Other Faiths

Debating God

Sean McDowell — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:48:16 -0800

Last weekend I had the opportunity of watching a debate between Dinesh D’Souza (author of What’s So Great about Christianity) and Michael Shermer (editor of Skeptic magazine). The debate was held at Southern Evangelical Seminary and the question was: “Does it make sense to believe in God?” The debate was lively, informative, and fun.

I’ve included the two opening statements (abbreviated) as well as their initial responses. I offer two quick critiques of each debater first:

First, Dinesh argues that we cannot know what happens after death, thus we should “leap” toward the Christian side since we have more to gain (ala, Pascal). He says neither Christians nor atheists have knowledge about life after death, which is why we have faith. Thus, he sees belief as taking over when we cannot know something. But this betrays the biblical perspective that we do in fact know what happens after death. 1 John 5:13 says, “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” Evidence from the resurrection of Jesus, the existence of the soul, and near-death experiences provide solid reasons to believe that consciousness (and judgment) comes after death.

Second, Shermer argues against the fine-tuning argument by claiming that the world is really not that hospitable for life. The vast majority of the universe, he claims, is inhospitable for life. But this raises a difficult question for Shermer: “If the universe is so inhospitable, then how did life evolve in the first place?” He wants to take away evidence for fine-tuning by reducing the hospitability of the universe, but this raises a huge problem for biological evolution, which requires an inconceivable enormous amount of hospitable environments to get off the ground.

“Does it make sense to believe in God?”

Dinesh D’Souza opening:

There are three good arguments for believing in God. It makes sense to believe in God because the deep questions we ask as human beings are only comprehensible in light of God’s existence. Other responses lead to absurdities:
(1)   Why is there a universe?
a.   For many centuries it was believed the universe was eternal and, hence, needed no creator. But Jews and Christians believed the universe had a beginning and that God created time and space along with it. Also, why does the universe have certain numerical values that it does (light speed, gravitational force, strong nuclear force)? What if they were slightly different? Fine-tuning is immune to a Darwinian evolution since it refers to the entire universe.
(2)   Why do we have life vs. no life?
a.   No one knows what comes after death. We believe there is life after death, but we don’t know it. The difference between Shermer and me is that he thinks he knows. I recognize that we both have faith. Yet the possibility that life continues (i.e., Pascal) is a good reason to believe in God.
(3)   Why do we have morality?
a.   We all live in a world of right and wrong. We all at some deep level accept absolute standards of morality. Some people claim to be moral relativists but it turns out such people are really relativists about your values but absolutists about theirs. If we are merely Darwinian products, then morality is a technique to get our genes in the next generation. Darwinians respond by saying we act altruistically to get back in return later. But what about moral acts we do without any possible return that can actually harm us? Example: Why help someone drowning who I am not related to (i.e., we don’t share genes)? We have a moral compass that leads us to sacrifice ourselves because God has put morality on our hearts.

Dinesh Conclusion: Believe in God because the universe makes sense. If we believe in God our life makes sense. Belief in God makes sense because it provides cosmic accountability, which brings justice.

Michael Shermer opening: I grew up in a conservative Christian home. I understand the internal coherence and consistency of Christianity. Basically we arrive at our beliefs for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with science (life experiences, relationships, psychology) and then we justify them afterwards with evidence. There are many things we don’t know which is why we have faith.

What about these questions? There is reason to believe in a universe from nothing without a top-down creator. The universe cannot not exist. Empty space is not filled with nothing. It appears that with string theory and GUT (Grand Unified Theory) that universes naturally pop into existence. When a star collapses we have a singularity that could explain the origin of the universe itself. The details are not important, but these are things scientists talk about and they are testable. Scientists offer hypotheses and fill gaps rather than simply posit God. Atheism is not a position. Atheists just don’t believe in God and that is the end of the story.

