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Book: God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God by John Lennox

by Editor

The first time I heard of John Lennox was listening online to his debate against Richard Dawkins. Not only was he able to stand up to Dawkins’s arguments, but he concluded with a sterling appeal to the resurrection of Jesus Christ as the final proof that God exists and has revealed himself to us. Dawkins responded that he was “disappointed” that Lennox would bring that matter up in a scientific debate, but I was encouraged. Later, hearing Lennox in person speaking in Washington State, I was further impressed by his knowledge, fluency, and ability to explain complex ideas to a popular audience.
John Lennox is Professor in Mathematics in Oxford and Fellow in Mathematics and the Philosophy of Science at Green Templeton College. In addition to being a leading mathematician and philosopher of science, Lennox is a committed Christian and an outspoken apologist. In addition to debating famous atheists like Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, Lennox speaks to popular audiences to encourage their faith in God and the biblical revelation.
This book presents a strong case for God as the intelligent, powerful Creator of the universe. As an expert in mathematics, including probability and chaos theory, Lennox analyses and explains the fine tuning of the physical forces and constants of the universe, and the information richness of the genetic code. These facts point to intelligent input. Lennox does not “argue from analogy, but [makes] an inference to the best explanation” (p. 175). This is not a “god of the gaps” argument, where, as science progresses, the need for “god” shrinks. Rather, it is an “atheism of the gaps” argument, as each new scientific advance provides more, not less, evidence for a divine, intelligent Creator.
The book surveys the major areas of debate—the origin and design of the universe, the origin of life, the origin of the major types of life, and the information-rich content of the genetic code. In each of these areas Lennox documents his statements well, citing leaders in each field. He selects the strongest, not the weakest, argument of his opponents and treats them fairly. In all these diverse subject areas, he emphasizes the issues that relate to his own strength and expertise.
Near the end of his book Lennox discusses the philosophical contribution of David Hume, who supposedly destroyed the argument for God based on the design found in various creatures. These pages summarize and state well the fallacy of Hume, and the emptiness of modern arguments by atheists who quote him.
This book is fun to read, even though sometimes the reading is heavy. I recommend it to all who desire to argue for the existence and work of the God of the Bible. It also is helpful to all Christians who have feared that their beliefs somehow are unscientific or unreasonable.

You can purchase God’s Undertaker from our book partner – 10ofThose.com

This review has been kindly supplied by Dr John Battle of Western Reformed Seminary, Washington State.

Solas, Rural Ministry and Lee Abbey

by Editor

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It’s important to us at Solas that we don’t only get involved with gospel work in the big cities around the country, but that we reach into rural areas as well. While many of our evangelism and training events take place in the big population centres, we also believe it’s important to reach beyond those urban areas.
And so it was that Andy Bannister recently led a small conference at the beautiful Lee Abbey in the Exmoor National Park. Lee Abbey is a Christian conference centre launched just after the war, with a vision to get the gospel out of the churches and to reach places like Devon. The pioneers of this work recognised that the big churches in places like London, Birmingham or Manchester can all too easily neglect places like the South-West, where churches tend to be smaller, and are spread out more thinly across the countryside. Part of Lee Abbey’s work is running training courses and conferences designed to encourage, strengthen and inspire Christians, especially from across the South-west.
The four-day course entitled “Confident Christianity – Persuasive Evangelism in an Age of Sceptics” took a small group and equipped them to share their faith with friends and neighbours, colleagues and classmates in engaging ways.
Andy says: “It was particularly fantastic to have so much time with a group, because you really get to know them and talk in-depth about their situations; specific friends they are trying to share their faith with, particular issues they are dealing with; and to pray with some of them too.”
dsc_0354_14359254650_o-2048x1152He was also really impressed with Lee Abbey: “While lots of guests come and go for the conferences, there is a continual Christian community of about 90 people, staff and volunteers, at the Abbey too. Watching them as they work out what outward looking Christian community is all about was quite inspiring. They do a lot in the local towns and villages; they are always thinking about how they can bring non-Christians in for events. It was a real privilege to work with them, in what was a new partnership for Solas. I’d seen Lee Abbey before in passing, when walking the Devon coastal path, but never been inside, it was great to meet them and work with them!”
Lee Abbey were also enthusiastic about working with Solas. “Everyone who attended was ‘fired-up” they said, while guests wrote that it was “excellent, informative, and well-informed”, “Bring Andy Bannister back!”, “Andy’s ideas are presented in a memorable way and well argued. Others wrote that “His humble, gentle and respectful approach had lessons for us all.” The Lee Abbey community are also using Solas’ Short Answers videos in their ministry too, so the partnership goes on!

Rebecca McLaughlin: It’s Time To Go On The Offensive

by Editor 2 Comments
When it comes to giving reasons for our faith, we Christians are playing far too defensive a game.

We’ve believed that Christianity is declining. It isn’t. We’ve assumed Christianity can’t stand up in the university. It can. Too many of us think Christianity is threatened by diversity. It never has been. And too few of us think Christian sexual ethics are sustainable in the modern world. They are. On these and many other fronts, we have conceded far more ground to secularism than it deserves.
But we’ve also been playing too aggressive a game. We’ve majored on point-scoring and culture-warring, when the Bible calls us to “gentleness and respect” (1 Pet. 3:15). We’ve propagated weak arguments without listening to real experts. And we’ve blindly stepped out into cultural traffic, rather than taking our lead from those with the credibility to speak.
If we are to be faithful in this cultural moment, we must be neither retreaters nor attackers, neither (needlessly) defensive nor (faithlessly) aggressive. Instead, we must go on a “gentle offensive.” Here are five things that will help.

