John Lennox at the "Why I am a Christian" Youth Event in Perth, Australia

welcome to John Lennox where I am a Christian hosted in Perth Western Australia in August 2014 this event is brought to you by Riverview Church City Bible forum and credo which is under the Christian conventions of Western Australia we hope you enjoy well ladies and gentlemen it's an immense honor to be with you all three of you and it's lovely to see such a crowd now I spent a lot of time in Russia and in Russia people lecture while they're sitting sitting so I'm about to sit and you will pardon me because I'm rather elderly about twice the maximum age of anybody in this room and therefore it is a much more pleasant thing for me and I hope for you that I sit in this way before you I've been asked to address the question why I am a Christian and I'm very delighted that Dan preceded me because ladies gentlemen here you have an example of a young man who up until recently found his world closing in on him and suddenly just over a period of time something happens to him that begins to expand both his mind and his heart and changes his life fundamentally so that his songs are filled now with meaning and you know if I were to summarize in just a few words why I am a Christian it's because Christ gives me the biggest story to put my life into of any story that there is on offer in other words he souls for me the problem of meaning and significance and that's the question we ask all the time Who am I what is my significant and in the sea of humanity we often feel so terribly small and we feel so unsuccessful in life we look around at those who are more talented more beautiful more able more skilled and we see the defects in ourselves when we look back over a record of messing it up and we wondered is there any ultimate significance and many atheists will help us and tell us that there is no ultimate significance all you are as a human being is an eczema on the face of the universe with no more significance as one philosopher putted them slime mold and ladies and gentlemen the battle in your mind tonight as well is the battle over the question Who am I I love the ancient Greeks you know I hope you do they were brilliant and they started examining the universe and they started asking questions what's this made off and they got very good at that and so in our universities we have all kinds of faculties exploring what things are made of material science and so on what's the universe made of what are you made of and we know a great deal about what we've made often we can get it repaired generally speaking up to a certain level but the Greeks ask deeper questions and one of those deeper questions was what is this made for that's a harder question and it's a question I'd like you to face tonight you may never have asked it before it's this what am i made for if anything you know so much about what you're made of but what were you made for let me illustrate this suppose I were to get one of these 4x4 vehicles that I see clogging up the streets of Perth and getting in my way and I take it home and you're a very good salesman and you decide to follow me up so after three months you turn up at my home and to your utter amazement the 4x4 is sitting in the middle of the garden full of tomato plants and you knock my door and great bewilderment you say excuse me professor Lennox um oh I'm so glad you came you know this is the best green house I've ever had because I've been growing the biggest tomatoes in my neighborhood you know there's a thing in the front panel here called AC and I find if I tune adjust to the right spot and leave it for a few weeks I get these colossal tomatoes now what would you think well I suspect you'd advise a psychiatrist but before you did that you might say Oh chop pardon me that's not what it's for what are you for you have asked us at the question you've got various goals in life and as those goals fall you discover that somehow they don't satisfy you how many people I've sat with they've got to the very top and I say to them were you going to go from here what have you discovered at the top and the answer is nothing one famous tennis player said I got to the top and I discovered there was nothing there have you begun to discover there's nothing wrong Dan is a fortunate young man he started to discover it in his 20s and we've got to be ruthlessly honest ladies and gentlemen in asking this question what are we for well no of course when it comes to my 4x4 I word expect the dealer to refer me to the book of instructions and of course you know the general rule when all else fails read the instructions and the sophistication of everybody's gizmos these days is such that the instructions are in CDs in inaccessible places and you wrack your brains trying to sort out how to get your iPhone connected and all the rest of it are there any instructions for human beings oh you say don't be foolish this is a 21st century instructions if there were instruction for human beings that would mean there was an instructor and now you're beginning to talk about God aren't you and you a professor at Oxford you ought to be ashamed of yourself you can't possibly expect us to raise the god question and instructions in the 21st century why not ladies and gentlemen where did your iPhone come from it's a brilliant result of technology isn't that where did technology come from it came from modern science where did modern science come from belief in God ladies and gentlemen that's where it came from we've forgotten that of course CS Lewis put it brilliantly men became scientific why because they explore spected law of nature why because