RZIM：Open Forum, Questions and Answers – by Ravi Zacharias @ University of Pittsburgh

to get the word out about tonight I'm gonna share with you a little bit about our speaker for this evening his name is Ravi Zacharias I know some of you may not be familiar with him Ravi Zacharias is founder and president of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries for the last 43 years he has spoken all over the world including an educational and cultural dynamos such as Harvard Dartmouth Johns Hopkins and Cambridge he has addressed writers of the Peace Accord in South Africa and military officers at the Lenin military academy and the center for geopolitical strategy in Moscow he is also authored or edited well over 20 books such as has Christianity failed you and won the golden medallion award for his book can man live without God as we engage in the topic this evening it is my hope that we'll all walk away from it challenged to be people who think deeply and critically no matter what your faith background may or may not be I also hope we can engage in these matters with maturity and utmost respect for one another and each other's beliefs to that end after the talk we will hold a Q&A session that will be both face-to-face and digital we have college students here so we have to be digital during Robbie's talk we encourage you to develop thought-provoking questions that are clear concise and relevant to the topic at hand please do those three things clear concise and relevant to the topic at hand for the face to face questions simply write your questions on the provided index card we have given you an index card as well as a pencil as you walked in so that you can begin to write those you can write them during the talk whatever inspires you to ask those questions bring them and we'll give you all the logistics on how to come to this microphone after Ravi is done talking for those who may prefer the digital route or those who are watching live online we'd like for you to tweet simply tweet your question and at the end of it make sure you hashtag our Zi M pit it is our desire to give preference to people who are skeptics or those who may not be of the Christian faith background to alert us to this fact both on the cards in your tweet simply put the hashtag of your faith background for example hashtag skeptic or hashtag Hindu and we want to give preference to those questions because we desire to be challenged as well as challenge one another we'll do our very best to get through as many questions as possible and it is my hope to ask one or two questions from Twitter because I think that that kind of atmosphere where we're both face to face and digital is kind of where we are in this world today so without further ado I give to you Ravi Zacharias you very much my might going on can you hear me or not get me on now no you can all right maybe you will even say yes if the answer is no so that you can get a nice restful evening so before I go into my subject matter let me read for you this it was read to me by my mother-in-law in Toronto last week she is 96 years old I have no idea why she read this to me and my wife and family there but she was laughing all the way here it is Steve aged 92 and Sally 889 living in Florida are all excited and to get married they go for a stroll to discuss the wedding and on the way they pass a drugstore Steve suggests that they go in Steve addresses the man behind the counter are you the owner the pharmacist answers yes Steve we're about to do you sell medication pharmacist of course we do Steve how about met circulation pharmacist all kinds see medicine for rheumatism pharmacists definitely Steve medicine for memory problems arthritis and Alzheimer's pharmacist yes a large variety the works Steve what about vitamins sleeping pills antidotes for Parkinson's disease pharmacists absolutely Steve everything for heartburn and indigestion pharmacists we sure do Steve you sell wheelchairs and walkers and canes pharmacists all speeds and all sizes Steve adult diapers pharmacist sure I help you Steve said we'd like to use this store as a bridal registry I could just sit down and say that's what it means to be human everything you want to talk about is right there all the fragility so stuck shoe a ting a bit isn't it oh my if it continues to do so and you want to put me on a fixed microphone I'll be okay that so long as I don't have to hold on to it I do speak with my hands they put but I think it seems to be going off and on is there anything I'm doing that's not right or is it are we okay back there the sound booth I think he's coming to give me a bit of a helping hand here that's what happens when you go digital testing testing testing tell me if you can hear me at the back do I see some in the front too but they're thumbs up down there giving a thumbs down there I've had that happen before too okay how about now we adjusting anything there watch it hello hello hello testing testing they're still complaining and the back rows there for me to keep going trying this still a little better we wanted a little higher yeah they're asking for it to be raised a little higher how about now a little better all right that's good I appreciate that thank you [Applause] [Music] this could become a shocking experience is there stuff maybe with some some that's the way I fix things at home all right well this will be a bit of a challenge for me because they'll keep me flat-footed here but I'll do my best because I think if I move away from that you won't be able to hear me but and I'm standing put here are you okay now can you yes thank you so much the whole subject of what it means to be human actually the first time I was ever asked to really address this was a few years ago at Johns Hopkins when they were doing this as a thematic study and had invited several people of different perspectives to present their answers on how they saw the response to the question what does it mean to be human and there were two Christians called on to address the issue in Francis Collins and I were the ones who took the judeo-christian worldview to answer the question but that was some years ago and as I'm looking at the theme now developing it in my own way for different audiences this is really one of the most foundational questions in life for you and for me because it is in effect a self defining question in general terms that has particular and individual implications some of you may have heard me tell the story of what happened many many years ago in the former Soviet Union in the year 2000 when they decided to empty their prisons and all of the political prisoners were being released one of the men who has released had already been there for 55 years he was about 20 when he had been incarcerated and he was 75 now he was a Hungarian by descent and he had gotten into the war had been captured and was now kept under Soviet control and for a lot of those years was in solitary confinement they were actually going to execute him because they thought he had lost his mind and was speaking what they thought was total gibberish but somebody suggested that they bring in a Hungarian psychiatrist to examine him if an indeed he was what they said that he was insane the psychiatrist came and spent several hours with him if not days because the first time I told this story I was in Washington DC and a man from the audience walked up from Hungary he said I know exactly who you're talking about this story really hit the headlines back home so Andres Thomas was the prisoner captured at the age of 20 and now being a pawn in discussion fifty-five years later the psychiatrist said to the Soviet powers that be release him to us we will take care of him he is not speaking gibberish he's speaking an old Hungarian dialect we will be happy to make him well it'll take some time and they finally signed the papers and the Med the medical practitioner put him on a wheelchair and was wheeling him out as he was heading out he asked and made his first request nobody was expecting what he was going to ask for he asked for a mirror he hadn't seen his face in 55 years so age 20 when he was incarcerated now seventy-five worn-out exhausted bullied almost dehumanized when they gave him the mirror he the doctor said he looked at it for all of about a second or two put it facedown and held his face in his hands and just sobbed uncontrollably he had lost the image of who he was and how he even looked if you have ever been to the concentration camp ouch wits a book involved or Dachau or anywhere and you see the pictures of the people as they were brought in and then as some were executed and even the children and so on you see that sunken face look of just bones with skin pulled taut around that skeletal structure they hardly know who they are it is a deliberate effort to get them to undefined' themselves and as I read that story sometime back some years ago I asked myself the question how did the tormentors define what it meant to be human they must have had a definition they must have had a way of viewing their fellow human beings whatever the definition was it was obvious that they were taking them from a pretty low rung of a ladder to bring them lower and lower and lower till not only was the tormentor wrongly defining them but the individuals had lost a definition for who they were and what they were intended to be that's really what this story is all about in fact the entire Nazi attempt was to find the Superman the superior human who could control the race and take the less capable and the less positive possible in them to be submerged and dominated by the superior what does the Bible say about this my talk to you tonight my dear friend is going to be on the judeo-christian view of what it means to be human I will take the major address here and after I finish my colleague from Oxford University whose teachers at Wickliffe all at Oxford Vince Vitale a dear friend and a colleague he and I had the privilege of authoring the last book together what does it mean to be on why suffering and now we are teaming up on this theme of does it mean to be human and we're about to team up on another book as well Vince did his master's work at Princeton did his doctoral work at Oxford University and as one our senior faculty now at the Oxford Centre for Christian apologetics there and he will take about nine or ten minutes after I'm finished to try and pull some of his thoughts together on this and then we will throw it open for a question-and-answer time so on behalf of the organizers my colleague and myself thank you for coming thank you for being here and giving us this evening I pray it'll be a meaningful time for all of us as we face this very critical and defining theme we are coming to it from the judeo-christian worldview and you will see that very quickly on how I have positioned it I believe there are really four thoughts on how the judeo-christian worldview sees the essence and the existence of a human being what we call Homo sapiens the first is in the reality of creation that we are not the random collocation of time plus matter plus chance we are not an accidental blip on the radar screen of time that there is a designer and a creator who has a specific purpose for who we are and why we are here now the problem with even that first assertion is that across the decades so many contrary views have come so many debates have been held so many perspectives and counter perspectives and oftentimes that debates are held on the processes through which we became what we are rather than focusing on the first cause and the purpose and the essence of who we are the truth of the matter is you can take a diversity of Christian thinkers on this and they