Why the Truth of Christianity Matters.
Parents, do you know how to keep your kids from becoming Atheists when they go off to college? Start training them early on about all the reasons to believe Christianity is true.
Proverbs 22:6 tells us we are to “Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.”
Training is different from teaching, as J. Warner Wallace wrote in his book Forensic Faith. He used the illustration of preparing for a boxing match. If you are only interested in learning about boxing, you can read a book on the subject. However, once a boxing match has been placed on the calendar, the boxer immediately starts getting into physical and mental condition to win the match.
Think of your child’s first year of college as boxing match. She is going to be in an environment that is openly hostile to the Christian faith. She needs to go through a long process of learning all the reasons to believe that Christianity is true. She also needs to practice the art of responding effectively to things that Atheists often say.
The popular culture is dominated by people who hold the Materialist world view. Entertainment, education, and government all teach that faith is hostile to science and should not be allowed in the public square. They define faith as “blind faith,” or “faith in spite of the evidence.”
Many of the people she will encounter will parrot things they hear popular Atheists such as Prof. Richard Dawkins say. Dawkins (among others) claims that faith is hostile to science. By respectfully asking (1) what do you mean by that? And (2) how did you come to that conclusion? It is possible to get them to realize that Atheism doesn’t have a very solid foundation. See the book Tactics by Greg Koukl for more on using what he calls The Columbo Tactic.
How Can We Know Christianity is True?
Frank Turek is co-author of the book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist. He says you only have to answer four questions in the affirmative to know that Christianity is True:
- Does Truth Exist?
Post-modernists say there is no truth, while making the claim that post-modernism is true.
If someone says there is no such thing as truth, ask them: “Is that a true statement?”
If there is no truth, then anything written by an Atheist can’t be true.
You can’t get away from truth. It is objective and absolute.
- Does God Exist?
There is a lot of evidence God exists, including scientific, historical, and logical evidence.
The scientific evidence known as the Big Bang shows that time, space, and matter all had a beginning. There was nothing, and then the entire space-time continuum leapt into existence out of nothing. (In the words of Aristotle, “Nothing is what rocks dream about.”)
Even Atheists admit that time, space, and matter had a beginning. Logic and reason tell you that anything which comes into existence must have a cause (or a creator). Nothing can cause itself to come into being. Therefore, whatever caused time, space and matter to exist must be timeless, space-less, and immaterial. It must also be personal, in order to make the choice to create something. It must also be incredibly intelligent and incredibly powerful to be able to create everything out of nothing.
- Are Miracles Possible?
The greatest miracle of all is in the first verse of the Bible – in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. If this is true, anything else that is not logically impossible is at least possible. Walking on water is easy for God – He created the water! God created life from non-life. He can raise someone from the dead.
- Is the New Testament True?
Here is a summary of the reasons we can trust that the New Testament writers were telling the truth. The testimony was:
Eyewitness (the writers were either apostles of Jesus or people who spoke to the apostles and to others who knew Jesus);
Early (written while many other witnesses were available to refute any lies or errors);
Embarrassing (containing unflattering details the authors would not have invented);
Excruciating (some writers were tortured and killed for refusing to recant what they knew to be true about Jesus), and
Expected (the Old Testament contained many prophesies about the Messiah – see Isaiah Chapter 53).
If you are ready to sink your teeth into the evidence for the truth of Christianity, read the book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist.
“Reasons for the Faith, aka Apologetics” 