick, on the ethical challenges that are often thrown at Christians.

In the evenings, we have an exciting series of lectures looking at how all this unpacks in the real world, as Christians try to engage our culture with clarity and conviction. We also have three panel discussions where expert practitioners will help explore how Christian faith integrates with the worlds of science, education, business and politics — and we’ll also look, through a lecture and a film, at how C. S. Lewis integrated his faith with art and the imagination.

If all this wasn’t enough, there will also be a myriad of opportunities for discussion, Q&A, and interaction with the lecturers. Our week will be brought to an end with a special appearance by Ravi Zacharias, who will help us think through how we can bring light to dark places and share our faith with clarity, conviction and generosity.

To find out more, visit the Summer School page on our website.

Please spread the word to friends, church members, and any others who you think would benefit. Why not suggest to your church leadership that they sponsor one or more students or young adults to attend?

It would be hard to underestimate the significance of Jesus. No other person has had a greater historical impact. Even those who aren’t Christians acknowledge this: Muslims revere Jesus as a prophet. Hindus consider him a holy teacher. Even many atheists are very willing to say they admire Jesus; for example Christopher Hitchens once said he respects “the virtue of Jesus’ teachings”.

Yet a common sceptical remark you hear is that we can’t really know anything about who Jesus actually was. He was probably a great guy, but the early Christians invented so many stories about him that we have no way of separating what’s true in the Bible from what’s false.

Many sceptics don’t realise, however, that most academic historians take Jesus very seriously. Not least because we have so many historical sources for Jesus. Many people don’t realise the New Testament is a collection of books, for example, and represents multiple sources about Jesus. Many are very early — such as Paul’s letters, which date to the 40s and 50s AD and some of the material he quotes is dated even earlier, to within months of Jesus’ death.

Literary studies of the gospels have also shown that their authors were intentionally setting out to write biography — not fiction or hagiography. Where we can test them against archaeology or other historians of the period, they’re shown to be reliable.

Thus historians take Jesus seriously. No credentialed academic historian in a university ancient history department would suggest that Jesus never existed, for instance. Throw out Jesus and you would have to throw out a wealth of other historical figures for whom less evidence exists, such as Julius Caesar.

In recent decades, there’s been a renewed interest in the study of the “historical Jesus”, by which we mean what we can say about Jesus using the methods and tools of the historian. There are a wide number of facts upon which historians agree. To list just a few, it’s generally agreed that Jesus was raised in Nazareth. That he was baptised by John. That he had twelve disciples. That he had a reputation as a healer and miracle worker. That he taught in parables and stories. That he clashed with the religious authorities of his day. That he spent time with social outcasts. That he had an extremely high view of his own identity and his relationship to God. That at the end of his ministry he rode into Jerusalem, was hailed by many as the Messiah, performed some kind of prophetic action in the Temple, for which he was arrested, tried and executed. That after his death, “something” dramatic happened, something so powerful that it caused Jesus’ disciples to believe he had been physically raised from the dead.

Thus it’s simply not the case that Jesus’ life was invented decades after his death by the first Christians. And that means we’re forced to take the life of Jesus very seriously — at the very least, we need to read the gospels as we would other ancient literature and weigh them accordingly.

And doing that brings us face to face with Jesus himself. A Jesus who made astonishing claims about himself. C. S. Lewis once famously said that Jesus left us only three options. Either he was mad — utterly insane. Or he was bad — a cynical liar. Or else Jesus was who he claimed to be. Whilst this threefold choice may slightly over simplify things, Lewis’ broad thrust is right. Jesus forces all of us to answer the same question he asked his disciple, Peter, in the Gospels: “Who do you say I am?”

One thing is certain: Jesus has left a powerful footprint on history, too great to ignore. “Who do you say that I am?” The answer each of us gives to that question matters profoundly.

Today’s media holds a similar significance to the printing press of the sixteenth Century. Without it, the Protestant Reformation would probably have failed to take off in the way that it did. Likewise, the media and social media in particular epitomises the Reformation cry Vox Populi: it is the ‘voice of the people’ giving anyone with anything to say a platform from which to speak.

Why should we tweet?

The web is ideal for sharing ideas. By involving ourselves in social media, we can ascertain public sentiment — we hear the thoughts of ‘real’ people rather than just journalists, politicians and well-trained PR staff. Through it, we are also given the opportunity to have our say and to help shape other people’s thinking.

It’s not just about ideas — behind each tweet, blog and profile is a person. Although arguably on a somewhat superficial level, by ‘following’, ‘liking’, or ‘sharing’, we can engage with these people, listen to what they have to say and humbly suggest things that they might want to know about. If we want people to read inspiring articles, watch challenging talks or visit interesting websites, it is easier to use established platforms that they are already using rather than create new ones.

Two of these established and popular platforms are social networking site Facebook and microblogging site Twitter — both boast over 500 million users. Twitter is a microblogging site which enables users to send a brief message of up to 140 characters. It is similar to a Facebook status update. Tweets range from amusing, to thought-provoking, to the profound. While many people create their own original tweets, lots predominantly re-tweet (see below) great content from other users.

Twitter is also a great way to direct people to videos, articles and websites. Using a resource like https://bitly.com shortens the web address so that the majority of a tweet isn’t wasted with a long URL. To do this, copy the long URL, paste it into the appropriate part of https://bitly.com which will shorten it, then copy and paste the new short URL into the tweet.

