Ep. 309: Top 5 Questions about Christianity -Part 2

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the indoubt podcast, where we explore the challenging topics that young adults often face. Each week we talk with guests who help answer questions of faith, life, and culture, connecting them to our daily experiences and God’s word. For more info on indoubt, visit indoubt.ca or indoubt.com.

Daniel Markin:

Hey, welcome to indoubt. This is Daniel Markin. And today we’re continuing the conversation with Andy Steiger in Part Two of our little series on Questioning Christianity. We’re looking at various questions that people ask about the Christian faith, whether it’s regarding to church or Jesus or even good and evil, and especially we spend some time there today talking about good and evil. Always great talking with Andy. You’re going to really enjoy this episode.

Hey, well, welcome back to Part Two of Questioning Christianity discussion with Andy Steiger. He’s the President of Apologetics Canada and a dear friend of mine. Andy, good to have you back.

Andy Steiger:

Good to be here, Daniel.

Daniel Markin:

Hey, we had a great time last time talking through two things. Well, we heard a little bit about your ministry, what’s going on with Apologetics Canada. Then we heard about this idea of Christianity, the Christian story and some of the discussion that as you had led this class and kind of like as you mentioned, it was sort of like a dialogue, but you were just talking and people were interacting with it. But you talk about what is the Christian story and how is the Christian story compelling? And then for your second session, you were talking about the life of Jesus and how is the life of Jesus compelling? And if you’re interested, we got into that last episode, you can go find that and maybe that’ll be more helpful to you to listen to that.

But what we’re going to do is we’re going to continue our Questioning of Christianity with Session Three, which we’re going to be talking a little bit about questioning the Bible. But Andy, as we think about just a recap, and maybe you can give us a brief recap of what we discussed in the last two, but what stood out to you in our discussion last time?

Andy Steiger:

Well, for those of you that were listening to our previous discussion, one of the things we’re doing is we’re just talking about Christianity. We’re talking about theology. And what it does is it invites people into the conversation and it gives them an opportunity and a space to raise questions. And this is something I love about Christianity. Christianity is a part of a robust intellectual tradition of people that have thought deeply about life and that have asked questions. And this is something that I think is so important for people to appreciate is that with coming to Jesus, it’s not like shut up and sit down. It’s like engage in the conversation and be part of this relationship. And you’re allowed to ask questions and you’re allowed to think through these important aspects of life. And the truth is, I can’t think of anything more important to do.

It baffles my mind that you can have human beings born on this beautiful rock spinning in this dark vacuumous space around a giant ball of fire, and never just stop and think about the fact that this is bizarre. This is crazy, this is amazing. Could this be a part of something so much bigger than just living and dying? I mean, that, to me, I think, is really crazy that people could live their whole lives and not think about the fact that they’re alive and what is this all about? So that’s what Questioning Christianity is about. It’s about giving people the space to talk, ask questions, and to think deeply on these important issues.

Daniel Markin:

Absolutely. And so one of the things that stuck out to me is we talked a little bit about the idea of Jesus being enough and we really nuanced that and talked about what that can look like in your own life. Because that can often be just a platitude, hey, Jesus is enough, but in maybe the most existential crisis you’re in or even just the building blocks of life. One of the things that I love about Christianity, and I often say this, is no matter where you are on the intellectual spectrum, whether you consider yourself, you’re like, “I’m just a very simple person, not a deep theologian,” or whether you are a high level theologian and you love getting into the nerdy stuff, philosophy, Christianity offers answers that are satisfying no matter where you are in that spectrum. And I love that. I think it’s so important. And so, Jesus is enough.

Andy Steiger:

Daniel, one of the things we could say, I think that the Apostle Paul is getting at in Colossians is that not only is Jesus enough, he’s more than enough. This is one of my favorite pieces of scripture. Paul says, “My goal is that they may,” this is Colossians 2:2 (NIV). “My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” I love that. In Jesus are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. And then he says, “And I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine sounding arguments. For though I’m absent from you in body, I’m present with you in spirit and delight to see how disciplined you are and how firm your faith in Christ is.”