What about fine-tuning? On a coarse scale, the universe is not very fine-tuned. There are very few places we can live. 99% is inhospitable. Why would God make a world so large that is inhospitable? It’s good to be humble about deep mysteries rather than say, “This is the way it is,” b/c physics is a young discipline. Who designed the designer? Who created God? Why stop the causal chain at the point of your creator? Even if there is a designer, this does nothing to show it is any particular God.

Dinesh response (1): I begin with a point of agreement—science is not a threat to religion. It is a fable that as science advances God retreats. A few questions: Michael alluded to the God of the gaps (something cannot be explained, therefore God did it). There is also an “atheism of the gaps” fallacy (“don’t worry, science will eventually figure it out”). Michael has tremendous faith in a particular type of science. On the fine-tuning, people abolish one God for an infinite number of universes. This is absurd!

I ask Shermer: What is the cause for which the universe is the effect? Did the universe create itself? There could be a natural or supernatural cause. The natural cause is impossible because the universe is all of nature. So, unless one wants to say the universe generated itself, there must be a transcendent cause.

There are motives for belief, but there are also motives for unbelief. Shermer says atheists believe nothing, but he has all sorts of beliefs as well.

Shermer response (1): Belief in God is the result of exceptional events (i.e., 9/11). We are aggressive about all sorts of beliefs about politics but not religious beliefs. Now the debate has become a bit more in-your-face. Why can’t God do a miracle such as growing back limbs? Why are all miracles equivocal? If we want to posit that God exists but that all things happened naturally, then why believe in God? If the universe is indistinguishable, then what room is there for God?

Response to Pascal’s wager: What if we picked the wrong God? Wouldn’t God know that you were faking? Self-deception is a powerful thing.

Why believe? What is so important to how you believe? Wouldn’t God be more concerned with how you lived your life? Wouldn’t that matter more than simply believing? Any worthwhile God would place more emphasis on works.

Prophets, Celebs and Those Who Drool Over Them

John Barry — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:00:00 -0700

Everybody loves entertainment and entertainers. Let’s discuss those who swoon and drool over celebs. Let’s also discuss the parallelism between modern celebs and prophets in the ancient world (believe me, there are more than you know).

I was at Piccadilly Circus in London (which by the way has no elephants or clowns, but for some reason has the word circus as part of its name), when I saw people flocking, swooning and drooling. So curious George I am, I decided to investigate. Apparently it was the World premiere of the movie Alfie, and none other than its star, Jude Law, had just arrived. Jude, you’re a great actor and all, but I am just not as impressed as everyone else seems to be (The old version of Alfie was so much better).

I began to think: what is the deal with this? Why must people completely freak-out over just a man? He’s not Jesus, right? Since my head is often in the sand of ancient times, this also made me ponder what it must have been like to be an entertainer in the ancient world. There were a few kinds of entertainers in the very ancient world (around 1,000 BC):

Priests, who gave sermons and slaughtered animals
Prophets, who critiqued the society, but were often rejected
Dreamers, who had visions while sleeping, or interpreted other people’s dreams

Generally, the prophets and the dreamers were the most entertaining. You can imagine that many flamboyant personalities were drawn to these roles because of this. In return, true prophets, like Moses, had a hard time keeping these out-spoken and often phony people from misleading the general public. Are you starting to see the parallels with modern celebrities?

In Deuteronomy 13:1-3 we have a few lines about this subject: “If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.”

The author does not say, “wait to see if what the prophet or dreamer of dreams says comes to pass.” He says, “and the sign or wonder that [the prophet or dreamer of dreams] comes to pass.” In other words, just because someone can do something amazing (like foretell the future), that does not mean everything they say is true. Instead, the indicator of a true leader is their actions. Do they follow what has been taught by God thus far, and are they interested in leading people to the true God?

Going back to our parallel account with modern celebrities, it seems that today we have tons of people who are doing amazing things, but are doing it for themselves, not for a higher authority (e.g., Criss Angel). We have other entertainers who are leading people into supposedly great religions (e.g., Tom Cruise and Scientology), while they themselves are wearing rose-colored glasses.

