Apologetics for Parents Archives - Page 2 of 11

The Need for Apologetics in the Local Church

Apologetics, when done with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15), is beneficial in evangelism as we see the Holy Spirit use it time and time again in the Scriptures through Paul’s “reasoning” and “persuading” to draw souls to the Lord. However, in this article, I will show how apologetics in the local church has other benefits: equipping the saints and preventing apostasy. Of course our entire Christian walk should be dedicated toward evangelism; that is a given. But, not to sound too inwardly focused, I want to show that apologetics has benefits for the believers themselves and why the local church is the best source to implement them.

Apologetics is Useful in:

Making Disciples

The Great Commission in Matthew 28 commands believers to make disciples, not converts. This is an important distinction to make for apologetics as it has many benefits and goals. We know apologetics can be used in evangelism to make converts as Paul did throughout Acts, but it doesn’t stop there. The church needs to stir up one another to love and good works (Hebrews 10:24), equip the saints for the work of ministry (Ephesians 4:12), help them hold their faith firm to the end (Hebrews 3:14), and encourage them to love God with their minds (Matthew 22:37). Apologetics can be used in all of these, not confined to a classroom or specialty ministry, but all throughout the local church.

The local church is essential in equipping believers. But what are we to be equipped with? Ephesians 6 tells us to put on the WHOLE armor of God so we can stand against the devil’s schemes. Apologetics helps to strengthen our faith, “which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one” and helps us “stand firm” with the “belt of truth.” Many times local churches focus on “the breastplate of righteousness” and the “helmet of salvation”, but we need the full armor of God.

The church stands on God’s Word, and they must compare everything to it. Apologetics is another aid in helping us know our Creator through studying his creation and loving Him with our minds. Apologetics does not replace Bible Study or preaching, it’s a helpful tool to be used simultaneously to produce richer study and preaching. Thus, it is not only useful in evangelism as Paul used it, but also through making stronger, wiser disciples with a faith built on solid ground.

Evangelism+

Apologetics isn’t just used in the moment of evangelism, but also leading up to it. This is a huge benefit of incorporating apologetics into the church. Fear cripples their congregants more than pastors want to admit. Of course, no matter how much we know, we may still feel nervous before sharing the gospel. However, the confidence in being able to defend our faith, through apologetics, eases those fears and can lead to more gospel conversations and encounters with unbelievers. I experienced this very thing as a 16 year old girl headed to Utah to share my faith with Mormons. I knew very little, and never wanted to be the one initiating or talking in the conversations. The more I studied, my confidence and ability to share and defend my faith increased. This made me WANT to initiate conversations and continue sharing the gospel even when I got home. Having a congregation who can more effectively and clearly share the gospel, while increasing the number of times they actually share it, should be an encouragement for pastors to embrace apologetics.

If the focus of apologetics in a local church setting is geared towards benefitting believers (not just for reaching unbelievers) the church will have stronger congregants, who can better spur one another on to love and good works. This is because apologetics equips the saints to live out the Christian worldview outside of the church’s walls…which includes evangelism! It is not a means of which believers fight with one another over trivial matters, but rather used to sharpen one another to better withstand the false ideologies and evils of the world.

Preventing Apostasy

“As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away” Matthew 13:20-21

Another important aspect of a local church is to help the saints persevere and hold firm their faith to the end. Apologetics is a helpful tool in preventing apostasy. I have experienced this benefit of apologetics personally. Had I not attended a youth group so committed to equipping us prior to college, I would have been eaten alive at my college. Ultimately, being a Christian at a secular college is HARD. Our sinful hearts sometimes don’t “feel” like living out the Christian faith or even “want” to. But I felt like Peter, when asked by Jesus, if he would like to go away as well. Peter replies: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:68-69) It did not matter how I felt each day, the gospel was true, and my faith was built on truth and not feelings.

A local church may feel that they are growing and that their congregants are evangelizing, so apologetics isn’t needed. I would caution against such a belief because as much as apologetics helps to equip us to share the Good News, it also protects us. Even if it appears that everyone has a strong faith and aren’t wrestling with doubt, we know that many have left and will leave the faith because they don’t feel like they have a good reason to believe it’s true.

If we are not giving believers good reasons for their faith, it will be much easier for the world to shake it when life gets hard. While discussing apologetics as a way to train, William Lane Craig says: “Unfortunately, our churches have largely dropped the ball in this area. It’s insufficient for youth groups and Sunday school classes to focus on entertainment and simpering devotional thoughts. We’ve got to train our kids for war.”[1] The world is at war with us. This is why we need the full armor of God.

Apologetics aids us in formulating sufficient answers to the world’s tough questions. At some point (if not already), we will be faced with tough questions. If our faith resembles a blind faith, or is built upon feelings, it can be more easily shaken. Therefore, the local church must cultivate strong faiths in their congregants so that they “may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” (Ephesians 4:14)

How Might Pastors Incorporate Apologetics?

Everyone has questions. Only those who know everything won’t have questions, and that of course, is none of us. Even pastors and church leaders have questions…and questions are a good thing! The local church should encourage their congregation to ask questions at church so they can come alongside them in finding quality answers. Pastors ought to share questions they’ve had, how they found answers (within the church body and not the world), and even invite his congregants to ask him questions to emphasize the benefits of asking and faithfully seeking truth. This type of culture within a church will lead to loving God with their minds, and not shrink in doubt. After all, we know JESUS IS THE TRUTH and therefore know we have true and genuine answers to give. No need to be scared of the questions when truth is on our side.

Apologetics can be implemented in all teaching ministries at a local church. Of course they can do specific series on apologetic topics or host apologetic events, but apologetics can be brought into all areas without disregarding expository preaching. Find time in all teaching moments at church to pull in some apologetics. Even if it isn’t blatant apologetics, it is about creating a culture where congregants can grow in their knowledge of the Lord, while getting their questions or doubts addressed within the church walls.

If Not for You, Do it for them

As I have discussed many benefits to apologetics in a local church and practical ways to implement it, I cannot stress enough that apologetics must be taught early. Apologetics isn’t just for adults and shouldn’t be confined to the main pulpit. It shouldn’t even be confined to college or high school students. Apologetics begins when children’s questions begin. As a mother to four young children, I can attest to how early that begins!

We should not answer any of our children’s questions with “because the Bible says so” for the same reason we rejected our own parents’ “reason” of “because I said so”. These types of explanations didn’t satisfy us then, and they certainly won’t satisfy our children, ESPECIALLY if the question is pertaining to big issues of life and not just why they have to make their bed. John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle write:

“Challenges that undermine the authority of God’s Word cannot go unanswered. And we cannot merely assert that the Bible is the authoritative book from God and hope kids will simply take our word on the matter. Young people must understand the nature of biblical authority. They must have good reasons to trust the Bible as God’s Word.”[2]

We have better answers than “because the Bible says so”, so let’s give them!

