Hi Everyone,
Before I begin, I owe a huge "THANK YOU" to Pastor Nick Pridemore of Cornerstone Christian Fellowship in Bloomington, IN, as I am blatantly using his material (with his permission, of course). If you are ever in the Bloomington, IN area, head on over to Cornerstone for some very sound Bible-based teaching, and head on over to Pastor Nick's Young Adult ministry called "Resolved" for some encouraging and God-focused ministry. I base a lot of my Youth Group activities and teachings after what I experienced and learned from Pastor Nick at Resolved.
Yesterday, we continued our topic on Christian apologetics. Two Sundays ago was an overview/introduction to the topic, and yesterday we continued the introduction. I intentionally held off on posting last week's lesson, as this week was an extension of what we did last week.
(This is what we covered two weeks ago)
So what is apologetics? Apologetics is defense of the faith of Christianity. It's giving an account of why you believe in Christianity without using the Bible as your main resource. We study apologetics, because some people refuse to believe in the Bible and its truths. Imagine this scenario...
Inquisitive Person: Why do you believe in God, and Jesus, and the Bible?
Christian Believer: Because the Bible is truth.
Inquisitive Person: Is the Bible really truth?
Christian Believer: The Bible says the Bible is truth.
Inquisitive Person: How do you know the Bible is truth?
Christian Believer: The Bible says that it is impossible for God to lie, and the Bible is God's word to humanity. So, because God always tells the truth, the Bible is truth.
Inquisitive Person: I don't believe in the Bible. Use something else to prove to me that God and Jesus and the Bible are truth.
This is where apologetics come into play. Apologetics is a tool that Christians can use to help defend their faith and beliefs. By no means should apologetics be the only reason you believe. Apologetics should reinforce your beliefs, not be the center of your faith.
I then went into basic math logic, where a --> b --> c.
I used the example where if:
a = I swing a large hammer
b = onto my thumb,
then c = a number of things. First, my thumb is injured. I probably yelled or screamed. I'm in pain. Secondly, you can infer that I could be careless, I could be tired, I had an unfortunate accident, or maybe I was distracted.
It's that second level of thinking that we are pursuing in apologetics. It's the thoughts that are not directly stated, but are implied or can be deduced through additional logic. Some things are easier to figure out than others, as some answers might have definitive answers, and some have strong evidence there of.
The Youth Group and I turned to the Book of Genesis. I asked them, who wrote Genesis? A few of them said God. While it is true that God inspired the book, he didn't pick up a pen and paper and write the first version. So, the question remained, who wrote Genesis? Ron's Bible had an answer in it. His translation of the Bible said it was Moses who wrote Genesis. Most Christians attribute Moses as the author, and I am one of them. However, that tidbit of information was not specifically in the Book of Genesis, but it was included as background information.
The point being is that Christians should be able to answer some questions about their faith that aren't specifically laid out in the Bible. Nowhere in the Bible does it say "And then Moses wrote Genesis". Yet, we credit Moses. People are going to answer questions where answers may not lie directly in the Bible. The "who wrote Genesis" question is just one example. What about "why aren't dinosaurs mentioned in the Bible if God made everything?" Apologetics will help Christians explain their beliefs to people that want to know things that are not specifically spelled out.
(This is what we covered yesterday)
We opened up with a comedy song that had nothing to do with apologetics. For those interested, it was the "Dooright Famiy" by Ray Stevens. Hey, if Christians can't laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at? :-)
We then listened to a song that gave a clue as to the topic of the night. "Somewhere in the Middle" by Casting Crowns. The first half of the chorus lyrics give the best clues:
Fearless warriors on the picket fence,
Reckless abandon wrapped in common sense
Deep water faith in the shallow end
and we are caught in the middle.
(We didn't cover the second half, but it does apply as well)
With eyes wide open to the differences,
to the God we want and the God who is.
Bu will we trade our dreams for his?
Or are we caught in the middle?
Can you figure out last night's topic clue? One of the Youth Group members figured it out. She said "you want to believe, but you don't know". (I have to admit that I was impressed, as using music for topical clues is very cerebral. I guess it's true that women do develop intellectually faster than men.)
So that brings up question, what is a belief? For that question, we turn to the dictionary. Belief is a noun. Belief can be defined as "any cognitive content held as true." There are two key words in that definition.
The first is cognitive. Cognitive is an adjective, and it can be defined as "of or pertaining to the mental process of perception, memory, judgement, and reasoning, as contrasted with emotional and volitional processes." (Say what? Be honest, you know you had to re-read that definition at least twice.) To paraphrase, a cognitive thought is something that you have actively, and consciously thought about, and came to a logical conclusion.
So, going back to the definition of belief, we can paraphrase it to read "any thought that you have actively and consciously thought about and came to a logical conclusion that the thought is true." (Perhaps now you can see why the word "cognitive" was developed.)
So that brings us to the difficult word in the definition of belief. The word "truth". You would think that cognitive would be the difficult word, but no, truth is far more difficult than cognitive.
So what is truth? Truth is a noun. It is an idea (though some can argue that truth can take on different mediums, let's run with the notion that truth is an idea for now.) Truth has many different adjectives and tests to see if something is truth. All of these must apply for something to be truth.
A:
Truth is discovered, not invented. It exists even if know one knows about it. Gravity existed before Newton named it.
B: T
ruth is transcultural. If something is true, it is true for all people in all places at all times. 2+2 is 4 no matter who’s holding the pencil.
C:
Truth is unchanging even though our beliefs about truth can change. When we started to view the earth as being round instead of flat the truth about the earth’s shape didn't change, only our beliefs.
D.
A belief can’t change the truth no matter how sincere the belief is. A person can sincerely belief the earth is flat, but they are sincerely wrong. People can have contradictory beliefs, but it is impossible to have contradictory truths. We can belief anything is true, but we cannot alter what really is true.
E.
Truth is not affected by the attitude of the person stating it. A person’s arrogance doesn't make the truth he professes wrong and vice-versa.
F.
All truths are absolute. Even truths that seem to be relative are actually absolute. If I say, “I feel warm today, 10/7/2012, it may seem like a relative statement. But in reality it is absolutely true for everyone everywhere that Michael McCracken felt warm on 10/7/2012. (Also, remember that only the Sith speak in absolutes. Wait... does this mean that the Sith from Star Wars is truth? Someone call Yoda for linguistic clarification).
G.
Truth is eternal. By this I don’t mean specific truths like what day it is or what the temperature is. I mean the concept of truth, or the fact there is truth, will never cease to be. Augustine said truth cannot die, for even if it dies then it is true that it died and truth is alive again.
I threw a lot at the Youth Group last night, but that was the intention. As we move along in the apologetics study, conversations will come up, and it is my goal and hope that some of this sticks with them.
As the last song of the night, we listened to "Voice of Truth" by Casting Crowns. The Youth were starting to get the idea of the song to topic concept, as they were engaging more on topic. I think I'm on to something using multi-media to get the Youth Group's attention...
So that was the lesson in a nut shell. We had a lot of side conversations, and we went more in depth that i wrote about, so if you interested, come to Youth Group and hear everything first hand. (Oh, then we played two games of Flag Tag, and I don't move as fast as I remember.)
I'll be posting the Youth Group Weekly Announcements later on this week. This post took a lot longer than I thought, and I had started it last week...
That's all for now,
-Michael