And I just want to say this, Daniel, and I’m curious if this was your experience as well. I’m sure it was. But for me, I did my BA in biblical studies, then I went on to do a master’s degree, and then I went on to do a PhD. And in each of those endeavors, I always wondered, “Oh man, am I going to come across something that’s going to shake my faith and show me that this is all just a bunch of wishful thinking?” And man, every time I’ve dug deeper into my faith, and this is one of the reasons I love doing Questioning Christianity, every time I’ve asked questions and I’ve dug deeper, my faith has grown more strong and solid. And I’ve seen that what Paul’s saying is so true, in Jesus are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Daniel Markin:

And that passage, to me, I just ponder that one. All, like hidden, the deepest treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Do you remember in Lord of the Rings, how the dwarves mined? They just went so deep, deep, deep into the mines, into the earth, they just kept going deeper and deeper and deeper and they were searching for mithril.

Andy Steiger:

It’s not a full conversation with Daniel unless at some point you get to Tolkin.

Daniel Markin:

What? We never talk about Tolkin.

Andy Steiger:

No, I love it. Sorry man, I interrupted you. Keep going, keep going. Take me down into the depths of.

Daniel Markin:

Well, just the image of their whole desire was to dig deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. And you’re like, “How much deeper can we go?” And they go. And even as deep as you could go into the vaults of the treasure of the wisdom of Christ, there are answers there. It’s crazy. And you can ponder that for a long time, that all wisdom and knowledge, the most hidden secrets of the universe, are found in Jesus. That, to me, is, I don’t know, I could ponder that for a while.

But okay, let me just get us onto here Session Three, which is questioning the Bible. And as you were teaching this class, one of the things you guys were doing is now you’re talking about the Bible. And so what do you find, what does our culture, maybe some of your friends, neighbors, what do they think about the Bible? Is it just a book? Is it kind of like a cool piece of literature? What do you find as you’ve done ministry across Canada, what’s the common perception of what the Bible is?

Andy Steiger:

That’s an interesting question and it changes dependent upon who you’re talking to. But a lot of people tend to want to look at the Bible from a couple different vantage points that are problematic. And so one of them that I’ve seen is people want to look at the Bible as a magic book. It is a book that there’s something magical about it. And it’s interesting because a lot of people get that because there are a lot of religions in which their holy books are viewed more like magic books. And by that I mean they’re viewed, and I’m not trying to be derogatory, I’m just saying that they’re viewed as though the words, the utterances of the words, are where the power is. This is true of Islam, it’s true of Buddhism.

So for example, you’ll be in a Buddhist country, like I’ve been in many times, and I remember one time asking, “What are the monks chanting?” I was asking the translator. And they said, “Well, I don’t know.” And I’m like, “Well, what do you mean you don’t know?” And they’re like, “Well, they’re chanting in Sanskrit, the language that the scriptures are written in.” But people don’t know what Sanskrit means, but for them they don’t need to because the power in their mind is in the utterance of the words.

But Christianity is really unique because for us the Bible is not a magic book. It’s a meaning book. The power is found in the meaning of the words. What is the story that’s being communicated? What is God seeking to tell about, like we talked about last podcast, about the purposes of what he’s doing and about who we are in him. And so those are important aspects of two different views that I often see because I often find that in North America people want to treat the Bible like a magic book in that, they’ll want to flip through it and put their finger on a verse and read that and be like, “There’s my wisdom for the day,” sort of idea. Instead of realizing that you would never read a story like that. A story is read and understood in its entirety, not chopped up into these verses. And the verses, of course, weren’t a part of the Bible in the beginning. We’ve added them later to be helpful. But I’m afraid that they’re not always helpful.

Daniel Markin:

I like what you’re saying about that. It’s not just a magic book. You don’t just flip to it. I mean, it’s a history book. It’s a philosophical book. It’s a book that is poetic. It has poetry in it. It’s a book that instructs. And I think just to say, “Wow, it’s just a nice story,” is way too simplistic. Because I would agree. It is. It’s a nice story. It’s the greatest story ever told. And yet it’s so much more than that.

