Notes from Ravi's appearance (Part 1 of 3)
I had a chance to see Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias and some of his staff in person this past Wednesday. It's taken me this long to get around to going through my notes on the event.
The first person to speak was Amy Orr-Ewing, on the topic "Why Trust the Bible?"
She started out with an interesting statistic: Jesus asks 157 questions in the gospels. Her point was that if we are to emulate Jesus when we witness to others, we must begin by asking the person questions to draw out what they think and believe. At the very least it shows we care about them.
This struck me today as being a major point. We often think of witnessing as just another one of the things that Jesus told us to do, along with repenting and being baptized. We often forget the reason we are called to evangelize: that our Lord loves the people we are talking to. If I, the person representing Jesus to the "witnessee", don't love that person, how can I expect that person to believe my message that God loves him/her enough to send His Son to die for them?
Amy went on to talk about three common questions that apologists have to deal with:
According to Amy, question 1 stems from the modern belief that there is no such thing as absolute truth anymore. She had no real answer for the question on absolute truth except to suggest that we bring people into the scriptures by showing how the texts hold together internally as well as with other external documents.
The answer question 3 also supports the answers for question 1 in a way. One thing that makes the Bible different from other holy books is the amount of scrutiny it has undergone since its creation. This scrutiny has been done both by believers as well as unbelievers. This is contrast to other religions which are often very reluctant to let outsiders look into the manuscript origins of their holy books. She pointed to parts of her own Bible where the translators had included footnotes showing alternative phrasing and words that have been found in the various copies that the translators had at their disposal.
One interesting piece of information that came out in discussing question 3 was this: we Christians often equate our Bible with the qur'an. This is incorrect. Because Muslims see the qur'an as God's perfect revelation of Himself, and since the qur'an is considered by Muslims to be the miracle that proves Islam is true, we should equate the qur'an with Jesus (who was called "The Word".)
The first person to speak was Amy Orr-Ewing, on the topic "Why Trust the Bible?"
She started out with an interesting statistic: Jesus asks 157 questions in the gospels. Her point was that if we are to emulate Jesus when we witness to others, we must begin by asking the person questions to draw out what they think and believe. At the very least it shows we care about them.
This struck me today as being a major point. We often think of witnessing as just another one of the things that Jesus told us to do, along with repenting and being baptized. We often forget the reason we are called to evangelize: that our Lord loves the people we are talking to. If I, the person representing Jesus to the "witnessee", don't love that person, how can I expect that person to believe my message that God loves him/her enough to send His Son to die for them?
Amy went on to talk about three common questions that apologists have to deal with:
- Isn't it all a matter of interpretation?
- Where did the canon come from?
- What makes the Bible different from all other holy books?
According to Amy, question 1 stems from the modern belief that there is no such thing as absolute truth anymore. She had no real answer for the question on absolute truth except to suggest that we bring people into the scriptures by showing how the texts hold together internally as well as with other external documents.
The answer question 3 also supports the answers for question 1 in a way. One thing that makes the Bible different from other holy books is the amount of scrutiny it has undergone since its creation. This scrutiny has been done both by believers as well as unbelievers. This is contrast to other religions which are often very reluctant to let outsiders look into the manuscript origins of their holy books. She pointed to parts of her own Bible where the translators had included footnotes showing alternative phrasing and words that have been found in the various copies that the translators had at their disposal.
One interesting piece of information that came out in discussing question 3 was this: we Christians often equate our Bible with the qur'an. This is incorrect. Because Muslims see the qur'an as God's perfect revelation of Himself, and since the qur'an is considered by Muslims to be the miracle that proves Islam is true, we should equate the qur'an with Jesus (who was called "The Word".)
posted by Mike at 9:42 PM
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