If you found Time Magazine's interview with N. T. Wright about heaven (to which I linked last Saturday) intriguing, you should make a point of reading this essay by J. Richard Middleton titled "A New Heaven and a New Earth: The Case for a Holistic Reading of the Biblical Story of Redemption." (HT: Paul Norridge via Steve Bishop)
Middleton convincingly argues that the Bible's plotline militates against the popularly held notion of "heaven" (i.e., an otherworldly, ethereal state devoid of cultural activity) as the goal of redemption. To the contrary, the zenith of Christ's redeeming work will be a complete restoration and renewal of creation where creation is not restricted to what is commonly referred to as "nature" but includes "the entire human socio-cultural order." Middleton states that his intention is "to explore the exegetical case for a consistent understanding of redemption as the restoration of God's creational intent, such that the appropriate hope of the redeemed is life in a renewed intra-mundane, earthly creation."
Middleton divides the essay into the following sections:
The Logic of Creation and Redemption
The Plot of the Biblical Story of Redemption
The Comprehensive Scope of Redemption in the New Testament
Problem Texts for a Holistic Eschatology
What Role Then for Heaven?
Here are some of the lines I found worthy of underlining:
With these two distinctions (concerning creation and redemption) in mind, it becomes easier to see that the traditional picture of "heaven" (found in many classic hymns and contemporary praise songs) as perpetual fellowship with, and worship of, God cannot constitute full redemption in biblical terms. This is because the traditional picture typically omits (and thus implies the negation or abrogation of) large areas of human life that God created good. "Heaven," therefore, as an eschatological state does not constitute genuine redemption of the multifaceted world God intended from the beginning. The logic of biblical redemption, when combined with a biblical understanding of creation, requires the restoration and renewal of the full complexity of human life in our earthly environment, yet without sin.
It is sometimes shocking for readers of the Bible to realize that the initial purpose and raison d'etre of humanity is never explicitly portrayed in Scripture as the worship of God (or anything that would conform to our notion of the "spiritual," with its dualistic categories). Instead, Scripture portrays the human purpose in rather mundane terms of exercising power over our earthly environment as God's representatives...To put it another way, while various psalms (like 148 and 96) indeed call upon all creatures (humans included) to worship or serve God in the cosmic temple of creation (heaven and earth), the distinctive way humans worship or render service to the Creator is by the development of culture through interaction with our earthly environment (in a manner that glorifies God).
In addition to fueling the kind of anticipation and eager expectation that the Bible describes as characteristic of the Christian life (but which, if we're honest, is frequently lacking from ours), this fuller-orbed view of redemption infuses many of the daily activities we're prone to think of as obstacles to our "spiritual" lives with profound significance.
In a current Christianity Today article titled "When the Media Became a Nuisance," New Testament professor Darrel Bock offers helpful advice on how Christians can constructively respond to blockbuster books, documentaries, and motion pictures that challenge the truthfulness of the Christian faith. As he points out, a critical necessity is equipping:
Rather than seeing new media reports as conspiracies to rail against, why not see them as opportunities to discuss faith with friends and neighbors who will find them intriguing? Only we mustn't do so with an angry or dismissive tone. Rather, we ought to respectfully explain the historic Christian view. Becoming equipped for such discussions may require seminars organized by local churches. Imagine churches working together to help believers contend for the truth in their communities.
The reason Dr. Bock has to urge us to employ our imaginations to envision this kind of equipping is it happens so rarely. What a contrast this vision is to the several emails I've received urging me to boycott the film The Golden Compass. I'm sure those who circulate such missives mean well but hopefully we will not think that we are satisfying our calling to be redemptive agents in the world by trying to organize mass protests via the Internet. Clicking "forward" and "send" is certainly less time consuming and mentally taxing than the activity Darrel Bock commends but it is not nearly as effective in advancing God's kingdom.
Thinking about our propensity to opt for demonstrations over dialogues reminded me of lines I marked years ago in J. Daryl Charles's book, The Unformed Conscience of Evangelicalism: Recovering the Church's Moral Vision. In it, the author laments American evangelicalism's lack of a mature theology of public life and moral persuasion. Referring to Os Guinness's Fit Bodies, Fat Minds: Why Evangelicals Don't Think and What to Do About It, Charles writes:
Evangelicals, he notes, have frequently concentrated their efforts in domains that are peripheral to society rather than central. Correlatively, they have relied heavily on populist strengths and rhetoric rather than addressing "gatekeepers" of contemporary culture. Moreover, and critical to the viability of an evangelical social ethic, we have sought to change society through political and legal means rather than contending in the marketplace of ideas at the intellectual level. Thus, evangelicals have tended to rely on "a rhetoric of protest, pronouncement, and picketing" rather than on moral persuasion.