Another important reason to start young is because we need to begin before we feel an urgent need to. As J. Warner Wallace writes, “According to the statistics, young Christians decide to abandon the church long before they ever tell anyone and usually before they leave the home of their parents…That’s why it’s so important for us to start early- even before your kids are verbalizing their questions.”[3] Many times, parents get into apologetics when it is too late. Even if your children do ask you their questions, if we fail to give sufficient answers, they won’t stop asking questions, they’ll just stop asking YOU questions. We must steer them to the truth in a satisfying and complete way, or we will see them seek answers elsewhere.

Conclusion

Apologetics is needed in the local church, in all ministries, and for all ages. Even if a believer doesn’t personally believe they need apologetics or good reasons for their own faith, why take the risk and not guard themselves against apostasy that the Bible warns against regularly? And even if they ultimately don’t need apologetics for themselves, someone they love does. And in order to be a wise “discipler”, we must have good answers to give or risk them turning to the world for answers.

We need apologetics in the local church to equip us to better know and love God with our minds, train and encourage us to evangelize, prepare us to better disciple young believers, and protect us (and others) from the deceitful ideologies of this world and falling into apostasy. The church is responsible for equipping their congregation, and thus, should implement apologetics regularly.

Now let us fasten on the belt of truth and get to work!

[1] William Lane Craig. “Christian Apologetics: Who Needs It?: Reasonable Faith.” Who Needs It? Reasonable Faith, www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/apologetics/christian-apologetics-who-needs-it/.

[2] John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle. A Practical Guide to Culture. David C. Cook, 2020. 309.

[3] Sean McDowell and J. Warner Wallace. So the Next Generation Will Know. David C Cook, 2019. 41.

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Proverbs: Making Your Paths Straight Complete 9-part Series by Frank Turek DVD and Download

God’s Crime Scene for Kids by J. Warner Wallace and Susie Wallace (Book)

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Maggie is a stay-at-home wife and mother to her husband Curtis and children Troy (in heaven),Ty, Jay, Palin and Boyd. She received her BA in Religious Studies from Chapman University and her Masters in Christian Apologetics and Evangelism from Trinity College of the Bible and Theological Seminary. She currently serves as the Biblical Immersive Experience Coordinator at Maven where she has the joy of planning trips for Christian youth to share their faith with Mormons in Utah. Along with her love for Christian youth and Mormon ministry, she is a pro-life and adoption advocate. She has a deep love for babies and has been nicknamed “the baby whisperer”. You’ll likely find her snuggling on the couch with one of her kiddos while eating bacon and drinking a glass of chocolate milk (Nesquik of course).

Original blog: https://bit.ly/3kwocJS

May 3, 2022/by Guest

Why Am I A “Sinner” And Why Do I Need To Be Forgiven?

Apologetics for Parents, Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Bob Perry

Here’s a question I got recently: “It has always bothered me that I am a sinful human. None of my good efforts, leading a good life can deter sin. I was born with sin and I have to be forgiven? I don’t get that. Why am I a ‘sinner’ and why do I need to be forgiven?” This is a difficult question to answer, especially when it comes from a genuine, good-hearted person. Nobody wants to think of themselves as a “sinner.” For the most part, all of us try to be kind, nice, and loving. We’re not serial killers, or bank robbers, or child molesters, or even shady politicians. It seems unfair to call someone a sinner — especially when you also seem to be saying that they were born to be that way.

There is a unique Christian solution to this dilemma. I’d like to offer three things to keep in mind when you think about it:

Exchange the Word “Sinner” with “Rebel”

I think part of the problem is that “sin” is a religiously loaded word. Yes, we are sinners, but the word conjures images of angry preachers demeaning our character and yelling from the pulpit that we need to “repent!” It all just sounds so judgmental and archaic. But the simple fact is that every one of us has done wrong things, no matter how small we think they are. We have all lied, cheated, stolen things, or mistreated other people. We have all been angry, jealous, or unfair to someone in our lives. It’s part of being human. So, if we have all done these things, it’s not unfair to acknowledge it. It’s just an observation about our common human nature.

The problem is that every time we do one of these things, we are violating an objective standard of moral goodness that we all recognize and should be trying to live our lives by. All of us realize this But, we do these kinds of things anyway. Every single human being who has ever lived is therefore a rebel in the same way. So, exchange the word “sinner” with “rebel.” Both are accurate, but rebel sounds less judgmental.

Use a Different Standard for Comparison

Instead of comparing ourselves to the bad actors in the world and seeing ourselves as pretty decent folks, we need to measure our rebellious actions against the standard we are actually violating. That standard is the perfect moral character of God. Nobody likes being told they’re a “sinner,” but when we change our mindset to realize our rebellion is against a perfect God, it puts things in a different perspective.

Imagine an artist’s masterpiece with a tiny flaw. Someone erases an eyeball on the Mona Lisa or vandalizes it with a single drop of bright yellow paint. Yes, the flaw is tiny. But no matter how small it is, you can’t help but see it. A tiny corruption in a masterpiece ruins the whole thing.

The Unique Christian Solution

If the standard is perfection, then any violation of that standard, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, creates an infinite separation between us and that perfection. Think of it as an infinitely wide canyon where we are on one side and God is on the other. Every religion offers a solution to crossing the divide, but Christianity’s solution is unique.

There are three possible responses to bridging the canyon we create when we rebel against God’s perfect moral standard.

Pretend the bridge isn’t there. This is basically the solution of the eastern and new age religions. People, and pain, and suffering, and rebellion are all just illusions. There is no need to build a bridge across a divide that doesn’t even exist. But it does make one wonder why we all seem to recognize our rebellious behavior if it’s just an illusion.
We can build the bridge ourselves. This is the idea that we can fix the mend by doing nice things to make up for the bad stuff we’ve done. Some call this a “works-based” theology, where we “work” our way back into God’s good graces. This is the solution offered by every other theistic religion (Judaism, Islam, Mormonism etc.). The problem with that is that the gap we’re tying to mend is infinite. We can work all we want but no human being is going to be able to build a bridge across an infinitely wide chasm.
God can build the bridge for us. What makes Christianity unique is that we don’t have to build the bridge. God builds it for us. It was the reason he came to Earth. He is the bridge between God and man. His suffering and death on the cross was the infinite payment required to make up for our rebellion. His resurrection sealed the deal.

All we have to do is acknowledge the fairly obvious fact that we are all rebels when we compare ourselves to the proper standard — then let God build us a bridge.

The religion of the Force (book excerpt)

Apologetics for Parents, Theology and Christian Apologetics

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By Frank Turek and Frank Zachary Turek

The Star Wars series comprises eleven wonderful movies (some more wonderful than others) that, by design, are infused with overtly religious issues.

George Lucas said, “I put the Force into the movies in order to try to awaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people — more a belief in God than a belief in any particular religious system.”

