Why don't we make sense to atheists?

I just have a (sort-of) quick line of thought for this post. Its not really thought through but I just wanted to get some ideas that have been bouncing in my head up on the screen.

Getting to my point.

As I noted in my last post I recently read through the book of Joshua. The bulk of the book recounts Israel taking over the promised land. This process includes lots of death and destruction and the like. It got me thinking about how different the God of the old testament can appear from the new.

Today I ended up reading through a bunch atheist blogs after stumbling into one. One of the top points that many of them argued was about how contradictory or hypocritical OT God is from NT God.

I'm not wanting to get in a big discussion about that beyond saying how important it is to understand that side of God as christian instead of ignoring it. In my view of God, how he acts in the OT is more confirmatory than contradictory to the message of the bible and why we need Jesus. What I am wanting to focus on is what viewpoints allow me to draw those conclusions.

So why don't we make sense to atheists?

Many atheists are very intelligent people with lots of valid questions and lines of reason. Often they are not afraid to ask questions that I think many Christians end up ignoring. When these questions do come up for Christians they look for someone else's reasons to parrot, don't truly answer the question or understand all of it, and don't strengthen there own faith from having to stretch themselves. Christians who do this end up sounding stupid or just get angry and start telling people they are going to hell.

But what about the Christians with actual well-reasoned arguments that they didn't copy and paste from an apologetics 101 website? Why aren't they making sense and getting through to these people? Sure we could attribute some things to hardened hearts but I want to go beyond that. What are some basic assumptions or views that make what is well reasoned in our minds illogical for an atheist? I'll tell you what I think they think to some degree.

1. The view of God -- God is like you or me only with lots of cool powers.
   
2. The burden of sin -- God is unfair because an all powerful being would be powerless to create a fair situation for us to not to be sinful.
3. Unfairness in this life -- God is unfair when he lets bad things happen to people, especially when they end up dying needlessly and I don't believe in life after death.
   
4. Miracles -- God's supernatural miracles have to be explained naturally for me to believe them.

I know this list came out pretty biased and oversimplified but I think there are some truths in it. The main one being that if you don't believe in the same end as I do then my reasoning will be flawed in your view. So how do I then make you convinced of the same end as me with a heaven and hell and a God that can truly be fair to us?

Anyways that is whats been bouncing around in my head. Please comment if you've seen anything that needs pointing out.

Mind maps and Joshua

Still working on the mind map for spiritual gifts. I'm trying to compress lots of information and organize it nicely. Hopefully I'll have it done by the end of the week. Although it might get put aside with my girlfriend coming back up from a Mexico missions trip.

In other news I most recently read through all of Joshua. Its a really good book to see God's provision when we trust and obey. It also brings up a lot of really good questions about God's nature and the authority he exhibits with the life he has created.

Going off on a vector, this book also makes one ponder the fairness of God and life. Actually this comes up a lot in the bible and in everyday life. People question fairness all the time. We can ask questions like "Was it fair to be a baby of a people God commanded to completely kill off?" I think its a topic you definitely have to view in the proper context or you'll get all twisted up about. This especially includes understanding the bigger picture God has for us. I think I might try and write a viewpoint about it when I get through with my mind map. We'll just have to wait and see.

Televangelists

Am I the only one creeped out by televangelists? (And why isn't creeped a word yet?) I'm not saying there shouldn't be tv ministries or that they are bad, but usually if I ever happen to come across one of their shows while flipping channels I find myself cringing.

What is it exactly that bothers me? Well the first thing that really jumps out at me would be how incredibly ridiculous looking these people are. (Notice I did NOT say ridiculously GOOD looking.) It makes me want to play the game: "TV Evangelist or Cartoon Villain???"

Is this a picture on the left of Bishop T.D. Jakes or the Kingpin from Marvel comics? You see the resemblance right? Okay he's not really that strange beyond the aforementioned resemblance but lets try again.

Our next contestant is televangelist Jan Crouch. Do the words "scary beyond all reason" pop into your head? Yep you guessed it, It's Yzma from The Emperor's New Groove in the flesh.

Okay so far my I haven't really made any objective arguments yet and have just been poking fun at these people. What really bothers me?

Recently in the news, 6 of the biggest televangelists have been put under investigation due to their financial practices. Take Jan Crouch again for example. She is known for trying to get people to donate money for starving children but lives in a million dollar mansion, makes 6 digits, and wears lots of gaudy jewelry. None of those are necessarily sins but it makes you question where your donations are going.

Fiscal responsibility aside, Benny Hinn is so far the biggest reason televangelists turn me off. Benny is probably best known for doing healing services. I believe in miraculous healing but the manor in which he performs these acts is unbiblical and also have been subject to scrutiny. Stories of those with certain disabilites (i.e. people in wheelchairs) have been know to be barred from coming to the stage.

Another BIG thing that he has done is curse anyone who opposes him. Raise an eybrow? Check it out. I guess I'm cursed now, bummer.

By the way, imagine he's using his pinky in the picture. Could he be Dr. Evil with hair?

Mapping the mind

So I have two small updates about the blog.

First, I downloaded my current theme and am trying to see if I can customize it. Mainly I'm playing with different color schemes and also trying to photoshop a personalized header for the title. Some of this includes learning basic xml. So far most my web designing has been limited to html.