Johnson adds:
The relative inattention to winning a person's mind and way of thinking, an inattention that tends to depreciate a long-term strategy of building relationships and addressing moral-philosophical complexities, has lasting results that are counterproductive to evangelicals' mission to the world.
I intend to see The Golden Compass, not only because it looks like a spectacular piece of filmmaking (at least as far as special effects go), but because I want to be able to speak intelligently with the people around me who will see it. I also wish to speak compassionately.
In an excellent article titled "Why We Can Neither Boycott nor Ignore 'The Golden Compass'" (HT: The Pearcey Report), David Dunham addresses this point, drawing lessons from Francis Schaeffer's evangelistic method which involved deconstructing a person's unbiblical worldview (a process Schaeffer referred to as "blowing the roof off"). Dunham notes Schaeffer's insistence that compassion accompany this activity, quoting from The God Who Is There:
These paintings, these poems, and these demonstrations which we have been talking about are the expression of men who are struggling with their appalling lostness. Dare we laugh at such things? Dare we feel superior when we view their tortured expressions in their art? Christians should stop laughing and take such men seriously. Then we shall have the right to speak again to our generation. These men are dying while they live; yet where is our compassion for them? There is nothing more ugly than a Christian orthodoxy without understanding or without compassion.
Dunham adds:
That is probably the greatest lesson we can learn from Dr. Schaeffer. You can never share the gospel with someone whom you do not take seriously as a human being; and they will never want to listen to you if your words are not truth and compassion mixed together. There church, and individual Christians in particular, have over the past several centuries struggled greatly with this kind of evangelism. We have often found ourselves more interested in turning up our noses, mocking, belittling, and boycotting the culture, but Schaeffer would have us to find compassion for the culture. So he says, “As I push a man off his false balance, he must be able to feel that I care about him. Otherwise I will only end up destroying him…” We must have compassion.
Yes I am angry that Philip Pullman wants to “destroy Christianity!” But in his books (which have been adapted into a full length motion picture, released today) I also sense that there is a man who hates God, who is honest about it, and who needs the gospel. I will find in some of his major fans similar feelings of religious disdain. How I share the gospel with them will need to start with recognizing this factor and lovingly tearing down the worldview that supports it as I bring them the gospel. What Schaeffer does so well is to remind us that the culture is part of life, where people’s worldviews are expressed, and though we would often criticize and demean culture it can and should actually be part of how we do evangelism.
Tom Gilson at Thinking Christian is a good example of the kind of action those I've quoted above call for. He recently led discussions of Philip Pullman's trilogy at two local libraries. He has also assembled a list of informative posts he wrote while making his way through the books.
Yes, imagine. Imagine a day when emails calling believers to boycott expressions of unbelief are overwhelmingly outnumbered by invitations to learn how to thoughtfully engage those who produce and consume them. I know, it's a stretch. But imagine.
The third issue of Salvo magazine, the theme of which is "Under the Influence - The Media and Their Messages," is en route to subscribers. You can take a peek at its contents here.
I've been a satisfied subscriber to Mars Hill Audio Journal for many years. When the cassette-carrying envelope arrives in the mail every other month (I know, I'm a dinosaur opting for cassettes instead of mp3's or CD's) my day is made. If I had any complaints, it would only be that I wish it were issued monthly rather than bi-monthly but that's just because I enjoy it so and hate having to wait for the next volume. I suppose the exercise in patience is good for me. Actually, when I consider that the quality of the journal would most likely suffer from shortening the span between volumes, the wait is worth it. Through his conversations with guests from diverse areas of expertise as well as his thoughtful commentary, Ken Myers provokes me to consider implications of the faith I profess in ways that I had not previously.In a recent letter to subscribers, Ken restated the convictions that motivate his work and made some noteworthy yet disturbing observations about the state of the Church. Here's an excerpt posted with permission:
For fifteen years, I have guided the work of MARS HILL AUDIO with the belief that the shape of cultural life really does matter; that faithlessness can take cultural as well as personal forms; and that, because cultural life matters, the Church must often strive to be counter-cultural. I have learned a lot in those years, and I have changed my mind about a number of things. But there are two conclusions with which I started this project (based on previous study and observation) which have been remarkably reinforced. The first is that what is called "modernity" is essentially incompatible with Christian faithfulness, that what makes modern culture distinctively "modern" involves a rejection of important Christian beliefs and practices. The second is that one of the greatest temptations faced by the Church and her leaders is the desire to be approved by the world, that the evangelistic motive can produce a dangerous preoccupation with "getting along," with being "winsome." When the Church gives in to this temptation, the result is a form of cultural captivity in which the Church is simply a chaplain to some cultural status quo, reducing the consequences of faith to personal, "spiritual" matters, but incapable of encouraging a truly counter-cultural stance except at the margins.