He admits that he wants to get young people to at least think about the big questions in life: “Is there a God? What does God look like? What does God sound like? What does God feel like? How do we relate to God? Just getting young people to think at that level is what I’ve been trying to do in the films.”

Not bad for Hollywood! But what kind of answers do the movies provide to viewers, and how do they compare to Christianity?

Lucas claims he’s not trying to direct viewers to definite answers. “What eventual manifestation that takes place in terms of how they describe their God, what form their faith takes, is not the point of the movie.”[1]

Of course, it was unavoidable that his movie would depict a specific kind of worldview with its own view of god. The Force isn’t a Christian view of God. The god of Star Wars is closest to the god of pantheism — it is omnipresent and binds the universe together, but the Force makes no moral demands on its users.

Moral demands are, of course, part of Christianity, which often uses the same light-versus-darkness language found in Star Wars. God calls us to be in the light, as He is (1 John 1:7). Those who are in sin are depicted as being in darkness, while those who have accepted Christ as their Savior are in the light of the Lord. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes:

“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness, and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.” Ephesians 5:8–11

This idea of affiliating oneself with the light separates Christianity from any type of Force-based religion in a big way. The Force itself is quite clearly neutral — equally accessible to both sides and not preferring one over the other. Since the Force is not personal, it can’t command anyone to do good with its power.

In this way, pantheism is a lot like atheism. Whether you call nature “the Force” or simply matter and energy, you have no grounds for objective morality. Impersonal nature has no authority or capacity to tell you or anyone what to do.

Yet there is morality throughout the Star Wars series. Although the Force is technically neutral, George Lucas admits Star Wars is a “morality play.” In fact, virtually all good stories, including all superhero movies, are morality plays. There are always good guys and bad guys. Evil always needs to be defeated, which presupposes that there is an objective standard of good we ought to follow. An objective standard of good that all humans are obligated to follow can only exist if a personal God exists.

Since the Star Wars universe doesn’t have a personal God, how is morality justified in the movies? It isn’t. But that’s OK. They’re movies. Not everything has to be justified or make sense. The Force, like Harry Potter’s magic, isn’t meant to be grounded in reality. It’s science-fiction. Just like we don’t see people flying on broomsticks, we don’t see people wielding lightsabers or moving spaceships around with their minds.

While Lucas claims the Force is morally neutral, the audience isn’t. Because God has written the Moral Law on our hearts, we intuitively and immediately know that the Jedi are the heroes of the story and that the light side is morally better than the dark side.

The repeated goal of “balance” in the Force is another difference between the Force of Star Wars and the God of Christianity. “The film is ultimately about the dark side and the light side,” said George Lucas. “Those sides are designed around compassion and greed — we all have those two sides of us — and we have to make sure that those two sides of us are in balance.”

This is really an odd statement to make.[2] Do we really want a “balance” between compassion and greed or between other forms of good and evil? Can you imagine your grandma telling you that as long as you do just as many nice things to the little boy next door, you can do all the bad things to him you want? Christians (and all people) should be fighting to eradicate evil completely, not balance it with good.

Furthermore, contrary to the Force of Star Wars, God and Satan are not “in balance,” as if they are equal and opposite forces. As we saw in the introduction, God is the one sovereign power, and all other creatures derive their power from Him. Just as evil cannot exist without good, Satan cannot exist without God. Neither can the angels and demons. Neither can we.

C. S. Lewis put it well, “Christianity agrees with Dualism that this universe is at war. But it does not think this is a war between independent powers. It thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel.”[3]

The Christian concept of faith is also different from the religion of the Force. In Star Wars,faith means not trusting your senses, but your feelings. It’s why Obi-Wan prompted Luke to turn off his targeting computer and trust his feelings.

Christianity is exactly the opposite. Faith is trusting in what you have good reasons to believe is true, and the primary way you get those reasons is by using your senses. Once you’ve discovered those reasons, you don’t trust your feelings when they contradict the facts. Feelings are fickle and subject to changing emotions. Feelings change, but facts don’t.

In Star Wars, the more faith you have, the more power you have. That’s why Yoda can lift the spaceship out of the mud on Dagobah while Luke cannot. But that’s not the way the real world works.

Imagine you and your friend get on a flight to Hawaii. If you totally trust the pilots but your friend is scared to death (your faith is strong but his is weak), does that mean you’ll get there but he’ll crash? Of course not. Once he’s on the plane, the strength of his faith isn’t the issue. The skill of the pilots is. It’s the same in Christianity. It’s not the amount of faith that has power — the faith of a mustard seed is enough. Instead, power lies in who you put your faith in. Jesus, not humanity, is the source of our power.

Taken from Hollywood Heroes: How Your Favorite Movies Reveal God by Frank Turek and Zach Turek. Copyright ©2022. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries.

Notes

[1] These quotes are from an interview Bill Moyers conducted with George Lucas in 1999, the transcripts of which are available here and here.

[2] Some may claim that by “balance” Lucas means the moderation between extremes that pantheists often advocate (signified by the yin and yang symbol). But if that’s the case, why would he claim we should want compassion and greed to be in balance?

[3] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (London: MacMillan, 1952), 50–51.

Should Christians Pursue Personal Success?

Apologetics for Parents, Culture CrossExamined

By Mike Taylor

Have you ever found yourself looking at someone else’s life on social media and wondering how they’re able to do all that they do? We see people on Instagram taking vacations, buying cars, starting businesses, quitting their jobs, and doing other glamorous things all while simultaneously raising multiple kids and finishing their Master’s degree. Or so it seems, at least.

And as we take in their glorious life, we can’t help but wonder: how on earth do they have the time and money and energy to do these things?

Then we might start to wonder, “Is living a life focused on material wealth and personal success something God wants for us?” Because it feels like the glorification of wealth is everywhere we look nowadays, and Christians are often right at the forefront of the madness.

But is it okay for Christians to pursue these things? Is it okay for Christians to pursue personal success and material wealth in a capitalistic society?

Let’s keep it simple. Let’s go back to the things we need. We all need two things in our life: comfort and significance.

Look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:

Physiological needs (Food, water, shelter, etc.) = Comfort
Safety needs (Security, employment, resources, health, etc.) = Comfort
Love and belonging = Significance
Esteem (Respect, status, recognition, freedom) = Significance
Self-actualization (being the most you can be) = Significance

In that context, everything we pursue in life comes down to these two very basic categories: comfort and significance.

In fact, we will only give up one of those things inasmuch as we are able to gain from the other. It’s a very interesting dynamic.

For example, a person will only exercise (sacrificing comfort) if they believe that such an activity will give them more physical and mental significance. They’ll push themselves pretty hard in the gym if they believe that hard work and discipline will make them more significant.