Andy Steiger:

Yeah, because this isn’t a fairytale, this is a true story. And then this is a story that can and will change your life. And that’s the power of Christianity, by the way, is that this story brings you in and will transform you, and this is something that’s taken me a long time as a Christian to fully appreciate. Because often when you read the Bible, you’ll think that the miracles are the impressive part where Jesus is healing the blind or the lame or raises the dead to life. And what you realize as you get into this is that’s not the real amazing part. In fact, Jesus only does those as a sign to show you that he could do an even more impressive miracle.

And that that more impressive miracle is that Jesus can heal the broken, that he can mend broken relationships, that he can mend your broken relationship with God and see that restored to not just living forever but relationship with God forever, that you can live, that you can fulfill the purpose that you were created for through him. That’s the real miracle of the Bible. And so that starts to really change the way that you see the Bible and the way that you experience the Bible.

Now I want to tackle one other thing, Daniel, that I see as a misconception. Well, there’s two things with regards to the Bible. And this is something that happens when we do the Questioning Christianity that I love is people are able to raise questions like, “Hey, why is the Bible translated in all these, there’s so much translations and stuff.”

Daniel Markin:

And can we trust those translations? Why is there so many of them?

Andy Steiger:

Exactly. And shouldn’t we just be a King James only? So these are great conversations for us to have as we get into the fact that, well, actually the Bible, particularly the New Testament, is in Greek. So if you want to be like a purist, well, then you better learn Greek and read it in Greek because the King James is a translation. And the reality is, is it’s like, well, which King James are you reading? Because it depends upon how far you go back. And what you begin to realize is that language is living, it’s changing. And so translation is an ongoing process that you will always have to translate the Bible because language is constantly changing. And you’ll realize this if you just go back and read some old literature from Shakespeare to Canterbury Tales or whatever it might be. You quickly realize that Old English, maybe you could understand 40% of it.

Now, one of the other things that’s interesting with regards to that as well, and this brings up kind of fun practical questions, like here in Canada, particularly in British Columbia, an expression that’s used here quite regularly is how was the weather yesterday? Well, it was raining cats and dogs. And we’ll use phrases like that here to talk about a downpour and it raises these interesting translation questions. You could ask, “Okay, if I’m going to translate that phrase raining cats and dogs, do I do that literally or do I do that more generally?”

And these are questions translators of the Bible have to deal with. Now when I translate it, am I going for the meaning that’s being communicated or am I going more for the exact wording that’s being used? And it’s funny because if we were to translate naturally, we’d probably often just say, “Oh, it was raining hard,” if I’m trying to translate it into German or something. And so what you find with different translations is that different translators in these different Bibles will use different methods where some will go more literal and say cats and dogs and others will say more of the meaning that’s being communicated and say it was raining hard that day sort of idea.

And so this is one of the reasons why you’ll get different translations is it’s different approaches. And then we think that this can be helpful for you, that you can read the different translations and see, you can compare those to appreciate what’s being communicated because that’s what’s important.

Daniel Markin:

And again, there’s lots of literature on that sort of stuff and the translations that like, we have more original documents now than we ever did in history. So chances are we actually can get a closer translation than they could back in the King James times. We have more resources, we’re better at it now. And so there is improvement that has come.

I want to jump back a little bit here because one of the other things that I think the Bible does, and this gets us into question four as we talk about questioning good and evil, asking questions about that. I think the Bible gives us the best framework by which we can understand good and evil. I do think that we all feel evil, we can all sense it, we can see it, we see it on the news and even in death we feel that and it just feels so wrong. And I think the Bible begins to lay out the best explanation for that and how we can overcome evil. And so has that impacted you personally, the Bible’s description of good and evil?

Andy Steiger:

Absolutely. This is one of the reasons why I like looking at different world religions is that can often give you a better perspective of Christianity or a unique or different perspective of Christianity. Because I think you’re absolutely right, Daniel, this is one aspect where Christianity really shines is where it’s explaining to you what we naturally experienced, where we go through these moments of brokenness of evil and we cry out, “The world shouldn’t be this way, it’s wrong or bad.” Whenever you talk like that, you’re saying that the world ought not be like this, it ought to be good, right or correct. Which raises these profound questions like, “Well, if I say that something’s wrong, what should it be?”