1. Know Our Moment

Forty years ago, sociologists predicted religious decline. Modernisation had bred secularisation in Western Europe, and where Western Europe led (so the logic went), the rest of the world would follow.
But that prophecy failed.
In the West, religious identification has certainly declined and looks set to decline further. But the rest of the world has not followed suit. In the next 40 years, Christianity is set to remain the world’s largest belief system, claiming 32 percent of the global population (a 1 percent increase over its current share), while Islam is expected to grow substantially from 24 percent to 31 percent. Meanwhile, the portion of humanity that does not identify with any particular religion (including atheists, agnostics, and “nones”) is set to decline from 16 percent to 13 percent. Indeed, if China swings toward Christianity as rapidly as some experts expect, the non-religious category could shrink even more, and the proportion of Christians would increase.
To the surprise of many in the Western academy, the question for the next generation is not, “How soon will religion die out?” but “Christianity or Islam?”

2. Level the Playing Field

The New Atheists claimed that religion poisons everything. This warps the thinking of our secular friends, but it doesn’t line up with the facts. A large body of empirical evidence shows that regular religious participation is good for individuals and good for society. In America, those who attend church weekly or more are 20 percent to 30 percent less likely to die over a 15-year period, suffer less from depression, are less likely to commit suicide, and are less likely to divorce.
We all know the health benefits of exercise, quitting smoking, and eating more fruit and vegetables. But it turns out that going to church at least once a week is correlated with equivalently good health outcomes to any of these! And the benefits extend to others. In his 2018 book The Character Gap: How Good Are We?, philosopher Christian Miller observes that “literally hundreds of studies” link religious participation with better moral outcomes. In North America, regular service attenders donate 3.5 times the money given by their nonreligious counterparts per year and volunteer more than twice as much. Meanwhile, levels of domestic violence in a U.S. sample were almost twice as high for men who didn’t attend church versus those who attended once a week or more, and religious participation has also been linked to lower rates for 43 other crimes.
Many of these effects aren’t exclusive to Christianity, but they give the lie to the idea that secularisation is good for society. Why have we heard a different message? As atheist social psychologist Jonathan Haidt warns, “You can’t use the New Atheists as your guide” on these matters, because “the new atheists conduct biased reviews of the literature and conclude that there is no good evidence on any benefits except the health benefits of religion.”

3. Reclaim Diversity

Celebration of diversity is a core secular liberal value. But when it comes to diversity, the cards are firmly in our hands. Christianity is the most culturally and ethnically diverse belief system in the world. Further, as we look at the demographics of Christianity in North America, two themes stand out. First, people of colour are far more likely to be religious than whites are. Across every index of Christian participation, black Americans poll substantially higher than whites—often by as much as 20 percentage points—while Latino Americans are also more likely than whites to identify as Christians. Second, in line with global trends, women are significantly more likely to be active Christians than men are. The gender gap is smaller than the racial gap. Black American men are more religious than white American women. But it’s still significant. Conversely, among American atheists white men are over-represented.
And this is no accident. Christianity was fiercely multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and multi-cultural from the start, and the church throughout history has always been majority-female. When we think about our cultural moment, therefore, we need to stop lamenting how the church is being eroded by demographic forces beyond our control, and start celebrating what God is doing through his glorious mixed-multitude of a church.

4. Field Our A-Team

Twenty-five years ago, historian Mark Noll wrote these damning words: “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” For much of the 20th century, many evangelicals saw the simplicity of the gospel as a mandate for intellectual laziness. But Christianity is the greatest intellectual movement in all of history! Christians invented the university. Schools like Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Yale were founded specifically to glorify God. Even academic disciplines that are supposed to have discredited faith turn out to have deep Christian roots: For example, the modern scientific method was first developed by Christians because they believed in a Creator God.
When it comes to the university, we’re not begging for a place at the table or trying to chop it up for firewood. We’re pulling up a chair to the table we built. But in the academic realm, as in other areas, we need to seek out our experts—the thousands of Christian professors whom God has raised up in universities—and learn from their work and let them lead.
Likewise, when it comes to other areas of cultural engagement, we need to let our most credible voices speak. In a world where Christians are seen as homophobic bigots, we need to get behind the biblically faithful, same-sex-attracted Christians God has raised up to speak for and to his church. In a world where Christianity is dismissed as a white man’s religion, we need to get behind biblically faithful men and women of color. And in a world where Christianity is thought to denigrate women, we need to get behind biblically faithful, rhetorically gifted women—particularly on issues like abortion, where being pro-life is often (falsely) equated with being anti-women.
None of this means bowing to identity politics. Truth is truth, whoever is voicing it. But God has raised up leaders whose voices can be heard. We need to field our A-team in the public square. And the rest of us must follow their lead.

5. Raise Our Game

When Jesus first preached, the harvest was plentiful. The same is true is today. Encouragingly, much of the trumpeted decline within Western Christianity has come from nominal or theologically liberal denominations—while more full-blooded, evangelical faith persists. Moreover, while many people have switched from identifying as Christian to identifying with no religion, the traffic is by no means one-way. A recent study found that while 80 percent of those raised Protestant in the United States continued to identify as Protestant in adulthood, only 60 percent of those raised non-religious kept away from religion when they grew up, with many converting to Christianity. Being non-religious turns out to be quite hard to sustain over multiple generations.
Rather than battening down the hatches, therefore, we need to go on an evangelism offensive. The secular consensus is crumbling, and we must humbly make the most of every opportunity—in schools and universities, at the bus stop, or by the water cooler. But we need to raise our game.
To be sure, if we’re sharing the gospel faithfully, we’ll often meet rejection. Only God can open blinded eyes, and we must pray like people’s lives depend on it—because they do. But we must ensure it’s the stumbling block of Christ our friends trip on, not an obstacle course of myths we could dispel.
So let’s field our A-team and go on an evangelism offensive with diligence, gentleness, and respect. Because Jesus is no relic from the ancient world. He is our modern world’s best hope.