will have a diversity of views on the issue of time on the issue of process in the issue of contingencies and so on on the age of the all of these come in when you get sidetracked into that you forget the fundamental precept of what it is the intention was in God's mind who we are and why we are here and this is what I want to say to you even the noted philosopher Anthony flue who for most of his life was an avowed atheist and wrote so much against the existence of God in the last few years of his life turned it went on to the fork in the road because he believed his own critique of theism was not valid in his mind anymore and he made a strong statement that the philosophical ramifications of our origin are crucial for the issue of morality and meaning the philosophical ramifications of who we are our defining for morality and meaning how we go through a moral reasoning and how we attribute meaning and purpose to human life you know it's fascinating even listening to the debate in the last one with one segment of candidates and one of them was asked why opposition had changed on a certain issue and it is interesting that she previously defined her position with the word sacred in there that there was a sacredness to our lives but when the definitions changed the word sacred was left out and the entailments of removing sacred are enormous ud sacral eyes life ud sacral eyes relationships ud sacral eyes all of their work in life and suddenly what is the opposite of sacred profane profe annum comes from the greek where you literally lock God and the temple as it were outside of your life the DC realization of life as ramifications which GK Chesterton said so well he said the tragedy of disbelieving in God is not that a person ends up believing in nothing alas it is much worse that person may end up believing in anything he went on to say there's only one angle at which you can stand straight and many angles at which you can fall and so whatever your view we must realize we are here to think of the philosophical extensions and the ramifications of how we define who we are now the fact that the judeo-christian worldview sees a creator without getting into the particulars of the how-to necessary entailments follow our implications number one there is intrinsic worth to every life that worth is not given by government that worth is not given by some statute that worth is not given by a community or a society that worth is intrinsically and essentially yours by virtue of being a person created by a designing and a worthy god when Joseph Stalin was tormenting his people and killing them by the millions it was not a very tall man Stalin was not his real name it was a nickname that was given to him at the steely countenance it is fascinating when he began to torture his own people I told this story to the faculty at the Center for geopolitical strategy and there was pin drop silence here's was his the story a Western diplomat went to see mr. Stalin and asked him how he planned to have his people continue to follow him when he was torturing them like this Stalin never gave her them had this to diplomat a verbal answer he called a waiter and asked the waiter to bring him a live chicken he took the lie chicken and that chicken under his arms and started to defend that bird till it was completely denuded the chicken by this point was quivering and trembling in his hands he took the chicken and put it down picked up a piece of bread and walked away from that chicken as the chicken was quivering there on the on the ground and the chicken hobbled over towards Joseph Stalin nestled between his trouser legs for warmth stalin bent down with a piece of bread and the chicken started to peck away at that bread and stalin looked at his visitor and said do you have your answer i tortured that chicken it will follow me for food the rest of its life he said people are like that you torture them and they will follow you for food the rest of their lives very few journalists and diplomats had the courage to call him for who he was Malcolm Muggeridge did in his book winter in Moscow and when he came back it changes complete position on what a government like that was which treated its people in such a demeaning way that's precisely how he had started to define them people were a means to his end his ends were a clenched fist which was the last gesture before he died a fist towards the heavens young people ladies and gentlemen when you look at God's Word Moses gave his people 613 laws david reduced them to 15 isaiah reduced them to 11 micah reduced them to 3 to do justice to love mercy and to walk humbly before your God so Micah took 613 laws and brought it down to 3 do justice love mercy and walk humbly before your God when Jesus was asked by an antagonist what the greatest commandment was it is amazing to me that he did not reduce it to 1 it's profoundly moving to me that he did not reduce it to one he could have but he reduced it to two to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength and to love your neighbor as yourself he said on these to hang all of the laws and all of the prophets 613 laws were put on two pegs to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and all your strength and to love your neighbor as yourself why did he give us two and not one because of the first the second necessarily follows without the first the second is with its feet firmly planted in midair you don't have the essence of what the created order is that loving your neighbor becomes purely an option for you and for me Jesus said it is not an option it is a necessary corollary it follows from the first you see your ethnicity your race who you are is your distinctive gift by God it is an inviolable gift that God has given to you when he talks of all of the nations when Paul gives his sermon there in the book of Acts he talks of all of the nations that were there and how God had called him to take that message to every nation and every tongue and every tribe you are a creature created by God and there's a segue I want to give to you here before moving to the second ramification I want you to follow me carefully now not only are you of essential worth with humanity in that essentiality there's a particular worth to you I want you to follow this very carefully so so we don't get lost in this whole thing that we call the mass of humanity there is an individuality to you in fact it comes from the Latin indivisible you cannot be broken up you come as a unique posit you are irreplaceable a position can be refilled but you will never replace a person there's a uniqueness to them my son who's here in the audience went to tailor University and in 2006 still a university had a terrible tragedy take place on a weekend some of the students were coming back from a weekend I don't know where they had gone for some work over the weekend or what and they were driving back in a van and if I remember this story at least parts of it correctly I think it was a truck that crossed over the medium median and slammed into them and most of them in that van were smashed to death they were killed one of the students survived all the parents were informed they came and picked up the corpses of their loved their loved ones and funerals were held but the Van Ryn family was told that their daughter Laura mmm was still alive albeit hanging on by a thread so the van Rijn family hung around the bed day after day week after week and I think it was her boyfriend who was also present and as she was beginning to regain consciousness start to ask her questions but none of the questions they asked her were making any sense within the context of the van Rijn family and I think it is a boyfriend or one day said you know there's something wrong here either she's completely out of it or I don't think this is Laura and the parents were upset saying what are you talking about the brain is damaged she's been hit hard give her some time he said no something is wrong and one day this gal looking up with her matted blond hair and all says I don't understand why you keep calling me Laura I am NOT Laura my name is Whitney I'm Whitney the silence in the room and they contact the authorities in the university saying was there a Whitney in this van said yeah but she's been buried here so they talk to her and they bring in the coroner and asked him have you done a DNA test on the burials said no said do you know who this is and they did a DNA test and found out she was indeed Whitney serac she was not Laura van Rijn but there's already a grave marker with Whitney's name on it although she was here very much alive and all of a sudden the serac SAR contacted and told your daughter is alive and the van Rijn said to pack their bags and go back and go to the grave and realize that their daughter was actually buried there and the change of the name had to take place on the marker every life in that van was valuable but there were relationships and the particularity that's why we are given names not to confer individuality but to recognize the individuality that is hoary there so in creation we have the ramifications of intrinsic worth we also have number two a reflective splendor there is a splendor that we are called upon to reflect and that splendor is ultimately to the glory of God that's what sacredness really means set apart we are set apart for the glory of God after the war when the Japanese Prime Minister kono yeh thought of all the horrors that are transpired and all that had been engineered in all of the schemes that were lost he was alone in a room and took his own life when they saw him having taken his own life on his bed they looked at the night table and Oscar Wilde's De Profundis was on the night table and the last page that he had open he underlined this these as terrible as it was what the world did to me nothing was as terrible as what I did to myself nothing was as terrible as what I did to myself as I speak to you there's a great tragedy taking place in Vegas a renowned basketball player Lamar Odom I think is his name but son feet tall or something big strapping figure wanted to get away from it all what did you he spent his time in a brothel drugged his body with cocaine and other stuff to give him some excitement for those few days till a 9-1-1 call came and described what was coming out of his nose and what was coming out of his mouth and he was totally unconscious and i think some news wires are saying that he's gone or the news wires are saying that he's unconscious in extremely critical condition and i I had y'all know the man I I don't even remember watching him play but here's what I want to say to you what a way to bid goodbye to the world when you're blessed with such physique and such genius in a capacity that very few human beings would ever have he was looking for a thrill looking for something to bring him out of his dull drums and into some sense of excitement and his bid goodbye to this world and he may as well underline also the words of Oscar Wilde as terrible as it was what the world did to me nothing was as terrible as what I did to myself and so to you young men and women if there's a challenge I want to give to you there's a reflective splendor to which God calls you don't let anybody rob you of that when he reminds you that he has made you for himself and your heart is restless until you have your rest in him the creation factor talks to me of intrinsic worth and a reflective splendor then there is a second thing that is the Incarnation the Incarnation actually reminds me that the word became flesh and dwelt among us in the person of Jesus Christ we see the on the unfolding of the Gospel story no matter what your faith or your belief may be it