How Can You Be So Sure?

By Michael Griego on September 30, 2016 • ( 0 )

Is your faith built on faulty assumptions? Do you have blind faith? How can Christianity be true? Is it the only way? How can you be so sure? Got a 2 minute answer? ♦

Good questions. Certainly ones that can easily trip one up. Many Christians are hard pressed to answer these very legitimate questions beyond common platitudes such as “the Bible says so” or “I was raised in the church” or “You just have to have faith.”

Those answers don’t play very well these days in a skeptical culture. Or even in many friendly but secularized environments where answers need to be tight and logical if they’re to be acknowledged, even respected.

So while skeptics are good at asking tough questions, many Christians are not very good in answering them in ways that are intriguing and invite further investigation.

Do you have a solid “go to” strategy to answer these questions? Think practically. Do you have sound and worthy 2 Minute Answers?

2 Minute Answers
Many questions about faith and religion fall into 3 categories:

The existence of God
The deity of Jesus Christ
The reliability and authority of the Bible

All Christians should be able to address these topics in concise and compelling ways. Let’s address each one.

1. The Existence of God – Christianity need not be based on blind faith but rather on fact. It is not irrational to believe in a God one cannot “see” – it’s irrational for skeptics to suppose that what cannot be seen does not exist. Black holes, electrons, laws of logic, and the force of gravity are all unseen but recognized as existing.

But “God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20)

Put another way, the order and the complexity of the universe testify to the existence of an uncaused First Cause.

Science says the universe had a beginning. It cannot have eternally existed – the law of entropy predicts that an eternal universe would have died of heat loss an “eternity ago.” Simple logic dictates that it did not spring out of nothing as nothing comes from nothing. The universe was made therefore by an unmade Cause greater than itself. As an infinite, eternal being, God can logically be demonstrated to be the uncaused First Cause.¹

2. The Deity of Jesus Christ – Christianity rises or falls on the deity of Jesus. Here are just 3 of many Bible texts that demonstrate Jesus is God.

John 1:1, 14: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son.“
Colossians 1:16, 17, 19: “…all things were created by [Jesus], “He is “before all things”, and “God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him.”
Hebrews 1: “About the Son he [the Father] says, ‘Your throne, O God, will last forever and ever'”

Additionally, Jesus provided many convincing proofs that He indeed was divine. He was God in human flesh and manifested the credential of sinlessness – Jesus “had no sin (2 Corinthians 5:21, 1 John 3:5, 1 Peter 2:22, John 8:46). Jesus demonstrated supernatural authority over sickness, the forces of nature, demonic spirits, and even death itself (Matthew 4:23, Mark 4:39, Luke 4:35, John 4: 50). And all 4 Gospels record how Jesus, unlike any other religious figure in human history, demonstrated ultimate power over death through the immutable fact of His resurrection.²

Finally, the proof of Christ’s deity is seen every day in the lives and testimonies of millions of people throughout human history who attest to the powerfully strange and transforming impact of a personal relationship with this God-Man Jesus who intersected and changed the world.

3. The Reliability and Authority of the Bible – Is the Bible divine or is it of human origin? First of all, the Bible has stronger manuscript support than any other work of classical history – including Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Caesar, and Tacitus. Almost 6,000 New Testament Greek manuscripts have now been uncovered, all written between 20-50 years after Christ. Compared to 5 copies of Poetics by Aristotle, 1,757 copies of Iliad by Homer, and only 210 copies of the entire works of Plato – all copies dated at least 1,000 years after their original writing.

On this point, Sir Frederic Kenyon, former director of the British Museum, commented concerning the Gospels:

“The interval between the dates of the original composition and the earliest extant evidence is so small as to be negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed.”

Additionally, while archaeological diggings cannot support the proposed historic underpinnings of Mormonism, the people, places, and details found in the Bible have been tested time and time again and show their true roots in history and evidence. New historical evidences prove texts in the Old and New Testaments regarding King David, Pontius Pilate, Caiaphas the high priest, the pool of Bathesda, and the city of Nineveh in the Assyrian empire, among many others.

Finally, liberal scholars attack the Bible by claiming the New Testament was determined by the winners of a supposed struggle between factions. Not true. The canon (books of the NT) was recorded very early (within decades of Christ) and thus was not subject to legendary contamination. The false Gnostic gospels (Thomas, Judas) are dated long after the close of the first century. Furthermore, the authority of the New Testament is confirmed by the eyewitness credentials of its authors.

Outside evidence confirms the canon “as is” and knows nothing of competing canons. Secular historians: Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Roman governor Pliny the Younger confirm the many events, people, places and customs chronicled in the New Testament.³

Certainly what we have today in the sacred Bible was not determined by men but by what its authors claim: the guiding hand and Word of God.

¹ The Creation Answer Book, by Hank Hanegraaff, (Thomas Nelson, 2012), 2-3.
² The Complete Bible Answer Book, by Hank Hanegraaff, (Thomas Nelson, 2016), 244-250.
³ Adapted from Has God Spoken, by Hank Hanegraaff, (Thomas Nelson, 2011).

Can you give a 2 minute answer to tough questions about your faith?
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But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. 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