Could the ancient words in Deuteronomy be more pertinent than we realize? I am not (in any way) saying we should apply them in the way Deuteronomy suggests, because the end result of the passage was reserved for the law of a particular land. But, I am saying that we need to set aside the idea of following entertainers and start looking for God in everyday life again (not gods whose names are written on stars in Hollywood).

What do you think? Can our society even move past the façade we are presented with everyday?

Radicals, Crazies and Prophets All Claim to See God

John Barry — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 06:00:00 -0700

Both the sane and insane have claimed to see God. Skeptics and radicals, geniuses and lunatics, prophets and heretics -- there is a person in each category who has supposedly been transformed by seeing the most mysterious, illusive and illustrious being in the universe, God.

So is it true? Have all these individuals really seen God? Who has, who hasn’t? Who’s right, who’s wrong?

Some psychologists claim that if a person says they have seen God, Jesus, angels, or demons that they are crazy. Is this true? Could all these people be wrong? Is a vision of God something the imaginations of lunatics conjured up?

There are endless discussions we could have about this topic, all of which I would like to engage with eventually. But for now, let’s discuss Moses, the second prophetic figure to be addressed in our series about “seeing the infinite God in everything.” Let’s also discuss the radicals and the crazies.

Moses, the prophet who led the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt, has a very interesting encounter with God in Exodus 33:18-23.

In this passage we are told that if anyone sees God's face, they will die. But Moses is allowed to see God’s backside. What precisely is going on here? Well, in the ancient world it was understood that if you saw the “glory” of God, which is His “face,” you yourself could face death.

To really understand Moses we have to back up the horse a bit to Exodus 3, the story of the burning bush. After Moses’ first encounter with God in Exodus 3 he became a radical, but a good kind of radical. He turned the social structures of an entire country on its head. At first, Pharaoh probably thought Moses was a lunatic – “Who is this crazy who thinks he can oppose the gods of Egypt, and their representative god (who by the way is Pharaoh)?” Moses was a heretic in Pharaoh’s eyes, but a prophet in the eyes of the God of the Hebrews – Yahweh.

Many have said, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” I say: One religion’s heretic is another religion’s prophet. One king’s enemy is another king’s hero. One psychologist’s crazy is another psychologist’s norm.

Well, what do you think?

Five Sacred Crossings Interview, Part 3

Craig Hazen — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:48:22 -0700

I was recently interviewed about my book, Five Sacred Crossings: A Novel Approach to a Reasonable Faith, by the Evangelical Philosophical Society. Here is Part 3 of 3 parts.

If you click on Five Sacred Crossings, you’ll go to a page where you can download a free chapter of the book. There is a video interview I did with Peter for Conversantlife.com

Can you tell us what it was like to write Five Sacred Crossings?

The thing I enjoyed the most was discovering myself where the story was going next. I did not have a detailed master plan before writing, so every day was a little surprise with regard to the unfolding of the narrative. I am still surprised by my own ending. Re-reading it was an experience that I certainly have never had when writing academic books and essays. I picked it up, started to read somewhere in the middle and couldn't put it down. I wrote the darn thing yet got caught up in the story myself! It was far more exciting and emotional than I remember when first writing it out.

What would you like to see happen with this book?

Of course, I would like to see it recommended by Oprah so it gets the widest possible reading! Okay, so maybe that's not going to happen, but it's a good dream. My book probably won't get that kind of exposure, but I hope some other compelling, thoughtful, stereotype-breaking Christian literature does. I think this is going to be most likely if those of us in the community of Christian philosophy and apologetics interact with the Christian creative community more intentionally and intensely.

From where you observe, as the Director of a cutting-edge Graduate Program in Christian Apologetics at Biola University, can you say how we - as American Evangelicals - are doing in our apologetic efforts?