Dr Rebecca McLaughlin

rmcm
holds a Cambridge PhD in English Literature, and a theology degree from Oak Hill College. She blogs at  https://www.rebeccamclaughlin.org/ and writes for several magazines and websites including Christianity Today and The Gospel Coalition, for whom this article was first produced. We are very grateful to Rebecca for allowing us to republish this article at Solas.

What happens when we die?

by Solas

What happens when we die? Are we just worm food? Are our atoms just scattered to the four winds? And doesn’t the same fate, on atheism, await all of humanity—in which case, what difference does it make how we live now? This Short Answers video explores arguably one of the most important questions one can ask—and shows why Christianity and Christianity alone offers hope and certainty.

This video is used as part of the SU Scotland “Connect Groups Q&A” curriculum.

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Short Answers is a viewer-supported video series: if you enjoy them, please help us continue to make them by donating to Solas. Visit our Donate page and choose “Digital Media Fund” under the Campaign/Appeal button.

Care, Equality & Freedom: What the Atheist-Psychologist Jonathan Haidt can teach us about Christian Apologetics.

by Editor

A classic scene of British comedy sees Basil Fawlty, before the arrival of some German tourists to the hotel, instructing his staff: “Whatever you do, don’t mention the war”. Of course, things go wrong very quickly! Similarly, we’ve often been told it’s impolite to discuss matters of politics and religion in public, because they start arguments. However, just because they cause disagreement doesn’t mean we can dismiss them altogether. After all, religion addresses the ultimate questions of life, the universe and everything – and politics concerns issues that touch our every day lives (education, health-care, taxation, immigration, etc.).
Furthermore, in light of the open questions of Brexit and Scottish Independence, there is an urgent need for us to be talking about: What kind of society do we want to be? This is not just a political question, but a moral one. There are things that we approve of and celebrate, and there are things that we discourage and condemn. Moral values and judgements stand behind everything from our laws that limit the speed on our roads (because we value peoples’ lives and safety above their freedom to cruise at whatever speed they wish) to our welfare policies for the poor, the disabled and unemployed (because we believe it is right for vulnerable people to receive additional support from the rest of the community). However, moral questions aren’t always so clear cut!
If it ever seems that when people are discussing morally contentious issues (like the beginning and end of life, gender and sexuality) that they are talking past one another or even talking in different languages altogether – it is because they are! They possess different moral visions of the good life and different understandings of what it means to be a good person. But what if we could find a way to discuss our different convictions without being disagreeable and confrontational? Someone who can help us is Dr Jonathan Haidt. As a professor of moral psychology, his work has sought to understand the psychology behind our religious and political disagreements. This article will introduce you to some of the key ideas in his important book “The Righteous Mind” and also indicate how they are helpful for Christians seeking to missionally engage with culture.
In Part 1 of the book Haidt makes the case that human beings are driven more by our hearts (motives, intuitions and desires) than our heads (reason and logic).
“We are emotional actors! We are highly intuitive beings who act first, and justify later. Our beliefs, convictions, and values are far less “rational” than we imagine.”
To illustrate this, Haidt develops the image of an Elephant and its Rider. He says that our emotions/desires/intuitions are like the elephant, while our intellectual reasoning is like the rider perched on top. Haidt’s research suggests that many of our decisions and responses are the gut reactions of our elephant to its surroundings. Our reasoning comes later trying to justify those prior decisions. This will ring true if you’ve ever had a strong reaction against something, but been unable to articulate why you disapprove of it beyond stammering “It’s just wrong – surely everyone knows that?!”
The key take away from Part 1 is that if you want to get people to change their minds, then you need to do more than talk to their Rider with facts and arguments, you also need to appeal to their Elephant:
“The elephant can be steered by the presence of other friendly elephants: Do you want to influence the people who disagree with you? You have to talk to their elephants. The main way we change our minds on moral, political or religious issues is by interacting with other people. We are terrible at seeking evidence that challenges our own beliefs—others must do us that favour. We are good at finding errors in other people’s beliefs. But the interactions must be civil. When discussions are hostile, the elephant leans away and the rider works frantically to rebut the opponent’s charges. But if there is affection, admiration, and trust, the elephant leans in and the rider tries to find truth in the other person’s arguments. The elephant may not usually change in response to objections from its own rider, but it may be steered by the mere presence of other friendly elephants.”
Part of Haidt’s own experiences as a secular atheist was a change of mind about the value of religion after his experience of welcoming church communities during his field research. As he has said elsewhere: “When your heart is open, then your mind is open”.
In Part 2 Haidt explores the six foundations of morality. The title of his book “the righteous mind” suggests that we are not born into this world as blank slates, but rather all humans come pre-loaded with a package of moral inclinations or “taste receptors”. Here they are expressed in positive and negative form:

(1) Care/Harm: the intuition to maximise peoples’ well-being while protecting them from harm, especially the vulnerable and marginalised
(2) Fairness/Cheating: the intuition to work for justice and equality (whether that is defined by the left as equality of outcome, or by the right as equality of opportunity)
(3) Liberty/Oppression: the intuition to appreciate freedom of choice and freedom from undue external interference
(4) Loyalty/Betrayal: the intuition to be willing to make sacrifices for the sake of a cause greater than oneself
(5) Authority/Subversion: the intuition to respect the wisdom of those who have come before us or in positions of responsibility over us
(6) Sanctity/Degradation: the intuition that some things possess special sacred status and must be protected from contamination (whether it’s the right’s concerns for the sanctity of life, sex and marriage on the right, or the left’s concern for the conservation of the natural world)

