UNDERSTANDING THE TIMES
The Newsletter of Contend for the Faith, Inc

1 Chronicles 12:32

OCTOBER 2001

Believers Must Contend for the Faith After September 11, 2001

Each session was videotaped so the messages would reach a wider audience than only those who attended the event.

Thank you to all of you who prayed for me in preparation and for speaking at this conference.

A LARGE item of praise is that I flew home on Monday September 10. If the flight had been scheduled for the next day who knows when I would have gotten back to Charlotte.

I am continuing to teach a class on Wednesday nights at Calvary Church called Love Your God With All Your Mind. The class will continue through Nov. 14. The class meets in room 233 from 7 – 8:15 pm and is free and open to everyone.

I have also been teaching a Sunday School class at Calvary when the main teacher, David Ingrassia, has to be out of town. David’s class meets in the Chapel at 9:15 am and is open to all. David is currently giving an excellent overview of the entire Bible. When he is away, I have been teaching on topics with an eye toward equipping believers to contend for the faith.

The annual National Conference on Apologetics and Other Religions, sponsored by Southern Evangelical Seminary, is at Forest Hill Presbyterian Church in Charlotte on November 9 & 10. This should be a fantastic conference with some of the best apologists in the world giving lectures. The keynote speaker is Dr. John Ankerberg. I will be doing a workshop on how to reach skeptics for Christ.

This conference is on Friday evening and all day Saturday. If you cannot attend on Saturday or you cannot afford the conference, you can still come to the Friday night session absolutely free. From 7 – 9 pm Dr. Ankerberg and Dr. Frank Beckwith will each be speaking. For more information on the event call 704-847-5600.

PRAYER REQUESTS

In a previous newsletter we made known the need for the ministry of a projector to be used with a laptop computer for presentations. Several people responded with generous donations toward this item. We are grateful to the Lord for your generosity. We only need about $1600 more to buy a top-notch projector that will serve our needs for many years. Please pray that the rest of this money will be provided.

We will be meeting soon with a large church here in Charlotte about the possibility of receiving support from them as home missionaries. Please pray that they will choose to help us. The sooner we have sufficient support raised, the sooner I will be able to focus on ministry full time.

Please continue to pray that the Lord will open doors for us to help Christians better understand and contend for the faith. In light of recent events, millions of people are realizing there are real differences in religious beliefs, but they wonder why Christianity is superior to Islam or any other religion. The need is tremendous for believers to be able to explain and defend the faith in a way that makes sense in a pluralistic world.

CONTENDING FOR THE FAITH

UNDERSTANDING HOW TO THINK: Part Three

In two previous newsletters we discussed the nature of truth and the laws of logic. In this issue we will apply these tools in dealing with some of the most prominent and divisive issues we face in our society today.

TESTS FOR TRUTH

One of the greatest tools that we have to detect errors in claims made by those who oppose Christianity and/or biblical principles is the process by which we can spot what are called “self-defeating arguments.” A self-defeating argument is one that fails to satisfy its own criteria of validity or truthfulness. The statement itself provides the information to defeat itself.

Let’s give some examples of this. If someone comes up to you and says, “I cannot speak a word of English,” you might chuckle because he just used English to tell you he cannot speak it. This is a self-defeating statement. Likewise, if someone claims, “No English sentences are more than three words long,” this statement refutes itself since it is longer than three words.

Another way to describe these statements is to say they are unaffirmable. That is, they cannot meaningfully be affirmed because they make no sense. If someone claims, “I do not exist” his claim is actually unaffirmable because he must exist in order to make the claim.

Now let’s apply this to the field of contending for the faith. In our society today not only do many people deny that Christianity is the only way to heaven, but they even deny that truth exists at all or that anyone can know it. Surveys by the Barna Institute and others show that this kind of thinking has infiltrated the church as well. One survey I read about said that, when asked if there is such a thing as absolute truth, more than sixty percent of professing Christians answered “No.” If that is true, then more than sixty percent of the church is not Christian! If there is no absolute truth, then how can we be followers of the One who claimed to be the way, THE TRUTH, and the life (John 14:6)?

So in a discussion someone may assert, “There is no such thing as truth.” Of course, he has just made a truth claim about the existence of truth, so his statement is unaffirmable and self-defeating. A good response would be to ask, “Is that statement true?”

Or someone might say, “No one should try to make other people believe what he believes.” You might respond, “Really? Do you believe that? Then why are you trying to get me to believe that also?” The argument is self-defeating.

LIVING IN THE REAL WORLD

Now let's show how some of the arguments over prominent issues of our day are self-defeating.

A man who lived a homosexual lifestyle wrote a letter to the editor of our newspaper and basically said “Because they criticize the homosexual lifestyle, Christians are directly responsible for the suicides of many gay people.” He was saying this so that Christians would stop criticizing homosexuality as wrong and immoral. But there is a huge problem with his argument.

I wrote a response to the paper in which I said this man either did not believe his own argument (i.e. criticism does not lead to suicide) OR he must want Christians to commit suicide because of his criticism of their beliefs and lifestyle.

Do you see how his argument defeated itself? If criticism of beliefs can lead to suicide, then he should not criticize the beliefs of anyone else for fear they might kill themselves. Using logic and reason, his argument intended to force Christians to be quiet about homosexuality is easily defeated.

If someone says, “Hey, you are a Christian, right? Well doesn’t the Bible say not to judge? So don’t judge me!” An appropriate response might be, “Is it your judgment that judging is wrong? Then why are you judging me for judging you?”

Non-Christians will sometimes say, “You should not go around telling people what they do is wrong.” Why, then, do they go around telling Christians what they do is wrong?

Someone will say, “You are just trying to force your views on others!” We can respond, “Is that your view? Then why are you trying to force it on me?”

The reason for pointing out these errors of thinking in the arguments of others is not to make them look foolish or to make them feel defeated. We are to defeat arguments, not people (2 Cor. 10:4-5). By clearing away the erroneous reasons people hide behind to reject Christianity we can help them see the truth, beauty, and reasonableness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jude 3,
Dave