Tag Archives: jesuschrist

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Daily Broadside | Maybe Jesus Didn’t Really Die on the Cross and Come Back to Life

It’s Good Friday and I always take a break from the political nonsense going on in our country to deliberately reflect on what is ultimately important in this life — a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. (See 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023.)

Because I don’t write on the weekends, I never specifically write about Easter Sunday and the resurrection of Jesus, which are inextricably bound up with the events of Good Friday. I want to do that today by examining some of the explanations posited by unbelievers who object to the idea of a physical resurrection from the dead.

To claim that Jesus was put to death and was really, indisputably dead — no heartbeat, no pulse, no brainwaves, no breath, fixed pupils, cold to the touch, completely unresponsive to any stimulation — and that he remained that way for some 40 hours and then came back to life, is extraordinary. It defies our reason, logic and experience.

When my father died, I was there. He was really, indisputably dead. If I had been told that he was up and walking around a few days later, it would be inexplicable and frightening and “unbelievable.” In our world, there is no “coming back” from the dead. Death is final. Dead is dead.

Yet we have four documents that describe an individual named Jesus who died and came back to life some 2,000 years ago. Could it be? Is it true?

Those who don’t believe say that what the Bible claims is impossible, and there must be another explanation. It was a hoax that the disciples pulled off by stealing and hiding the body; His appearance after death was a hallucination; Jesus didn’t die on the cross but was revived later; the entire story is a myth.

To say the disciples stole the body and just claimed Jesus was alive doesn’t stand scrutiny because they all went to their deaths proclaiming that Jesus was alive. One might die for something he believes to be true, but twelve will not die for something they know to be false.

Same with the theory that the appearances of Jesus were hallucinations driven by a fanatical wish for it to be true. But the Bible says that Jesus appeared to groups of people, including a crowd of more than 500. Individuals may hallucinate, but groups of people don’t all hallucinate the same thing at the same time.

As far as the whole story being a myth, the textual evidence doesn’t support the theory. A myth requires time to develop, so the closer a writing is to actual events the less time there is for the truth to be contaminated by mythology.

For example, in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 Paul refers to a creed, a creed being a formal statement of belief.

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve.

Paul wrote 1 Corinthians in the mid-50s. In this passage, he’s referring to an even earlier statement about Jesus’ life, death, burial and resurrection. Paul likely “received” this creed directly from Peter and James, both of whom were eyewitnesses and with whom he had met following his conversion. The features of Paul’s language dates the creed to the 30s, probably within a couple of years of Jesus’ death, which precludes any legendary developments.

So Jesus’ resurrection isn’t a myth, it wasn’t the product of mass hallucinations, and the disciples didn’t steal the body. What about the theory that Jesus simply passed out but recovered after he was removed from the cross?

It’s known as the “swoon theory” and it collapses under close scrutiny. Rather than summarize it for you, I’ll let the writers at CARM do it:

The Swoon theory falls apart quickly when you consider that Jesus had undergone six trials, was beaten, then scourged with 39 lashes that left His back raw, exposed, and bloody.  He had a crown of thorns forced upon His head, ripping His scalp.  He had been crucified with nails in the hands and feet; he hung there for six hours bleeding and dehydrating; his spear-pierced side emitted blood and water.  He was left in a tomb for three days and was tightly wrapped up.  Was anyone in this condition able to revive, get himself out of the tight wrappings, and then walk on pierced feet?

Could he single-handedly move a large stone with hands that were unusable due to the wrist piercings which severed the median nerve and paralyzed them?  Could he then somehow get by the armed guards given the charge of watching the grave-side?  Are we to believe further that Jesus managed to walk a long distance on feet which had been pierced and then appear to the disciples as a victorious conqueror of death?  The Swoon theory makes no sense.  In fact, it would take more to believe this ridiculous conjecture than it would to believe that Jesus rose from the dead.

Exactly so.

The resurrection of Jesus is the lynchpin of the entire Christian faith. If Jesus is still dead, then the entire ediface collapses. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:17-19,

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins … If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

Fortunately, the tomb was empty and the only reasonable explanation is what the Bible declares: we have a risen Savior.