they believed in the law giver you see I'm not remotely ashamed to be both a scientist and a Christian because Christianity arguably gave me my subject isn't it Alderfer that Isaac Newton Galileo Kepler Babbage start Maxwell all of them were believers in God it didn't hinder their science it was the powerful motor that drove it what's fascinating to me it's even more fascinating when you realize that people like Stephen Hawking who was just ahead of me at Cambridge and light-years ahead of me in his brain power he says you now got to choose between science and God Newton didn't say that the more he studied the universe the more admired the genius of the God that did it that way his law of gravity which he incorporated in his famous book principia mathematica where he said that he hoped that would persuade thinking people to believe in a deity however we moved from Newton to Hawking I want to suggest to you ladies and gentlemen we've moved from Newton to Hawking by a series of colossal and partly deliberate misunderstandings of two things one is the nature of God and the other is the nature of science very briefly because this is part of why I'm a Christian because it makes sense of my science it gives me a rational basis for doing it the problem with God is that many of the atheists who are my friends think that I believe in a God of the gaps that is I can't explain it therefore God did it like a great god of lightning do atmospheric physics at the University of Western Australia and that God will disappear in a single lecture those gods disappear by the advance of science and if you think God is a God of the gaps of course you'll ask people to choose between God and science but the problem is that's the way you've defined God the God of the Bible isn't the God of the gaps he's that God of the whole show the gods of the width the bets we do understand the gods of the bits we don't understand he is the creator and sustainer of the universe and one of the major problems in the contemporary debate is that people relegate the God of the Bible to be a Greek god and then dismissive the argument is pseudo people who do that haven't the faintest notion about the ancient gods but let me tell you then one of the world's authorities on ancient near-eastern God's very Yaga a professor at Oxford just says this the difference is vast the ancient gods of the Greeks the Romans the Assyrians the Babylonians are all descended from the universe they are products of the basic primeval NASA of the universe the God of the Bible created the universe that's the difference so we need to be clear by God but then we need to be clear about trials because you see the problem is people say well we've got a law of gravity says hawking therefore the universe can and will create itself from nothing now apart from the triple logical self contradiction in that sentence because we've got a law of gravity because we have something the universe will create itself from nothing which is a flat contradiction as will be obvious even at this time tonight what he's saying is because we've done some science therefore there's no God we got a law of gravity marvelous what would you think of I said to you here are two explanations for a motor-car one the law of internal combustion two Henry Ford please change well that's absurd isn't it I find even children can see what professors can't see there are different kinds of explanation there's a scientific explanation why is the kettle boiling because the heat energy has got to such a stage that the molecules of water vibrating that they're spitting off steam and the pressures building up and the whistles going that's why it's boiling no it isn't it's boiling because I want a cup of tea well I'm glad you laugh because now you've understood the difference between two kinds of explanation it's the same at the level of the universe ladies and gentlemen God is not the same kind of explanation as a scientific explanation God is the reason there are any explanations at all well Lawrence Christ wrote an article saying the Higgs boson is arguably more important than God I wrote another article answering him saying yes of course the Higgs boson is arguably more important than God if the question you're asking if you're giving a lecture in particle physics but if you're asking the question why is there a universe at all in which particle physics can be done then God is our you believe more important that the higgs-boson you see what's happening in our culture is people are fooling you by presenting you with a set of false alternatives God or science mechanism or agency gravity or God and all this kind of thing and a moment's thought shows that they haven't a clue about philosophy Stephen Hawking actually says in his book philosophy is dead that's about page three a tease the whole book is about philosophy and he proves very effectively that at least in his case philosophy is completely dead and I mean that seriously I find it astonishing misuse of science for people to argue that science and God are in conflict they're not where the conflict lies ladies and gentlemen is between two worldviews atheism and theism and there are scientists at the highest level even the Nobel Prize level on both sides so what we've got to ask really is does science lead towards God or lead toward atheism I've made the point from history I just want to make another point because this doesn't get us to Christianity yet but it tears some of the fog that stands in the way of many people even beginning to see what Christianity claims you see my big reason for rejecting atheism is because I'm a scientist not because I'm a Christian