is a fact said by hundreds and hundreds of people even by sceptics that when you see the person and the life of Jesus Christ virtually unparalleled when I was writing my book an imaginary conversation between Jesus and Buddha I entitled it the Lotus and the cross Jesus talks to Buddha I interviewed so many Buddhist monks priests and scholars and Thailand and Malaysia and all of that and oftentimes at the end of the day I would sit down with them and talk to them and the conversation would move to the person of Jesus Christ and my faith on more than a half a dozen occasions a monk or a priest or a scholar would say you know what in Jesus Christ we see somebody so unique and so unmatched and there would be a recognition and a respect for who he not only claimed to be but how he lived in the person of Jesus Christ and his incarnation I see two implications number one is the absoluteness of the moral law that this is a moral universe we have to think in terms of moral reasoning and what we are watching happen in our political landscape in America is a destructive process right now and why is it destructive because we only think of right and left we have forgotten there's an up and a down when you lose the up and the down you will only have the right and the left and you will have swords drawn against each other you know in the House of Commons in London the two parties are actually separated by a measured distance it was so that if you spat you couldn't spit across on the other person and I think it has something to do with certain sword lengths as well imagine leading a country but keeping you from spitting against each other last year I had the privilege of being in Brazil along with some friends here to see the World Cup and soft soccer now I've seen cricket it's a gentlemen's game that's why you hear somebody when someone else is cheating you say that's not cricket soccer you can bite off another person's ear you can do whatever you want and be sent home you know and the hundred people who had the closest seats to the game three feet away from the rim of the field did not get to see the game or any match they had to turn their backs to the play because they were watching all of the rabble rousers up in the stands in case anybody came with knife and other weapon in hand to kill the player he didn't think performed to his liking and the players they themselves had men in uniform watching their behavior I was doing a program for the BBC and mentioned this players had referees and umpires watching to make sure nobody chewed off another person's here outside the rim was standing a hundred fellows looking at us so that they made sure we didn't do anything naughty and you know what the BBC guys said to me I'm not sure you really want to use this illustration in England because soccer is a very sacred thing out here you know fascinating what do we see laws are broken again and again and again rules are broken again and again and again and that's why we need thousands of pages for health insurance laws because every sentence dies the death of a thousand qualifications it's not enough use one word on a plane about the smoke detector they say don't touch tamper disable or destroy No why can't you just say don't mess with this because somebody can say I didn't mess with it it just messed itself you know my father-in-law was a chemical engineer which shall oil he had a brother who had a way with words and his brother in the younger days they had these gramophone machines and gramophone records made out of plastic or whatever and interred verdant Lee his brother Arnold sat on a chair with about 12 of his father's favorite records on on the chair and crashed the whole thing smother smile was smashed it broke and Arnold didn't know what to do his father was really gonna have his hide when he got back so the father came back and he walked into the living room and saw the shattered piece of all of those favorite LPS as they called them long claims the records and he called the boys known and see what happened here and Arnold looked and said dad it got sat upon it got sat upon so what you're really saying is its its fault if it weren't there it would not be the way it is right now I have a friend in Australia who is attending a weekend of a social and his wife made two beautiful cream pies he told me this story himself he said and he was bringing it down the stairs one in each hand she'd spent earlier you can see what's coming and he stumbled and slipped and the pies Murphy's Law facedown and he looked at it and he said call his wife he said why didn't you cover it why did you give it to me like this and she just stood there staring at him he said then I burst out trying thing what a fool I am you know there is a moral law and here's what I want to say to you somebody was asking a question and a good question yesterday at Carnegie Mellon and he raised the question that yeah religion has oppressed people atheists of oppressed people you know haven't they both empowered on the wrong things yes but there is a difference when a man who claims to be a Christian oppresses people and hurts them and bullies them and victimize them he or she is violating is violating the rules by which the Christian is called to live violating the message but of an atheist does what Mao Zedong did what Stalin did they could legitimately consider it a natural outworking of their atheistic worldview one can be logically deduced for their own purposes one is an illogical and that is the difference keine else and the atheist from calgary says this we have not been able to show that reason requires us to have a moral point of view or that really rational persons on hoodwinked by myth or ideology need not be individual ego as so classical a more or less reason doesn't really decide here I know the picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one reflection on this depresses me pure practical reason even with a good knowledge of the facts will not take you to morality pure practical reason even with a good knowledge of the facts will not lead you to morality there is no rationally compelling reason why you should be moral you may choose to be and many of them are there's no rationally compelling reason for it because morality is ultimately self-referencing and so I say to you in the whole reality of incarnation we get the absoluteness of the moral law and the second ramification is we have this supremacy of love we have this supremacy of love this thing for which we earn again someone last night asked the question of love and I talked of the words from the Greek agape falero storge eros God's love friendship love protective love romantic love all hang on the peg of God's love my love and how I express my love cannot be self defined it is defined by God and an intrinsic part of God's definition for love is commitment commitment is an inextricable part of love you know I was talking to a person a few weeks ago came to visit me I won't say too much he sings a live-streamed and I want to protect people and whatever the situation was she'd wanted out she wanted from her family and I said to her I say that you're counting the cost are you she said yes I said reason she said I have no reason I just want out I said did you ever love individual oh yeah so but now she said oh no and the conversation went and I said how do you know that you will not get into another relationship and again claim love now and three years from now claim it's not there I said you better think very carefully what what love really means you have to have that sense of commitment in the old english language the commitment was made in these words with my body I thee worship there was an exclusivity made in love an exclusivity so that way you said yes I do to one you were really saying no I don't do every other there is a sacredness that is given to love but you know I want you to follow this now yeah it's easier to talk about something like that isn't it as adults and all of that I'm now a grandfather and I watch the grandkids in a very different way than I watched my own and my daughter one day said to me dad why I said I don't know maybe you have a certain stock of affection and love and when you have your own 90% of them is exhausted in worry and care and pathing and providing this and that you've only got about ten percent left to feel and when you have the grandkids the parents do the 90 percent of the care now we've got 90 percent of the field and only 10 percent of the work so one of our grandkids come and visit us we have a ball but when they go my wife and I sit down on the chair and stare at each other for about two minutes saying what just happened let me tell you about our letter have Benson Churchill was sunsoft by a corporal have I ever told you about my grandchildren Churchill said no and I want you to know how much I appreciate it since I'm not Churchill let me tell you a couple of stories our oldest grandest grandson is followed by the name of Jude he has a vocabulary and a half I don't know where he picks up his vocabulary from but I'll tell you he sure can use it big big words and about he's now four but urban he was about three and a quarter or something like that a three and a half he everybody we're praying around the table for the food and then he looks at his father and says mommy prayed why did you say Amen so sorry it was the other way around he looked at his mum and said daddy prayed why did you say Amen so she being the daughter of an apologist gave too long and Unser she was going on and on and on and he was just staring at her and finally threw his arms up in the air and he went like this will somebody please explain to me what on earth has just happened here three and a half not long after that his mom had lost her car keys looking around the house she couldn't find it she just pause for a moment slapped her forehead and said I must be losing my mind he walked up to her knees her mummy whatever you do don't lose your heart because I'm in there three and a half three and a half how is it possible for us in our world to hurt such little ones when they have understood belongingness is a vital part of reality and ladies and gentlemen I'm here to say to you in the Christian worldview you belong to God first he pours that love into your relationships belongingness as the fountain from which all of your other relationships flow this is very unique and very distinctive to the judeo-christian worldview so you've got creation you got in for incarnation thirdly and quickly I've got the transformation God promises to change your heart nor the worldview does every other worldview asks you to change your own heart and earn the right learned the right to enter into his presence that's a reality that's what we are told to lift ourselves up by our own moral bootstraps but the story that God gives to us is that he brings a change in your heart and in mine I'm 69 years old today this year not today not today not today not although if you want to give me a gift it'll be fine you know no just kidding 69 years old this year it was a the age of 17 from a life of meaninglessness when I turned my life over to Jesus Christ I never dreamed what he was gonna do with me in me through me for me yes there have been valleys yes there have been shadows yes there have been long tunnels but there's never been a moment but that I have known he brought my feet onto solid ground and because of him I have a light into the future because of him I have an arm around my law in my life as he carries me through its that transformation of my heart they're ultimately as it happened in my heart and our brothers and sisters actually my sister was the first to lead me into a knowledge of