Happy Easter!

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Daily Broadside | An Immovable Faith in God Starts With Obedience

Daily Verse | 1 John 5:3
This is love for God: to obey his commands.

Friday’s Reading: 2 John and 3 John
Saturday’s Reading: Jude

It’s the Friday before Christmas and my last opportunity to wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas!

While our country is a hot mess and getting worse every day, the one thing that can’t be destroyed is a personal belief in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and in the birth of his Son, Jesus Christ. Indeed, it is often the only thing that has given people the strength to endure unimaginable persecution and deprivation under some of the worst regimes in history, starting with the Roman emperors and continuing to present day in states like China.

But such faith keeps us from disobedience and, in fact, strengthens us in our resolve to obey our Lord, as today’s Daily Verse shows us: love for God is to obey his commands. In fact, as I wrote here, to hear God is to obey God, and I end the week with the following meditation ahead of Christmas.

In speaking of what the greatest commandments are, Jesus said,

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
— Mark 12:29-31

In Deuteronomy 6:4 we find perhaps the most essential prayer in all of Judaism — the Shema (sh’-mah), a daily recitation affirming God’s singularity and kingship. The name Shema comes from the first word of the verse, which means “hear” or “listen.”

She-ma yisrael, adonai eloheinu, adonai echad.
Hear O’ Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.

To “hear” in English means to be aware of sound. In our culture, we can hear someone talking and either absorb and respond to it, or ignore what is said. Not so in Hebrew society. When they’re called “to hear,” it’s a call to act. Hearing and doing are the same thing. To hear God is to obey God.

Immediately following that declaration is what Jesus calls the first and greatest commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” If the preceding is true about God — that He is the singular, only true God, and that He is our God — the first and foremost way of expressing our devotion to Him is by loving Him with everything that we’ve got.

And, says Jesus, the next greatest commandment has the same force as the first: love your neighbor as yourself. No commandment is more important than these two.

Love God. Love others.

In Hebrew culture, love isn’t just an emotion — it’s an active attachment. It means following through on our commitment. If we “hear” (sh’-mah) this command, it means we will faithfully respond out of obedience and loyalty to the Lord. Being commanded to love is a matter of doing, not just feeling.

This is the foundation of our redemption. Above everything else, God desires that we love Him completely and totally. That is the greatest commandment. That is why Jesus came. The purpose God had in saving us was that we might love Him based on His intrinsic worth as the one and only true God. Out of that, we love others.

The baby born in the manger expressed perfect obedience to these two commandments. He always did what pleased his Father (John 8:29) and he loved others to the fullest extent possible (John 13:1). He showed us what it meant to love God through his unwavering obedience to His commands. He showed us what it meant to love others by going to the cross on behalf of a lost world.

O believer, may you hear these words this Christmas!

Have a great weekend.

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Daily Broadside | Talking Head Blasts Pro-Life Christians with Poor Reasoning From the Bible

Daily Verse | Daniel 12:2
“Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.”

Wednesday’s Reading: Hosea 1-7

Wednesday and I think of this blog as daily commentary on politics, culture and the Christian faith. I see those three fields as directly interrelated. Politics is downstream from culture, and culture is downstream from faith. The politics we’re experiencing are a result of the culture we live in, and the culture we live in is shaped by the amount of biblically-accurate faith that exists in the culture.

According to research conducted a year ago by Dr. George Barna, 176 million Americans claim to be Christian (69% of the population), but only 9% of them possess a biblical worldview. In other words, nearly three-quarters of us identify as “Christian” but only about one in ten of us actually live life according to that biblical identity.

What that means is that we end up with proclamations like the one that Joe Scarborough recently offered up during MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Scarborough lauded [Republican South Carolina state Sen. Katrina] Shealy’s speech and then accused pro-life Christians of “heresy” and suggested that Jesus doesn’t necessarily oppose abortion because the Bible doesn’t record him having said the word.