and here's the reason what do I do science with well you say my mind well that's generous because most of my atheistic colleagues say the mind is the brain there's nothing but the brain stuff then I ask them what's the brain and they say well the brain is the end product of a mindless unguided process and then I say and you trust it is it ironic that people are prepared to trust what they themselves believe to be the end product of a mindless unguided process when if they knew that their computer which they used for 23 hours a day was the end product of a mindless unguided process atheism doesn't shoot itself in the foot ladies and gentlemen it's far worse than that it shoots itself in the brain and that's fatal now you see the Christian the believer in God has a reason for doing science it's the reason that Galileo Kepler and Newton have which is why science exploded in the 16th and 17th centuries it's that they expected and believed science could be done because they believed in a rational creator you see faith lies behind science both faith in God and then the next step faith in the rational intelligibility of the universe that Springs from a belief in a rational goal I hope you're with me so far because these arguments are enormous ly important and you notice they're dead simple there are new tricks here these arguments are very simple indeed but the fog is such that when a high-powered person says God is a delusion as Stephen Hawking put it the other day when interviewed he said belief in God religion is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark but I was asked to comment so I did in like fashion eight years it was a very story for people afraid of the light you shouldn't that statements like that don't prove anything you see the big problem that comes out of that is this that statements by scientists aren't always statements of science can I repeat that statements by scientists are not always statements of science you get Carl Sagan very famous with his TV series cosmos the universe is all that there is was or ever shall be that's not a statement of science it's a statement of his atheistic belief that's all it is now you see ladies general once we clear that fog we can come to the central thing because what we got next to see is that God isn't a theory he's a person and that brings me to the other way of accessing knowledge about God we can read certain things from the universe I believe we can see there's a rational intelligence behind the universe the Bible itself claims that Paul said that one of his most famous writings the invisible things of God that is his eternal power and Godhead that there is a God are perceived are clearly seen from the things that are made nature isn't neutral it's got the signature of God written all over it but that's as far as you get but you see you think about it logically here are we were persons we're not just theories my wife isn't a theory I can guarantee you that she's a person are we to imagine that the source of our being is less and personal of course not that flies against every analogy we know and the God who now reveals himself in the Bible now here's the important thing leads Intel the moment I mentioned the word reveal all people get very allergic and nervous and saying we believe in rationality we believe in reason we don't quoting Richard Dawkins believed in holy books as if you didn't need you read to read a holy book revelation and reason don't contradict each other have you ever met anybody that can read the Bible without using the reason of course not that's not the issue the issue is this ladies and gentlemen is this universe a closed system of cause and effect or is it open and if it's open here we are thinking feeling rational beings with all the emotions and richness of our capacity for music and love and art is there a God whose revealed himself the claim of the Bible is that is now here's the thing I could analyze you with a scanning tunneling microscope of the most extreme advanced character never get to know you the only way I'll ever get to know you is if you talk you know and reveal yourself to me and that's the only way you'll ever get to know me now here's the exciting thing about Christianity is that the claim is in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and God said let us make man in our own image do you realize what that means the stars and the galaxies that you see so clearly sometimes over head and Perth they're not made in God's image they show his glory you were made in God's image just think of the value that gives you I think that's powerful stuff to be able to tell men and women that they are of infinite value and dignity made in the image of God and therefore creators with all those talents and gifts but the sad thing is we find a world that's broken and bruised it looks as if a bomb had hit it Dan talked about an explosion in his own heart it's a good metaphor it's a bit like Christchurch Cathedral isn't it traces of beauty we can see but lots of damage through earthquake or Coventry Cathedral traces of beauty and damage through bombing and the world presents us with a mixed picture but that doesn't take away from the fact that we're made in the image of God it just points out that we see that it's a living memory but we feel it disjointedness between the concept of being made in the image of God and a perfection and the mass and a stuff that keeps foaming up like vomit inside our own personality and destroying us from the inside and everyone a few young people knew you're only one click away from disaster at anytime of the contemporary age one thing how do you data with it I