The same is true of comfort. We’re typically only willing to give up the chance at being significant if it gains us a significant amount of comfort. Plenty of people spend a disproportionate amount of time outside of work and other obligations sitting on a couch eating junk food. We’re all guilty of this on some level, and the reason we do it is because we are, either consciously or unconsciously, making a decision to accept comfort in the place of significance. It’s a tradeoff we’re willing to make whether we realize it or not.

So, then, “success” is simply shorthand for more comfort and significance. If we explore what it means to be successful, we’ll find that everything we envision comes back to these two things.

So the question is: is God okay with me pursuing more comfort and significance?

Neither comfort nor significance is bad. In fact, I would argue that we are alive for these two reasons. All the best things about being alive bring some level of comfort. If we are uncomfortable, and if we are uncomfortable for no reason associated with future gain of comfort or significance, then something is probably wrong.

For example, if you’re experiencing increasing levels of discomfort in your back in the form of back pain, there’s probably something wrong. You instinctively know that because there is no end goal of achieving more comfort or significance from your back pain.

So discomfort in and of itself is not a good thing. Yet your body knows that and continually alarms you using discomfort and causing you to address potential long-term problems.

If you’re a follower of Jesus, then everything you believe is based on comfort and significance.

Heaven is comfort (Revelation 21:4), walking with God here on Earth brings comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3-4, Psalm 23:4), and being a child of God is where you find significance.

God made us to find comfort and significance in him, and like it or not, everything we do in our lives revolves around these two things.

The problem comes in when we lose focus on the right source of these two things.

Too often in our lives, we lean on other sources of both comfort and significance. We look to our jobs, our families, our social status, and any other number of things to help us gain comfort and significance.

The problem is, nothing ever fills the void, and people who mean well end up abandoning their false sources of comfort and significance without ever replacing those sources with the true source. Then we end up believing that comfort and significance are things that aren’t meant for us.

I cannot tell you how many people I’ve come across who live empty lives because they’ve come to believe that comfort and significance are bad things. And it’s true, when you’re reaching for the wrong source, they are bad things. But we were made for comfort and significance.

Think about the biblical history of the human race. At one point in our history, we had all the comfort and significance we wanted. We had every resource at our disposal and all the authority we could ever ask for. That was the garden of Eden. Except there was more.

There was one thing that seemed as if it could bring more comfort and significance, so we tried it out. We thought that if we just learned enough and tried hard enough then we could be the source of our own comfort and significance. Yet here we are today still trying the same tactics. It doesn’t bring lasting comfort or significance now just like it didn’t then.

But here’s where it gets fun. Once you can see and identify the problem, you actually have a chance at resolving it. Once you know that God intends for you to have comfort and significance, now you know what void to fill. Now you know what battle to fight.

The truth is, success is not something to be feared. Not all dreams in your heart are not things to be stifled. It’s not always pride and it’s not always the enemy trying to destroy your life through aspirations.

You’re alive for a purpose, and that purpose can and should bring you sentence comfort and significance (i.e., success). If we can learn to fight the battle within ourselves – the battle of trying to gain comfort and significance on our own instead of pulling them from God – then we’ve learned to fight the only battle worth fighting, the fight of faith.

The faith you and I are fighting for is the belief that comfort and significance come from a higher source and not from our own abilities to achieve. So don’t shy away from success. Success is just shorthand for comfort and significance, and God had every intention of making you successful.

Instead of seeing success as something to shun, see it for what it is – a gift from your Father. Once you realize that, then you’ll find increasing gratitude and fulfillment that, frankly, only come from seeing success. If you see yourself as a lowly person whose job it is to give up everything good for the sake of self-denial, then what do you have to be grateful for? How are you tasting and seeing that the Lord is good? (Psalm 34:8)

God promises prosperity for his people when they listen and follow him (Psalm 1:1-3, Leviticus 26). Jesus said, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” He said “all” these things – not the bare minimum of these things. God doesn’t want you to live a life in despair. In fact, I’ll say it this way: God wants you to have it all, he just doesn’t want it all to have you.

So we shouldn’t shun success, and we certainly shouldn’t speak against those who have success. Ecclesiastes 10:20 says, “Do not revile the king even in your thoughts, or curse the rich in your bedroom.” Instead, like Jesus said, “use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” Use success as a tool for godly influence.

Success is a magnifying glass – it makes you more of what you already are. And if you ask me, the world needs more successful Christ-hearted people.

3 Practical Steps to Help Build Your Kids’ Immunity to Anti-Christian Ideas

Apologetics for Parents

By Alisa Childers

When my daughter Dyllan was a toddler, I exercised quite regularly at the YMCA. (And by “exercised,” I mean that I read a book on the stationary bike and pedaled as slowly as possible while I enjoyed an hour of free childcare. Not gonna lie.) One day when I picked her up from the kid’s room, the childcare worker pulled out the unopened granola bar I had put in Dyllan’s bag, handed it to me, and said, “We can’t give this to her because it contains peanuts. We don’t allow anything with peanuts into the childcare area.” I admit I was a bit surprised because it wasn’t something I had given much thought to. But I quickly learned that there was almost nothing parents feared more in 2010 than the dreaded peanut.

Of course, peanut allergies are very real. In their book, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt reported that before the mid-1990s, peanut allergies were extremely rare in American children. However, by 2008, fourteen out of every thousand kids had developed peanut allergies. No one knew why there was such a drastic increase until an authoritative study was released in 2015. It was discovered that many kids were developing peanut allergies because their parents avoided giving them peanuts. The study revealed that introducing peanut products to infants with a high risk for allergies actually reduced their chances of developing a peanut allergy by a whopping 81%. In other words, giving peanut products to infants caused their immune systems to respond and build up a tolerance.

Our kids have amazing bodies that react to bacteria, parasites—and yes, peanuts—with an immune response that teaches their system to adapt and fight off future threats to their health.

In the same way, I believe our kids have spiritual immune systems.

Several years ago, I was a participant in a study and discussion group about Christianity. This was the class that challenged my faith intellectually and I’ve told that story here. One day, the subject of Adam and Eve came up and it was asked, “Does anyone still believe they were actual people?” I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I was entirely naive when it came to this subject. Even as an adult, I thought the literal existence of Adam and Eve was something all professing Christians believed in. Chalk it up to the Evangelical bubble I grew up in or the fact that most of my life happened before the invention of the internet. But the question threw me because I had no idea how to answer.

Until that moment, I didn’t even know it was a question. I had zero immunity.

This was simply one of many skeptical claims raised against historic Christianity that snowballed together to send me into a dark time of doubt. I’ve often replayed that moment in my mind and imagined a different scenario. What if I had been aware of this question from childhood? What if I had already thought it through? What if when I read the Genesis account of creation, someone had told me, “Hey, some people don’t think Adam and Eve really existed. Let’s think about what the Bible says about it, what scientific evidence shows, and what that would mean for the gospel.“

If my spiritual immune system had been strengthened in this way, hearing this question as an adult would have been no big deal. It wouldn’t have shaken my faith one bit. I would have simply engaged in that conversation intelligently, without fear or doubt.

