I once read an article in the Independant Newspaper by a very intelligent man who had become very cynical and opposed to Christianity. The position he took was that there was no truth or logic in the Christian viewpoint. I have reprinted my reply in this blog post. Hopefully it will make you think and bring you to the point where you take the claims of the Bible seriously.
'My imagination was engaged as I started to read your piece on "The
Bible Society’s debt to Arthur C Clarke?" You had obviously carried out some
good research about the society and highlighted some key statistics which would
be very interesting to a number of people. I was then quite amazed that you
chose to so violently misrepresent the teaching of the very book that the
society has spent so long translating and making available to the world. For
example you chose to ignore that the Bible and Christianity has developed more
education programs, opened more hospitals and changed more societies for the
good than the current world atheistic belief system has ever done. People who have
been successful, in theory, in establishing atheistic states have generally
produced societies which have been just as corrupt as capitalist ones. Incidentally they have ultimately been unsuccessful because of the corrupt heart of humanity. All of this however only
looks at the outcomes of the opposing world views without actually discussing
the validity or plausibility of their views.
The documents on which the Bible is based
Consider for a moment the genuineness of the biblical documents;
you call them ‘stories, myths, legends etc. I would have imagined that a man of
your intelligence would accept the validity and historicity of the Bible. Even
Professor Dawkins accepts the validity of the record and recommends that every child
should read it (“Richard Dawkins, the
atheist author of The
God Delusion, believes that children
should grow up reading the Bible”. The Times May 10th 2007)
despite the fact that he does not like what it says. The biblical record has
been consistently proven to be accurate in terms of history and archaeology and
even in the realm of science despite the fact that the modern scientific world
view is split between evolutionary belief and the biblical record of Creation (see The Genesis Enigma: Why The Bible Is Scientifically
Accurate by Dr Andrew Parker, published by Doubleday).
In
terms of the New Testament record especially regarding the life and death of
Jesus of Nazareth and the claims to his resurrection there is clear evidence
and logic that it speaks the truth even if many do not wish to follow through
with the logical conclusion that ‘if this actually happened what does it mean for
me?’ Many clever people have attempted to discredit and disprove the historical
accuracy of the account of the resurrection of Jesus Christ but have been
persuaded by the evidence that he must have risen from the dead. A couple of examples come to mind; see the
end of the letter for details. How an individual responds to that
information is up to them but I believe that the evidence is there to be found.
As far as the conclusions you come to regarding the Old Testament I
do understand your concerns and the issues you have with what seems to be the
severity of the God of the Bible. I am not sure if you have read the whole biblical
record and sought to understand the complete picture before coming to a
conclusion. A careful analysis of the Bible will show that among many things
God is both holy (just, righteous, morally pure) and loving. One characteristic
does not cancel out the other; in fact his goodness and love of what is right
demands that he deals justly with acts of sin and wrongdoing. Where people
assume that God is acting out of order a careful analysis of the facts will
persuade them that he was acting to maintain what is right. If a judge in our
times was confronted with evil behaviour, child abuse, rape and a whole range
of anti-social behaviour that was illegal and detrimental to the good of
society we would not question his ‘goodness’ when he passed sentence and
enforced a punishment that met the severity of the crimes. But when facing the
examples of God’s judgment on nations that practiced the very same activities we
question his goodness because he acts justly and righteously to deal with
behaviour which breaks his laws and damages society. I am not sure if we are consistent in our approach to these issues.
Ultimately God has revealed Himself in the Bible and is warning us
that we are all in danger of his coming justice and judgment as a result of our
moral defection and sin. He had made provision for us to flee
from his coming judgement through the sacrifice of His own dear Son, Jesus. His
offer to clear the legal case against us and to offer us pardon, forgiveness
and salvation is still on the table. That doesn’t sound like a vengeful,
demanding, capricious, homophobic, merciless and tyrannical God to me.
The result of this post will hopefully be that people can see that there is an alternative argument to the one you put forward and can decide for themselves where the truth lies
Note referred to: examples of legal minds who set out to disprove
the resurrection and where convinced that it must be true – this is a limited
list, there are many more examples.
Dr. Greenleaf,
Royal Professor of Law at Harvard University, was one of the greatest legal
minds that ever lived. He wrote the famous legal volume entitled, A Treatise on the Law of Evidence,
considered by many the greatest legal volume ever written. Dr. Simon Greenleaf
believed the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was a hoax. And he determined, once
and for all, to expose the "myth" of the Resurrection. After
thoroughly examining the evidence for the resurrection — Dr. Greenleaf came to
the exact opposite conclusion! He wrote a book entitled, An Examination of the Testimony of the Four
Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice.
In which he emphatically stated: 'it was IMPOSSIBLE that the
apostles could have persisted in affirming the truths they had narrated, had
not JESUS CHRIST ACTUALLY RISEN FROM THE DEAD, . . .'
(Simon Greenleaf, An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice, p.29).
Greenleaf concluded that according to the jurisdiction of legal evidence the resurrection of Jesus Christ was the best supported event in all of history!
And not only that, Dr. Greenleaf was so
convinced by the overwhelming evidence, he committed his life to Jesus Christ!
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