Depending on our genes, our environment, our society those moral taste buds will be reconfigured causing us to lean in different directions. For example, Haidt’s research suggests that those who identify as Liberal politically or who are younger generationally will be more concerned with the first three foundations (Care, Fairness and Liberty), while those who are older or more Conservative will be attracted more by the last three foundations (Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity). This insight has huge significance for our cultural engagement today.
An often overlooked aspect of cultural change has been the impact of individualism on the moral landscape of our society. For example, after last year’s referendum on changing the Irish constitution, removing the provision on the sanctity of life from conception – commentators attributed the campaign’s success to the influence of feminism, the rising religious apathy among young people, and the deleterious impact of child abuse scandal on the reputation of the Catholic Church. However, there was little reflection on how the elevation of the individual and their bodily autonomy has resulted in a bias in moral thinking. Today the emphasis is on individual needs (moral foundations 1-3), not on universal sacred principles (foundations 4-6). That is why the appeal to a woman’s right to choose what to do with her body suffocates any discussion about what the moral status of the embryonic human is. Interestingly, as a liberal pro-choice supporter, Haidt would be critical of how this moral bias is also a blindspot that means that contemporary liberal and younger people are impoverished in the resources for engaging in moral discussion and decision (Part 3 of the book considers how “moral binds and blinds”).
Whereas Christian apologists have been talking about the importance of mental worldviews for a long time, it is only more recently we have begun to realise the significance of moral visions. If we are going to persuade people about the truth, goodness and beauty of the Bible on morally contentious matters, then we need to start using our culture’s moral language and concepts as a way in. For example, here are Dr Glynn Harrison’s reflections on the significance of Haidt’s work for discussions about sexual ethics:
“Christians often cave into the sexual revolution because they haven’t understood its moral nature and particularly its reliance on individualistic moral reasoning. They try to rebut its compassion and fairness (moral foundations 1-3) with argument from authority and tradition (foundations 4-6). But in today’s culture, people who possess no language of fairness, or compassion, or equality lose every time. So Christians need to find a language that connects their general convictions to their culture’s individualistic concerns”.

In today’s culture, people who possess no language of fairness, or compassion, or equality lose every time

Glynn also suggests a way forward that takes us back to the example of Jesus: “Jesus integrated justice and compassion for the individual with uncompromising obedience to God’s Word and His moral law”. If we can see Jesus possessed the full moral spectrum as the perfect God-Man – this will then help us find the words and stories to better connect with our culture, showing that Jesus remains surprisingly good news.
#1 Care / Harm
As Jesus declared in word the good news of the coming of the kingdom of God in Himself, He also demonstrated in deed that His rule was good news for those who were poor, suffering, vulnerable and marginalised. Jesus showed compassion as He ministered to the crowds of needy people, taking the time to counsel and heal individuals – He was undoing the effects of the curse and giving previews of what life in the new creation would be like for those who trusted in Him.
#2 Fairness / Cheating
As you listen to Jesus’ teaching, He had lots to say about the justice of God being brought to bear on this world, making wrongs right and holding the guilty to account. It’s often been noted that the person who most frequently spoke about the reality of eternal judgement in hell was the most loving person who ever lived: Jesus. While there are many people who would cheat justice in this world, Jesus makes clear that they will receive their just desserts in the world to come. Also Jesus promised rewards for those who were faithful in His service. I half-wonder if the reason we have two parables about rewards for service (one with equal outcomes and the other with proportionate outcomes) is God’s way of appealing to both the left and right?!
#3 Liberty / Oppression
As you watch Jesus in action, you cannot miss his many encounters with people who were spiritually oppressed by demonic forces, who enslaved and ruined their lives. Jesus demonstrated His divine power and credentials by delivering these captives from their evil oppressors. However, Jesus was not just interested in spiritual oppression, but also social evils. There’s the interesting story about the widow who puts her last coins into the temple treasury who is commended for giving more (all that she had) than the rich people. But many commentators point out that Jesus goes on in context to condemn that temple and its custodians for their systematic corruption and exploitation of people, like this poor woman. There is also the interesting encounter between Jesus and Zacchaeus the tax collector, who is himself a traitor and oppressor of his own people. That encounter resulted not only in personal transformation of Zacchaeus but also social restitution and reconciliation as he reimburses all those he stole from.
#4 Loyalty / Betrayal
As Jesus embarks on his journey towards the Cross, He begins to speak more about the cost of discipleship. It entails taking up the Cross and following Jesus, dying to ourselves and our own agendas, so that we might instead live for Him alone. The night before His death, Jesus also graphically taught His disciples about the importance of putting the good of others in the believing community ahead of themselves. As the disciples jockeyed for power and position, Jesus took the posture of a servant and washed their dirty feet – even the feet of the man whom He knew would betray Him only hours later.
#5 Authority / Subversion
As Jesus began His Sermon on the Mount, He explained that what He was saying was not in competition or conflict with the Old Testament Scriptures, but rather His ministry was the fulfillment of all that had been promised. He was not a radical innovator or revolutionary seeking to rewrite things; instead He was fully committed to the Word of God. When Jesus clashed with the traditional Pharisees, this was because they elevated their manmade wisdom over the divine Word of God, and to make matters worse were hypocritical: demanding more from others in terms of obedience than they expected of themselves. Jesus also modelled His own submission to the will and authority of His Father, most notably in the Garden of Gethsemane. The heart of what has gone wrong in this world – sin – is the rebellion of God’s creatures against His authority. Humans have sought to be rulers of their own autonomous kingdoms of self, all the while rejecting God’s authority and His good word. Thus, Jesus insists that repentance is necessary: taking God’s side against sin and submitting to His authority.
#6 Sanctity / Degradation
Asked about divorce and remarriage, Jesus took his questioners back to the story of the first marriage to explain that it is not a man-made idea but a God-given institution between a man and woman. He would go on to explain that sex was a sacred gift (not just another bodily appetite) to be enjoyed within the covenant of marriage – as a picture of the committed love that God has for His people and a preview of the great wedding of heaven and earth, Jesus and His church at the end of history. Being unmarried and celibate all His earthly life, Jesus has shown us that respecting the sacredness of sex does not entail living an unfulfilled and frustrated life.
In summary, how can the secular psychologist Jonathan Haidt help us? For our apologetics ministry, his image of the elephant and its rider reminds us the significance of leading with compassion and concern for people, before seeking to share the arguments and reasons for our hope in the gospel – so they have open hearts and open minds. This what Peter was saying all those centuries ago in the Bible: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15). Also Haidt’s concept of the six moral taste receptors suggests that to persuade both the elephant and its rider to listen, we need to start with the language and concepts it already finds morally compelling: care, equality, freedom. This is not merely a mercenary tactic, rather we see in Jesus the perfect image of the God of compassion, justice, freedom, faithfulness, sovereignty and holiness. As we are being changed more into His likeness, we will develop a fuller moral palate – not just empowering us to live as good people, but good neighbours and good ambassadors for our Father in heaven.