“As a Southern Baptist, I grew up reading the Bible — maybe a backslidden Baptist, but I still know the Bible. Jesus never once talked about abortion, never once! And it was happening back in ancient times, it was happening during, in his time!” Scarborough said angrily. “Never once mentioned it, and for people perverting the gospel of Jesus Christ down to one issue, it’s heresy.”

Backslidden Joe Scarborough is correct in his assertions about two things: abortion was a common practice in biblical times, and Jesus did not, in fact, address abortion in scripture. But knowing those two facts does not lead necessarily to his conclusion, which is that “there are people who are using Jesus as a shield to make 10-year-old raped girls go through a living and breathing hell here on Earth.”

I would put Scarborough among the 176 million Americans who claim to be “Christian” but don’t have a biblical worldview. His rant is not meant to be a strong biblical argument, but an emotional appeal to win support for his ideological position. The 9 percent of Christians with a biblical worldview are constantly hammered with arguments like these and need to be able to answer them with biblical reasoning and logic.

The most obvious flaw in his argument is the logical fallacy of arguing from silence. He’s saying that because Jesus never addressed abortion, it’s un-Christian to make such a singular issue out of it—”heresy,” as he labels it.

The problem with his argument is that we don’t know that Jesus never addressed abortion. Not everything Jesus said and did is recorded in scripture (John 21:25). Jesus is not recorded as addressing slavery, sex trafficking, drug use, systemic racism or transgenderism. What can we conclude about his views on those issues?

Nothing. We don’t know because scripture is silent on what Jesus thought.

Scarborough, though, is declaring what Jesus believed about abortion by what he didn’t say. But silence does not mean approval nor, to be fair, does it mean disapproval.

Essentially, the argument from silence is attempting to prove something in the absence of evidence. What would help, then, is evidence. And when it comes to children and their value to Jesus, we have plenty.

First, Jesus himself experienced the process of conception to birth, arriving incarnate as a child rather than a fully formed adult.

Second, Luke 1:41-44 records an in utero interaction with his cousin, John the Baptist, who “leaped for joy” over his proximity to Jesus while he was still in the womb. That indicates awareness, emotion and agency, which are all aspects of personhood.

Third, Jesus honored the Jewish scriptures as authoritative during his life. We can safely assume that he would affirm the declaration of David in Psalm 139:13-16.

For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.

And, finally, Jesus scolded his disciples who tried to prevent children from being brought to him (Mark 10:13-16).

People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them.

Jesus was indignant with his disciples’ treatment of the little kids. I can imagine him saying, “Whoa, whoa! What are you guys doing?” He was offended by their presumption.

Even though Joe Scarborough is correct that Jesus never mentioned abortion in scripture, he’s wrong in concluding that therefore it’s wrong for Christians to make such a big deal about it. It’s clear from the rest of the Bible that children are created by God and that Jesus found them worthy of blessing.

That’s why we fight the scourge of abortion.

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Daily Broadside | Finding the Good in “Good” Friday

Daily Verse | 2 Kings 8:19
Nevertheless, for the sake of his servant David, the Lord was not willing to destroy Judah. He had promised to maintain a lamp for David and his descendants forever.

Friday’s Reading: 2 Kings 9-12
Saturday’s Reading: 2 Kings 13-14

Friday, but not just any Friday. Good Friday.

Good Friday?

On that Friday, Jesus suffered the indignity of a show trial during which false witnesses testified against him.

Good?

Jesus was accused of blasphemy for telling the truth that he was the Son of God when charged under oath to admit if he was the Messiah.

Good?

Jesus was slapped, punched, and spit in the face by the chief priests and the Sanhedrin, who then mocked him for good measure.

Good?

Jesus was brought to the Roman governor, Pilate, to be executed—because the Jews weren’t allowed to do it themselves.

Good?

Jesus was sent to Herod, who ridiculed and mocked him, then sent him back to Pilate.

Good?

Jesus was traded for an imprisoned murderer, Barabbas, whose name ironically means “son of the father.”

Good?