Other than teaching our kids the basics of the Christian faith, there are many practical steps we can take to help bolster their spiritual immune systems. Here are three to start with:

1. Read the Bible with your kids, and don’t skip the hard stuff.

By “don’t skip the hard stuff,” I certainly don’t mean you should freak your kids out right before bed by reading about the Levite hacking his concubine to pieces in Judges 19, or Samson getting his eyes gouged out in Judges 16. Obviously, there is an age-appropriate way to introduce biblical stories to our kids. What I mean by “don’t skip the hard stuff,” is that reading stories and accounts that skeptics typically challenge is a great way to inoculate our kids against their false ideas.

For example, when my daughter was about seven, we read through Genesis together. In chapter 26, we read the story of Isaac lying to the Philistines. He told them his wife Rebekah was his sister, fearing that someone might kill him in order to marry her. I said to my daughter, “Did you know that some people think this story is made up because it’s so similar to what Isaac’s dad Abraham did twice before? What do you think about that?” We had a great conversation about how it would make perfect sense for Isaac to repeat his father’s lie, because there seemed to be no major consequences for doing so. In fact, in both cases, Abraham left richer than he came. We also looked at the biblical theme of sons tending to repeat their father’s sins. After we talked, it all made sense. And now my daughter won’t be caught off-guard should she hear that skeptical claim in the future.

A great resource to help with this is The Apologetics Study Bible. As you read through the Bible, it footnotes the verses that skeptics typically challenge, and offers intelligent and credible responses you can talk through with your kids!

2. Expose your kids to atheism.

As a parent, it can be scary to intentionally tell your kids all the reasons why atheists reject Christianity. Based on her experience teaching apologetics to Christian parents, my friend Natasha Crain noted that many parents don’t want to risk leading their kids astray by introducing atheist arguments. But she rightly points out that all of our kids will inevitably hear these ideas. She wrote:

The only choice you have as a parent is if they’ll hear them first from you—in an environment where they’ll have your guidance readily available—or if they’ll hear them first from nonbelievers—in an environment where they’ll be processing what they hear on their own.

Brett Kunkle compares exposure to atheist ideas with teaching his kids to surf. In this video, he explains that as a parent, you wouldn’t throw your kid into the ocean to surf big waves before you teach them basics like swimming and how to handle smaller waves. Watch below:

Getting our kids used to the “smaller waves” of atheism can be a great way to prepare them to encounter the “big waves” when they are out on their own.

3. Expose your kids to false gospels and other religions.

Just like it’s important to expose our kids to atheist ideas, it’s equally important to expose them to counterfeit gospels—which almost always masquerade as authentic Christianity. It’s been said that the best lies contain the most truth. This is why false gospels can be so tricky to discern. . .they contain so much truth. They will often emphasize Jesus, use the right lingo, and even appeal to the Bible to back up their claims. Explaining the differences between authentic Christianity and Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the prosperity gospel, or progressive Christianity will prepare our kids to interact with their ideas and see through the deceptions they espouse.

Another important step is talking with our kids about what people of other religious faiths believe about God, Jesus, and the nature of reality. Although they agree on some points, every world religion contradicts the others at a fundamental level. Logically, they can’t all be true. This is a great opportunity to expose the contradictions and talk with our kids about why Christianity is true and best explains reality.

Who would have thought that giving a baby a tiny bit of peanut butter could potentially save his life? In the same way, giving our kids tiny bits of anti-Christian ideas and allowing them to process these questions within the safety and guidance of our care could have a lasting impact on their future spiritual lives.

Other practical resources:

For years, Brett Kunkle has offered theological training for teenagers and facilitated trips to Utah to interact with Mormons. When I interviewed him on my podcast, he reported that the impact of these trips has been tremendous in the lives of young people, motivating them to study theology and apologetics on their own. He now offers trips to the Berkeley college campus where Christian kids can share the gospel and interact with atheists and skeptics. Find out more at www.maventruth.com.

Another ministry doing great work in this area is Jonathan Morrow and Impact 360. Every summer, they offer experiences in which Christian teenagers are trained in leadership, apologetics, and theology after which they are given real-world experiences to test their knowledge. They visit Buddhist and Mormon temples, meet atheists, and more. Find out more at www.impact360institute.org and listen to Jonathan’s interview on my podcast.

If you want to be intentional about this, pick up Natasha Crain’s book Talking with Your Kids about God: 30 Conversations Every Christian Parent Must Have, and follow Natasha’s blog for more great tips. Or pick up J. Warner Wallace’s trio of kids’ books (1, 2, and 3) that explore everything from the existence of God to the truthfulness of Christianity.

Part 2: Overcoming

Apologetics for Parents

By Jason Jiménez

This article is adapted from Jason’s book Abandoned Faith.

“Inevitably we carry some amount of parental regrets. Freedom from regret comes when we admit our weaknesses before Jesus. No one is perfect. Our imperfections, though, shouldn’t become a wall between God and us or our children and God. At the cross we can lay down our regrets over our failures and move on. Remember that even the great heroes of the Bible did things they regretted.” — Mary DeMuth, Building the Christian Family You Never Had: A Practical Guide for Pioneer Parents.

Holding on to regrets prevents you from experiencing true freedom in Christ. It’s hard not to think back on all the moments you should have acted differently.

The would-of-could-of-should-of attitude does not help. It only makes matters worse between you and your millennial child. The key is not to regret having regrets. It will only bring on more regrets. What you need to do is give your regrets over to God and allow His healing power to take control of your life. Like the old saying goes, you can’t change the past, but you can learn from it.

Being tossed around by waves of regret is actually where Satan wants you to be. He doesn’t want you to let your regrets go. He wants you to drown in them. And every time you see your son or daughter making bad choices—Satan wants you to feel regret. He wants you to blame yourself for their sinful choices. But like the apostle Paul, you need to gain the assurance of saying, “One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead (Philippians 3:13).”

Stop living in the past. Rather, look forward to how God can use you in the life of your millennial right now. Take your focus off of fear-driven parenting, and turn it to a faith-driven parenting.

The Psalmist says those who look to God will reflect His glory and will not be ashamed. Every parent needs to hear that. They need to know that they don’t have to live a shameful life. What they need to do is let it go, and trust that God will restore their family.

When we’ve done that, we can become excited about what lies in store. God has uniquely equipped you to minister to your children. One of the greatest ways to be a conduit of grace is by living it out for others to see. Paul declared, “Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ (Philippians 1:27).”

When a Christian parent lives out his or her faith in a way honorable to God, it will have a lasting impact on their children!