these kinds of things that my father's heart was ultimately changed and if you knew known my dad and the nasty temper with which he lived when my dad's life was transformed it was so dramatic that people who knew him marveled at what had happened in change about five or six days from now I'm going to be in Louisiana and Baton Rouge I will be speaking at the Angola prison I was telling some friends before the meeting here Angola prison was the bloodiest prison in America over 5,000 prisoners in Angola prison 85% of them on life without parole the chaplain was telling me when you had come into that prison there was blood on the walls blood on the carpet blood on the ceilings when a prisoner was checked and he was given a knife to defend himself it's an all-male prison forty five on death row and as I walk past death row and shook hands with them prayed with them talked to them and then spoke to a group of about 80 or 90 of them who have joined a seminary distance learning program you see some years ago a warden by the name of burl Kane said I'll take over this prison I'll direct it if you allow me to do it my way he put a Bible in every cell he held Chapel every day he brought a seminary into the program and now it has become one of the safest prisons in America and I was told by the chaplains you could bring the prettiest young woman and walk up past these cells you won't hear a wolf call or a whistle or a nasty comment profanity is not allowed in this prison by either the inmates or the staff when you some of my buddies are gonna join me next week I just got a confirmation from the governor's office today that we are doing this next week and I'll tell you what when you walk away from that chapel service and see the prisoners in fact the letter that came to me today said would you like to have lunch with the chaplains and the team or would you rather have lunch with the prisoners I said with the prisoners don't even let me think about it because I've had a meal with them before when they have served it to me you talk about faith so viewlet they lead in the worship service when they're doing their Bible studies arms but muscles bulging like watermelons out there and one of the chaplains said to me the gang of thugs in this prison has now become a gang of pastors and one of them said to me when I asked him if he was there on life without parole he said yes I said how does it feel to know you never gonna walk out of here he said mister Zechariah's if you knew what I'd done and why I'm here I was really a prisoner outside he said I have come here now and I found Jesus Christ for the first time in my life I'm free he said pray for my parents they're outside and they think they're free they're in Chains creation incarnation transformation and lastly consummation God gives us a hope God gives us a promise God gives us the reality that time is not the end that there is an eternity but there is an eternity when jesus promised his disciples that he would rise again he promised he would rise again bodily to give them the empirical proof of the bodily resurrection that he was who he exactly claimed to be and gave hope and promise to a whole generation then and to life beyond that Billy Graham once told us sitting around a luncheon table that he was speaking once one-on-one conversation with Konrad Adenauer the Chancellor of Germany and had an hour broke the conversation dramatically and walked up to the window looked out of the ruins of the city and turned to Billy Graham and he said to him mr. Graham do you believe that Jesus Christ really rose again from the dead hey Graham said I looked at him and said mr. Chancellor if I did not believe that I would have no message to give to this world it's the resurrection of Jesus that keep me going I was with the Graham teen people last weekend and Billy Graham's latest book has just been released it's called where I am and it is taken from John 14 I go to prepare a place for you that where I am you may be also I go to prepare a place feel the hope I hope that God gives to you and to me by the resurrection from the dead and so I close with a simple illustration and then I'll call my buddy to come and speak to you mince of college football coach Lou little tells the story in his memoirs about a man a young student who was always very obedient very good very well-behaved but it was not a first string or so I never played much he was just there as a backup but he would notice this young man showing the facilities to his father whenever his father visited til one day the father passed away and the message came to the son and the University and so he went to the coach to a little and said do you mind if I not I'm not there this weekend sir I've got to attend my father's funeral he said no you can go so he went buried his dad and came back and the following weekend he looked at the coach and he said you mind if I play this game he said you're not number one we have a better quarterback he said I understand let me play if I'm not the best player on the field you can set me down coach Lou said he'd give my chance or two he was red hot played a brilliant game the best game he'd ever played and I skipped through the game after it was over he put his arm the coach put his arm around him and he said you know I used to watch you walk around with your dad showing him all of the places from a distance I never wanted to intrude but now that he's passed away you did this for him didn't you he said actually coach it's more than that my dad was blind and this was the first time he was ever gonna watch me play and I was playing this for him but you have the eternal perspective it redefines everything for you so you've got from the created order to the incarnation to transformation to consummation that's what it means to be human in the judeo-christian worldview god bless you thank you so much come on [Music] [Applause] well whenever I yeah I wish that I went first it's a real privilege to be tonight and Robbie and I thought spend 10 minutes telling you a bit about my spree where we go on to take some of your questions and I'm always particularly thankful when I have a chance thank you I'm always particularly thankful when I have a chance to speak about Christianity in a university context because it was in a university context that I first became a Christian I didn't show up in college as a Christian and and actually I had some really major misconceptions about the Christian faith when I first showed up really two major misconceptions and I'm just going to share with you briefly about each of those first I really thought that Christianity was for people who were stupid I thought that Christianity was for people who didn't think hard enough actually the first Bible that I ever had I was challenged to read through it by someone and as I did I would cross things out and add things and I'd write a big BS in the margin whenever I disagreed and Christians would sort of look over and say why do you have a BS in the margin of your Bible and I'd say oh that verse makes for a great Bible study I came over time to think that I was dead wrong in my assumption that Christianity had to be anti-intellectual I don't want you to take my word for that I want you to go out and look into it yourself that's what I did today actually back in Oxford where I live and teach professor Brian left out is giving his first lecture of the year in his series on the existence of God left I was the head professor in philosophy of religion at Oxford and each week in that series he'll make a rigorous defense of a different argument for God's existence now I wish I had time to talk to you about each one of those arguments now I don't feel free to bring that up in the QA if you want before a left-tail held the head post at Oxford in philosophy of religion it was held by a man named Professor Richard Swinburne Swinburne is probably the most influential British philosopher of religion of the last 60 years or so he still lives in Oxford he's going to be coming and guest lecturing and of course I'm teaching later in the year and one of the things that he'll talk about in that lecture is a book that he published in 2000 three it's called the resurrection of God incarnate and in that book he argues that on the available evidence today it's 97 percent probable that Jesus truly miraculously rose from the dead after having died confirming that he is the God that he claimed to be now that might sound like a crazy claim to you it certainly sounded like a crazy claim to me but I just couldn't believe that there were people of this stature who were writing about these things and coming to conclusions like that and being able to defend them we're talking about a book that's published by Oxford University Press someone who's considered the foremost philosopher of religion in all of Britain and who can Abele defend that claim at top academic conferences all around the world and I've seen him do it and for me at least that forced me to the position where I had to say it has to be possible to be fully committed to intellectual rigor and also to be a fully committed Christian I think I was wrong that Christianity is for people who don't think hard enough I also think I was wrong about a second misconception I had about Christianity and this one was really about the central message of the Christian faith to me Christianity was just a bunch of outdated rules it was like those 613 laws that Ravi mentioned and for me they were really just like some of the crazy old laws that are still on American law books technically but they're now irrelevant and out-of-date and no one would think that they had any meaning I found a couple of those laws as I was putting this together so apparently in Baltimore it's illegal to take a lion to the movies and it's pretty disturbing to think that at some point someone felt the need to make that law and in Oklahoma this is my favorite one it's illegal to have a sleeping donkey in your bathtub after 7 p.m. why anyone would think that would be okay before 7:00 p.m. no idea but I used to think of Christianity a bit like this a load of weird out-of-date impossible to follow rules but when I began to look deeper during my first year of college what I found was that the meaning of Christianity was completely different from what I thought it was and I can remember thinking to myself why didn't someone tell me about this sooner if someone had told me what this was really about I would have signed up ages ago and what I found was that Christianity isn't primarily about rules it's primarily about relationships and there's one story that Jesus told which I especially helped me to see this it's a story about a son some of you will know it it's a son who breaks every rule he demands his inheritance early from his father then he abandons his family then he wastes what his father had worked his whole life to provide on wild living and meaningless life eventually the Sun hits rock bottom he decides to return home and to beg his father for a job now the son would have known that in that ancient Jewish culture if a son lost his inheritance and then returned to his village what was supposed to happen was that the whole village would gather around him and shout he has been cut off from his people that's what was supposed to happen to this son instead at the mere sight of the son when the father seized the son still far off in the distance the father takes off running like an embarrassing fool and he throws his arms around his son and he kisses him and he welcomes him home now I'm sure that the father in this story wasn't pleased about the rules that had been broken I'm sure he took that seriously but the Father's love for his son and