A One-Legged Stool
Frank Turek relayed a story recently that simply broke my heart. A man had contacted him and told Frank the story of his daughter. She had been a top Christian student in her high school (and I believe it was a Christian private school). She had helped lead the youth group in her church. She won several scholarships from Christian organizations before she went off to college, to UNC Chapel Hill if I recall correctly. And her professed goal upon leaving was to win the campus for Christ. Then one day she contacted her father to tell him she no longer believes in God.
Seventy-five percent of teenagers who are raised in church jettison their faith in the first year - three out of four! I have no idea if there are statistics beyond that, but I'd like to see them if there are. I wonder how the one-in-four is doing by the end of his or her second year, third year, and beyond.
So this young lady, with a lofty goal and pretty impressive credentials, must have held out for a substantial amount of time, right? How long do you think she lasted? She was just six weeks in when she decided it had all been a lie, just a month-and-a-half away from home. I'm not even sure she'd gotten to her first Parent's Weekend. How had she managed to build such a fragile faith that it would crumble at the first sign of challenge?
Dr. Turek asked her father if he'd ever gotten her any apologet-ics training, and he said he'd meant to but never got around to it. It turns out it could have possibly made all the difference in the world in this case. You see, it was actually her Ivy League-credentialed New Testament professor, who is an atheist, that convinced her the New Testament is unreliable. He told her it is full of myth and legend, that we really don't even know who wrote it or when. So here is an authority figure who specialized in New Testament telling her it's as much a work of fiction as the Harry Potter series. Why wouldn't she believe him?
I can't remember which popular apologist said that we're good about telling people what to believe but not good about telling them why it's true. Combine that with the fact that as Christians, we are often single-issue believers and are frequently guilty of circular reasoning. Why do you believe in the Bible? Because I have faith. Why do you have faith? Because I believe in the Bible. So let's suppose your faith is built on no more than this. How difficult do you think it is to kick a one-legged stool out from under someone?
Admittedly, I know nothing of this girl's faith. And I can't be sure that apologetics would have made any difference in her specific case. She may have simply decided that the party atmosphere offered at a majority of U.S. colleges was just too attractive to pass up. But I do know she would have been well-armed to make a defense of the faith if she had a genuine desire to.
For example, had she just learned a good defense of the Resurrection, it would have paid off enormously here. Why do I say that? Most folks do not realize that New Testament scholars are comprised of a wide variety of individuals; they are not all, maybe not even mostly, Christians. Believe it or not, many New Testament scholars are from other faiths, such as Jews or Muslims, or from no faith at all, like skeptics or atheists. In fact, they become New Testament Scholars in order to refute Christianity. The reason this is important is because there are many facts about the Resurrection with which approximately 95% of New Testament scholars agree. Now do you see why I spelled out the varied backgrounds of these academics? It is important to understand there is agreement among a vast majority of these scholars, many of whom do not believe in the Christian God or even God at all. Many of even the most liberal scholars grant dozens of facts about circumstances or events surrounding the resurrection; practically no one concedes fewer than twenty. But, in what he calls the “minimal facts approach,” Dr. Gary Habermas uses anywhere from just four to seven of the best-attested facts, facts conceded by a vast majority of New Testament scholars, to argue for the Resurrection. In this case, this particular young woman would have known that some New Testament scholars become so for disingenuous reasons.
Furthermore, I find myself imagining "what if." What if she had known that the icons of evolution are at best misleading and at worst outright fabrications? What if she knew Stanley Miller's experiment was refuted within a decade of its taking place? Or that paleontologists agree archaeopteryx wasn’t an ancestor of any modern birds but is a member of a totally extinct group of birds? What if she knew archaeoraptor was a fake - that someone had glued a dinosaur tail to a primitive bird? Or that Ernst Haekel completely forged his work? Or that Java man never actually existed, that a 342-page scientific report from a fact-finding expedition of nineteen evolutionists, his own peers at the time of his "findings," demolished Dubois’ claims?
What if she had been taught about the Kalam Cosmological Argument, that everything that begins to exist has a cause, that the universe began to exist, and therefore, the universe has a cause? What if she had learned about the logical conclusions that flow from this philosophical argument?
What if she knew there are more than thirty separate physical or cosmological constants that require precise calibration in order to produce a life-sustaining universe? What if she was familiar with the term "Anthropic Principle" that arose as a result?
What if she knew that Earth is anything but ordinary, our sun is far from average, and even our position in the galaxy is fortuitous - that new findings are suggesting that Earth is, in fact, special, and we have every right to believe we are alone?
What if she had learned about irreducible complexity in biological organisms and that even Darwin said evidence of such would cause his theory to collapse? What if she knew of Dr. Michael Behe's work supporting irreducible complexity?
What if she had learned about the extraordinary amount of information in each of our cells? What if she had known that "human DNA contains more organized information than the Encyclopedia Britannica? If the full text of the encyclopedia were to arrive in computer code from outer space, most people would regard this as proof of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. But when seen in nature, it is explained as the workings of random forces."[1]
What if she'd been taught the logical conclusion of philosophical naturalism, that on this type of materialistic worldview there can exist no absolute foundation for right and wrong, no such thing as evil, no ultimate meaning for life, and no free will?
What if she had learned that the Christian worldview stands up to rigorous inspection, and that it is the only worldview that can sufficiently answer the problems of pain, suffering, free will, reality, right, wrong and evil?
As believers we are to always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in us (1 Pet. 3:15) and destroy speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God (2 Cor. 10:5). To do this Christians need a broad base of knowledge that prepares them to answer challenges from multiple quarters - science, history, philosophy, and so on. No one must become an expert in all of these, but he should at least be able to speak intelligently about a variety of subjects. But if you remain beholden to a singular line of defense, please at least become well-versed in its support. If this young woman had known how the cannon came about, how scholarship supports the veracity and historicity of the gospels, and how to buttress her faith in Scripture with extra-biblical support, her stool, even with one leg, could easily have remained solidly underneath her.
[1] George Sim Johnson, The Wall Street Journal