David J. Nixon

david.nixonis Pastor for Youth and Students at Carrubbers Christian Centre, on The Royal Mile in Edinburgh’s historic Old Town.

“A.S.K.” by David Robertson

by Solas

Welcome to A.S.K – Ask. Seek. Knock. ‘Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.’ (Matthew 7:7–8). We all have questions about Jesus, the Bible, the Christian faith and our culture today. The great news is that Jesus gives answers. These questions were gathered from teenagers in fifteen countries in five different continents. All of them are real questions from real teenagers. 52 short chapters. Each contains a question, a Bible passage, a Bible verse, a discussion, something to consider, recommended further reading and a prayer. These answers may lead to more questions which is fine – but the main aim of this book is that you the reader comes to see and know better the One who is the Answer, Jesus Christ.

Available at 10ofThose.com

Author David Robertson was a co-founder of Solas and its Director for six years. He was minister at St Peter’s Free Church in Dundee  from 1992 until 2019, when he relocated to Australia. His other books include The Dawkins Letters, and Magnificent Obsession.

My faith, by Justin Brierley

by Editor

I grew up in a Christian family. Both my parents became Christians when they were at Oxford University together. However, I wouldn’t say that I really owned that faith myself until I was about fifteen years old. We went to church every Sunday, and I had friends in the youth group, but I went because my parents did. The turning-point for me came at a church youth camp. As a teenager, l wasn’t sure about Christianity, I didn’t have the conviction that others seemed to have. However, on that youth camp, faith really came alive for me! Looking back, I would call that an encounter with the Holy Spirit, and it was something that was quite life-changing.
I was only fifteen, but what I experienced was God’s presence in an incredibly new and almost tangible way. It sort of woke me up, like a light being switched on inside. I realised that this is true! Then things inside me started to change too. I started going to church, not just because my family and friends went, but because I wanted to be there. I wanted to worship God, I wanted to read my Bible, pray and be baptized. This passion began burning inside me. So really, that experience was a turning point. God in his grace reached me then, and while my faith has obviously developed and changed since then, I still look back to that moment as a fifteen year old as a key moment when suddenly things came alive. It was almost like the world turned technicolour!
Of course, every Christian has a different story. My wife’s path to faith is very different. While she grew up in a Christian environment she just says she knew God was always there. For her there was a natural progression in her faith and she doesn’t point to a single moment of conversion. For me there was a moment, where something happened.
I took that faith with me through my 6th form years and to Oxford University where I studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics and got very involved in drama and arts. We did Christian mime and drama both on campus and out on the streets too. Looking back on it, using street theatre and drama in evangelism was a bit ‘out-there’ and daring. What was driving it was my desire to express the gospel in ways that were creative, intelligent and engaging. It all turned out to be remarkably good preparation for what I would later end up doing in radio.
I got married shortly after university, then while my wife trained for church ministry, I started to work at Premier Christian Radio and we’ve been together on this journey together for the last 18 years. I have been blessed to have this ministry that’s developed through my Unbelievable? radio show. The radio work has really developed over time. I began on the breakfast show, just with the thought of resourcing Christians with Bible teaching music and interviews, and that was great. I really learnt the art of radio broadcasting during those early years.
A few years after I had started, I went to the managing director said I’d really love to start a show of my own with which to create a space for discussion between Christians and non-Christians. The idea was to model for the Christian audience how to have good conversations and to defend the faith. We wanted to help Christians to talk about Jesus and about the Bible in ways that people understand. It started as a bit of an experiment and we decided to call it Unbelievable? That’s how the show was born back in late 2005. The first show simply featured me sitting down with an Anglican Priest and his atheist neighbour talking about faith. All those shows had a Christian guest alongside someone of another faith (or no faith). We had Muslims, Hindus, New Agers, agnostics and atheists.
The heart of the show is Christian/non-Christian dialogue and it became surprisingly popular, first as a live show, then as a pre-recorded segment, and now as a podcast too. Actually the podcast has grown to become a large segment of our audience. The radio audience is essentially Christian, but the podcast listeners are really diverse. Lots of atheists and agnostics listen and join in the discussion and have told me they appreciate the way that we give both sides of an argument a fair hearing.
Now we have over 3.5 million downloads of the show each year and we have branched out into video as well, putting debates and discussions on YouTube.
By 2017 I had been in weekly dialogue with Atheists for over a decade and put a book together which detailed some of what I had learnt. It’s called Unbelievable? Why, after ten years of talking with atheists, I’m still a Christian. In the course of all that thinking, reading and debating, some of the things that I believe as a Christian have shifted and changed. Critically though, while I’ve heard every objection to God going, my faith is actually stronger. I’ve seen that there are actually good answers. Even though there are still plenty of mysteries and things I don’t claim to know (and probably never will) there is actually a really solid intellectual core to Christian belief that is surprisingly strong, when you look into the evidence. Also, interestingly when you look at the other worldviews out there, whether it be other religions such as Islam, or indeed atheism, you begin to see some pretty big deficiencies. So my book basically says, “Come with me on this journey, I’ve heard the objections, and here is why I think Christianity still makes extraordinarily compelling intellectual sense.”
There is of course a danger in an over-emphasis on apologetics. It can be dangerous to reduce faith to just ideas and academic arguments. The problem is that these arguments can be prioritised ahead of the experience of knowing God. So I would stress both inviting people to understand with their heads and experiencing with the heart! My hope is that people will really hear the intellectual case for Christianity by listening to the show or reading the book. However, I don’t want that to replace having a living relationship with Jesus Christ.
I know some people who have come to faith through the show, and others who tell me that they have listened but still aren’t convinced. My role is really to give Christian faith a good hearing, the rest I leave to God. I’m actually really grateful to God for allowing me to use Unbelievable? as a way of engaging with so many people.
So that’s my testimony, that’s where I stand now, having had over 10 years of conversations with all kinds of sceptics and opponents. I’m not claiming to know it all but I have discovered that there’s a really strong foundation to this faith. It is it worth putting your trust in Jesus – He is worth trusting!
The heart of the Christian faith is about trusting and following Christ. This message has changed me, it’s changed so many people I know and it has changed the world, so I can I can recommend nothing greater than to trust and follow Jesus.