grew up in a very different world I was so protected that I see my children my grandchildren surrounded by a sea of intellectual sharks and moral sharks wanting to destroy their lovely personality how could you recover that and here's the brilliance of the Christian message God became human now ladies and gentlemen one of the biggest arguments in our society is our human being special your famous professor peter singer whom i've debated thinks not i think he's wrong and one of the most powerful arguments for humans being special is that god became one how about that that's big stuff isn't it you see Dan pointed it out he said the claims Jesus made were incredible we missed them if we don't sit and reflectively take them seriously he stood in our world at the age of about thirty and said I am the truth he didn't send say I say the truth a little that's true he said I am the truth what you mean if you ask the truth about this universe and you reduce it to atoms and elementary particles and ask what's the truth about them and keep on asking you come to Jesus Christ who will stand in front you and say I am the truth is that big enough for you the thing that I find sad about my atheist friends as a tiny nosov their worlds ladies and gentlemen they don't have a God to begin it it was some kind of spontaneous combustion and we could talk about that I've written a book about it and they don't have a God to serve it up they live in a tiny space and the space for each individual is seventy years give or take a little bit and then the silence they believe and the blackness of an eternal tomb what sort of an existence is that Richard Dawkins would I put a turn said yes it's bleak but that doesn't mean it's false I said Richard it's bleak but that doesn't mean it's true how would we know that this world isn't a closed system because in space time in history God incarnate Jesus Christ was crucified died and broke the death barrier by rising again from the dead that's why I'm sitting here you say you can't believe that stuff as a scientist I mean after all miracles are violations of the laws of nature come on you can't believe that stuff David Jim proved it long ago no he didn't it's so easy to see he didn't you know and Lewis again pointed it out brilliantly in the 1940s I'm staying in a hotel in Perth I put a hundred dollars into my drawer last night I put a hundred dollars tonight and tomorrow I find $50 what does that babe that the laws of arithmetic have been broken or the laws of Western Australia oh I'm glad you laugh because you see the difference between the two uses of the word law we get so hung up on this we think laws in science or somehow causes or their like a law that's passed by the government that you violate notice the word violate that's nonsense how did you know a thief had taken 150 dollars out of my drawer because you know the laws of arithmetic that's how people realize that something spectacular had happened when Jesus reappeared from the dead because they knew that dead people don't just come wandering about after they died if they didn't know that dead people normally remain dead there wouldn't have been remotely surprised at seeing Jesus but when he appeared from the dead was such enormous Authority and power enough to transform 11 men into men that conquered the ancient world and brought the message of Christianity throughout the world there's evidence in history that the thing is real as a famous ancient historian put it there's a resurrection shaped whole in history but that's long ago ladies and gentlemen and so I come to the next set of reasons why I'm a Christian because it works ladies and gentlemen you see Christianity is testable you say oh it's not testable you only get testable things in science no you don't Jesus Christ promises you that if tonight you take all that stuff that's clogging up your conscience and your heart and repent of it and deliberately as a step say Lord you died for this I don't understand how it works but you died for this to take all that mess upon yourself I don't know how you did it I don't know why you did it but I say that you did do it and I'm prepared to trust you he promises you that you will tonight receive forgiveness receive eternal life a new quality of life and that will make in time such a difference to you as it's made in Dan how many hundreds of times I see marriage is saved where people were fighting each other right in the courts and suddenly they come to encounter Christ and they realize that both of them are desperately wrong and they seek forgiveness and they repent and you got a married to the foundations of a happy full home and some more children of a chance a half-decent chance of a life how many times have I seen drugs that are poisoning someone's brain got rid of back to sanity back to life back to meaningfulness you know when you see that you begin to think there's something in this business people have been friendless and lonely and isolated ladies and gentlemen the trouble is we believed a colossal lie it's been going on for millennia it's that God is somehow against us Christopher Hitchens said to me in a debate he said who would want a great North Korean dictator in the sky watching you I said Christopher you make me very sad who would want a woman in their hearts watching them all the time my wife was in the house all the time I said Christopher if the person watching you is not a North Korean dictator but someone who loves you it's wonderful to have them in your home and in your life ladies and gentlemen don't believe that lie that God is out to repress and suppress all your human flourishing on page 2 of the