As I have read the books written by my guests, talked with them, and with pastors and lay-people around the country, I have come to a deeper conviction of the truth of the first point above. And as I have looked at the books that sell really well among Christians, as I have watched the churches and parachurch groups with large and growing constituencies (some of them, admittedly, short-lived), and as I have talked with younger Christians whose experience and assumptions have been shaped only by "culture-affirming" institutions, I sense a growing level of uncritical identification with contemporary culture. While there are a number of wonderfully insightful books by Christian authors who see the underlying dynamic of many cultural conventions (books about technology or commodification or narcissism or our addiction to entertainment or the state of modern marriage), the insights of such prophetic thinkers seem to be ignored by celebrated Christian leaders, and hence by most Christians. It is easier to keep a big church program running if you don't introduce too much cognitive dissonance between what you say on Sunday and what advertisers and entertainers and professors and miscellaneous experts say the rest of the week.
Of course many good things happen even in churches that are culturally assimilated, just as many good things happen in churches that are culturally disengaged. But bad things in people's lives that are culturally induced and sustained are much harder to deal with when believers aren't ready to recognize that the Church's ways need not be the world's ways. Churches that are culturally careless will not be likely to nurture disciples capable of recognizing cultural disorder outside the church. So, for example, a congregation that adopts contemporary media techniques without reflection is unlikely to produce people alert to the limitations and liabilities of mass media. The church with a food court is unlikely to foster thoughtfulness about the deep cultural losses sustained by modern eating habits. The pastor committed to "entertainment evangelism" will never be able to convey the wisdom in Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death and other similarly prophetic books.
I, too, frequently lament most of the items situated on the bestseller shelves of Christian bookstores. Money and time spent on these would be so much better invested in resources like the Journal. It won't give you more "how to's" or steps to spiritual victory or building a successful church. What it will give you is rich food for thought about what fidelity to Jesus Christ (both individually and corporately) should look like in our cultural setting. A subscription would make a wonderful gift to a pastor or any believer interested in thinking and living in a more thoroughly Christian manner. You can learn about receiving and/or giving a demonstration issue here.
A few weeks ago Dick Staub hit some nerves when he predicted that "Facing the Giants," the Christian film that gained notoriety for its PG rating, would be "another artistic embarrassment in the name of Jesus." Today he gives further explanation for his criticism and asks a series of thought-provoking questions in response to a reader who took offense at his previous post:
I have no doubt that "Facing the Giants" will make a ton of money, but since when is that American materialistic standard our standard? As for emotional reactions? I'’ve been "moved to tears" by art my kids brought home as children, but I did not expect it should be mounted at the local art museum. If we want to glorify God, why should we champion movies with good storylines that make people cry, but are created with inadequate, uncompetitive budgets and substandard acting? If this film DOES make tons of money, Hollywood may distribute more of them. Do we really want to send the message to Hollywood that the kind of films Christians want will be characterized by poor acting, low production values that are inoffensive, make us cry and also make tons of money? Is this truly how we want to influence Hollywood for God?
Thanks to friends at the Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity (Thanks, Joe and Danielle!), I finally secured a copy of the premier issue of Salvo Magazine, a quarterly publication of The Crux Project. I first heard about it from Melinda Penner, whose description made me think it was the kind of magazine I'd enjoy. I'm not disappointed in the least. To say that I'm impressed by the quality of this magazine's layout and content is an understatement.
The publishers describe the magazine's mission as:
Blasting holes in scientific naturalism, marveling at the intricate design of the universe, and promoting life in a culture of death.
Critiquing art, music, film, television, and literature, interrupting mass media influence, and questioning the sanity of our consumerist lifestyle.
Countering destructive ideologies, replacing revisionist fictions with undeniable facts, and paring away political correctness.