IMG_0768 (2)
Justin Brierley

Justin Brierley presents Premier Christian Radio’s flagship apologetics and theology debate programme Unbelievable? every Saturday at 2.30pm. The show brings Christians and non-Christians together for dialogue. 
For the Unbelievable? podcast.
For the Unbelievable? book
Adapted from an interview with Social Church
UTC_Web-header-651x291_article_imageJustin will be hosting the Unbelievable? conference on July 20th, in London’s Methodist Central Hall. Entitled, “Speaking Truth in a Post Truth World”, it promises to help Christians to share their faith in a world of fake news and cultural confusion. More information and tickets are available here

What Difference Would Jesus Make to Me?

by Solas

“Even if the claims of Jesus were true, why should I care?” In this episode of Short Answers, Andy Bannister sits down with special guest Jonny Somerville from the NUA film series to find out why we should care whether or not Christianity is true. NUA is a brilliant series of short films checking out the big questions of life, faith, and Jesus — check it out at https://nuafilmseries.org

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Book: More>Truth: Searching for Truth in an Uncertain World by Kristi Mair

by Editor

More>Truth is Kristi Mair’s great addition to the IVP ‘More’ series, which aims to help readers connect the Bible’s wisdom to some of the biggest issues we face in our fast-paced, postmodern world. In just 126 pages, she shows us the dilemma at the heart of our culture – that we are at the same time suspicious of claims to absolute truth and desperate to know truth, to know we’re not being lied to. After helping us see how we got to this cultural moment, Mair holds up Jesus Christ as the Truth and explores the implications of this for our understanding of what truth is like and how we can live and speak in truth.  There are many reasons that More Truth is worth reading, but here are some of my favourites.

It understands our world

Welcome to the world of post-truth. You can identify its impact in the weariness printed across our foreheads. We are tired. Tired of hearing everybody’s truth just to be misled. Tired of wondering what truth is and whether it’s even possible to know something truly. But something in us just can’t give up…Something deep within us calls for truth. (p2) One of the real strengths of the book is Mair’s analysis of how truth is regarded in our culture today and why. Her sketches of the effects of ‘post-truth’ in our divided world all feel very current and familiar, from her depiction of the cynicism and distrust that so often accompanies truth claims to the way she describes the fear around how truth relates to power. She manages to capture not only the facts but the feelings of our culture’s struggle with truth. As a reader you feel she really knows the issues, and that she is speaking with relevance to some of the most potent questions about truth at this moment: Can we really know truth with any certainty? If there is such thing as truth, where do we find it? Is truth safe, or does it just divide?
Alongside this concern to understand and articulate how our wrestling with truth feels in our culture today, Mair is also unafraid of being counter-cultural. This book calls Christians not to abandon the idea of real, objective truth – especially the truth claims about Jesus that are unpopular in our current climate – but rather to stand by truth confidently. This call feels compelling because Mair helps us understand so clearly the struggles and contradictions at the heart of our culture’s relationship with truth.

It aims to grow disciples

We fight lies by standing in the truth. Standing firm. And we stand firm by actively calling to mind and physically walking in the truth of the gospel; in our listening and our doing. (p101) More Truth doesn’t stop short at convincing us that truth is a real thing that can be known. In her relentless focus on Jesus as Truth himself, Mair encourages us to grow as followers of Jesus. She wants us to live as those who know, love, live and speak truth because Truth lives in us and gave himself for us. This was probably my favourite thing about the book and I found myself repeatedly challenged about how knowing Truth himself should hit the road in my life in a variety of ways. Jesus’s words to Pilate are startling: ‘those who belong to truth listen to my voice’ (John 18:37). Jesus says what we belong to, we listen to: those who belong to Truth listen to Truth himself. The thing is, we are always listening to something and it isn’t always Jesus (p72)
Mair wants us to grasp that being people of ‘truth’ isn’t simply about head knowledge of certain facts. Our hearts and wills are meant to be caught up in the truth too – by listening to Jesus’s voice of truth and discerning lies around us; by being quick to confess and repent, turning consistently back to Truth; by speaking truth to others, and by sharing the joy that comes from knowing Truth himself.
A book written on the topic of truth for today’s world could so easily have stopped at providing some strong arguments for the existence and reasonableness of absolute truth claims. But Mair goes further than this, devoting the second half of the book (about six chapters) to exploring the implications of truth being personal and relational rather than merely propositional. She wants us to be disciples of Truth himself so that we can point the way to him in a world that both resists and longs for truth. This emphasis makes More Truth a really refreshing, practical and Christ-centred take on the topic.