Release Your Children

Moses’ parents saw how special their baby boy was and did not fear the Pharaoh’s edict. Rather than be stricken by fear, they released their son to God. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Children are a gift. But they are also on loan. You don’t own your children. They may have your DNA. But they are made in the image of God. You would lay your life down for your kids. But Jesus laid His life down and rose again so that your kids may have eternal life.

Give each of your children completely and totally over to God. You will be glad you did.

Part 1: Unspeakable Pain

Apologetics for Parents, Culture CrossExamined

By Jason Jimenez

This article is adapted from Jason’s book Abandoned Faith.

Many millennials have said that although they were raised in a Christian home, Christianity was never at the core of everything they did. I remember one college student tell me, “I think the only reason my parents go to church is to feel better about themselves.” Another said, “The only time we learned about the Bible was when we went to church.”

Millennials are saying the gospel was not at the center of their home. Millennials may have received a degree of faith from mom or dad, but it wasn’t enough for them to see the value and importance faith has in their own lives.

This is a painful reality for parents. Painful because their millennials are right. Faith went as far as going to church. Sure, you throw in a few extra-church activities, a few family devotions, and lectures about doing the right thing. But the truth is, many parents feel they failed in leading their children spiritually.

Furthermore, parents have become so overly protective that we have neglected the protection of God over our children. We love our children, but God loves them so much more. We know our children better than anyone, yet God knew them before they were born.

Too often we pick on the millennial for being lazy or too dependent on mom or dad. In reality, the actual problem is often mom and dad. The fear-driven parenting creates an unhealthy level of dependency. Out of fear, mom and dad never adjusted their level of attachment in their kid’s lives as they got older.

The church pews are filled with parents experiencing deep pain. Pain over the fact that their child is no longer living for Christ. Pain over the fact that they may be to blame.

Many parents will tell you they are hurting. Hurting over the bad choices their adult children are making. Hurting over the lost intimacy they once had with their son or daughter.

Often times we are so worried about the spiritual state of millennials that we have neglected to care for the condition of parents. The amount of pain experienced by parents is overwhelming. They are getting hammered. Take this email I received from a mother about her son:

When your children were younger, it was so much easier to involve yourself in their lives. But when they get older and leave home, it’s much more difficult to know your place. When your child pushes you away and makes their own bad decisions and then wants your help, only to disregard it again, breaks your heart. As a parent, instead of looking forward to talking with your adult children, you begin to dread the calls because you know that there will be another issue to deal with. You want to be the hero and have all the answers. But you know no matter what you say, they won’t always listen. It’s a tough place to be in because you feel disrespected, and angry—and on top of it all…you feel like you failed your child. When all I want is to have mature and healthy relationship with them. All I want is for my children to need me in their lives.

What a moving email. The heart of this mother captures what many more parents feel. If we are going to win millennials back to Christ—we first need to win parents back to hope and healing.

Stay tuned for part 2 to see how parents can overcome this painful reality.

The Fast But Quiet Creeping of Everyday Cancel Culture: 3 Things Christians Need to Know

Apologetics for Parents, Culture CrossExamined

By Natasha Crain

Last month, the CEO of video game maker Tripwire Interactive was made to step down from his job just 53 hours after he tweeted support for the new Texas abortion law (which banned abortion after the baby’s heartbeat can be detected). Here’s the offensive tweet that apparently warranted the loss of his job:

“Proud of #USSupremeCourt affirming the Texas law banning abortion for babies with a heartbeat. As an entertainer I don’t get political often. Yet with so many vocal peers on the other side of this issue, I felt it was important to go on the record as a pro-life game developer.”

That’s it.

That’s it.

He merely stated his view that he supports protecting unborn babies from being killed. But having a different view was too much for cancel culture to handle. The pressure came quickly. A co-developer, Shipwright Studios, tweeted a statement the next day in which they said they would be canceling any existing contracts with Tripwire Interactive because they could not in “good conscience continue to work with Tripwire under the current leadership structure”:

Almost unbelievably, Shipwright Studios’ About Us page has a section called “Moral Compass.” It states:

“STEM fields are notoriously unwelcoming for many demographics, but women and minorities are notably underrepresented in game industry as a whole, and game programming in particular. As a small business owned by three white men, we are not blind to the luxury of being able to keep our ‘politics’ separate from our work, as well as personal lives. But for many of our friends and colleagues, ‘politics’ are not some easily ignorable distraction.

As an industry, we can do better and we must.

While we don’t have the power to change the industry as a whole, we do have the power to change the way we conduct our business with it. We are ready to put our money where our mouth is and lend our voice to further causes that promote diversity and inclusion, preferring to work with clients working towards the same goals which only serve to enrich the industry to which we have devoted the entirety of our careers.”

I’m guessing you didn’t hear about this particular story, or if you did, you shook your head and moved on with your day. Maybe that’s what you’re doing right now.

But that’s the point of this article.

Similar actions are taking place every day across nearly every (if not every) industry. People are losing jobs for publicly sharing views that differ from what’s been deemed acceptable by secular culture.

This also happens in academia.

And Hollywood.

And in the press.

And even—if not especially—in personal relationships. Numerous people have been canceled by friends or family in the last couple of years simply because of what they believe (including myself).

You might collectively call all this “everyday cancel culture.”

Yes, there are still high profile cancel culture examples that grab sustained public attention, but it’s the everyday cancel culture that picks off person after person without national attention that’s far more insidious because the cumulative seriousness of what’s happening isn’t obvious to many people.

Meanwhile, everyday cancel culture rolls on with major implications that Christians need to understand. Here are three important things to know.

1. Cancel culture is deeply rooted in today’s pervasive secular social justice ideology, so it’s not going away any time soon.

It might be tempting to chalk all this up to mere social hysteria—a “this too shall pass” phenomenon. But that’s a really dangerous and incorrect assumption to have.

To see why, you have to understand that cancel culture’s major ideological roots grow several decades deep; this isn’t something freshly springing out of society’s top soil. And those roots are called Critical Theory.

Critical Theory as an academic subject is quite complex, but in its popular manifestations, here’s the basic idea (which is a worldview unto itself). The world is divided into two groups: those who are oppressed (the powerless) and those who are oppressors (the powerful). Those who are in the identity groups considered to be oppressed—for example, women, people of color, and the LGBT community—are victims of the social structure that has empowered the oppressors. You’ve probably heard quite a bit in the media, at least in passing, about Critical Race Theory in particular, but that’s just one Theory in the Critical Theory family—the one that deals with race-based oppression specifically. (For more on Critical Theory and its relationship to Christianity, see my article here.) The basic ideological structure of Critical Theory has become the de facto lens through which secularists view social justice, and it’s becoming entrenched in nearly every major cultural institution.

So what does that have to do with cancel culture?

In the context of Critical Theory, canceling is seen as a tool of the oppressed to deal with the sins of the oppressors.

That brings us to an important second point. But the bottom line in this one is that Critical Theory and cancel culture are integrally related concepts, and because Critical Theory is becoming firmly entrenched in society, cancel culture is likely here to stay as well.