Unlike Facebook, you don’t need to know someone to ‘follow’ them on Twitter. When you follow someone, what they tweet will appear on your home feed. Likewise, random people choosing to follow you will be able to share your thoughts. You are likely to get more followers if you have something to say! To follow/unfollow people thus adding/removing them from your feed, hit the ‘follow’ (unfollow) button.

Why not follow us here at RZIM Canada?

Simply follow @rzimcanada. We tweet one (occasionally more) apologetic thoughts, quotes or nuggets per day, along with regular news, links to resources, and information on RZIM events.

Re-tweet

If you like what someone else has said, you can re-tweet it. This means that your followers can now see the original tweet, thus increasing its reach. To re-tweet, hit the ‘retweet’ button on the tweet that you’d like to re-broadcast — you can even add your own comment if you’d like (and if there’s room!)

As well as re-tweets, you can mention individuals. A mention is when you use @ followed by their name e.g. @rzimcanada. This @name is also known as their Twitter Handle.

The mention could be purely informational …

e.g. Listening to lecture on Islam with @rzimcanada

It could be attributive — summarising what someone has said and adding their handle …

e.g. Your priorities will reveal where your true hope is actually located @rzimcanada

It could be a message to someone especially if the handle is at the start of the tweet …

e.g. @rzimcanada Looking forward to the next Engaging Culture seminar!

It could function as a virtual pat on the back …

e.g. Enjoyed the Wheaton Summer School. Great to see the Canadian team there! @rzimcanada

#Tag

A Hash Tag is a way of referring to a subject matter, an event or a phrase. It can be used in a similar way to an @mention if the person referenced is not on Twitter e.g. The reaction many Christians have to Muslims is fear. But fear isn’t a basis for evangelism— much better is compassion #apologetics 

It also makes the content of the tweet more searchable as #tags are grouped. This means that people who don’t follow you may find your content if you use a #tag that they are interested in.

Trending

Twitter monitors tweets so if lots of people are tweeting about a particular subject, particularly when using #tags, those subjects will appear on the homepage of Twitter. Large events like the Olympics obviously end up ‘trending’ but every now and then references to God and apologetic questions make their way there – wouldn’t it be great to see this happening more frequently?

What would social reformers like William Wilberforce and Martin Luther King have done if they could use our modern tools to cry out for justice and equality? What would Jesus have tweeted? And, following in His footsteps, what will we tweet?

Christianity is a religion that stands or falls on history, especially when it comes to the resurrection. As the Apostle Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 15, if Jesus did not rise from the dead, our faith is useless. Everything stands or falls on the resurrection. But, asks the sceptic, how can we believe anything so fantastic as the resurrection?

Yet it might surprise you to learn that historians take the resurrection very seriously and there are thousands of scholarly, academic works of history published discussing it. In particular, there are a number of facts that most historians, be they Christian, Jewish, or secular all agree upon.

First, it’s agreed that Jesus was crucified. No serious historian would doubt this — Christians claimed that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah and the messiah was supposed to defeat the Romans, not get crucified by them. The crucifixion is simply too embarrassing to have been invented. Furthermore, the death of Jesus is attested so frequently and so early by our sources that there’s no avoiding it.

Second, it’s agreed that Jesus was buried in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea. Again, this claim is very early, contained in multiple sources. No alternative burial story exists and it’s unlikely that Christians would have ascribed such a role to a Jew, as Joseph was, unless this really was the case.

Third, most historians agree that early on the Sunday morning after his death, Jesus’ tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers. The story exists in our earliest sources and, more significantly, if one was invented this kind of story, one would hardly have invented women as witnesses — their testimony was considered all but worthless in the world of first-century Judaism. It’s interesting, too, that the Jewish authorities at the time never denied that the tomb was empty, but tried to claim that the Christians had stolen Jesus’ body. Everybody agreed the tomb was empty.

Fourth, historians agree that the early Christians had numerous experiences of the risen Jesus, on multiple occasions and over a period of several weeks. We have an extremely early list of the witnesses of such experiences preserved in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, as well as in the gospels.

And this leads to the fifth point of agreement. That the followers of Jesus sincerely believed he was alive again. Look at their radical transformation, from a group of frightened men and women hiding from the authorities after Jesus’ death, to their willingness to face torture and death for preaching that he was risen. We also have to explain the birth of the church as a movement distinct from Judaism — central to the earliest Christianity was a meal commemorating Jesus’ death and resurrection and the practice of meeting and worshipping on Sunday’s — resurrection day — as opposed to Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. The first Christians entirely restructured their entire social and religious world around the resurrection.

These, then, are the facts. Almost all historians accept them — and accept that something happened. The challenge is to explain what. And the problem for the sceptic is that all attempts to explain the facts have consistently failed. Except one. The most compelling, most thorough explanation is given, early and consistently by eyewitnesses to the events; that God raised Jesus to life three days after his death. That’s not a fantastic claim but a historical claim — and one that we can be supremely confident of.

The Summer 2012 issue of the RZIM Canada newsletter, inCONTEXT is now available. Everybody on our mailing list has been sent a copy, but if you’d prefer to download it as a PDF, download links can be found below.

Summer 2012 inContext (800 KB PDF)