It has an evangelistic heart

Although often directed towards Christian readers, Mair reveals an evangelist’s heart in her call for followers of Truth himself to live and speak in a way that commends him. Chapter 11 on engaging the apathetic, sceptical and truth-seekers offers a compassionate example of how to receive our friends’ struggles with truth, as well as practical ways we can unmask wrong thinking about truth claims and point to the answers found in Jesus.
Again, there is no speech–life divide here: we are called to both speak up for truth with rational argument, and at the same time to stand by our words by living truth-filled lives that witness to what we’re saying. And that note of confidence that marks the whole book is here too – because whatever culture says now about truth, Jesus remains the same and we are to be his witnesses:
The beauty of the Great Commission is that Truth finishes these words saying that he will be with us to the very end of the age. To the end of our post-truth age or whatever age we ‘progress’ into next, Truth comes with us…Truth does not leave us alone. Truth comes with us. Truth lives in us. Truth speaks for himself through his Word. We have the liberating privilege of being those who point to Truth. (p123)

It puts Jesus at the centre

There’s so much here in this short, conversational book: a whistle-stop tour of the Bible storyline and the history of philosophical thought about truth; reflections on our ‘post-truth’ world; explorations of how we know what we know – the list goes on. But in the end, More Truth is foundationally about Jesus Christ. You could give it to Christian friends of all ages and stages, as well as to a friend who is seeking after truth but doesn’t yet know Truth himself.
More Truth wants us all to place our confidence and hope in Jesus, because in him we find God’s real, living and satisfying Truth – and that is its greatest recommendation. As Mair concludes, ‘Truth is real, Truth has flesh, Truth walked among us. And Truth’s name is Jesus Christ.’

You can purchase More>Truth from our book partner – 10ofThose.com

Kristi Mair

OPiTBMod2.jpgis Research Fellow at Oak Hill College, and is pursuing a PhD in aspects of epistemology at The University of Birmingham. This review by Liz Willis of UCCF was first published at Be:Thinking.org.

Fairies at the Bottom of the Garden

by Editor

Is believing Jesus rose from the dead like believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden? Well, that depends.
Religious people generally bristle at the charge that their cherished beliefs belong in the same category as fairies, or dragons, or flying spaghetti monsters. They’re quick to distinguish a faith they experience as rational from mere fables.
But in a recent interview for the weekly podcast I’m part of, I was taken aback when a respected literary scholar, Alison Milbank from the University of Nottingham, said this:
“I can’t tell you that fairies don’t exist. I don’t really know! I would be very careful to say that there are no fairies, and certainly when I was a child, I had experiences of fairies. And there are no fairies in the Bible – but that doesn’t mean there are no fairies.”

Wait … what?

Milbank went on to explain, in her mild, unabashed, extremely English way, that “even if” there are no fairies, they represent something: a mediation between ourselves and nature, a moral order; something just on the edge of our consciousness; an enchantment we’re always losing – fairies are always leaving, always flitting away. It’s an enticing idea. It tells us something about ourselves, and about the world.
In our secular age, we tend to think of disbelief in the supernatural as default. Yet surveys regularly show that the decline of belief in “something more” doesn’t track neatly with the decline of religious affiliation in Western countries. Even in Western Europe, that bastion of secularism, 65 percent of people say they believe in God or a higher power, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center survey – including 75 percent of non-practicing Christians, and 29 percent of the religiously unaffiliated.
Most Western Europeans also believe in the soul – even among those who reject the existence of a higher power, 22 percent of Brits, 43 percent of the Dutch, and nearly a third of French people still think there’s more to them than just their physical body. Very few of us are entirely consistent in our beliefs. Surveys regularly run across rich seams of contradiction. A fifth of non-religious people in the UK believe in life after death. 6 percent of American atheists and agnostics say they pray daily (and 11 percent weekly or monthly). 9 percent of non-religious British people believe that Jesus rose from the dead, and 6 percent of non-religious Australians. And a fluctuating proportion of churchgoers say they don’t.
And this is without getting into how many people believe in witches, or horoscopes, or that aliens have visited Earth; or the proliferation even in places like avowedly secular France of private exorcists, mediums, shamans, and “energiticians”. The stats mirror back to us a mosaic of belief and doubt far more intriguing than the black-and-white battlelines of materialism and religion.

There are a few options for responding to this metaphysical jumble.

One is to lump it all together in order to dismiss the lot, as the writer Kurt Andersen does in his Atlantic article on “post-truth” thinking in the age of Trump. He excoriates his fellow Americans for their “promiscuous devotion to the untrue”, and proclaims himself one of an embattled minority he loftily calls “the solidly reality-based”:

“Only a third of us, for instance, don’t believe that the tale of creation in Genesis is the word of God. Only a third strongly disbelieve in telepathy and ghosts. … More than half say they’re absolutely certain heaven exists, and just as many are sure of the existence of a personal God … 15 percent believe that the ‘media or the government adds secret mind-controlling technology to television broadcast signals,’ and another 15 percent think that’s possible.”

Equating religious dogma with conspiracy theories with any old supernatural belief may be satisfying – but it does mean being forced to conclude that most of your fellow citizens, and most humans who’ve ever lived, have been loonies. (Some may not consider that a downside.)
Second option: we can focus on where to draw the line between supernatural beliefs that are “reasonable” and those that aren’t – where warranted faith ends and the lunatic fringe begins. I would argue that we have a moral obligation to do this for our own beliefs; but in approaching other people’s, it may be less constructive.
Finally, we can opt to bend our attention back on itself – on the phenomenon of faith in the first place. It’s striking that humans are so prone to what Milbank calls a “natural desire for the supernatural”. We can be thrilled by the wonders of the cosmos and the little joys of our daily lives, yet still we yearn for something more. We can suppress it in ourselves and belittle it in others, but it tends to take its revenge, one way or another.

I believe that Jesus rose from the dead for what I sincerely believe to be historical, evidence-based reasons. But not only for those reasons.

