Gas Salespeople?
Not long after we moved into our new house, we were accosted twice by door-to-door natural gas salespeople who tried to sign us up for fixed pricing on natural gas on our house. On both occasions, they claimed that the previous occupant of the house had been their client, and that if we did not sign on our gas would be cut off. We didn't appreciate their tone, but decided to follow it up. Turns out that the previous occupant of our house was not a client with either savings company, nor were we in any danger of having the gas shut off. In other words, we had salepeople out-and-out lie to us in order for us to sign on the dotted line. Needless to say, their credibility went out the window, along with any potential future business with us.
I remembered this today, just after having a good conversation with Ande, a young man in my congregation who will be heading for University in Halifax come fall. He always has great questions, and good conversations almost always ensue. He's back from working at a camp this week, and stayed after the service to talk a bit and ask his usual thought-provoking questions. He was telling me a story about how a camp supervisor was throwing out statistics as a way of proving the case for faith.
And I shake my head.
I think apologetics is important, I really do... but when they're based on stuff that can actually be quantified, and subsequently disproven, I think we get on dangerous ground. Ironically, by using science to "prove" God, or frankly, vice-versa, our vision has become so narrow that we end up missing the whole point. Apparently, one claim the camp leader made was that he cited 20,000 historical manuscripts that are non-contradictory, that prove Jesus to be true.
[sigh]
I suppose if one took 20,000 copies of the New International Version of the Bible and put them in a warehouse, then perhaps this claim could have some truth to it. However, last time I checked my scholarly resources, there are nowhere near that many manuscripts available, and indeed, many of them are contradictory. Especially the material that can be classified as "Christian Gnosticism. " As such, this guy's argument falls apart like a house of cards, and as people start seeing Christians as being no better than those people that come around to our doors trying to sign us onto the latest savings on our gas! It's all hot air... and there goes our credibility.
Making false claims on truth I think is a very dangerous exercise. I don't care how eager we are to share the good news about Jesus, we cannot sacrifice our integrity when we do so. To put it in more evangelical language, we cannot lie about God's Truth (and I don't mean that it's impossible to lie about it). Otherwise, we abuse what God entrusts to us, and credibility goes bye bye!
I preached today on David and Bathsheba, which, oddly enough talks about the danger of assuming that we know God so well that we assume that we can do no wrong... Which is precisely the moment when we are capable of doing the most harm.
I remembered this today, just after having a good conversation with Ande, a young man in my congregation who will be heading for University in Halifax come fall. He always has great questions, and good conversations almost always ensue. He's back from working at a camp this week, and stayed after the service to talk a bit and ask his usual thought-provoking questions. He was telling me a story about how a camp supervisor was throwing out statistics as a way of proving the case for faith.
And I shake my head.
I think apologetics is important, I really do... but when they're based on stuff that can actually be quantified, and subsequently disproven, I think we get on dangerous ground. Ironically, by using science to "prove" God, or frankly, vice-versa, our vision has become so narrow that we end up missing the whole point. Apparently, one claim the camp leader made was that he cited 20,000 historical manuscripts that are non-contradictory, that prove Jesus to be true.
[sigh]
I suppose if one took 20,000 copies of the New International Version of the Bible and put them in a warehouse, then perhaps this claim could have some truth to it. However, last time I checked my scholarly resources, there are nowhere near that many manuscripts available, and indeed, many of them are contradictory. Especially the material that can be classified as "Christian Gnosticism. " As such, this guy's argument falls apart like a house of cards, and as people start seeing Christians as being no better than those people that come around to our doors trying to sign us onto the latest savings on our gas! It's all hot air... and there goes our credibility.
Making false claims on truth I think is a very dangerous exercise. I don't care how eager we are to share the good news about Jesus, we cannot sacrifice our integrity when we do so. To put it in more evangelical language, we cannot lie about God's Truth (and I don't mean that it's impossible to lie about it). Otherwise, we abuse what God entrusts to us, and credibility goes bye bye!
I preached today on David and Bathsheba, which, oddly enough talks about the danger of assuming that we know God so well that we assume that we can do no wrong... Which is precisely the moment when we are capable of doing the most harm.
posted by John Crowdis at 12:44 p.m.
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