How are we doing with apologetics? Not bad. There is one advantage when secular culture encroaches more and more on the Church's turf. The Church seems to awaken to some of the important things she has neglected like the apostolic command in 1 Peter 3:15 to "be prepared always to give an answer." By any measure the interest in clear-thinking Christianity has been on the increase. This may just be a regional phenomenon, but huge crowds come out to Biola to hear lectures and debates now that would have only attracted a handful twenty years ago. We have a long way to go, but I think significant progress has been obvious and measurable.

Our greatest weakness with regard to apologetics is that by-and-large the average Christian and pastor still thinks that knowledge and faith are non-overlapping realms of human endeavor and experience. Our greatest strength with regard to apologetics is that so many leaders and teachers in the movement model that fact and that it is not just about giving answers and winning arguments, but rather it is about living a full-orbed life in Christ.

How might Five Sacred Crossings cultivate the strengths of our apologetic efforts?

I think Five Sacred Crossings is centered on this key strength I just mentioned. The book uses arguments and persuasion, but the key characters model grace, kindness, courage, love, and sacrifice to make the arguments real and weighty. I see my colleagues in apologetics and philosophy at Biola doing this every day and it is more inspiring than just about anything you can encounter. These are men and women living the great answers to life's questions, not just speaking them.

Sad News for Extreme Atheism

John Mark Reynolds — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:13:09 -0700

Pity the atheist.

There are not very many of them and a great many people in the US already don’t like them.

That is too bad, since many atheists are decent people who share basic American commitments to justice and the civil order even if they don’t share the basic American belief that these rights are an endowment by the Creator.

This isn’t just an intellectual mistake, but it means that every time they read most great American documents or visit great American sites, they face ideological offense. It doesn’t end with the theism of the Declaration or the way our Constitution was signed (without an ACLU produced qualm) “in the year of our Lord.” They must stand in the Lincoln memorial and read his great Bible soaked Second Inaugural Address. American Revolutionaries kept saying things like: “No King, but King Jesus!”

Even their hero, Jefferson, was a deist and not secular at all in the modern sense. They visit Yosemite, hoping to choke the incense of religion, only to find that one of the oldest buildings there is a chapel!

Theism is shot through American life and culture from the start.

To these woes they have recently added the burden of their history.

Most of the great ideas, art, and culture of the world were produced by theists or within cultures sustained by a theist population. Of course, since most people were theists, many of the world’s biggest headaches were also caused by people who claimed to believe in God.

This was their great hope. It was at least plausible that there was some way of getting rid of the God idea while keeping the good stuff the God idea had encouraged. If Western theists had (mostly) produced a society, they liked couldn’t they keep the Western civilization and get rid of the theism?

Sadly, this experiment did not go well at all.

The areas of the world they ran most directly turned out to be horrific. Millions died in the twentieth century at the hands of extremist leaders who mouthed commitments to “reason,” “science,” and “enlightenment.”

It turns out that just as belief in a God of love is no absolute barrier against hateful activity, so too the ideology of atheism is no cure for human evil. Just as Christians must modestly admit that Christians have done great harm in the name of Christ, so secularists must admit that secularists have done great evil in the name of their cause.

Of course, mainstream Christians, the largest group of theists in the USA, have never been Utopians about life this side of Paradise. Our view of reality is compatible with progress (which we have produced), but not perfection in this life for most people. We are on a pilgrimage to a new and better city and this New Jerusalem will not be built by human hands.

In fact, one of the great attractions of early secularism (until history disappointed them) was that it was overwhelmingly Utopian. These men mocked “pie in the sky by and by,” and promised perfection, at least to our children’s children, if we just gave them power.

Read early science fiction (overwhelmingly secular) if you doubt it. “Science” was going to make us all happy! Watch the classic “Things to Come” to see real statist Utopianism in full bloom . . . in a fight against the humanities and religion.

It is really hard not to laugh until one remembers these books encouraged some very bad governments and ideas.

Of course, many (if not most) American secularists know all of this. They believe secularism is true, but they are modest about it. They know they could be wrong. They try to persuade us they are right, but do so realizing that there good points on the other side.

