Posted on Thursday,

A New Kind of Apologist

The world we live in is changing fast. There are new challenges and opportunities at every turn. We must be ready.

I deeply believe apologetics training is essential to following Christ in today’s culture. Thinking well is not optional.

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Which is why I am so excited to tell you about a brand new book that just came out and I had the honor of contributing to. (In fact, it just showed up yesterday in the mail hot off the presses!)

The book is A New Kind of Apologist and it’s edited by my friend and popular author, speaker, and apologist Sean McDowell.

It deals with important topics often ignored by apologists, such as transgender issues, religious freedom, and the intersection of economics and apologetics. My chapter deals with How to Question the Bible in a Post-Christian Culture.

Here’s just a few highlights:

A new kind of apologetics that is relational, gracious, and holistic interviews with both seasoned apologists and skeptics, providing insights into how to do apologetics effectively in today’s culture A New Kind of Apologist addresses the latest issues, including:

“Connecting Apologetics to the Heart”
“Teaching Apologetics to the Next Generation”
“Apologetics in our Sexually Broken Culture”
“Apologetics and Islam”
“Apologetics and Religious Freedom”

It also adopts fresh strategies for reaching those who are outside the church with the truth of the gospel.

There is a lot of valuable, cutting edge input here and I encourage you to pick up a copy and prepare yourself to engage!

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Article: Cotton Candy Christianity

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Posted on Thursday,

Why the Ivy League Can’t Give Students a Life that Truly Matters

People want to live a life that matters. Nobody wants to waste their life right?

And many today think that a college education is necessary for living a good life. And if you can somehow get into the Ivy League, well, then that’s the golden ticket to the inside track.

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But let the buyer beware. You should know that the Ivy league cannot deliver meaning and purpose. And to be fair…most colleges can’t either. Why?

They are simply not equipped to. And their inability is creating disillusionment and drift among this generation.

To see this, listen to the candid admission made by Harvard psychologist Stephen Pinker:

“Perhaps I am emblematic of everything that is wrong with elite American education, but I have no idea how to get my students to build a self or become a soul. It isn’t taught in graduate school, and in the hundreds of faculty appointments and promotions I have participated in, we’ve never evaluated a candidate on how well he or she could accomplish it.”

The fundamental question here is this: what is a human life for? How do you become fully human? And this is a worldview question.

The Problem with Colleges and Universities Today

The problem can be summarized in a word–reductionism.

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Not to worry, I will unpack this. But this concept is essential to grasp because it’s everywhere. It is the assumption that drives the whole show in modern education.

Here is what reductionism looks like: You take a human being and reduce him or her to merely an information and data container. As I have written elsewhere, this reductionism is why we are failing our students.

Is information important? Yes. But is it the whole enchilada? Not even close.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The Christian worldview provides the resources and holistic vision necessary for how you give a student–or any human being for that matter–a meaningful life. I have shared my thoughts on how to teach from a Christian worldview in another post.

However, just so I am not misunderstood, I think education is a great thing–especially for Christians. College is and can be a very important path to living well. But true education is not about testing well or finding a job that pays the bills–it’s about living well.

A diploma doesn’t guarantee human flourishing (i.e., what is classically understood as “happiness” before we completely emotionalized the term in the modern era). And the sooner we figure that out the better off we will all be.

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Article: How to Respond to the “That’s Just Your Interpretation” Objection

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Posted on Wednesday,

How to Overcome Cotton Candy Christianity

Growing up I was aimless, self-reliant, and far from God. But along the way, everything changed for me.

As we begin talking about how we avoid Cotton Candy Christianity and raising a generation of “Almost Christians,” I want to share some of my journey because I think it could make all the difference for you as well.

When I became a follower of Jesus Christ as a junior in High School, I was finally home. Coming from a broken family, I was now able to begin healing in many ways through God’s perfect love and acceptance.

But of all of the gracious gifts God has given me, the one that has most profoundly changed the trajectory of my life is this truth: God desires and deserves our best thinking.

As Christians our thinking matters to God. Yes our emotions and relationships matter to God as do our acts of kindness and serving others. But none of that replaces this foundational part of Christian discipleship–our minds matter.

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And it is the failure to grasp this key insight–more than any other–that has lead to the “almost Christianity” we are experiencing today.

When defining the Greatest commandment, Jesus framed it this way:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” – Luke 10:27

To live well we must think well. All of our actions flow from what we believe about reality—including our thoughts about God and our neighbor.

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C.S. Lewis is no fan of Cotton Candy Christianity:

“God is no founder of intellectual slackers than any other slackers. If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you, you are embarking on something which will take the whole of you, brains and all.” – C.S. Lewis

We can’t just feel. We have to think. We need to take Christianity seriously again.

We must embrace God’s calling to think well and love Him with all of our minds.

You can do this. Now’s the time. Are you ready?

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Article: Is something more true because it’s in the Bible?

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Posted on Tuesday,

Cotton Candy Christianity

I’ll never forget the first time I encountered cotton candy.

There it was in all of its colorful and sugary glory at an amusement park. The attendant was circling the bowl to make this humongous ball of cotton candy. My mouth was watering. It looked amazing!

And then…I bit into it. And there was literally nothing to it! It had no substance. It evaporated in my mouth. I was so disappointed!

To this day, I’ve never bought another cotton candy for myself (yes, I did give in and buy it for our kids once, but they quickly realized their snack dollars were better spent elsewhere!).

Lesson learned. Appearances can be deceiving!

The more I reflect on it, the more I think that’s what’s going on with much of what is called ‘Christianity’ today. It looks really good and uses the right buzz words but then there’s nothing to it. Not much substance and it simply evaporates.

A Generation of Almost Christians

We are raising a generation of almost Christians. I think that explains some of the numbers we are seeing when it comes to youth. Yes, some students do walk away from the faith (about 50% disengage from their faith during the college years and many don’t appear to be coming back). But honestly, some never really had a substantial faith to begin with–that was there’s anyway. They didn’t own it.

Kenda Dean, author of Almost Christian observes:

“A significant part of Christianity in the United States is actually only tenuously Christian in any sense that it is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition. It is not so much that U.S. Christianity is being secularized. Rather, more subtly, Christianity is either degenerating into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly, Christianity is actively being colonized and displaced by a different religious faith.”

I see this first hand when I work with students and parents. And this breaks my heart.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be almost Christian.

God has called us to more than Cotton Candy Christianity.

“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” – Romans 12:2

This year let’s do something about that together. Let’s pray. Let’s dream. Let’s think. And then let’s act.

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In the days ahead we will be talking about how to do that.

Your Turn: What do you dream for this year when you think about your spiritual growth?

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A quick response to the “who are you to judge” objection.

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Posted on Tuesday,

Why You Should Have Faith In The Bible (VIDEO)

Can the Bible be trusted anymore? Recently I was interviewed for CBN (along with Josh McDowell and Darrell Bock) on the reliability of the Bible in an age of skepticism. Here is a short segment that aired on the 700 club based on my latest book Questioning the Bible: 11 Major Challenges to the Bible’s Authority. I hope you find it encouraging and helpful!

You can watch the rest of my CBN interview videos on the reliability of the Bible and learn more about recent exciting archaeological discoveries here.

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Do you want more confidence in defending the reliability and authority of the Bible? – CLICK HERE

Quick Read: Why Christians Need Apologetics

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