Debunking the cultural myths that have undercut human dignity, all but destroyed the notions of virtue and morality, and slowly eroded our appetite for transcendence.
Recovering the one worldview that actually works.
The people who put this magazine together not only utilize artistic flair and intellectual sharpness but also hilarious satire. Part of the fun of reading this issue has been finding the mock ads strewn throughout. One of them (for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Insects) made me laugh out loud when I read it while waiting at the barber shop. "STOP THE INSECTICIDE!" reads the caption beneath a magnified picture of an ant. "One million ants are slaughtered every month by careless missteps, cruel young children with magnifying glasses, and newspapers wielded in ignorance and fear. Feeling bugged? To learn what you can do to help stop the insecticide, or to sponsor an orphaned pupae, call...." (It's like The Wittenberg Door meets Philosophia Christi on a popular level.)
In a letter to readers, founder and editorial director, Richard Moselle says something I've believed for some time. The culture war being waged in America cannot be reduced to conflicting political visions. It is the clash of diametrically opposed philosophies of life or worldviews, out of which particular political stances emerge. Here's how Moselle puts it:
About eight years ago, I came to realize that it was these two worldviews-as opposed to, say, political differences-that have led to our current cultural divide. Not that I wasn't previously cognizant of conflicts over "traditional morality" and the like; rather, I saw for the first time that such conflicts ultimately arise from two distinct ways of looking at reality: one predicated on belief in transcendent truth and the other committed to the notion that such truth is a myth.
Unfortunately, there aren't many media outlets for the discussion of the subjects that matter most. Philosophical and theological discourse don't make scintillating programming. Neither can they be easily condensed into talking points and/or sound bites.
Regrettably, it sometimes seems that Christians share this general impatience with and disinterest in such subjects, often preferring political activity over reflecting deeply on the underlying worldview issues. In fact, I sometimes wonder whether American evangelicalism's attitude might properly be summed up by the phrase, "You can tinker all you want with my theology and doctrine but don't go messin' with my politics!" That thought came to mind as I read the recent New York Times article about Greg Boyd's disowning of conservative politics. My reaction was similar to Russell Moore's at Mere Comments:
Evangelicalism has taken on a political identity while shedding a theological one. A thousand people left Boyd's church. They held a "conservative" stance on issues such as the church's role in society. And yet, for years, Boyd has taught that God does not know the future free actions of people. He has preached that the universe is a democracy rather than a monarchy, and that God's purposes are thwarted by human and angelic decisions he didn't anticipate and he can't overturn. He has articulated an egalitarian view of men and women fully in line with the feminist movement and fully out of step with the biblical canon. Where were the thousand "conservatives" then?
But, I digress. Back to Salvo. I showed my copy to our youth pastor a few minutes ago and he agreed that the format and content would be inviting to high school students who might not otherwise engage these topics. From what I've seen of the first issue, I've decided to get a personal subscription and urge our church's library to subscribe as well. I assure you, I have no affiliation with the magazine nor am I on commission to boost sales. I'm just excited about a new resource that has the potential to promote critical reflection about the ultimate issues of life on the part of both Christians and non-Christians. I encourage you to check it out for yourself.
In February of this year, Mars Hill Audio's Ken Myers delivered four lectures at Christ Presbyterian Church in Marietta, GA under the heading "After Evangelism: The Cultural Lives of Christians and Their Neighbors." Here's a blurb from the conference web site:
What if the Church organized its life around a commitment to discipleship and not just mere evangelism? What would the Church look like if it acted consistent with its calling to teach disciples to observe all that he has commanded? How should the Church minister in the world if those commands are not just about personal belief and piety but about the way we conduct every aspect of our lives in the Creation that exists by, for, and through Christ? How would the Church’s forms of expressing its identity and message be different if Christians realized that cultural life isn’t just a convenient and arbitrary conduit for evangelism, but the way that our obedience, faithfulness, our new life find concrete expression in the world, but not of it?
The four lectures (titled "Christ and Creation: Two Adams and a Fall," "Creation and Redemption: Salvation and the Fulfillment of Humanity," "Creation and Culture: Real Reality and Cultural Order," and "Church and Culture: Discipleship and All of Life") are now available for purchase. You can find ordering information, brief quotes from each session and a 38 minute audio portion (MP3) of the first lecture at the conference lecture page.