And one of the things that the Bible does, particularly when we’re looking at this, and when we do things like Questioning Christianity, we’re constantly bringing these conversations back to that focal point of what’s the purpose here? Because this is sometimes where people can miss the mark where maybe all they’ve heard about Christianity is sin and evil and they think that’s what Christianity’s about, that God’s all about his rules and you got to get the rules right so that God doesn’t send you to hell and those sorts of things.

But when you get into the Christian story, that’s not what this is about at all. It’s about a God that loves you dearly. And because God loves you, God wants you to experience the best possible life. God wants you to flourish. And flourishing happens when you fulfill the purpose that you were created for, being in relationship with God and right with one another. But it’s a type of relationship. It’s not just any kind of relationship. It’s right relationship. And so these start to raise those profound questions like you’re bringing up, Daniel, well, what does right relationship look like?

And ultimately the Bible warns of counterfeit relationship, what we call evil, relationship that does not lead to your good, relationship that doesn’t lead to flourishing but leads to death and destruction. And so it’d take a while to kind of tease out all of this, but an important concept from the biblical perspective is that evil is not a thing in and of itself. Evil is the corruption of something.

So one of the analogies that I like to use is the analogy of currency and counterfeit currency. See, currency is a thing, but counterfeit currency is not a thing. It’s the corruption of something. And from the Christian perspective, this is how we understand evil. Evil is the corruption of good. So good is the thing. Goodness exists and God allows evil to exist for a time, this broken relationship, but he will judge it. It will be destroyed. And you don’t need it. Because there’s other religions, kind of this dualistic view of good and evil. But Christianity is saying, “No, there’s good. God has allowed for that good to be corrupted for a time, for counterfeit relationship,” if you will. But the currency is what’s real and that currency is what’s going to lead to your good. It’s hard to, I know we’re in a bit of a rush here at the podcast, so hopefully I’ve explained that quickly enough without confusing anybody.

Daniel Markin:

No, definitely. Because with God we have a standard of what’s good. And it goes back to this idea that we actually couldn’t know what is good or what is evil if we don’t have God. Which I think is so interesting how people will claim to know what things are good and what things are evil, but they’ll claim to have no standard. And if you just ask the question, “Well, by what standard are you saying that’s good?” they’ll appeal to some sort of, “Well, this is how we’ve evolved.” “Okay. But by what standard now are you saying that that’s good or bad? I don’t care if we’ve evolved. Why do you think that something is good or something is evil?” And ultimately Christianity says, “Well, because we have a God to contrast that to.”

Andy Steiger:

Well, and this is an important one just to make a couple notes that I find when you do question Christianity with people, you begin to realize where people aren’t hearing us quite correctly. Because some people will be like, “But Andy, I’m an atheist or I know an atheist and they’re good people.” And it’s like, “Well, yeah, we’re not saying that you need to believe in God to do good things. What we’re saying is, is you need God to exist in order for there to be such a thing is good. And if you’re going to say that the world ought not to be this way, then how ought the world to be? Like when we say that it shouldn’t be evil, well, what’s the standard of good then? What’s the standard of the way it should be?”

And from the Christian perspective, as you’re getting at, Daniel, we’re saying that God is that standard. And here, let me put it in these terms. God embodies right relationship within God’s essence. God is the very standard of how a community or a relationship ought to be. That God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and lives in right relationship within God’s essence. And that essence is good. It becomes the very standard of how we ought to live that’s going to lead to our good.

And so then this becomes an important point with regards to the nature of God. Because when we say that God is love, we’re not saying that love is God. That’s to confuse it. We’re saying that God is loving and that yes, God has rules, but God’s rules come from God’s love. And this is where people can really misunderstand Christianity or get things backwards. And that’s why I like Questioning Christianity because we can untangle some of this where we can explain, “Listen, no, God is love and God loves you and God desires for your good. And thus, like any good parent, God has rules to direct you of what’s going to lead to your flourishing and what’s not.”

Daniel Markin:

Absolutely. I won’t press too much further there because I completely agree. Let me bring us to our last piece here, Session Five, Questioning the Church. And in the interest of time, let’s just get right into it. Because oftentimes I’ll hear this, “Hey, I know that God is loving but the church is not.” And oftentimes we’ll just hear that complaint over and over again. “I didn’t feel welcomed, I didn’t feel loved at this church, I didn’t feel understood.” And what have you found, what encourages you about the church, but also what concerns you about the church? Because that’s a big concern for some people that like, “I’m all about God, but I don’t want anything to do with the church.”