Such secularism is often attractive and has merit.

What it lacks is the certainty and immodesty that motivates so much of the tiny (but loud) activist secularist base. These are the folk who are constantly wounded by the continued religious nature of American citizens and most people in the world.

They live in an irrational fear of religion which drives out love.

Recently, some of these more extreme atheists have tried to salve the wounds by asserting that they may be small in the USA, but they are smarter than everyone else. They are the “brights” and everyone else is a bit dim by comparison. This would be comforting if it were not more easily explained by recent sociological pressures in some areas of the culture. In parts of the culture, atheism is a lazy assumption in just the same way that being spiritual is a thoughtless assumption in others.

After all, there are plenty of very clever theists, so nobody can claim a monopoly on intelligence.

The Pew Study is important, because it turns out that whenever they grow a bit, many members of the “atheist church” are as subject to strange inconsistencies in their views as any other group.

The Thomist philosophers of the Roman church have long had the joyous burden of mass appeal! It is good to get bigger, but growth brings with it the natural “dilution” of a certain kind of intellectual talent. For theists, with their broader view of reality and knowledge, this is anticipated.

For extreme secularists, rabidly hostile to religion and already reeling under so many burdens, such a situation is pitiable. It turns out that a firm commitment to the tenants of secularism does not even help many followers understand secularism!

What this should do is produce the (traditional Christian) virtue of modesty about being “right” intellectually. Having the right idea is good, but not enough. Good hearted atheists, who are wrong and inconsistent, may make much better neighbors than wicked Christians who are consistent in their true beliefs, but hateful in their practice of them.

Faith, beliefs for which we have evidence but that are uncertain, is necessary for everyone. The uncertainty in all our knowledge should breed modesty in all of us.

Somebody must govern and some ideas (whether religious or secular) will dominate, but this domination should always (the nature of faith teaches) be as open and light handed as possible. Many moderate secularists, chastened by recent history, have learned this lesson. Many traditional religious people, long ago chastened by history, also know this.

The sort of person, religious or secular, who thinks all his foes obviously cads or fools is sad, but dangerous.

Pew reminds us that nobody has a lock on rational thinkin

Faith to Faith: A New Conversation

Dan Scott — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:03:11 -0700

There’s no getting around it. We live in a culture that includes beliefs and practices from every major world religion, and a whole bunch of minor ones. And we need to know what our neighbors, co-workers, and sometimes even our family members believe. That’s why I wrote Faith to Faith: A Conversation About Christianity and World Religions. This isn’t your typical “us vs. them” book about Christianity and other beliefs. I wrote Faith to Faith to give my fellow Christians as accurate a picture as possible of the beliefs and practices of the various world religions, not because I want to prove them wrong, but because we need to know how to relate to them.

The folks at Conversantlife.com thought it would be helpful to know a little more about my new book. So over the next few weeks I will be responding to some questions about Faith to Faith and why I wrote it. Even though I’m the one answering the questions, this isn’t intended to be a one-way conversation. I’d love to hear your responses to my thoughts. Even more, if you have a question you’d like to ask, please post it in the comments section at the end of this post.

You refer to your new book, Faith to Faith, as a “fictionalized account” of a three-day interfaith conference you attended a few years ago. What were the circumstances that led to your involvement in this conference?

For ten years, I pastored a mid-city congregation in Phoenix called The Valley Cathedral. It was a large church that erupted into the life of the city in the 70s and 80s. By the early 90s, it was rocked by scandal and division. The demographic shifts around the little affluent island of Central Phoenix (where the church was located) became frightening to many. However, many began to come to the church from the margins of society. Most of our suburban congregants could not relate to either our area’s changing needs or to the changes we made to accommodate those needs. So I began to meet church leaders who were more involved socially in the lives of the poor.