Jesus was flogged, a lashing with nine leather straps laced with pieces of splintered animal bone and lead weights that ripped the flesh open across the shoulders, back, and legs to a depth of one inch, pulling ribbons of muscle out through the lacerations.

Good?

Jesus was mocked, dressed up in a scarlet robe with a coil of inch-long thorns jammed onto his head and a wooden staff in his hand. After humiliating him that way, the soldiers spit on Jesus and beat him on the head with the wooden staff.

Good?

Jesus was nailed to a wooden beam by his wrists, then hoisted up onto a vertical beam sunk in the earth. His feet were then nailed to the upright beam, and he was left there hanging. Breathing in wasn’t a problem, but to breathe out, he had to pull himself up by his nailed wrists while pushing up with his legs on his nailed feet.

Good?

Jesus was crucified between two thieves, being “numbered with the transgressors.”

Good?

Jesus was insulted by one of the thieves hanging there with him.

Good?

Jesus’ clothes were taken by the soldiers.

Good?

Jesus was sneered at by the religious leaders.

Good?

Jesus was mocked again by the soldiers.

Good?

Jesus was taunted, insulted and mocked by passersby.

Good?

Jesus wondered why he had been abandoned by God.

Good?

Jesus hung from his wrists on the cross from 9:00 in the morning until 3:00 in the afternoon.

Good?

Jesus died, condemned by his own and executed by proxy.

Good?

Jesus’ body was taken down from the cross and placed in a tomb not his own.

Good?

Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

Isaiah 53:4-6

Good?

Yes! Good.

Have a good weekend—and a very happy Easter.

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Daily Broadside | How to Stay Calm Even as the Country is Wrecked by Our Leaders

Daily Verse | Exodus 33:11
The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend.

Monday’s Reading: Exodus 35-37

Monday and one of my kids playfully asked me how she could have a good weekend after reading what I wrote on Friday. Truthfully, I’ve had the same thought at times: after laying out what we’re faced with in this country, isn’t it kind of cynical to wish someone a good weekend?

I don’t know how what I write lands on you, but I’m able to enjoy my weekend after surveying the wreckage that our ruling class is visiting on us a nation for one main reason. First and foremost, above all else, I trust that Jesus is who he said he is and that he will do what he said he will do.

I make no apology for believing that. I don’t minimize it, excuse it or dissemble about it. He is my hope, not Brandon. Or Trump, for that matter.

Jesus is the answer to every question that mankind has ever posed, including what is going on in the United States and around the world right now.

In the beginning was the Word [Jesus], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. —John 1:1-5

Nobody knows what’s going to happen in the future, either distant or immediate. Not you, not me, not anyone but God. The worst thing we can do is worry about it, since we can neither know what will happen nor control it. That’s something Jesus taught us in the gospel of Matthew.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. —Matthew 6:34

The word translated as “worry” literally means to be divided or to be distracted. In the context of Matthew 6, Jesus is saying that God knows our material needs and that we should prioritize pursuing him first, and the material needs will follow; therefore, we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be divided or distracted in where we put our attention.

That doesn’t mean we can’t be curious or concerned about what we see taking place around us in terms of civic order and a safe society. When God sets up rulers (see Romans 13:1-7) they are expected to govern according to the laws of God. When they don’t, they are being untrue to their responsibilities as “God’s servants.”

I don’t know about you, but it’s clear to me that those God has placed in authority to govern this nation are not staying in their given lanes. Are they governing according to the laws of God? By and large they are not. They are immersed in deceit, grift, and immoral lawmaking. They are steadily bringing citizens under their control and demanding that we follow their dictates, no matter how they violate human norms, constitutional rights or the moral order God provided.

And that’s because they don’t fear God and they don’t respect the rights of We the People in the United States of America.

This blog is my attempt to call attention to the ways in which our governing elite are being untrue to the established law of the land and the ultimate laws of God. You and I can call it what it is, pray intelligently about it, then leave it in his hands without allowing it to become an unhealthy preoccupation.

With that in mind, let’s have a good week.