Now, I personally don’t think that you can be a Christian if you don’t love the church. And at least, because like we’ve talked about many times, it’s about relationship with God and relationship with one another. And so it might be hard to find a good church, but we ought to be doing our best to try and find a community where we can belong, where they’re passionate about relationship with God and one another.

Andy Steiger:

Absolutely, because sometimes we will reduce Christianity to you and God. It’s just me and Jesus sort of idea. And that often is perpetuated when we think of the gospel being reduced to, well, accept Jesus into your heart. And although that’s fine way of speaking, as long as you understand what that means. But the challenge with it, of course, is that you were saved into more than just a relationship with God. You were saved into community. That it’s both. That yes, you have a personal relationship with God, but you also have a communal relationship with God. And when you read the Bible, this is one of the things I see people missing is they miss that communal aspect. Notice when Jesus is teaching how to pray, how does he begin? He says, “Our Father who art in heaven.”

Daniel Markin:

My father, my father who is…

Andy Steiger:

Right. The whole prayer is plural. It’s we. And this is something that a lot of people miss, that we’re a part of a community and that that community’s going to lead to your good. You need the church and the church needs you.

Daniel Markin:

The Bible will talk about adoption and we are adopted into…

Andy Steiger:

Family.

Daniel Markin:

Into a family. And so if you’re adopted and all of a sudden there’re siblings there, well, you don’t get to choose whether or not they’re going to be your siblings. They’re your siblings now. So now you got to learn how to live with them.

Andy Steiger:

So think about that then, Daniel. This is the problem that a lot of people have. Let’s use that family analogy. Because they’ll come home for a family reunion around the table and their brother’s being a jerk. And they’re like, “Man, this guy’s such a jerk,” or they’re not liking this brother. And so they’ll be like, “Well, I don’t want to be a part of this family anymore,” or, “Mom and dad, you must be jerks because brother’s a jerk,” sort of idea.

And this is where I think a lot of people will kind of derail, if you will, in that your relationship with God should not be defined by other people. This I find such a critical point, and this is something where our testimony can sometimes lead us astray because we get used to telling people about God through our lives. But the problem is, is your life should be pointing to Jesus, not to yourself.

And that’s true not only of the good but also of the bad, that some people will reduce Christianity to whatever person that they’ve encountered. But the reality is, is that we are all broken people in need of Jesus. And that you should anticipate that the church is going to have broken people in it and that just like any family, it’s going to have some dysfunction in it. The question is whether or not you’re committed to the family and you’re committed to reconciliation and seeking each other’s good in the midst of this. And that this doesn’t reflect negatively on who our heavenly Father is and that God is good.

Daniel Markin:

Everybody needs forgiveness and we constantly need forgiveness because we’re still sinners. Even when you become a Christian, your sin doesn’t disappear. You’re made new, you’re made whole, but then the enemy will do everything he can to try and distract you and pull you away and we will mess up sometimes. It’s just part of a sin nature. And we need forgiveness. And it’s like even that jerk of a brother at the Thanksgiving dinner table, that brother, that sister needs forgiveness. And not only that, you need to learn to forgive them as well. That could be how the Lord’s working in you there. And I find it so interesting that after Jesus teaches us how to pray, forgive us our sins and forgive those who sin against us.

Andy Steiger:

Where does he go? Forgiveness.

Daniel Markin:

Afterwards, we’ll be like, “Oh, the Lord’s prayer is so good.” Then afterwards there’s a little note where he really doubles down. He says, “If you do not forgive your brother, you will not have forgiveness in heaven.” It’s not really an option to forgive as Christians. You don’t have the luxury to choose who you’ll forgive and who you won’t. Forgiveness is not an option. But you learn that and you get that in community and you’re tested at times.

Andy Steiger:

Well, think about this because I think this is an important aspect of what you’re getting at here, Daniel, and I’m so glad you brought that up about forgiveness. I love how Jesus is like, “Here’s how you pray. And by the way.”

