Christ or Chaos E-Book

Dan DeWitt

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 158

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Is Christianity irrational? Atheists often say that it is. But does such a charge really stand up to close scrutiny? This book follows the story of Thomas, a junior in college, as he wrestles with the claims of those who think the Christian faith is nothing more than a collection of ancient myths with little connecting to reality. Whether you are facing objections to your faith for the first time, simply discussing your faith with unbelieving friends, or doubting your faith altogether, you might be surprised to discover that Christianity actually offers a more compelling explanation of what it means to be human than atheism could ever hope to provide.

Leseprobe

CHRIST OR CHAOS

Dan DeWitt

Foreword by Josh Wilson

Christ or Chaos

Copyright © 2016 by Daniel A. DeWitt

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Jeff Miller, Faceout Studio

Cover image: Neo Edmund/Shuttertock

First printing 2016

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-4896-3 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-4899-4 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-4897-0 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-4898-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

DeWitt, Dan, 1977–

Christ or chaos / Dan DeWitt; foreword by Josh Wilson.

1 online resource.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4335-4897-0 (pdf) -- ISBN 978-1-4335-4898-7 (mobi) -- ISBN 978-1-4335-4899-4 (epub) -- ISBN 978-1-4335-4896-3 (print)

1. Christianity and atheism. 2. Apologetics. I. Title.

BR128.A8          

261.2'1—dc                              23 2015027347

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

To my big brother, Chris, with much love and respect

Table of Contents

Cover PageNewsletter Sign upEndorsementsTitle PageCopyrightDedicationForeword by Josh WilsonIntroduction: Reality Used to Be a Friend of Mine1 Much Ado about Nothing2 The Cosmic Song3 The Major Anthem4 The Minor Key5 Haunted by Transcendence6 What If God Were One of Us?7 Our Stubborn SmileConclusion: Hoax or HopeAcknowledgmentsNotesIndexMore by Dan DeWittBack Cover

Foreword

You know the feeling you get when you’re relaxing in a chair, leaning back, arms up, fingers folded behind your head, and all of a sudden you recline just a little too far? Right after you suck all the air out of the room, one of two things happens. The first is that by flailing your arms in just the right direction at just the right speed, you somehow manage to right yourself and find your balance. The alternative is that you fall flat on your back, wind knocked out, probably needing to take a few moments to recover from your not-so-graceful plunge.

That second outcome: that’s me when I went to college. My dad is a pastor, I was raised in the church, and I grew up with mostly Christian friends. I was taught that what I believed was the absolute truth, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. All the way through my high school career, I can’t remember doubting much about my faith. I was comfortable, leaning back in my cushy Christian recliner, confident that I had this faith thing figured out.

Then, in college, I met people who believed differently than me. Some of them followed other religions. Others were atheists or agnostics. But one thing we all had in common was that we were basically decent people, adhering to a fairly similar set of moral guidelines. I didn’t really know any atheists in high school, and out of my naiveté, I assumed they were probably all immoral or uncaring, and obviously not very thoughtful since they didn’t believe in God. What I found was quite the opposite. These folks became my friends. As I got to know them, I realized that they were intelligent and incredibly thoughtful. They just happened to subscribe to a completely different worldview.

My chair collapsed and I spiraled, arms thrashing, into the abyss of confusion. I began to wonder if my faith was ill placed. I wasn’t sure if there were good, rational reasons to believe in Christianity. I considered, for the first time, that some other religion might have it right or, even scarier, that there might be no God at all.

About that time, I met someone named Dan DeWitt, who became my college pastor at church. Dan was exactly who I needed to have in my life during those frightening moments of rebuilding my faith. Dan had been down the path I was on, and knew well how to respond to my doubts. He listened with grace, prayed with and for me, and helped me sort through why I believe what I believe. He took his time and didn’t give me a one-size-fits-all solution.