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Daily Broadside | Not Everything is Awful

Daily Verse | Romans 12:16
Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.

Tuesday’s Reading: 1 Corinthians 1-4

Happy Tuesday my friends. We have to do something about shredded wheat, but what?

I came across this article while I was getting caught up with the latest news stories online. It describes how Indianapolis Colts head coach Frank Reich gave props to the source of his strength after a monster win over the Buffalo Bills this past Sunday: Jesus Christ.

In the video he speaks candidly about his faith and particularly about where he gets his strength.

“The reason I’m doing that here and now is because almost 30 years ago after a really big game right down the hall in a press conference I shared the lyrics to a song that meant a lot to me,” Reich said.

“It really spoke to where I get my strength from. The song is ‘In Christ Alone,’ and it’s written by Shawn Craig. … It might encourage someone who’s climbing their own mountain right now.”

Reich went on to recite the lyrics of the chorus, which read, “In Christ alone I place my trust, and I find my glory in the power of the cross. In every victory, let it be said of me that my source of strength and my source of hope is Christ alone.”

He said his personal favorite line came from the song’s second verse and says, “I seek no greater honor than just to know him more.”

That “really big game” he mentioned was the greatest comeback in NFL history, when Reich led the Bills from 32-points down to beat the Houston Oilers in overtime, 41-38.

With all the junk going on in our country and across the globe, it’s refreshing to hear a humble NFL coach give praise to the One he follows.

Instead of using the Colts’ biggest win of the season to heap praise on himself and his leadership, he turned the praise back over to the Lord.

Good for him and I always try to promote a coach or player who seems to have a humble faith. That seems to be what Reich does here, as does Kirk Cousins over at the Minnesota Vikings.

Enjoy the video and the courage of Reich to state plainly where he gets his strength and where he places his faith. And cheer for Colts as they play through their season so that Reich might have a bigger platform.

More men like that, please.

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Daily Broadside | Is “Love Your Neighbor” or “Slay the Idolaters” More Radical?

Daily Verse | Nahum 2:8
Nineveh is like a pool
    whose water is draining away.
“Stop! Stop!” they cry,
    but no one turns back.

Happy Monday, my friends! And to you, stalkers, lurkers, and prowlers. I now see that vitreous humor isn’t funny.

On Friday I wrote about three Muslims who were relocated to the United States who have either recently acted, or planned to act, violently against other people in this country. The mainstream media tends to ignore stories of Muslim violence and it would be easy to dismiss the examples I gave you as aberrations — exceptions to the norm, the ‘norm’ being that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful.

That’s factually true. Estimates of how many Muslims live in the United States vary, sometimes wildly, but credible estimates seem to be in the range of Pew Research’s 3.85 million (1.1% of the US population) in 2020 to Gordon Conwell’s 4.4 million Muslims (1.4% of the US population) in 2015 and “projected to more than double to 10 million by 2050 (2.6% of the US population).”

Obviously, the vast majority of Muslims are peaceable people.

However, there are a couple of things we need to keep in mind. The first is that apologists seeking to defend Islam from the reputation that the radical jihadists create will often cite instances where even Christians have acted violently (for instance, the medieval Crusades or an individual claiming to be a Christian says they were told by God to murder someone). By doing so, the apologist tries to position Islam as morally equivalent to Christianity, no more or less violent than another world religion. “All religions have their radicals,” they argue, “and Islam is no different.”

The problem with this argument is that while both Christians and Muslims may have their “radicals,” what motivates them is completely different. When a Christian murders another person, they are acting contrary to the central tenets of their faith. “Do not murder,” one of the Ten Commandments, comes to mind. Jesus telling his disciples, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35).

Then there’s Paul’s declaration in Romans 13:9.

The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

On the other hand, when a Muslim murders another person, they are acting consistently with the central tenets of their faith. Take, for instance, Sura 9:5, commonly referred to as the “Verse of the Sword”:

9:5. When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. If they repent and take to prayer and render the alms levy, allow them to go their way. God is forgiving and merciful.