Many of these new friends were further left on the political and theological spectrum than me or our church. I found myself in the curious place of agreeing with my liberal friends about the problems of our city and its people. However, I disagreed with them about the solutions and about the deepest roots of the common issues we faced. I certainly disagreed with them about spirituality. So while I was glad to be friends with people of other religions and was willing to cooperate with them to bring food, shelter and clothing to the poor, I could not worship in Native American ceremonies or participate in New Age convocations. This stance perplexed both “liberals” and “conservatives” in Phoenix.

My conservative friends were aghast that I would even participate in the interfaith conference at the Franciscan retreat center. One radio talk show host denounced me for being cozy with the Catholic bishop of Phoenix. Emails alleging all sorts of doctrinal and spiritual errors about my approach kept the atmosphere hot around me for several years. Naturally, my liberal friends assumed that I was crossing over, or, in their words, “maturing.”

I had not crossed over. I was an orthodox Evangelical Christian. I just wanted to “be at peace with all people in so much as lies within me,” as St. Paul puts it. So I wanted to learn what the Buddhists thought or why a professor of economics at ASU had become a follower of a Native shaman. I also wanted to know why the church, the love of my life, was so repugnant to so many spiritual seekers in our city.

The years of trying to pastor the people of central Phoenix while dodging fire from fellow believers did not turn me into an embittered liberal. They did make me willing to be “the Protestant presenter” at the interfaith conference. There comes a point in which your reputation is so shot that you no longer have the energy to defend it. That’s when you can finally just do what you think is the right thing to do. I knew that I was still an orthodox Christian and that I knew where the boundaries were between us and the other great world religions. Then I asked myself if the Lord would attend such a meeting. When I determined that he would, I went. Once I got there, I had to decide how I would represent my Lord, my faith and even my fellow believers who were upset with me. I wanted to be faithful to that responsibility.

That pretty well sums it up!

What was it about your experience at the interfaith conference that prompted you to write your book?

I was amazed to sense the deep hunger for God in that conference. I liked most of the presenters and could relate to their spiritual journey. I kept asking myself why, in view of their sincere respect for the Lord Jesus, were they not making their way to Him.

A Buddhist is very likely to honor Jesus and to be extremely respectful as we talk about his teachings and about his death and resurrection. A Muslim, despite the current spiritual war, is also inclined to profound sentiment about Jesus. Most of the world’s seekers respect our Lord. So why don’t they follow him? In many cases, it is because of us! We often speak and live in ways that becomes a stumbling block to the world’s seekers.

Meanwhile, we spend enormous amounts of money to relate to “seekers” who are almost always affluent consumers only marginally interested in spiritual things. It’s the wrong approach for our evangelism, our theology and our spirituality. We have been going the wrong way, like trying to run a combine on the beach while the fields are white and ready to harvest.

I wanted to share these feelings with fellow Christians. I wanted to tell them that New Agers are usually hungry for God. They are certainly no scarier than the secular folks we have been trying to reach, people who often have little concern about their souls.

Who is your intended audience for Faith to Faith? In other words, who should be reading this book?

My main audience is Christians. I want to awaken in them a concern for the peoples of the world who seek the Lord of Life but who do not encounter Him in our churches. I want to urge us to stop secularizing our worship in a mistaken attempt to reach unbelievers. I want us to rediscover awe and wonder in the presence of God – the otherworldly and mysterious otherness that woos the soul Godward and reminds us that we were made to live forever. That is what all people everywhere seek who are concerned about eternity, meaning, and about forming a relationship with their Creator.

Five Sacred Crossings Interview, Part 2

Craig Hazen — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:14:33 -0700

I was recently interviewed about my book, Five Sacred Crossings: A Novel Approach to a Reasonable Faith, by the Evangelical Philosophical Society. Here is Part 2 of 3 parts.

If you click on Five Sacred Crossings, you’ll go to a page where you can download a free chapter of the book. There is a video interview I did with Peter for Conversantlife.com

Who is your intended readership? And can you tell us about some of the reaction to the book?