Bible you'll see how that entered into the world are the enemy said to the first two months God has said in the day you eat that you should surely die because he knows you eat it you be as God's knowing good and evil and they fell for it and they've been falling for it ever since just ask yourself do you think of God as an enemy if you do you've believed a lie it's as simple as that and the wonderful thing to discover is God's forest God so loved the world listen to those words they're magnificent God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life is I mean those words are magnificent and you see these and gentlemen either Christian because Jesus doesn't compete with anybody on the score there's nobody else in all of history offers me credibly forgiveness and eternal life so I'm not insulting any other religion by taking it from him when nobody else offers it do you see that it's very important you do see it this is a huge thing why am i a crystal do you know the biggest thing in all my life even as a professor at Oxford whatever that means is that I loved ladies engine loved at a level that I will never begin to understand a love that has power over death I love my father but I've lost him no I haven't I'll see him again because jesus is risen it means death is not the end that gives real hope that gives us a real message and also ladies and gentlemen it brings back into the world a concept that's rapidly disappearing and that's the concept of morality and ultimate justice listen don't get on the Atheist bus before you know where it's going where's it going well isn't the Richard Dawkins described the bleakness of the universe this universe is just exactly what you'd expect it to be he says if it bottom there's no good there's no evil there's no justice DNA just days and we dance to its music that's all there is to life ladies and gentlemen the terrorist bombers the young man from my country who proudly held in his hand the head of a journalist that all our papers today is just dancing to the music of his DNA who could blame them for that ideas have consequences and then you teach a generation of young people in Australia or anywhere else that all forms of behavior are acceptable that were simply animals they'll start behaving like that they have already how can you blame them and if Hitler gets all the power all yes the news blow his brains out when he's cornered he never faced justice if there is no justice and you see this is another reason why I cannot conceivably accept eight years have I been to Auschwitz many times the vast majority of people who've ever lived will never see justice of atheism is true the vast majority of people currently alive on planet earth will never see justice because they won't get it in this life and there's no other life of which they could conceivably get is then our concept of justice and morality and illusion no it is not because God has appointed a day in which he judge the world by the man he is appointed and given evidence to all men not just a believers by raising him from the dead it's a magnificent thing that they're going to be a judgment that people aren't going to get away with it but that makes some of us tremble doesn't that we're not going to get away with it are we and that's where the Christian message is utterly unique because Jesus stood in our world and he said truly I say to you whoever hears my word and believes on him that sent me has already eternal life and shall not come into judgment but has already passed from death to life you see do you really believe that yes I do why because of who Jesus is ladies and gentlemen he invented the atom richard dawkins mocked me once for believing that Jesus walked in water and I said to Jesus invented water in the first place maybe it's not such a big deal that he could walk on it I'm done you're going to time for questions but I appeal to you young people I want you never to forget this evening because you see I'm telling you what so many people when they reach their 50s and 60s wish they'd heard when they were 17 and 18 don't waste your life invest it in reality but you'll only believe in reality if there's evidence you probably come with a Christian friend tonight squeeze the guts out of them to get the information out of them what Christianity is a means plague them it's so important to be sure I understand people not sure but you can be sure why because it's not you simply seeking God God seeking you and he came into the world to find you wouldn't it be wonderful if you met him tonight thank you very much well thank you professor Lennox we are going to have some time now to look at the questions that you've sent in and so I John will take us through those and and then I'll be back up to finish the night so I'll leave you with John again good well thank you for these questions ladies and gentlemen why do so many kids who've grown up in church drift away from God in church the main reason given in our country is because they don't ask answer our questions let me speak to those of you who do go to church we need to get our act together we have been scandalously lacks in not facing the questions of a younger generation many in the older generation think they've settled all the things on a new raft of questions have come up to which I find even many ministers and churches have new answers and if you're talking your relevancy in a church on Sunday you lose everybody of course you lose them because they watch TV it's professionally done they see answers they see wonderful discussions of science and of music and so on so we've got to get our act together so that's one of the main reasons there