his desire for relationship completely overshadowed everything else the son simply says I was wrong and I'm sorry but before he can even get the words out of his mouth the father throws his arms around him and squeeze him tight he embraces him just as he is and then to show the son just how committed he is to having him home again he puts the best robe around his shoulders he puts the family ring on his finger sandals on his feet and then he goes and he kills his best animal and he throws a huge party for his son so often in this life you were going to be asked to believe that your value as a human being depends on how well you adhere to other people's rules and how well you meet their expectations that you're only worth getting excited about if you've been impressive or successful or beautiful Christianity says otherwise Christianity says that the best forms of love are not about deserving they're not about what we earn or merit or accomplished they are simply about being a child the son in this story he broke every rule but he was a son he was family and that was more than enough and Jesus told that story as a picture of God's love for us love that is unconditional love that cannot be earned by following the rules love that cannot be lost by breaking the rules and so as a Christian you can stop competing to be loved and just enjoy it if someone asked me to sum up my whole experience of the Christian life in one sentence that might be it you could stop competing to be loved and I could just start enjoying it look I hope every one of you is tremendously successful here in college and beyond I hope you get high GPAs and scholarships and championships and promotions at work and all of that good stuff but most of all I hope you will know you are unconditionally loved by God and invited into relationship with him and I hope that that will be the most important truth about who you are as a human person that what will define you as a human will be the only thing about you that can never change the only thing about you that can never change that you are unconditionally loved by God and invited into relationship with him thank you so much for listening and invite Robbie back up and we'll take your questions [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you again at this time we're gonna start our QA process and here is the the ground rules for that again remember to be clear concise and relevant to the topic and if you would like to we are going to have the mic for microphone right here but they're going to be two staff members over here to just check to make sure that they're that your questions are clear concise and relevant so if you do have a question on your paper and you would like to to ask that to either Vince or Ravi please begin making your way over here to these ladies and they will then give you the opportunity to come to the microphone if you're going to ask the questions via Twitter we have a couple people checking those as well remember to make sure that your questions have hashtag rzi M Pitts and that way we can get to those I'm going to ask the opening question to - Ravi and Vince and then we are going to begin having the audience ask questions as well thank you again and sorry for the the sound problems that we seem to have but we've overcome them very much so Ravi you said in your talk this evening all other worldviews outside of the judeo-christian worldview call us to earn our way why is an attempt to earn our way such a bad way to be human again I apologize [Music] I'll resist comment it's a great question and I will probably answer it in a tangential way and then get to the heart of it I have a friend in Atlanta Georgia he might even be watching this program he came from a very strong Hindu background he was a computer systems engineer type guy we became very good friends and he would come every week and ask me question after question after question and please just be going in circles the whole time my wife was from Canada would marvel at this and she would say he asked the same thing last Sunday you know let's see yeah and why did he ask it again I said because he's Indian we just keep going in circles we like the circular view of life we do it again and again and again then one day he came up with this question for me he said Ravi ji which is a respectful term he said you know I was thinking he said when I borrow money from a bank my bank manager is kind enough to tell me how much I owe and how long it is going to take for me to pay it off I know what I owe and what time I have in which to pay it back he said actually my bank manager is kinder than the karmic law because in karma I don't know how much I owe and I don't know how many incarnations I need to have in order to pay it off I said I didn't ask the question you did you tell me about it and then I told him a conversation I had with the chief Buddhist monk women's monk only move a woman Buddhist monk ordained in Thailand it had to go to Sri Lanka to be ordained because in Thai Buddhism they didn't do that the ordination of women she got ordained came back she has a PhD from McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario Canada brilliant gal so she and I were talking and we were asking each other questions and finally one day I said to her is every life a rebirth is rebirth a rebirth she said yes I said in every birth you're paying for the previous birth she said that's right I said if you start from now and go back to the beginning it's a finite number of births you have had from now going backwards you've not had an infinite number of births she said that's right I said so you've had a finite number of births she said that's right I said what were you paying for in your first birth if every birth is a rebirth and in every birth you're paying for your previous birth what were you paying for in your first birth she paused and looked at me and said we don't ask those questions and I told it to my friend and he looked at me and he said you know the longer I am listening to what you have to say the more I am totally taken up by what the cross of Jesus Christ is all about he said I cannot earn my karmic right I simply don't even know how much I owe every life every day I wonder how much I really owe and all of this and so if you look at whether all the pantheistic were pantheistic worldview z-- they have to pay they have to pay but they never know when they have paid enough that is unknown to them if you were talked to a devout Muslim he would honestly say to you would you say how do you get to paradise he'll say your good deeds have to outweigh your bad deeds and you ask him do you know if you have reached that says yes I know and I had a friend from Iraq who was telling me that every Friday he would walk to the farthest mosque in order to count the number of City would take to take care of all the bad things he done the rest of the week to earn the right for his good deeds to outweigh his bad deeds it's amazing the psychological aspect of the world views move in that direction but in the judeo-christian worldview you have the offer of Christ to forgive what you and I can never make up by our sure good deeds you see Jesus Christ didn't come into this world to make bad people good he came in this world to make dead people sin is not just a transgression sin is also a missing of the mark you missed the mark so our very lives no matter how good we are misses the mark of beating the glory of God salvation is a gift in the Christian world you and then with gratitude you live out your life in demonstration of that appreciation this is very unique very unique unmatched in any other worldview offered just quickly add a sort of personal experience to this because I think sometimes what's behind the question is a temptation to think actually we don't know that much so so maybe I can work it off I'm not that far in debt I live a pretty good life and I just had an experience a few years ago where a guy who I didn't treat well when I was younger when we were teenagers he wasn't a very nice kid neither was i I can remember putting him down and taking every opportunity I could to do so and I found out a few years ago that he had taken his life that he had committed suicide and it made me ask the question you know would that have been the case had I been kind to him and I offered my hand to him rather than pushing him down and I I don't know the answer to that question some of you would know that the Bible says the wages of sin is death I had read that line many many times I don't think I had ever really felt the full force of it we see so little of the rippling effects of our bad deeds of our sins God sees things from a perspective that's very different and I wouldn't want to see what all the rippling effects of my unkind words have been over the years not just in that one person's life but in so many other lives as well perhaps some of us have also had the experience of of maybe making some moral progress in our lives something that perhaps we used to think was fine no big deal but now that we've moved past that we're able to look back on it and say actually that was pretty terrible what I used do I'm glad that's not something that I do anymore well imagine if you were God imagine how far along that process he must be a being who's perfectly holy what must our sin look like to him that even we can look back and say actually that thing that I thought was no big deal actually that was pretty bad from the perspective of a perfectly holy God what must that look like so I think both because we don't see the rippling effects of our actions and because our perspective is so finite if not the perspective of a holy God I think we really do underestimate just how much it is that we owe which makes the Christian story that much more remarkable that God would come and pay that price for us I think part of what it means to be human is to be in need of forgiveness hope this is working maybe not hello okay good thanks for being here guys it's great so this is a question about physician assisted suicide so this is for both of you I suppose I said so what we still lacked the ability to choose our birth and therefore accept our natality in the face of desires and autonomy fatality seems to be within our reach so I was wondering if you could discuss the issue of physician assisted suicide pursuant to your views on autonomy and denominate and if you think that the unknown fatality is necessary to be human sorry um do you think that unknown fatality is something that is necessary to be human I think I'm getting the last word I'm not earned let me let me get to the heart of the question then that is physician assisted suicide the basic question you're having is is it right to be proceeding with that and for a person to request that all of a physician is that really the heart of what you're saying sure you know my my brother is a physician and the surgeon at that too and he's actually chief of pain management in McMaster in Ontario Canada he faced a lot of these issues of people struggling with pain and pain is a very terrible thing with which to live I remember when I injured my back and that's why it's actually easier for me to stand even answering your question I have two titanium rods from l3 2 s1 with four clamps and it screws bolting me down I'm bound from mid back right into my sick from the tailbone after I injured my back and I remember there were days I would sit in my car and put my head on the steering wheel and cry say am I ever gonna get rid of this pain because I never dealt with I never want to take any prescription medication I just felt I didn't want to go that route I've heard physicians say a short-term solution could be a