I believe that Jesus rose from the dead for what I sincerely believe to be historical, evidence-based reasons. But not only for those reasons. C. S Lewis, looking back on his conversion from atheism to Christianity, wrote that he once considered the Christian story simply a version of the old myth of the “corn king”, a god who dies and rises again as a symbol of the agricultural cycle. And yet:
“Early in 1926 the hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew sat in my room on the other side of the fire and remarked that the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. ‘Rum thing,’ he went on. ‘All that stuff of Frazer’s about the Dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it had really happened once.’ … If he, the cynic of cynics, the toughest of the toughs, were not – as I would still have put it – ‘safe,’ where could I turn? Was there then no escape?”
Lewis came to believe that something could be both myth and fact, at the same time. And he was as shocked as anyone to find in orthodox Christianity the satisfaction of his “natural desire for the supernatural”.
I still don’t believe in fairies. But I’m retiring my cynicism, and accepting that the near-universal longing for something “beyond” might itself have something to tell us about reality.

Natasha Moore

Natasha-Moore-150x150-circleis a Research Fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity. She has a PhD in English Literature from the University of Cambridge and is the author of Victorian Poetry and Modern Life: The Unpoetical Age, as well as editor of 10 Tips for Atheists and other conversations in faith and culture. This article first appeared on publicchristianity.org 

If God Appeared to Me, I’d Believe in Him

by Solas

“If God appeared and did a personal miracle just for me, I’d believe in Him!” Solas Director Andy Bannister tells the story of an unusual conversation with an atheist friend—and how it led to the question “Does God just want us to believe in Him? Or is He looking for something more?” Check it out in this fascinating episode of Short Answers.

This video is used as part of the SU Scotland “Connect Groups Q&A” curriculum.

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Short Answers is a viewer-supported video series: if you enjoy them, please help us continue to make them by donating to Solas. Visit our Donate page and choose “Digital Media Fund” under the Campaign/Appeal button.

Spring Harvest 2019.

by Editor

The Christian festival, holiday and conference, Spring Harvest celebrated it’s 40th anniversary earlier this year. Andy Bannister was on the speaking team at Minehead, and in this video-blog reports on a week of ministry and encouragement.
Solas, partnerships, evangelism training, humanity, Islam, the resurrection of Jesus are just some of the things Andy talks about in this lively three minute report!

To find out more about how your church could work with Solas in evangelism and evangelism training, contact us here.

The Only Failure Is Unfaithfulness

by Editor

Ask the question, ‘who wants to fail?’ and you have a fairly sure thing that no hands will be going up in the room. Nobody aims for failure. This is just as true for Christians. Nobody who wants to share the gospel with their friends, family, colleagues and neighbours is planning to fail. Everybody, at the end of the day, wants to be successful.  In truth, there is nothing wrong with that. Only an idiot or a scammer would purposefully go into something to fail on purpose. So, let me say this clearly: it is right to want to succeed in our Christian witness.
Where we tend to go wrong is in our measure of what success ought to look like. Despite the fact that almost every Christian recognises this is a terrible measure, we so quickly fall back onto numbers. At church we ask, “How many people came to the event” as if that is some measure of anything. Sometimes we try to be a bit more spiritual and ask, ‘how many people have said that my life has made them consider Jesus?” but these are really all ways or saying much the same thing.
Others prefer to judge it by ministry output. If you can increase the ministry opportunities and the range of ministries you do, you have ‘made it’. Some consider punishing schedules that they take largely upon themselves as a sign of success. If you work and work, preparing to burn yourself out for Jesus, then you are a success.
The problem with all these measures is that they are all unbiblical. In fact, by all of these measures, the ministries of Jesus and the apostles after him were unsuccessful. They also unhelpfully labour under the presumption that these things are somehow within our hands. But the people who are saved, the people you are able to influence for Christ, and potential ministries you are able to do all ultimately rest in the Lord’s hands. None of these are really measures of your success and are more things that the Lord was pleased to do with you.

The measure of our success is nothing less than faithfulness.

The measure of our success is nothing less than faithfulness. Whether your church grows in number or not, whether you lead more or less people to Christ this year than last year: the only question that matters is this: were you faithful? Did you faithfully obey the Lord in the ministry he has given to you?
Jeremiah’s 40 years of ‘no response’ must be judged a success on this measure. Isaiah’s ministry of nobody listening is a similar success. They faithfully did what they were called to do. Our call is, likewise, one of faithfulness to Christ. Our ministry will be a great success if we do the things that Christ has called us to do.
And what has he called us to do? Live godly lives, make the most of every opportunity to speak for Jesus, to always be ready with an answer for the hope we have in Christ, to speak to anyone with gentleness and respect, and to be ambassadors for Jesus in this world. The number of people who respond, and the ministry opportunities that present themselves are above our pay grade. You cannot save a single soul, you cannot grow a single person, you cannot create and single ministry opportunity. These things are all the within the hands of the Lord. Your task is to remain faithful to that which he has called you to do.
You should definitely want to be a ministry success. But ministry failure is not when people don’t want to hear your testimony, or reject you or the gospel. The only failure unfaithfulness to Christ. The success for which we are aiming is faithfulness. The big concern with that is as we look at scripture and see the unfaithfulness riddled through the history of God’s people. But knowing that we have the Holy Spirit who gives us the words to speak and, all the more, remembering that we have a sovereign God who will ensure that what he wants to achieve will be achieved, including our faithfulness. So even in our one task of remaining faithful, we rest on the Lord who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

Stephen K. Kneale

iimg_93402566-768x5171s married to Rachel and has two children, Clement and Aurélie. He is the pastor at Oldham Bethel Church, an FIEC church in the Greater Manchester area of the UK which is also affiliated to the North West Partnership. He holds qualifications in History & Politics (BA, University of Liverpool), Religious Studies & Philosophy (PGCE, Edge Hill University) and Theology (MA, Kings Evangelical Divinity School). He blogs at Building Jerusalem, where an earlier version of this article appeared.