Dan wasn’t afraid of my doubts, I learned, because God isn’t afraid of our doubts. I came to see my growing list of questions not as a sign of a weak faith, but as an indicator that I was taking my faith seriously. I learned to view my doubts as opportunities, as an invitation to search for truth.

One of the things I appreciate about Dan is that he is a Christian leader who’s not afraid to publicly empathize with skeptics. He won’t tell you he has it all figured out, because none of us do. But he will consistently point you toward the great Love and Light that has captured his heart.

Jesus is big enough to handle your uncertainty. He isn’t intimidated by your questions. That’s because he’s not a formula, but a real person. And in the end, what will change your life is not an argument, but the very Spirit of God. And I’m praying that’s exactly what will happen as you work through the following pages.

This book is Dan’s way of catching your recliner. It’s his way of pulling up a chair alongside of yours for a friendly dialogue about the most serious of topics: truth that can be defended, but doesn’t need defending; the love of God that isn’t deserved, but is given freely; and a peculiar providence that places people, and even books like this one, in our lives at just the right time. Maybe you’ll discover, perhaps even for the first time, a faith strong enough to support you with all of your questions and doubts.

Josh Wilson

singer/songwriter

Introduction

Reality Used to Be a Friend of Mine

Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth.

C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

The sun will probably kill us.

That’s what scientists tell us. The large warmth-giving star our earth orbits around will continue to heat up until it burns all its nuclear fuel. Feeding its insatiable hunger for energy, it will grow into what experts call a “Red Giant.” In its hot wrath this giant will gobble up all life on earth and burp out a silent planet.

The End.

That’s how the curtain closes in one storyline at least. And that’s the outlook many embrace today. The plot begins in a murky prebiotic ocean and ends in the heat death of all of civilization. And if that’s where life came from and where history is headed, there’s not much we can do about it. After all, wishful thinking has never slain a giant.

I loved giant stories as a kid. They involved mysterious beans, cunning heroes, and defeated Goliaths. But the Red Giant isn’t my idea of an inspirational fairy tale. I think I like the Jolly Green Giant, who advertises canned vegetables on television, a whole lot better.

If it were up to me, the Green Giant would trounce the Red Giant, and we would all walk off into the sunset holding hands and snacking on sweet peas. In all seriousness, there actually is a fifty-five-foot-tall statue of the Jolly Green Giant in Blue Earth, Minnesota. If things end the way scientists predict, this monument will one day melt beneath the heat of the expanding sun, a reminder that life doesn’t have to mirror fantasy.

Not every story has a happy ending. Not all giants are jolly. When I was a child I thought like a child. Perhaps it’s time to put away childish things.

But we’re all suckers for a good story. That’s why we squirm a bit at gloomy projections for the human race. We want a comedy even though our meteorological forecast forces us into a tragedy. I think deep down we’re all holding out hope for a David figure to step in with a humble sling and defend us from the cosmic foe threatening our existence. We simply want a better ending.

Choose Your Own Adventure

Every perspective of reality contains an inherent narrative. Every worldview is a novel. Each has an author, a beginning, and an end. The task for thinking people is to consider not which story is the most interesting, but which one is actually true. In the end we may find a story compelling and true in which we can lose ourselves. Better yet, we may discover a story in which we can actually find ourselves. That would be novel indeed.

As a young boy I enjoyed reading the Choose Your Own Adventure books. At the end of each short chapter you would be asked a question about the plot and then be directed to a specific page to continue the story, depending on your answer. While every decision along the way would influence the outcome, none was more important than the very first. Your response to the first question would determine the scope of all of your future options.

Reality works a lot like this. We all have to make fundamental assumptions about the nature of the universe. The first chapter of the human narrative presents the question about origins. The options are (a) nature contains the answer to this question or (b) something outside nature contains the answers. The decisions that follow are important, but this first choice determines the possibilities—the parameters—of the rest of the plot.

This is the basic worldview assumption that Thomas is forced to wrestle with his junior year in college. His roommate, Zach, has recently become an atheist. Zach is convinced that his new worldview offers a superior explanation of the universe. Encouraging Thomas to reconsider his faith, Zach has suggested that Christianity is irrational and detached from reality.