long-term problem so you take physical pain it's an awful thing you take emotional pain it's a terrible thing you take the breakdown of hope all of these things come into being all I know is if I were a physician I would not want to play God with a patient's life no more than I would want to play God with my own life and choose to take it there are long answers to this there are short answers to this there are schools of ethics and bioethics my own alma mater Trinity International University in Deerfield Illinois has a huge department in this right now I would just say as a general rule you always operate first by the rule and then you take where the contingencies come in that's the issue that I think we always live with in life and as a rule I would say that when you look at people who have lived with a lot of pain and endured a lot of pain and whose faith has remained unshaken then I would say to you I would always trust God to be able to cushion and cradle me through any disappointment or any pain what kind of pain can I think of that would want to decimate this temple of the Living God rather than trusting him to take care of me one of the great struggles was in the life of a one called Annie Johnston Flint and he was born Annie Johnston and then was orphaned and she was adopted by the Flint family she grew up with many many melodies of course orphaned first and then she contracted rheumatoid arthritis she spent most of her life - stood up like a pretzel in pain in fact what my witness said the last time he saw her she had eight cushions around her body cushioning the sores because she'd been in bed that long the Biography I think was called the making of the beautiful by Roland Bingham she got cancerous she got blind she was incontinent so here she was orphaned rheumatoid arthritis incontinent cancerous blind she wrote a book of hymns and songs in those conditions one of them is this he giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater he sendeth more strength when the Labor's increase to added affliction he addeth his mercy to multiply trials his multiplied peace when we have exhausted our store of endurance when our strength has failed aired the day's half done when we reached the end of our hoarded resources our father's full giving has only begun his love has no limit his Grace has no measure his power has no boundaries known unto men for out of His infinite riches in Jesus he giveth and giveth and giveth again beautiful him so he sustains and he gives and so let me just let me just close with this I'm not minimizing the agony of it I know I've been there at trying at seventeen to N at all and so I just say this to you when the state when statecraft becomes Soulcraft and we start defining things like it's okay for you to make that judgment call remember what I said about language how it'll die the death of a thousand qualifications you make this possible in contingency a and B it'll happen in cdef and it'll become as kind of a slippery slope in which man will suddenly end up playing God and euphemistically we may call it whatever we will but what we are really doing is not offering hope and sustenance we are telling people we are here to end your life and if this body is the Temple of the Living God I don't wish to profane it nor do I wish to legitimize the profanation of it I think there are other solutions and other ways that God will give us to strengthen the person who is struggling with hope you give a person hope and you give them love and you give them sustenance they will endure it and walk through the dark tunnel and the dark night of the soul that would be my answer to you [Applause] not really gonna add to that but just to say as as you were as I add to it just just to say that the verse that came to mind as as Robbie was talking was my heart is sorrowful even to death Jesus speaking in the garden the day before he knew that he was going to go to his death and so you know both emotionally the day before and in physical pain the next day jesus knew what it was to be so far along that spectrum of pain and suffering for there even to be that sense of even to death and one of the greatest cruelties of suffering is its isolation and so when Robbie says we can always give hope one of the reasons we can always give hope is because the Christian faith is the only one that has a God who always understands what it is to be in that place where my heart is sorrowful even to death and that's something we can always offer do you you know the name of Kevorkian in relation to that way you're seated somewhere here I'd like to look eyeball-to-eyeball here somewhere on there there you are sir some years ago I saw Kevorkian on a television program and he was with CNN with dr. Gupta who was their medical adviser it was a fascinating conversation but it all boiled down to how Kevorkian interpreted life he started off with his definition of being human - dr. Gupta and if you can I'm sure you can get it in their archives they can hear it and he basically said you know you're just a bunch of chemical blob here put together there's no purpose to your life he kept repeating that there what is their life's purpose there is no purpose so I live like that so the foundation on which he moved to his because he himself I think has passed away now but that I'm sure it's in their archives and that's something dr. Gupta never seemed to latch on to and asked him that's what you really think life is all about it starts off with what it means to be human and ends up ultimately with the loss of the value life - so just get that and you'll see the logical connection on the - good evening so I'm a Hindu my question for you is that through my you know cursory review of most religions it seems like they all have a common thread of answering the question which seems to plague us all which is what happens to us when we die it's the one question I think that a lot of us have difficulty with because we cannot answer it and so seems like this common thread is it gives us hope for the afterlife something better than what we have right now and it feels like I feel like a lot of religions that what they do is they put forth codes or rules of conduct to help us live a good life so that we can achieve this afterlife and so given this commonality what makes you believe that Christianity is the correct or right religion great question great question and your name is sue keto spell that for me su ke tu su Kido I think you've asked a very very important question first of all let me qualify a little bit and I'm sure you already know that that not all religions talk about an afterlife mainly the monotheistic ones do the pantheistic ones are reincarnation even the reincarnation in Buddhism and Hinduism is a little different in Hinduism is the transference of identity one into another in a different form but in Buddhism it's not even sure whether it's the identity that strands migrated or just another form of essence that is emerged a worldview is built not on one line of argument a worldview is built on a connected series of arguments and if a world we were just built on one line of argument I think this is a mistake naturalism often makes it'll take sort of one argument that it has in its favor and forget all the myriad other questions that emerge when I look at the person in the work of Jesus Christ this is the most important question I had to ask now granted I asked it in Reverse fashion because I was on a bed of suicide a Bible was brought to me and I prayed a prayer of desperation I grant you that I just had no hope but I was read the verse jesus said because I live you also shall live I just said this is talking about a life that I don't have and maybe this is the life I need and so I prayed that prayer but then I made a prayer commitment right on that bed I was 17 and I said Jesus if you who you claim to be I will leave no stone unturned in my pursuit of truth because my goal was truth pragmatically it made sense for me to hang on to a life jacket that was thrown my way but then I began my years and years and years of study when you look at the life of Christ from the prophetic schema of hundreds of years before where he was going to be born what he was going to do what his name was going to be called how the manner of birth was the manner of life he was going to lead how he was going to die and then the resurrection from the dead the uniqueness about the New Testament or Old Testament Scriptures it's not a single author it's multiple authors as you know 66 books 40 different authors have read it and it is interesting that Paul a Saul of Tarsus who wrote one third of it came in a reverse fashion to the rest of them the disciples came birth life death resurrection and that's how they found new Jesus not so with Saul who came to be he became Paul he said when he was encountered the risen Christ she said that I may know him the power of the resurrection and the Fellowship of his suffering being made conformable unto his death he started with the resurrection but he said he needed to understand the cross because he came in reverse chronological order but he encountered the risen Christ the conversion of Saul of Tarsus and Thomas especially these true dramatic conversions are powerful witnesses of what happened Saul who was killing them he was sanding standing there watching Stephen being martyred and kept the clothes of those who were stoning him Thomas who said I'm not gonna believe until I see the resurrected Christ myself and he went to India where there are 330 million deities and he went and preached the gospel of Jesus and paid with his own life that kind of dramatic transformation took place not because of just one event but a connected series of events so here's the bottom line a worldview is built around four questions origin meaning morality and destiny origin meaning morality and destiny and there are three trust tests for truth logical consistency empirical adequacy and experience all relevant logical consistency empirical adequacy and experience Elevens three tests for four questions and when you take the prophecy of Christ hundreds of years before on his virgin birth you take the purity of his life unmatched totally unmatched till this very day then the death that he promised for the forgiveness of sins and then the resurrection as an Easterner I asked myself this question when Jesus was asked how he was going to demonstrate it if he were a fake hyouta said I'm going to spiritually rise again and they would never be able to falsify it but he said I'm bodily going to rise again that is an empirically falsifiable dictum all they would have had to show him was the body and say where is he you said he was going to rise again so it's in the whole schema of the prophetic corpus the hundreds of years the multiple authors pointing towards the same same person from his virgin birth to the purity of his life to the death on the cross for forgiveness when he said Father forgive them because they don't know what they are doing and then the resurrection again my four questions are answered correspondingly with truth on specific questions and coherently when all of the questions are put together and answers are given so to me first of all all religions are not the same they are actually they may their people say they're fundamentally the same superficially different actually they are fundamentally different and at best superficially similar and the fundamental difference that you see in Jesus Christ is in his uniqueness and exclusivity of his claim and the embrace that he gives to all humanity the perfection of his life the purity of his life the death and the resurrection to me that coherence of his answer convinces me