are other reasons of course people sometimes discover rightly that Christ makes moral demands or they're not prepared for them they think they can run the automobile that is human life without the instructions and they don't realize that the instructions are written by somebody who loves us and we have a great task to do to repair that to show living Christianity to our young people have them into your home how many of my children's friends would come into the home and they would just say to my sons and my daughter your home is so different why is that be a witness engage all of these things are so vastly then I'd be tempted to preach a sermon about it but I'm not what do you think about the academics and theologians who insist the passion narratives are legendary and character that nothing can really be known about Jesus resurrection I don't think very much about them simply because that ancient historians who know more about ancient history aren't in that category you've got a very famous ancient historian here in Australia his name is Edwin judge if you want to answer that question read Edwin judge ancient historians don't doubt the existence of Jesus I've never met one because the evidence is much more powerful and many people think the evidence is far stronger for the authenticity say of the Gospel of Luke that it is for Caesar's Gallic Wars which some of us studied in school to our paid or our delighted makers delight but we're not taught that most people have no idea of the documentary evidence for the authenticity of Scripture now if the person who asked this question is really interested in it they will follow that up there's a lot of literature here but start with that one judge who as an ancient historian is world class in his thinking what do you think about Christianity being the enemy of free thinking well I think it's entirely wrong but it is an impression that some Christians have either deliberately or unwittingly given ladies and gentlemen it should be obvious if you've ever read the commandments that the first commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your mind soul heart and strength to love the Lord with your mind how did that commandment get lost in some spiritual traditions you are insulting God if you don't love God with your mind that's one of the reasons Christianity goes dead and so many professional people they love their business with their mind I even know some people that know the football scores for the last 50 years off by heart but when it comes the Bible they don't know it they haven't got to know it they go to church they say their prayers and so on but they've long since lost any cutting edge of witness because when they open their minds about their faith it's inarticulate and it's so pure I'll that their colleagues see it and so they're silenced forever and you're living in a society and so am i we're the biggest pressure is to privatize our faith keep it to yourself you want to believe in Jesus that's nice for you but don't you bring it into the public space ladies and gentlemen I'm gonna bring it into the public space you need to get the courage to do the same thing your public space isn't necessarily this size it's the person you know at work or are you living in a silent world when it comes to Christianity and the load world when it comes to music and football everything else in politics just analyze your conversations of the last week how much time have you invested in dissecting the previous Prime Minister of Australia and how much time have you spent discussing God with people that will tell you something how much time have you spent looking at a screen and how much time have you spent looking at Scripture will never reach this generation if we play religion and some of you young people might challenge you if you're going to influence this world for God you need to take scripture seriously and Godward seriously and get into it and spend hours in it immerse your lives in it and then you will not have people around you saying why is Christianity the enemy of thought I grew up in a home where Christianity was the most expensive most intellectually searching belief system that I could even imagine and when I met the others I find them so cramping that it just wasn't true forgive me I might wax eloquent about that you see how do you feel about the Western world moving away from Christianity how do you respond well you know it's like the starfish the millions of starfish stranded on the beach and the man is going alone he picks up one he throws it back and somebody says well you're not helping much it makes no difference well he said it does to that starfish and that's the way to start ladies and gentlemen if we don't break the barrier of silence individually we'll never do anything we are brilliant at leaving it to the pasture and leaving it to the other person this is not my task the New Testament doesn't imagine a silent norm of Angelus increased Christian we're not talking about the gift of evangelism like Billy Graham we're talking about the command to answer people's questions and the Apostle Peter says always be ready to give it answer to those that ask you he envisages dialog have you noticed that and our task is to provoke dialogue right as you brought up CS Lewis as lamb defeated the white weights of the famous book lion richard wardrobe what was the link between that of Jesus why actually did Christ have to die as if it were a rule that he had to obey it wasn't a rule II had to obey he laid his life down freely ladies and gentlemen because he loved you and me and why did he have to die because Sidon is a killer how would you