2. Cancel culture sees itself as taking the moral high ground.

Those who aren’t steeped in the views of Critical Theory typically see cancel culture as a bad thing; it’s a dictatorial shutting down of opposing viewpoints. But if you understand it in the context of Critical Theory, it suddenly makes sense why proponents of cancel culture see it as a good thing:

The harsh actions involved with canceling people are assumed to be morally justified because they’re thought to be taken on behalf of the oppressed.

When everything is framed either implicitly or explicitly in terms of a fight against evil oppression, a lot of leeway will be given to what’s considered to be acceptable action.

The problem is how one defines oppression. Note that Shipwright Studios—the company that “canceled” Tripwire for having a pro-life CEO—said in their so-called “Moral Compass” statement that they want to lend their “voice to further causes that promote diversity and inclusion.” From a Christian perspective, it’s hard to imagine how they can’t see the irony in claiming they champion diversity and inclusion while canceling a relationship with a company whose CEO has a different view on the sanctity of life.

But once again, understanding cancel culture’s Critical Theory roots sheds light on why people like the Shipwright leadership don’t see it as ironic at all. They believe they have the moral high ground on this issue because they see it as a matter of reproductive justice. Within the framework of Feminist (Critical) Theory, it’s unjust for a woman to not have the choice to have an abortion.

In other words, the pro-life view is seen as oppressive to women.

Shipwright and others like them literally see themselves as the moral heroes and moral protectors of society, based on their own secular standard of justice (clearly, they don’t consider the injustice done to the preborn infant who is killed). When they say in their statement that they cannot “in good conscience” continue to work with Tripwire, they’re making it clear they believe they’re the good guys. And when they say would be doing the industry a disservice to “allow” a fellow industry CEO to have a public pro-life viewpoint, they’re making it clear they think canceling people for so-called oppressive views is actually a moral obligation.

3. Cancel culture will ultimately be at odds with Christianity because it has a different standard of justice.

Cancel culture proponents can make it sound like a good thing given the Critical Theory-based train of thought we just looked at. But Christians need to understand that it will continually be at odds with Christianity because secular culture has a different standard of justice (as we began to see in the last point).

Take, for example, these words from an article by progressive Vox writer Aja Romano: “The idea of canceling began as a tool for marginalized communities to assert their values against public figures who retained power and authority even after committing wrongdoing…In similar ways, both ‘wokeness’ and ‘canceling’ are tied to collectivized demands for more accountability from social systems that have long failed marginalized people and communities…Taken in good faith, the concept of ‘canceling’ a person is really about questions of accountability.”

Some people have tried to recast cancel culture as “consequence culture” to emphasize this idea of mere accountability. But accountability assumes a standard to be accountable to, and therein lies the problem.

As I explain in my upcoming book Faithfully Different (in which I have two chapters on social justice and cancel culture):

“One of the biggest problems with secular social justice from a biblical perspective is that it lacks an objective standard for defining justice in the first place. In secular social justice, oppression is often defined with respect to how people feel about dominant groups imposing their norms, values, and expectations on society as a whole, and that doesn’t necessarily correspond with what would be considered oppressive from a biblical perspective. As a result, people today are often being canceled for stating ideas that are wrong in the eyes of the world but not wrong in the eyes of God. When a person like Romano states that cancel culture is really just about accountability for when people ‘say or do bad things,’ it sounds reasonable on the surface, but it’s actually a very dangerous idea. It implies people are accountable to a mob that’s ready to take action as soon as someone’s words or actions stray from the mob’s own standard of justice.”

The mob’s standard will never be the same as God’s standard.

So where does all this leave Christians?

Given the factors discussed here, we can expect cancel culture to affect us personally and indefinitely. This mentality isn’t going away. We should just expect to be canceled in some way for stating what we believe because we’re seen as the bad guys now.

But that doesn’t mean we should be silent.

In fact, it means the opposite.

We need to be bolder than ever.

Bold enough to speak when people call us oppressors (by their own standard) and cut us off from relationships, positions, and opportunities.

Bold enough to act when people move to stop us in every way.

Bold enough to love according to what God wants for people rather than what they want for themselves.

It’s time for “salt and light” to really mean something. It’s not a cutesy phrase to put on the back of a t-shirt. It’s our calling to preserve truth in a decaying culture and shine light in a dark world. Let’s be sure we fear God more than we fear the temporal cancelation weapons of man.

For more on my upcoming book, Faithfully Different, check out pre-order details here! I wrote it to help Christians gain clarity about what it means to believe, think, and live differently as a worldview minority in a secular culture. Cancel culture and secular social justice are two of many subjects covered.

We Need More Sound Biblical Doctrine Taught in the American Church

Apologetics for Parents, Culture CrossExamined, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Jason Jimenez

We’ve all heard and seen the numbers that show how biblically illiterate Christians are in America. For example, the reputable Barna Group cites only 6% of identified Christians possess a biblical worldview. This is (more or less) verified by Pew Research Center and LifeWay Research.

No matter how many times I’ve studied statistics on biblical illiteracy in the American church—it always causes me to swell up with tears.

But why? Why are over 90% of Christians unfamiliar with the Bible and incapable of articulating the doctrines of the Christian faith?

As a pastor, I realize the bulk of discipleship is on the parents, not the church. In Ephesians 6:4, Paul commands fathers to raise their children in the “discipline and instruction of the Lord.” But the critical training ground for families, especially for dads and moms, is the church. We see again in Ephesians the duty of spiritual leaders within the church is to “equip the saints for the work of the ministry” and to “build up the body of Christ (4:12). The Greek word for “equip” is katartismos, which carries the idea of “adequately qualifying or preparing someone to accomplish something with sufficiency.”

Unfortunately, this form of equipping Christians in the Word of God and theology is no longer a high priority for most American churches. Rather than being a place where Christians are trained thoroughly in sound biblical doctrine, the Western church has capitulated to a water-down gospel presentation that seeks to entertain rather than raise up an army of soldiers capable of advancing the kingdom of God amid a dark and perverted world.

However, not only has a lack of teaching sound biblical doctrine contributed to the decline of biblical literacy, but it also has created an absence of godliness in the church and a decline in the overall attendance in denominations across the country.

This (and many more reasons) is why pastors and church leaders need to get back to teaching sound biblical doctrine instead of feeding their congregations a bite-size version of Christianity.

The great Bible teacher, Warren Wiersbe, had this to say, “Churches are not built up and strengthened through man-made programs, entertainment, recreation, or “drives.” The church is a body and must have spiritual food; this food is the Word of God.”

Wiersbe is right. The church’s primary service isn’t to offer programs once or twice a week for families. Instead, the church is meant to be a place where Christians can come and get grounded in the Word of God as they grow in their love for Jesus and love for one another (see Hebrews 10:24-25).