that he is who he claimed to be and truth by definition is exclusive all truth needs to be exclusive Buddhism claims to be exclusive Hindus and claims to be exclusive they all have exclusive is exclusivity built into that but in the person of Christ you see the demonstration in his birth life death and resurrection so I say to me I'm convinced that because it go hares and because I have personally verified it in my own life and you can do that do and find that experience in that he is who he claimed to be just to add something that Robby's already mentioned but the the resurrection was particularly key for me in my investigation of this I was studying philosophy it was very important to me not to have to take some blind leap of faith and the fact that there was a publicly verifiable historical claim that I could look into was very very important and if you asked scholars a hundred years ago how did we come up with a Christian myth of the resurrection they would have said well one person told the truth to this person that person told this person that person told this person and a few generations down the line we had a crazy myth of the resurrection since then in the last couple of decades scholarship has really turned around on this question in part because there are a few places in the Bible in particular a passage at the beginning of first Corinthians 15 and you can have a look at it later but it's a it's a very early Creed and it lists all of the people and the groups that Jesus appeared to he appeared two individuals and two groups at different times in different places doing many different things and today even the most atheistic critical scholars date that passage that early Creed - almost immediately after Jesus's actual death and supposed resurrection so the legendary development hypothesis has been thrown out of the window what people know now is that there actually were a lot of people the passage says hundreds of people and then it says most of whom are still living almost as if to say go out and ask them yourself there were many people who were utterly convinced they had seen this man Jesus alive and interacting with him after he had died and so that then raises the question what can account for that what can account for this huge historical gap between what should have been the movement ending death of Jesus and then the explosion of Christianity Jews worshiping a man as God unthinkable the Sabbath changed from Saturday to Sunday unthinkable what bridges the gap which is there no matter what you believe that's the question for anyone Christians Brit that gap with the resurrection when I was looking into this as a university student I asked the top two skeptical New Testament scholars at Princeton to meet up for a coffee to talk about this because I said this is what I've just laid out for you this is what I'm seeing here's the big gap and I thought okay Christians fill that gap with the resurrection but surely those who aren't Christians must have equally plausible alternatives and I said to them how do you fill that gap and one of them glanced towards a mass hallucination hypothesis which isn't taken seriously in the literature she wasn't glancing towards it with any conviction either there's simply too much data too many appearances too many people hallucinations are things that happen to individuals not to groups the other one who was historian simply said I'm not interested in that question as a historian there was some sort of assumption that because it was a miraculous claim it was therefore not within the remit of proper history and I've never understood why so for me the resurrection the fact that the fact that you could have arguments that you can consider for that was that blew my mind I just assumed that's an ancient claim that we could just never know whether that happened or not but actually you can look into it and you can look at the facts and then you can ask the question what best explains the facts and the reality is that today in the scholarship the only explanation which is given any degree of credibility is the fact that Jesus actually rose from the dead every other explanation has been completely undermined and so I think it is a rational decision to say that actually happened and then to take that next personal step of praying a prayer like the one that I prayed which was God the Christian God I don't know if I'm talking to anyone but if I am I'd really like to know about it and I think that's a really powerful prayer and that God responds to that thank you sir before you go if you good if you don't mind one of my colleagues is here give her your email if you don't mind about it but I've written a book called Jesus among other gods I'll be happy to send it to you with my compliments when it'll come your way thank you thank you thank you for the opportunity to ask this question I've struggled for decades on whether or not I believe that God is good and for the past five years I have particularly struggled with these questions why did God allow Satan into the Garden of Eden why did God banish Satan to the earth and allow him to pour his hatred and evil out on people corrupting us further if God is love if he's love himself how did he allow that why would he you know have all of these uh why did he create us in the first place really if he knew all this was gonna happen and all the pain and suffering and we each have our own pain and suffering but God knowing all the pain and suffering why did he allow this church transpire that is such a good and reasonable question thank you for it I I wrote my PhD on the question of why a loving God would allow evil and suffering in the world because I think it's a really difficult question and I've spent years thinking about it and I still don't have an easy answer for you you've asked a couple of different questions one is about you know why would God allow there to be a being like Satan who could potentially have negative impact on us I do think that God is a God who loves many different types of beings the Bible seems to imply to us that angelic beings like Satan was we're not initially bad that Satan was initially an angel that was in fellowship with God and made a free decision to turn away from God and to use the powers that God had given him in ways that God never intended as a Christian I do think that God created different types of beings and just like an angelic being like Satan can have an impact on me I can also have an impact on lower beings like chickens and fish and other parts of our natural environment that I need to steward well God has created a system where we can have a real impact on each other and on different types of beings both for good and for bad and if God is going to give us the power to be good to one another part of what comes with that if he makes us genuinely free is the power to be bad to one another as well if God wanted to give me the power to help that kid youin who I spoke about earlier who I didn't help up and who I wasn't kind to if he wanted to give me the power to be good to him what came with that was also the power to push him down it's the very same power that I can use in one way or another way and I think God has created a world which is free and meaningful but that also means that there's a lot of devastation in it God is pictured as weeping in both the Old Testament and the New Testament because of that and I think part of the difficulty for us is that we see such a small slice of our overall existence if the Christian faith is true and we're going to live for eternity then what we see right now is literally just the first few moments of human existence it would be as if aliens had tapped into a feed from Earth and all they could see was the CCTV was a camera in the delivery room when I was being born and all they saw was the first few moments of my life they saw my mom be wheeled in screaming with pain I was an emergency cesarean section so they saw these doctors cutting her open with a knife then they saw me get taken out blood everywhere my mom screaming for me and these doctors take me out of the room if that's all that the aliens had seen they would think that the doctors were utterly evil in reality the doctors saved both my life and my mother's life on that day but it's very hard to judge sometimes someone's goodness when all you see is a thin slice of the history in which they've interacted that's why for me I think the really significant thing about Christianity is that there's a distinction between goodness being explained explained and goodness being displayed one of the ways you can be confident in someone's goodness even when you see suffering in the world is if you can explain it perfectly if you can say here's all the reasons that the person had for allowing all of these terrible things to happen that's very difficult to do we can give some general reasons but to say that about specific cases were not in position to do that but there's also a case of goodness displayed when my dad was rushed to the hospital a number of years ago the doctor came out and said we need to take them immediately into surgery we don't have time to explain everything now but there's a good chance that I'll have to receive an amputation and at the time it was very reasonable for me and my family to want to question that doctor to say is that really the best prognosis is he's just trying to get this over with now rather than trying to battle for my dad's leg and his health operation after operation we questioned him but what if that doctor had come to us and said dad's going to need significant blood transfusions during the operation and we're having trouble finding a donor but I'm a match and so I'm going to volunteer to give my own blood for your dad so that he can make it through the operation and be healthy if the doctor had done that then I would be right to say he is good because he had displayed his goodness with such an extravagant act of love and that would be true even though I still couldn't tell you all the reasons that he had for why he had to take my dad into the operation I couldn't explain his goodness but it had been displayed in such a way that I could be confident that he was good even though I didn't have a perfect explanation and I'm always struck by a line by Frederick Nietzsche atheist philosopher but he said the gods justified human life by living it themselves the only satisfactory response to the problem of suffering ever invented Nietzsche was talking about the ancient Greeks when he wrote that and in his bias he never made the connection to Christianity but I think as a Christian I can affirm that statement and say it's because I have a God who came down when he didn't have to and live to human life including terrible suffering and ultimately his death so that I could be healthy and live for all eternity that I can be confident that he has displayed his goodness even when my understanding is not full I hope that some help the question you've raised I'm sure you're aware is probably the hardest question for theism to face and it's probably it's the old question you know virtue and distress and vice and triumph has made atheists of mankind so at the heart of your question is beyond the Satan presence and all of that is the reality of pervasive suffering profound suffering endemic systemic and all of that I want to take you through four steps and also you'll be kind enough to leave your email with my colleague there Vincent I caught heard the book - Skaal why suffering I'd like to you have that Plus sent it on to you four things I want to say to you number one always think of a question and it's assumptions very important always think about it CS Lewis reminded