I had certain folks in mind when I was putting the story together. Think about the millions of people who watch Oprah every day. They are open to spiritual and religious ideas, but want to connect with them first on an emotional level. They are open to thinking about the big issues if they are presented in a relevant and engaging way.

Forget about my intended readership for a moment, though. The book has been out long enough so that we know who is reading it, and it is really remarkable. Everyone you can imagine. Octogenarians, non-Christians, teenagers, women, men, people who haven't read a novel in decades, Christians, people in the highest ranks of the federal government, major TV stars, pastors, atheist college professors, a woman from Liechtenstein, a stuntman from Brazil, an Israeli soldier, a missionary in Cambodia, and on it goes.

As an evangelical Christian, it is very exciting to receive feedback from non-Christians who are reading it and caught up in the story and the ideas presented. I've heard dozens of accounts from unbelievers who read the story and then contacted me or other Christian people they know. The book really throws them for a loop. They resonate with all five of the "crossings" and find the main character very attractive, but at the same time they know that these are Christian ideas being presented. It's as if they needed to hear the big issues of the Gospel in a compelling new way. I intentionally wrote this book to break down stereotypes of Christianity and provide a fresh look at eternal truths. As one lifetime agnostic told me after reading it, "We've got to talk about this. If this is how you look at the world, it is far more rational and attractive than I have assumed."

Why should philosophers and apologists read fiction?

Christian philosophers and apologists need to read fiction (and poetry, and listen to music, and at least occasionally watch films and TV) in order to be culturally relevant. Jesus led his revolution primarily by telling unforgettable stories that stuck with people who heard him. Humans are wired for hearing and telling stories. The great ideas that are so compelling and persuasive to high-level Christian thinkers need to become part of the mindset for people in all societal strata. Therefore we need new channels of communication to make these ideas relevant to everyone. This is a creative project of the highest order. Although philosophers and apologists may not be the ones writing the novels, screenplays, and operas that ultimately move the culture, we need to be familiar with these modes of communication and discourse if we want to see our ideas last beyond the life cycle of our latest book from a university press.

Are there fiction writers that you admire or use as your model?

No, I can't say I used anyone as a model. Although I would recommend that anyone wanting to try their hand at what I call "didactic Christian fiction" should, for two reasons, read widely among very popular novelists whose works fill the racks at popular bookstores and airports. First, so you can see what level of discourse and style the general population finds engaging (after all, these are the people who you are seeking to influence with this kind of writing project). Second, it will encourage you because I think for the most part your reaction will be: "Oh my goodness, I can do much better than that." You might be wrong, but it will help overcome your insecurities about shifting gears to fiction writing.

Five Sacred Crossings Interview, Part 1

Craig Hazen — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:13:37 -0700

I was recently interviewed about my book, Five Sacred Crossings: A Novel Approach to a Reasonable Faith, by the Evangelical Philosophical Society. I’m going to divide the questions and answers into three parts. Here is Part 1.

By the way, if you click on Five Sacred Crossings, you’ll go to a page where you can download a free chapter of the book. There is a video interview I did with Peter for Conversantlife.com

How would you characterize Five Sacred Crossings?

That's pretty straight forward. Five Sacred Crossings is a novel, pure and simple. The best way to capture the genre is to compare it to Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code. The Da Vinci Code is a fast-paced, page-turning mystery novel that packed into its center some teaching about the origins of Christianity. Unfortunately, Dan Brown bought an ugly package of historical gossip and unfounded nonsense as the "suppressed truth" he was hoping to reveal to the world. But what better way to communicate such things than for a couple of years to have every other person on a given airliner reading about it! Dan Brown had the wrong message, but the right vehicle to disseminate it.

What I attempted to do was similar except that I packed into the core of the mystery novel key elements of the Christian worldview that make Christianity attractive and grounded in knowledge.