When asked in an interview with Relevant Magazine what area of Christian media most concerns him, radio personality and author Dick Staub replied:
C.S. Lewis said, we don't need more Christian writers; we need more Christians who can write. Lewis and Tolkien wrote 50 years ago and are still influential today because their work had spiritual, intellectual and creative ballast. They would not have imagined operating in the kind of parallel universe that Christian media has become. They were mainstreamed. Last year alone their works sold in the millions.
At the risk of sounding uncharitable—50 years from now, how many copies of Left Behind and the Purpose Driven Life will be sold? Our popular culture is impoverished and the "Christian media culture" is satisfied to make money by serving crumbs off the table of that fallen culture, often dumbing down our faith in the process. Until we experience a spiritual, intellectual and creative renaissance, both culture and the parallel universe of Christian media will serve thin gruel, entertaining ourselves to death. I'm concerned about the whole Christian media enterprise.
Another of my favorite quotes from the interview: "Hans Rookmaaker said Jesus didn't come to make us Christian, Jesus came to make us 'fully human.' Those who are fully human have no appetite for the crap pumped out in culture and the Christian subculture."
The entire exchange is relatively brief and well worth reading.
Speaking of films, bethinking.org has posted an excellent audio by Andrew Fellows on the use of film in apologetics. Fellows, a staff member of L'Abri in England, gave this presentation to a group of campus ministry workers.
He begins by dividing the apologetic process into three stages:
1. Subversion
2. Persuasion
3. Proclamation
Proclamation is the telling of the core gospel. Fellows says this is the most precious stage in the process yet complains that for many Christians, this is the only stage. Consequently, we miss many opportunities. Persuasion targets those who, though skeptical, are open to dialogue about the possibility of Christianity being true. Here, believers give reasons for their faith. Finally, subversion, the most challenging stage, is needed when dealing with those who are completely closed to considering the gospel. This involves getting inside the other person's worldview and "rattling their cage." (Though he doesn't mention it, this is equivalent to what Francis Schaeffer meant by "taking the roof off.") Fellows thinks that popular films can be effective tools in this phase of apologetics and estimates that about 80% of his own conversations with those who are closed to Christianity revolve around movies.
Fellows' talk has four main points:
1. Don't underestimate the power of film
2. Allow film to function as narrative
3. Be attentive to the worldview that lies beneath every film
4. Checkpoints for our use of films
In the course of the talk, Fellows explains the power of narrative and how we must learn to make connections between a film's narrative and the Christian story which is the one, true, epic story. Every other story that has ever been told connects to this story in some way. Subversive apologetics through film seizes or exploits the similarities between the film's story and the Christian story while recognizing the essential differences in worldview. (Fellows offers nine worldview questions to ask when viewing a film.) However, the focus of this kind of engagement is not primarily about arguing worldview but about the story and its appeal to the imagination.
Fellows says that the more his own Christian worldview has developed, the more his enjoyment of film has increased. He also says that if unbelievers see that we love and understand films, real discussions will emerge.
During the Q & A, he urges the campus ministry leaders to teach their students how to watch movies, something most of them don't know how to do. Teaching them how to do this will equip them to discuss films with their peers. This caused me to think about the need for churches to educate believers in a similar manner. For those interested, Brian Godawa's book, Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom & Discernment, is a good resource for that.
Since reading about Dr. Tim Keller’s ministry in the New York Times (and blogging about it here), I’ve gone directly to the source (thanks to Steve McCoy's impressive resource list). So far, I've listened to three of his sermons and read a few of his writings much to my enjoyment and benefit. I want to point to one article I found especially insightful concerning apologetics and evangelism in our postmodern ethos. It’s called “Deconstructing Defeater Beliefs: Leading the Secular to Christ” (pdf).
Dr. Keller defines defeater beliefs as a culture’s “common sense consensus beliefs that automatically make Christianity seem implausible to people.” Because these deeply-entrenched beliefs are assumed to be true, people hastily dismiss the Christian faith since it contradicts them.
If, for example, a culture is convinced that all religions are true, Christianity’s exclusive claims are quickly rejected as ludicrous. Implausibility structures are culturally relative, meaning that “Christianity is disbelieved in one culture for totally opposite reasons it is disbelieved in another.” This is an important point highlighting the sociological dimension of fallen humanity’s suppression of the truth. While it’s accurate to say that depravity is ultimately and universally responsible for unbelief, the “course of this world” that the unregenerate follow is not monolithic but varies across historical period, geography, people group, etc.