Osama bin Laden began his “Letter to America” with verses that gave him and other jihadists permission to fight unbelievers.

“Permission to fight (against disbelievers) is given to those (believers) who are fought against, because they have been wronged and surely, Allah is Able to give them (believers) victory” [Quran 22:39]

“Those who believe, fight in the Cause of Allah, and those who disbelieve, fight in the cause of Taghut (anything worshipped other than Allah e.g. Satan). So fight you against the friends of Satan; ever feeble is indeed the plot of Satan.”[Quran 4:76]

See the difference? When a “radical” jihadist commits a killing in the name of Allah, it is not someone who has taken a verse out of context and somehow perverted the Koran. They have in fact followed precisely the commands of their holy scriptures.

If Christians were to follow precisely the commands of their Holy Scriptures, we’d see a radical shift in our culture.

The second thing to keep in mind is that while the majority of Muslims are peaceful — either being ignorant of or flatly ignoring these deadly verses — the peaceful majority are irrelevant. It’s the radicals, the extremists who drive the agenda. Brigitte Gabriel founded ACT for America, the largest national security grassroots organization in the U.S. and often speaks on politics, culture, and national security. Here, she participates in a panel discussion on what happened in Benghazi, but addresses a question from a Muslim law student and explains why the peaceful majority doesn’t matter.

So while the majority of Muslims are peaceful, it’s not them who we are immediately concerned about. We’re more concerned about the Muslims here in the U.S. who are willing to act on their Koranic beliefs, like the Muslim passenger who tried to crash the cockpit of a JetBlue flight last Wednesday or the Muslim in LA who tried to run down a crowd of Jews — again, last Wednesday.

If, as Brigitte Gabriel suggests, 15-25% of the Muslim population is radicalized — meaning that they take seriously the passages from the Koran telling them to fight the unbelievers — then in the U.S., that’s between 577,500 and 962,500 radical jihadists on our soil.

To give you a sense of scale, the size of the United States’ combined military is 1.358 million. Compare that to the higher number of “radical” Muslims, nearly one million people. That doesn’t mean that there are that many radicalized Muslims among us, only that statistically, there could be.

If that’s even close to accurate, however, that means that we will continue to hear stories like those linked above, and that the number of those stories will grow.

But don’t worry. Diversity is our strength and I’m sure it will all work out.

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Daily Broadside | You’re Not the Result of Time + Chance

Daily Verse | Ezekiel 37:26
I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant.

It’s Thursday and I want you to know that guy over there in the shades wants you to play pickleball with him.

Let’s take a break from the political world and the ongoing disaster that is the Biden administration, and look at the question of how we got here, with “we” meaning human beings. I don’t assume that all of you who read this blog believe in God or, conversely, that you all believe in the theory of evolution.

Frankly, I don’t know what you believe.

I suppose that for a lot of people, the question of where “life” came from, and specifically human life, might not even find its way to the forefront in their thinking. We just “are” and we muddle along as best we can. But lots of people wonder about it; even NASA is wondering if “life” once existed on Mars and, if so, how it got there.

I don’t dabble much in apologetics on this blog, which has a much tighter focus on politics, but it does have a relationship to what I write about. I believe that almost everything we see happening in our culture today is the result of an abandonment of the centrality of God — and, specifically, of Jesus Christ — by our society.

I say that this blog is an examination of the intersection of faith, culture and politics. If you read my brief “About” page, you’ll see that I believe that culture is a reflection of faith, and politics is a reflection of culture.

I follow Jesus Christ and come at life as an evangelical Christian. It’s from that perspective that I comment on national politics and American culture. If politics is downstream from culture (as Andrew Breitbart believed), then culture is downstream from faith. In fact, said Richard John Neuhaus, “Culture is the root of politics, and religion is the root of culture.”

So if culture reflects the faith (or lack thereof) in a society, then it’s important to understand the reasons for why a society either embraces or rejects faith. And that’s the connection to apologetics, which is not about saying, “sorry,” but about defending the Christian faith with reason, facts and logic.