realize it yet sin is the biggest problem every government on the world faces today now we think of sin usually in a couple of areas like sex and so on so let's think of it it's messing up its our innate human capacity to make an absolute mess of things it's the biggest problem it's a killer it's killing people in Perth tonight they'll be dead before the morning I can't explain to you how Christ's death they use with it I can't tell you what gravity is ladies and gentlemen nobody knows what it is so don't expect me to be able to explain something that's infinitely deeper but I believe in Christ's death as effective because it works and because it makes sense so what is my view on evolution and creation considerable and extensive they've written the book on it called God's Undertaker of science bury God they've written the second book on it called oh that's the main title the subtitle is seven days that divided the world ladies and gentlemen this is a huge topic we need a whole evening on it if you're serious just Google my name I've dozens of lectures on this but you can't whatever you believe about evolution and creation you cannot deduce atheism from evolution but if you want to know why just have a look we can't go into that in detail what is the biggest faith shaker you have faced and how do you answer it's an important question because you see the way faith grows is by questioning it and exposing it to its opposite precisely because I grew up in a strong Christian environment I'm not like Dan you see I have no idea what it's like to be a young adult and not be a believer he does so those of you like that should listen to him and talk to him I don't know what it's like so I needed the guide CS Lewis was a major guide but what I spent my entire life doing is exposing my faith to questioning what is the biggest faith shaker well it could be suffering couldn't it that's the hardest question I face I arrived in Christchurch two days after the earthquake I preached the biggest service that had been held in Christchurch for many years on the Sunday after I had to meet people who lost their relatives now this is the hard question ladies and gentlemen it's a very hard question and there are no simplistic answers to it and the trouble is you see that my heart goes out to people that have rejected God because of pain and suffering who can't make any sense particularly of what one might call senseless pain and many people become atheists because of it and I can understand that up to a certain extent and they just say that's the way the universe is it shows there's no mind behind that there's certainly no love behind it you can talk about intelligent find the universe if you like but please don't talk to me about a personal God understand that but it's not good enough ladies and gents firstly if you become an atheist because of it you're faced with an intellectual problem immediately what is evil richard dawkins takes the logical consequences of his belief system and he says they're no good there's no evil and yet he endlessly talks about the problem of evil there's a disconnect there he doesn't realise which something that nature realized but nature then was a real atheist and he understood the consequences nature said if you get God out of the equation you'll end up by getting all values out of the equation and you get good and evil out of the equation they're running out of our society now there are staggering surveys of North American young college aged kids who simply on the basis of clever questioning revealed they have no idea of what good and evil are now that's a serious side issue but you see atheism doesn't get rid of the suffering doesn't in fact it could be argued that makes it ten thousand times worse because it gets rid of all hope I have a problem with pain and suffering because I continue to believe in God but you see ladies and gentlemen this brings us straight the only place in the whole of the universe I see a way into this question is the cross because at the very least if that was God on the cross what's he doing there I never forget being and one of the largest synagogues in the world and I was trying to help a young Jewish lady understand the Yiddish that the rabbi was talking and my Yiddish is very pure nice big German so I was doing I've asked them I'm afraid I was taking translators license and we were in an exhibition of the festivals of Israel beginning with a Passover and so on so I took a little bit of Liberty since I didn't understand everything to explain that this had found fulfillment in Jesus the Messiah's so I was gently adding for what was being said and dub eventually I hadn't noticed that in the middle of the room there was a big montage and it was the gate of Auschwitz Arbeit macht frei work will set you free and she stirred she's very intelligent architect put her hands out like this across the door and she said what is your religion make of that and I said I wouldn't insult your memory of your parents who were gassed behind those gates by giving you some simple explanation I said you know you've asked me and I'm going to answer your question but it's going to be very difficult you know that I believe that Jesus Yeshua was how much he Ock the Messiah and she nodded with her hand still light like this I said the next bit is even harder because he claimed to be God incarnate now I said that's very hard for you to accept but just just try and follow me and I'm trying to just except for a moment that that might be true you know he died on a cross and she nodded still with her hands out like this I said if that's gold on the cross what's it saying I said at the