Notice how Paul described what the Word of God does for a believer: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17).

Did you catch that? When churches and Christians spend time learning God’s Word and unpacking the rich doctrinal truths that make up the Christian faith—they will be complete and able to fulfill the will of God. As physical exercise is beneficial for your body, so too is the Word of God profitable for Christians as they are trained on how to form proper habits of behavior so that they are qualified and able to live out their faith every day.

So, if you are a Christian leader in your church, ask yourself, how effective am I in teaching sound doctrine to the people God has called me to shepherd? If you are currently not serving in your church, ask yourself, what can I start doing to be a part of the solution to train up more Christians in the Word of God?

BIBLE STUDY: WAS THE RESURRECTION BODY OF JESUS SPIRITUAL OR PHYSICAL?

4. Is the NT True?, Apologetics for Parents, Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Wintery Knight

So, everyone from left to right accepts the early creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 being dated to 1-3 years after the death of Jesus, even atheists like Crossley, Ludemann, and Crossan. The thing is, some people are not sure that the appearances of Jesus to individuals, groups, and skeptics really were physical appearances. They say, “well, Paul’s appearance was non-physical, so the other ones must have been, too.”

Let’s take a look.

Here’s a paragraph from my friend Eric Chabot, from his blog Think Apologetics. He explains why Paul’s use of the word “resurrection” to describe what the other witnesses saw means bodily resurrection.

He writes:

If Paul did have a vision, then the term “vision” is vague and must be defined. As Licona points out, visions are either objective (i.e., something that is seen without the use of our natural senses) or subjective (i.e., a product of our minds). The real problem is with the vision hypothesis is that it doesn’t explain Paul’s use of resurrection to explain what had happened to Jesus. The two words are used for resurrection in the New Testament “anastasis” (rising up) and “egersis” (waking up), both imply a physical body. Furthermore, the use of the word “opethe” (the Greek word for appeared) shows the Gospel writers did believe that Jesus appeared physically. “There you will see (opethe) him” (Matt. 28:7); “The Lord has risen and has appeared (opethe) to Simon” (Luke 24:24). When they used “opethe” here, it means that He appeared physically to them.

So when Paul gives his list of appearances in 1 Cor. 15, the issues become whether the appearance to him is the same as it was to the disciples. There is no doubt the post-resurrection body of Jesus (after the ascension) had to be somewhat different than the body the disciples saw. Also, whenever the New Testament mentions the word body, in the context of referring to an individual human being, the Greek word “soma” always refers to a literal, physical body. Greek specialist Robert Gundry says “the consistent and exclusive use of soma for the physical body in anthropological contexts resists dematerialization of the resurrection, whether by idealism or by existentialism.” [9] Furthermore, in N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God shows that the Greek word for the resurrection which is “anastasis” was used by ancient Jews, pagans, and Christians as bodily in nature.

Now, I think my view on this, and I’m not sure if Eric would correct me, is that Paul got an objective but the non-physical vision of Jesus. There was something there that everyone else could see and hear, in my view. But in my view, Paul’s “veridical” vision was post-ascension and so non-physical. Paul uses the word resurrection to describe what the other eyewitnesses saw (and he met them at least twice, according to Gal 1 and Gal 2), and that means physical resurrected body.

Eric Chabot writes this in another place:

Now, I said before in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul could have chosen to only use the word pneuma. He doesn’t. He does say “spiritual,” but he’s got an adjective there. He also says, soma, “body.” What did Paul mean?

Philippians Chapter 3. It’s a short chapter. There are 21 verses, but Paul says three things in one chapter that indicate he’s talking about a physical resurrection. In the opening verses he says, “I was a Hebrew of the Hebrews” and “as touching the law,” he says, “I was a Pharisee.” Now, it’s very well known that the Pharisee believed in a bodily resurrection. In fact, according to Acts 23, as Paul was being taken captive by the Romans to prevent his being killed, he shouted out to the group of people and said, “Why are you taking me? Because I believe in the resurrection of the dead?” He meant a literal resurrection.

When the Pharisees heard that, they said there’s nothing wrong with this guy. But the Sadducees [who didn’t believe in the Resurrection] didn’t like it. So as a Pharisee, he’s agreeing with the Pharisees.

So, the first evidence is from Philippians 3. As a Pharisee, Paul believes in a physical resurrection.

Secondly, in verse 11 he says, “That I may attain the resurrection of the dead.” Now, the normal Greek word for resurrection is anastasis, but in this passage, Philippians 3:11, he puts a prefix on there, ek anastasis. Ekanastasis, according to all Greek scholars that I know of, is translated in this passage: “The out resurrection from among the dead.” Paul said, “I want to attain the out resurrection.”

Now, to a Jew, “out resurrection” means “what goes down is what comes up.” You come out from death. And then just a few verses later, Philippians 3:20,21, he said, “From Heaven, we look for Jesus who will change our vile soma (body) to be like unto His glorious soma (or body),” when he should have said pneuma, according to this other view.

So he’s a Pharisee who believes in a physical resurrection. Ek anastasis—“resurrection from out among the dead ones.”

Thirdly, Paul says, “He Jesus will change my body to be like His body.”

So right there in Philippians 3 alone, I think the picture of Jesus being some wispy spirit that appeared to him on the road to Damascus doesn’t fit Paul’s own data.

Yes, that’s why Philippians is my favorite book. You can get so much useful theology out of it. Something about the resurrection in Phil 3, something about Jesus’ divinity in Phil 2, and loads of practical advice on stewardship, charity, fellowship, endurance and practical love for others throughout. Some of it takes a little digging, but that’s what commentaries are for, am I right? But I digress.

If you want to read something a little more challenging, I found a paper from the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) from their journal, where it talks more about soma and anastasis. If you want a bit of a challenge, download the PDF and read it. It’s by Kirk R. MacGregor, and the title is “1 Corinthians 15:3B–6A, 7 And The Bodily Resurrection Of Jesus.”

Apologetics is Useful in:

Making Disciples

Evangelism+

Preventing Apostasy

How Might Pastors Incorporate Apologetics?

If Not for You, Do it for them

Conclusion

Exchange the Word “Sinner” with “Rebel”

Use a Different Standard for Comparison

The Unique Christian Solution

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Notes

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Recommended resources related to the topic:

​1. Read the Bible with your kids, and don’t skip the hard stuff.

​2. Expose your kids to atheism.

3. Expose your kids to false gospels and other religions.

Other practical resources:

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Release Your Children

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Recommended resources for the topic:

1. Cancel culture is deeply rooted in today’s pervasive secular social justice ideology, so it’s not going away any time soon.

2. Cancel culture sees itself as taking the moral high ground.

3. Cancel culture will ultimately be at odds with Christianity because it has a different standard of justice.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Recommended resources related to the topic:

1. Read the Bible with your kids, and don’t skip the hard stuff.

2. Expose your kids to atheism.