Second, I found a free program called FreeMind. FreeMind is a free program(go figure) that allows for the easy creation of mind maps. The idea is that you have a central bubble that is your topic that you then draw branches from and subdivide in to smaller groups and those groups into smaller groups. It comes with a host of features to tag, link, and identify all these components. The idea is to use it to think through different ideas, theologies, policies, biblical passages, etc.

I started work on one i'm doing about spiritual gifts and hope to have it up soon.

Spiritual Gifts

I've been doing study on spiritual gifts for a while now. I ran across this commentary today by David Guzik who I think does a good job of analyzing 1 Corr. 12. I often find myself in between Pentecostals and Baptists on the topic. I like how the author make this clarification when describing Calvary chapel churches who are also often in the middle of the same topic:

"balance is meaningless unless it is a Biblical balance; we don’t want to strike a balance between heresy and truth."

As I decide on what I'm going to believe I want to make sure I don't compromise including ideas and suppositions I've developed with no conclusive backing to them.

Read it for yourself here.

Hermeneutics --A Basis for Understanding

Hermeneutics is the study of the interpretation of religious texts. If we want to have an accurate understanding of the Bible we need to know how to study it.

Before I get into that however I need to first put down the an important assumption that I believe in as the foundation for my personal study. I believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God (II Timothy 3:16-17; II Peter 1:21), without error in the original writings (Psalm 19:7; Luke 16:17), the complete revelation of His will for the salvation of men (John 20:30-31), and the Divine and final authority for all Christian faith and life (I1 Timothy 3:16-17; Matthew 5:18). Please note however this does not necessarily apply to translations.

If you don't believe the bible is without error then you can still use proper study techniques when analyzing its passages. I believe that doing so is an honest way of truly weighing the integrity of the book. Being able to then trust in the Bible is an important part of believing in the gospel. When we do believe we can start to see the Bible in new light and we can begin to apply it to our lives.

Case and point: If we can trust the bible then it makes our efforts of translation that much easier. (Well, maybe not a whole lot easier but it can lead us to find very different conclusions).

So what do we need to do when we interpret the bible? People write volumes about hermeneutics. While there are many schools on the subject I'm just going to list some of what I think are the most important factors to remember when reading scripture.

• Eisegesis -- Eisegesis is a fancy word for reading into a passage what you want it to say. This is the opposite of exegesis which means to draw meaning from the text rather than attributing meaning to it. In other words its a no-no.
• Preconceptions--This point mostly builds off the previous point. Have decided what we want to believe already or are we willing to find truth and understanding in the bible whether or not it conforms with what we already think?
  
• Audience--Who is being addressed in the passage? Historical peoples or figures? Jews, Christians, Gentiles? Everyone? This can also drastically change what we find appropriate for the application to our lives. Understanding covenants and dispensation are important for interpretation.
  
• Etymology/Diction--Its important to remember that we are reading translations unless you happen to be pretty good with Greek and Hebrew. Using a Strong's can seriously change our view on a passage when we start to understand some of the distinctions between languages. Also its important to ask "how did they choose to say what they said?" (How did God choose to say what he said).
• Cultural Differences--Politics, social economics, religion, etc... The impact and meaning of scripture can often be understood better when you understand the audience it was directed at.
• History--Knowing who's who and what's what can add valuable insight into what is going on. (This also provides some good verification for the authenticity of the Bible.)
• Context--Pretty much all of these points are about reading in context. However for this bullet I'm talking about the surrounding passage. Is how you are interpreting fit with whats around it?
• Support--Its been said that a single verse does not make a theology. The Bible often hits on a subject in more than one place. If the bible is without error then it will not have contradiction when interpreted correctly.

After making this list I remembered I needed to list another principle for reading the Bible to go along with my first. This is that I believe the Bible is non-progressive. This means that biblical commands do NOT change or have different meanings as our culture changes. However it is important to also keep in mind the intended audience of the commands.

In summation its important to have good interpretation to be able to have good application of God's word to our life. (Not that I haven't seen good application come from bad interpretation nor bad application from good interpretation). We can more easily live a life pleasing to God if we can clearly understand what he has given to us in his word. Most Importantly we need to remember that its the author who gives all knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. Many times we just need to ask for it to be given.

First Entry

If you didn't catch the side blurb I'm a mechanical engineering student attending classes at Oregon State University. I grew up in Klamath Falls, OR a small town 15 minutes north of California. I accepted Christ durring a VBS when I was little and have gone through lots of stages of growth and changes up to now. I'm a part of multiple christian organizations on campus and am continuing to try in grow in knowledge and wisdom of the Bible.

So I figured I'd start putting some of my bible studies in blog format. I don't know if I'll get a good readership but I think its a great way to voice what I'm thinking and hopefully get some feedback by other people on their thoughts too.

Right now I think I want to stick to examining the bible book by book but I might go topical every now and then. However for my first entry (after this one) I'll cover for my own benefit important stuff for interpreting the bible and the assumptions I will be making when reading (like the bible is perfectly inspired by God).

Over the last few months I've slammed through a bunch of book in the NT and I think I'm ready to start going back over them in more detail than a single read-through. I might be starting in Ephesians as my summer group for Campus Crusade is reading through it over the summer.