Daniel Markin:

If you don’t do this.

Andy Steiger:

Your heart should be oriented towards reconciliation to forgiveness. So in other words, then, the church is about Jesus. And if the church is about Jesus, it means that you and I can be honest about ourselves and other people. But the problem is we tend to want to go the celebrity route where we want to idolize people and make the church about people and not about Jesus. And then we can’t be honest because now we’ve made our faith and our hope into somebody instead of about Jesus. And then we begin to either not see Christianity correctly or judge it incorrectly because we’re judging it with regards to a person.

And let me just bring this up real quick here because it means then that we can be honest and we must be honest about where the church has gotten things right but also where it’s gotten things wrong. And that there are church fathers or different people historically that we love, our theologians that we love, or our authors that we love that have gotten things wrong. And that we can be honest about because our hope isn’t in them, it’s in Jesus.

Daniel Markin:

Totally. And just as an aside, you pointed this out to me, we look up to guys like Martin Luther. And Martin Luther said some of the most racist things. He was just a flat out anti-Semite. Some of the stuff he would say was awful. And you realize.

Andy Steiger:

He said terrible things.

Daniel Markin:

All of us, even the best of us, still fall short of that glory.

Andy Steiger:

Or even Jonathan Edwards.

Daniel Markin:

Oh, totally.

Andy Steiger:

Edwards gave an argument for slavery. And for many people they might want to run away from that and be like, “Oh my goodness, Edwards tried to justify slavery?” And it’s like, yeah, and he was dumb and he shouldn’t have done it, but my hope’s not in Edwards.

Daniel Markin:

I know. Well, and people can look back on us 300 years from now and they’ll be like, “You believed that? You taught people to do this?” We just don’t know. And I think we have to have a humble posture and when there’s correction, receive it. And that happens in community and that’s the real value of the church. We need the church for that.

Andy Steiger:

Pointing people to Jesus. I love what Paul says, 1 Corinthians 11:1, “Follow after me as I follow after Christ.” That’s what church looks like.

Daniel Markin:

Yeah. Andy, hey, we’ve run out of time here. This has been awesome, though. Thank you for joining us again for Part Two of this Questioning Christianity. And for those who might want to hear a little bit about your ministry, where can they go to find out about Apologetics Canada, but then also let them know about the conferences that you have coming up as well.

Andy Steiger:

Yeah. One thing is I just want to encourage people with as we go here, Questioning Christianity is something you can do at your church in your own community. You can hold these opportunities for people to talk about the Christian faith and to be able to ask their questions and get some clarity. And we’re constantly working on more resources to help you do that. You can find out more about us at apologeticscanada.com. We have a variety of different resources that you can check out online. And one of those resources that you can check out is our conference.

So we have a conference happening in Saskatchewan in February. We have one in British Columbia in March. And then we’ll have another one, details will be coming soon, in Ontario for November. We’d love to see you out to one of those events. I’ll throw one last thing out there, Daniel, as we close. And that is we do something across Canada called the Leadership Summit. We have a new one coming up in Ontario in May. Would encourage you to check that out on our website and you can register for that. We’ll have more coming out in Saskatchewan and in British Columbia. So keep an eye out for those.

Daniel Markin:

So good. Andy, thank you for joining us and as always, been a pleasure.

Andy Steiger:

Thanks, Daniel. Great being with you.

Speaker 1:

Thanks so much for listening. If you want to hear more, subscribe on iTunes or Spotify or visit us online at indoubt.ca or indoubt.com. We’re also on social media, so make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Andy Steiger:

Indoubt is a ministry that exists to engage young people with biblical truth and provide answers for many of today’s questions of life, faith, and culture. Through audio programs, articles, and blogs, indoubt reaches out to encourage, strengthen, and disciple young adults. To check out all the resources of indoubt, visit indoubt.ca in Canada or in doubt.com in the US. Or if you’re in a position or share a passion for the ministry of young people, you can support the ongoing mission of engaging a new generation with the truth of the Bible. First, you can pray for this ministry. And second, and if you are able, please consider a financial gift by visiting indoubt.ca in Canada or indoubt.com in the US. Your gift of any amount is such a blessing and an answer to prayer. Thanks.