Are there solid reasons to believe in the God of the Bible?

Biblically-grounded Christians believe that God created the whole universe ex nihilo, out of nothing, including human beings, as Genesis 1:27 testifies:

So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

If true, that means there is a personal, powerful and creative Being who designed men and women and the environment they inhabit. Also, if true, it seems like we should expect to see evidence of design in the creation.

On the other hand, the secular alternative to the Creation narrative is that life spontaneously arose out of nothing. Life is the result of pure chance over billions of years with no Designer involved or even necessary.

One of the factors to consider as we try to determine whether the biblical account is truthful or whether the evolutionists are correct is the complexity of what we see around us. Is it rational or logical to think that the incredible intricacies and complexity we find in our world is the result of random mutations and impersonal chance over time? Or is it more rational to see that there must have been an intelligence behind the creation?

Mark Tapscott over at HillFaith.org posted an interesting link to an article in Quanta Magazine that discusses the complexity of just a single neuron. Three researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem trained an artificial neural network to imitate a biological neuron. They were shocked at their findings.

[The researchers] trained an artificial deep neural network to mimic the computations of a simulated biological neuron. They showed that a deep neural network requires between five and eight layers of interconnected “neurons” to represent the complexity of one single biological neuron.

Even the authors did not anticipate such complexity. “I thought it would be simpler and smaller,” said Beniaguev. He expected that three or four layers would be enough to capture the computations performed within the cell.

Like Tapscott, I’m no scientist and don’t pretend to be one. But I can read, and what this tells me is that the sheer complexity of a single neuron far surpasses what even some of our smartest scientists assumed about them.

Tapscott goes on to suggest that “one tentative conclusion suggested by the Quanta Magazine piece and the study it describes might be expressed with something like this: Greater complexity reduces the probability of a chance explanation for the existence of a single biological cell and increases the necessity for intelligent design as the explanation.“

Intelligent Design theory posits that there must be an intelligence behind all that we see, but does not specifically name the Christian God as that intelligence (although it’s inferred). The Intelligent Design movement is led by luminaries such as Michael J. Behe (Darwin’s Black Box) and William A. Dembski (The Design Revolution).

Tapscott goes on to quote retired mathematics lecturer Julie Hannah:

In general, there is a problem with the popular belief that infinity renders anything possible. For example, monkeys typing for an infinite length of time are supposed to eventually type out any given text, but if there are 50 keys, the probability of producing just one given five-letter word is

Julie Hannah equation

This is a tremendously low probability, and it decreases exponentially when letters are added. A computer program that simulated random typing once produced nineteen consecutive letters and characters that appear in a line of a Shakespearean play, but this result took 42,162,500,000 billion years to achieve!

In other words, the probability that such complexity as we see in our universe is the result of chance + time is essentially zero “in any operational sense.”

This is not just true about a single biological neuron, but about the universe as a whole. “The physicist Lee Smolin has calculated that the odds of life-compatible numbers coming up by chance is 1 in 10229.” That number is nearly incomprehensible (1 followed by 229 zeroes):

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Even in the face of odds like that, some people refuse to concede that it’s possible there’s a Designer. So they persist in their claims that they just haven’t discovered the incontrovertible evidence that is necessary to “prove” that the universe was formed by chance.

Back to my earlier questions: Is it rational or logical to think that the incredible intricacies and complexity we find in our world is the result of random mutations and impersonal chance over time? Or is it more rational to see that there must have been an intelligence behind the creation?

When we abandon reason and logic (one chance in 10229 means, for all intents and purposes, impossible) in favor of ideological presumptions (there is no god), we become untethered from fact and veer into conjecture. From there we begin to draw assumptions about the meaning of life that align with our worldview. If our existence is the result of random mutations and chance, then there is no god and no reason to adhere to biblical principles or consider them superior to any other set of life principles.

While over-simplified, that’s how we got to where we are today as a society and a culture. It’s the wholesale rejection of Jesus Christ at the center of our lives.

What do you think? Agree or disagree?