very least it's telling me that God has not remained distant from the problem of human suffering but has himself become part of it and the tears just burst from her faces he still stood forming a cross and she said these words which I shall never forget she said why is no one ever told me that about my Messiah before he didn't really die ladies and gentlemen he rose from the dead that's what gives me hope there is to be a judgement God will see that justice is done and he will do it and it will be seen to be done atheism has nothing of that I said that to you earlier so I think there's a way in but we must do it with sympathy it can take years to work off the loss or the abuse we may never really get over it but to discover a God that loves us and is prepared to surround us with his love and to promise us one day a new body to replace the one that's been abused that's a magnificent thing to be able to tell people there's a related problem and I'm going to stop with this because my times up how can I be convinced that Christianity is the only truth about God why should it hold more credibility than Buddhism or Hinduism well ladies and gentlemen you have to decide that on the basis of evidence which of them really make sense and answers your questions on the historical level if we simply take Judaism Christianity and Islam my Jewish friends believe that Jesus died and did not rise my Muslim friends believe that he didn't die I believe he both died and rose those three things cannot be simultaneously truth so you've got to ask yourself the question but the reason I'm a Christian is because you see religion in general is generally depicted as an entrance gate followed by a way which I'll draw a wiggly line followed by a judgment you know the kind of thing like the University of Western Australia you get in through some exam some ceremony and you're on the way and your professors or gurus or Imams or priests to help you but even they can't guarantee you're going to be accepted at the end and however kind your professors at university are they cannot guarantee that you're going to be accepted at the end why because the basic principle is your merit and how many times have I said with someone from religions including Christianity by the way they said that is what my religion teaches it's not what Christianity teaches later and here's the utterly revolutionary thing Christianity is not a system of merit and that's why I can know tonight before I leave this place that God has accepted me because Christ has died for me I often illustrated I met my wife first day at university she was 16 but that's a different story she's the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen anyway now of course I wanted to marry her eventually so I came to her one day and I presented her with a cookbook and it's full of laws you know if you're going to make an apple cake thou shall take so many grams of sugar thou shall take so many kilos of flour thou shall take so much water and you should boil it and mix it and so on so I said no sorry it's going to be like this you see and I couldn't possibly accept you now I mean if you follow the prescriptions in this book for forty years that say then I think about accepting you so how about becoming my wife do you think I did that why are you laughing do you know that's how millions of people think of God you wouldn't insult a fellow human being by suggesting your relationship with them was based on merit would you and yet millions of people think exactly that of God if I try and keep the rules then perhaps one day you will accept me that's slavery ladies and gentlemen and it's one of the biggest reasons that people are running away from religion because Christianity has been interpreted like that and it's the exact opposite you imagine my wife having tried this for a year to him really taking it seriously and wanting to bake an apple cake and she suddenly realizes if she doesn't do it perfectly she's back to her mother and she turns the knob up to a thousand degrees centigrade and out comes a burnt offering see exactly what happened and people that try to keep the rules become cramped they become narrowed they feel oppressed and they say god I'm not remotely interested in you and they missed the whole point of a God who so loves them he spreads his arms out and across and saying you can't make it old chap in your own I'm prepared to die for you and give you a free pardon right now ladies and gentlemen do you know why my wife's such a good cook because my acceptance honor doesn't depend on it I don't go around the world talking about God like tonight in order and hoping that one day God will accept me I do it because he has accepted me do you see the difference and you will know those of you are married that the essence of a marriage is that security of acceptance that's independent of the minor vagaries of the way we behave why would we insult God by suggesting - and we could merit it and you see here Christianity isn't competing with anybody because it's utterly unique ladies and gentlemen it is 5 past 9 I have sinned massively and going 5 minutes over my time thank you very much indeed thanks for watching John minutes why I am a Christian we hope you enjoyed it if you want to get in contact with us or to find out more information please visit www.nixonlibrary.gov

Channel: CREDO Perth

Views: 104,474

Rating: 4.8016958 out of 5

Keywords: John Lennox (Academic), Australia (Country), Christianity (Religion), science, faith, why, Christian, Perth, CREDO, Dan Conway

Id: jGrbrKWZFJg

Length: 60min 20sec (3620 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 06 2014