us there's nothing so self-defeating as a question that has been asked without thinking it through and so in naturalism and that question is asked now I'm not saying you're not thinking it through you are thinking it through but when naturalism raises it has an evidence against the existence of God when they say there's such a thing as evil they have to assume that such a thing is good when they assume that such a thing is good they must assume that such a thing is a moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil so if there's evil is good it is good there's a moral law if there's a moral law they must pause it a moral lawgiver but that's whom they're trying to disprove and not prove because there's no moral lawgiver there's really no moral law there's no moral law there's no good if there's no good there's no evil the question actually self destructs the assumption it makes is very profoundly antithetical to the worldview so naturalism can't legitimately say this is evil it may say it's uncomfortable may say I don't like it but you invoke the category of evil you have to climb up the ladder till you around now somebody might say why do I need a moral lawgiver for a simple reason that every time we raise the problem of evil and suffering it's either raised by a person or about a person which means we assume the person has entrance naturalism cannot make that assumption because we are totally the random product of collocations of atoms and so on so the question actually points to a God rather than saying therefore there is a an argument against the existence of God it actually has to bring him into the paradigm that's the first thing the second thing I say to you is that the possibility of worlds goes like this God could have created nothing God could have created a world where we would only choose good God would have could have created a world where there was no such thing as good or evil or lastly God could have created this kind of a world where there was a possibility of good and evil this is the only world in which love is possible love is not possible in the other three so the only end it's all love is the supreme ethic this is the only best of all possible worlds in which love is possible the third thing I want to say to you is that the naturalist raises the questions is a trilemma god is good god is all-powerful yet there is evil these three poles of an argument God is all-powerful God is good yet there's evil it is incoherent why is it a trilemma why is it not a Quadra lemma why not a quinta lemma God is also all-knowing God also has eternity in perspective so why do we only take three in order to raise the question there are other components and so while it's so real I just say this to you in enclosing trying to get around this creates a huge dilemma in the heart and so you go back to the question and says my question legitimate I don't think it is legitimate in naturalism I can't defend it love is not possible and any other religious worldview it's only in the judeo-christian worldview so let me give you a little application here and I hope the book will take you even further I want to thank you for your courage and the clarity with that you've raised it I live in Atlanta and in Georgia there's a young gal by the name of Ashlyn blocker she suffers from a malady called SEPA congenital insensitivity pain with anhidrosis even the sweat glands and her body really do not work but she's insensitive to pain there are a handful of people in this world who've been born with that malady they don't feel pain and the mother was on television saying you know people may think it's a wonderful life but we have to watch her all the time if she steps on a nail while she's in sports it could just lacerate that skin she could bleed she could get an infection and so she has to be examined after every sporting game she could put her hand on a burning stove and not know it's being burned and so she was being interviewed and she was crying about this problem that the doctors were not able to solve why she doesn't feel any pain they have not solved that mystery she ended the program by saying every night I pray a prayer God please let my daughter be able to feel pain and I just say to you is in our finite world if pain is a possible indicator for things that are wrong is it really impossible in an infinite world for God not to be able to explain that to your heart and mind on why it is there and why this disjunction love is the supreme ethic pain is the greatest reminder of all that is wrong and that's why he went to the cross and 'red the pain to show us his love and through the resurrection gives us the hope that with his life we can find that hope and meaning and God bless you as you think about that thank you very much [Applause] [Music] check-check this next question is going to be our last question of the evening just because we're running out of time so thank you hello thank you very much for thank thank you very much for being here tonight and what I would like to ask is a three-part question that are all interrelated one what is itself the image of God what does it mean for us to be made in the image of God and third why do we find that so repulsive and the reason I say that is because we as humans will take any excuse we can to worship anything and everything in this world with two exceptions we absolutely hate other people and in and of our flesh we hate other people and we hate God in and of our flesh without his prompting so what is it about the image of God and being made in that that we find repulsive okay can I ask you a simple question are you a follower of Jesus yourself yes you are fair enough then I can give you a shorter answer I consider myself Protestant and that's fine that's fine I expect to see both wesley and calvin in heaven i think it's you framed it very well though i find that fascinating i think lewis actually addresses that in one of his books he says we are not so much repulsed by evil as often as we are repulsed by good because of its claims upon us and we often are haters more of the good then we are just so the evil only louis could come up with such an angle into a reality but let me answer your question briefly and have you read the book by Anthony flue there is no God no crossed out there is God and his own transit rider near into theism or at least 2d ISM before he passed away he has a section on this he talks a little bit about what the image of God really may acts correction I'm not thinking of that book that so that's another one on the compatibility as a book written by kit wood ki t wo OD it's an old one it was a Cambridge scholar at one time and it is called what is human and it takes the existentialist view and he takes the naturalist viewer a religious view of forget what - the one is the Christian view and he has a brilliant section on the image of God so the last name is kit wood and the book is what is human basically theological II there have been two aspects to what the image of God is all about one is a moral reasoning the moral framework okay and the second is self determination that we have responsibility to make our own choices those are the two aspects theologically speaking of what the imago Dei is all about i have moral reasoning and i have the self determination you know i saw I was raised in a lion safari once or safari in South Africa and we were about 30 feet away from a family of lions that was feasting upon a felled felled elephant and they were chomping away and licking their chops you know enjoying all of this it was too close to comfort there the beasts of the field they're the beasts of the field that's how they live they destroy each other they pummel each other they bruise each other we don't take them to a court of law say why did you hurt this elephant you know you're not to have been doing this that's the way the wild beasts are but funny thing is even if we had hurt that lion other elephant we could end up in a court of law because we are responsible we are moral beings we have to show the rightness of what ought to be done and what ought not to be done moral reasoning this is where I think America is today we are struggling with how to find an antique referent how do we hang our peg on an absolute moral law we don't like it and the moment we make a moral pronouncement somebody stands up with anger and says what gives you the right and the moment they say what gives you the right they are implying there's a moral responsibility to even having the right you see it's not just a question of chemistry and physics I could just say well my neurons went kicked into action and that's why I'm doing this now they're asking me to bear responsibility moral reasoning is a distinctive aspect of being human and then self-determination you have the freedom to choose and the freedom freedom to reject it's the choices that we make God has given us this powerful possibility right from the garden the old story and I'll close with this you see they were given all the privileges of everything except one do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil people may laugh at that but they don't realize they live it out every day the Garden of Eden story is lived out every day what was the point Satan said you know he lied to you why don't you do it because you become God God said no don't do it and the day you do it you kind of die who turned out to be right see God told us we were going to destroy ourselves what was the test don't play God don't become the definer of good evil let God be the definer of good and evil that was really what the test was all about and now as we have chosen to define good and evil turn on the evening news at night and you see what we've done to this earth but the moment we come up with a prescription of moral responsibility somebody wants to punch you in the face for that because I have no right which in itself is a moral assumption we talk of human rights what are those we first gotta define what it means to be human so why do people object to this because the moment you bring God in you bring in accountability and moral responsibility so as I close I just say we thank you all for coming here tonight you've given us such a significant amount of your time Vince and I are honored that you are here the most important thing I would say to you is you have a choice you have a choice God makes us claim upon your life and promise us to give you meaning purpose and the fulfillment for which he's made you if you're a skeptic just take the Gospel of John and start reading it and ask God to speak to you Israel do revealed to himself to you through that word and I'll tell you what the day that light Dawn's in your high in your own heart where you realize he is really claimed to be the way the truth and the life and that he came to give you an abundant life you yourself will see this world through different eyes heaven above his softer blue wrote the hymn writer earth around his softer green something lives in every hue Chrysler sighs have never seen birds with gladder songs or flow stars with deeper Beauty shine since I know as now I know I am his and he is mine he's made you for himself his love for you is because of his value that he places on you he will use you in ways that'll amaze and surprise you what it means to be human is in general terms what it means to be a human being submitted to God can be in particular terms and that you can experience in your own life thank you again everyone for giving us thank you

Channel: The Bible-smith Project

Views: 305,017

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Id: tMz41KcYA7g

Length: 117min 26sec (7046 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 02 2016