A funny side point is that the knowledgeable folks at Harvest House decided to position Five Sacred Crossings as a book of apologetics and not as a novel because the Christian fiction genre is so over saturated right now. They wanted my new book not to be lost in that category. Hence, they helped come up with a subtitle "A Novel Approach to Reasonable Faith." So I don't know where you will find Five Sacred Crossings in the bookstore - in the apologetics/religion section, or in the fiction section.

Without giving too much away, can you say what the book is about?

The book is about a few weeks in the life of a college professor and brilliant natural linguist named Michael Jernigan who takes a college class through some teachings called "the five crossings" that he learned about in the Cambodian mountains as a young soldier in the Vietnam War. Through these teachings, and raucous discussion among a group of very diverse students, the class learns how the wisest of people approach life's biggest questions. The book is punctuated by an intense story about an Indonesian terror cell in the college town. I certainly won't tell you how it ends, but I've been stunned by the fact that about a dozen grown men (not to mention the scores of women) have contacted me to tell me they couldn't put it down and were in tears when they finished it.

Why did you write Five Sacred Crossings?

It seems to me that Christian philosophers, apologetics, and theologians in our generation have done some extraordinary work in re-establishing the intellectual credibility and the integrity of the Christian worldview in a secular and pluralistic age. What we haven't done, though, is find new ways to communicate these great truths to the masses who are so confused on issues of religious truth and the meaning of life. I thought I would try my hand at writing something that would appeal to people I know who would never read an apologetics textbook or a philosophy article in an attempt to engage them with clear thinking on the issues that matter most.

Pedophiles and proselytizing

Lisa McKay — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:09:29 -0700

The second half of the interview I did for Canadian public television in Vancouver last year took an unexpected turn. It veered away from the psychological impact of aid work and touched on pedophiles and proselytizing. Didn't think the two topics naturally went together? Neither did I - until questioned on live national television :). Anyway, here's the six minute clip...

The Blind Man and the Elephant

Craig Hazen — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 11:07:45 -0700

It seems that it is not as easy as it once was to speak about all religions as if they are the exact same thing just dressed in different clothing for different people groups at different times in history. With the continuing high profile of Islamic terror activities, stark contrasts are being presented between Islam and the other world religions. Islam is not the same as Buddhism, and Buddhism is not the same as Christianity, and so on. It is very unlikely that all of them are leading to heaven, God, or nirvana. This is much easier to grasp than it used to be.
I remember learning a very old and famous fable in grade school as the teacher tried to demonstrate that all the religions are really, underneath the surface, one and the same. You’ve probably heard it at one point or another and it goes like this.
Several blind men are led into a rajah’s (that is a king’s) courtyard where they encounter an elephant. One feels a tusk and concludes that an elephant is like a spear. Another touches a leg and thinks an elephant is like a tree. Yet another bumps into the side of the beast and believes it is a wall, and so on. The blind men offer their opinions rather forcefully and even begin to fight over it. The rajah hears the mayhem down below and comes out on his balcony to assess the situation. After taking a moment to capture the scene, the rajah says, “You foolish blind men, don’t you know that you have all been in contact with the same thing? It’s an elephant and you have all been touching different parts of it.”
The lesson by analogy, of course, is that each of the different religious traditions of the world are bumping into only one particular aspect of ultimate reality and are blind to the total picture. But at the end of the day, all of the religious hands are touching the same essential truth.
It is easy to see the appeal of this fable in its attempt to show that at the core all religions are the same. But there is a more interesting feature of this fable that is not normally highlighted. How is it that the blind men finally know that they are all touching the same elephant? They hear a word from the rajah who stands above the situation, sees all, and can provide real knowledge to those below. Without a rajah the blind men would still be fighting.
In a day when humans are battling over religious issues like never before, we must not assume that all religions are the same. They are not. But we should redouble are efforts to find real knowledge about ultimate reality. And that can only come from a rajah, a king. One who stands above the human situation and can communicate clearly about where we came from, who we are, and where we’re going.
Where is our raja? Where is our king? Where is our voice from above?