Recognizing the inevitable presence of implausibility structures and how they stand as barriers to the gospel has important implications for how we seek to commend the faith to postmodern hearers. Some Christians insist that we abandon argumentation as a means of gospel persuasion and, instead, rely on the apologetic power of Christian community and ministries of mercy to those outside the church. Keller’s reaction to this line of thought is worthy of quoting at length:
"I couldn’t agree more that post-modern people come to Christ through process, through relationships, through mini-decisions, through ‘trying Christianity on.’ They are pragmatic rather than abstract in their reasoning, etc. But the books that are against any arguments at all seem to miss the fact that the extreme pragmatism of non-Christians today is part of a non-Christian world-view. Our post-enlightenment culture believes what has been called expressive individualism. That is – ‘it is true if works for me.’ This obviously is based on the view that truth and right-or-wrong is something I discover within my own self and consciousness.
What then of the claim that ‘post-modern people don’t want arguments – they just want to see if it works for them’? All right – as with any form of contextualization, let us as evangelists enter – adapt partially – to the culture of expressive individualism. Let us show them the reality of changed lives. Let us use narratives rather than long strings of logic. But at some point you must also challenge the sovereignty of individual consciousness. Jesus is Lord, not my personal consciousness. At some point, the idea that 'it is true if and only if it works for me' must be challenged. We have to say: 'Ultimately that is correct - in the very, very long run, obeying the truth will 'work' and bring you to glory and disobeying the truth will 'not work' and bring you to ruin. But in the short run (like - even throughout all the rest of your life!) obeying the truth might lead to ostracism, persecution, or other suffering.'"
Keller goes on to explain that sharing the gospel involves a two part approach, a negative apologetic dimension that consists of deconstructing the reigning cultural implausibility structure, and a positive aspect of sharing the gospel. This communication must be done in a fashion so as to connect the gospel message to what he calls the culture's base-line narratives. He writes, "In short, you have to show in line with the culture's own (best) aspirations, hopes, and convictions that its own cultural story won't be resolved or have a 'happy ending' outside of Christ."
Keller advocates presenting the gospel using a three-layered approach composed of these two aspects. The layers are as follows:
a) Brief gospel summary. First, the gospel must be presented briefly but so vividly and attractively (and so hooked in to the culture's base-line cultural narratives) that the listener is virtually compelled to say 'It would be wonderful if that were true, but it can't be!' Until he or she comes to that position, you can't work on the implausibility structure! The listener must have motivation to hear you out. That is what defeaters do - they make people super-impatient with any case for Christianity. Unless they find a presentation of Christ surprisingly attractive and compelling (and stereo-type breaking) their eyes will simply glaze over when you try to talk to them.
b) Dismantle plausibility structure. ....The leading defeaters must be dealt with clearly and quickly but convincingly. Defeaters are dealt with when the person feels you have presented the objection to Christianity in a clearer and stronger way than they could have done it.
c) Longer explanation of the person and work of Christ. Now, if people find you have at least undermined the defeaters in a listener's mind, you can now return to talking at greater length about creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. If you try to do apologetics before you pull off a quick, attractive presentation of Christ, people's eyes will glaze over and they will become bored. But if you try to do a very lengthy explanation of the meaning of Christ's cross and resurrection before you convincingly deal with the defeaters, they won't listen to you either.
Keller illustrates how this approach looks interacting with two pervasive Western cultural concerns : 1) personal freedom and identity and 2) unity and diversity. He then gives brief but helpful examples of deconstructing six dominant defeaters in Western civilization: 1) Christian exclusivism in light of religious pluralism, 2) evil and suffering, 3) the ethical restrictiveness of Christianity, 4) the record of Christians, 5) the angry God, and 6) the unreliable Bible.
The article concludes with points the unbeliever who's ready to explore the Christian faith must consider, including this one about doubt: "Your doubts are really beliefs, and you can't avoid betting your life and destiny on some kind of belief in God and the universe. Non-commitment is impossible. Faith-acts are inevitable." What Keller is stressing here is that there is no such thing as ideological neutrality. Objections to the Christian faith don't spring from nowhere but are expressions of alternative systems of belief which are themselves in need of a defense.
Part of our evangelistic task, then, is to help our hearers become more aware of their own presuppositions. We must ask them the same question Cornelius Van Til did in his "Why I Believe in God": "Will you not go into the basement of your own experience to see what has been gathering there while you were busy here and there with the surface inspection of life? You may be greatly surprised at what you find there." Then, if we are prepared, we can take their hand and lead them downstairs.