The two have been best friends since they were little kids. Very few of their childhood memories do not include the other in some way. Rooming together in college was a given. They’ve looked forward to it since their senior year in high school when they decided to attend the same university. But now, in their third year of college life, it seems they’ve never been further apart.

This has both taxed their friendship and challenged Thomas’s faith. He fears it may drive them apart forever. How can their friendship survive such a clash?

To be honest, many a night Thomas has wondered if his roommate is right. On occasion he has asked himself, “Is Christianity really disconnected from the world? Is religious belief irrational?”

What most troubles him is that some of Zach’s arguments against Christianity seem reasonable and persuasive. After all, they’ve both seen some really unfortunate things in the church. Thomas doesn’t have to be convinced of the limitations of their religious upbringing or of the evils done in the name of faith. So in many ways he empathizes with Zach’s decision to walk away.

And he’s considered what it would mean to follow in his footsteps.

On the other hand, if atheism is true, then the grand story of humanity means basically that we are the products of time and chance and are headed toward nonexistence. We are simply matter in motion—entropy in sneakers. But to Thomas the human experience seems to point the opposite direction. Is this only wishful thinking?

Thomas has always considered the biblical description of the world to line up with his lived experience. For him, Christianity has always made sense of life. So he’s not ready to give up without a fight. Yet his roommate has raised some valid questions about belief in God. Given the topic and their lifelong friendship, this is no trivial debate he can brush off.

Thankfully, this isn’t a journey Thomas has to take alone. He finds support from a campus ministry leader who offers some helpful resources for responding to Zach’s challenge. They talk late one evening and develop a list of biblical themes we should expect to encounter in the real world if Christianity is indeed true.

Thomas’s list includes things like a universe that is not eternal, telltale signs of design in creation, a universal longing for God (or a God substitute), a moral fabric to the universe, and accounts of God interacting in history. If Christianity is true, we should expect to find these things in the world around us and in the human experience.

If Christianity is irrational, then it should be easy enough to expose this and demonstrate that its explanation of the world and human lives is incoherent and uncompelling. But if Christianity is true, then it should provide insights into the world we live in, the values we hold, and the lives we seek to lead.

Is reality best explained by cosmos or chaos? The word cosmos is used to refer to the universe as an orderly system. The word chaos refers to something governed by chance. Which word best describes our world? Do we live in a cosmos or a chaos? Does Christianity lead us to understand the cosmos in a way that makes sense of our lived experience? Christianity, if true, should offer a map to reality—a guide to understanding the cosmos.

The Next Steps

In these pages we will follow Thomas as he reevaluates his faith in light of his roommate’s challenge that Christianity is irrational. I hope to provide an honest portrayal of what faith and friendship look like when they’re held in tension. And I hope to demonstrate the gospel’s relevance in the contemporary landscape of skepticism.

Like my earlier book Jesus or Nothing, I use a narrative framework with fictional characters to illustrate what it might look like to work through issues in real-life situations. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of Christianity that Thomas considers important and how it relates to his experience. I interweave some of the arguments for and against the Christian worldview in an attempt to depict what these kinds of dialogues can look and sound like. I recognize that my bias as a Christian will affect the way I present either side.

I take this approach because I happen to think the gospel is up to the challenge. I’m concerned that many Christians are content to hunker down in Christian echo chambers and ignore the broader cultural conversations about faith in God. Some treat the gospel like a fragile heirloom that should be covered in Bubble Wrap, hidden in the attic, and thus preserved for future generations.

I tend to think the gospel can hold its own. The gospel won’t be intimidated or overshadowed by rival truth claims. As the famous preacher Charles Spurgeon said, you don’t defend a lion. Unchain it and it will defend itself.

This book is about the gospel minus the Bubble Wrap. It’s about the gospel’s power unshackled and taken out of the attic. We need the gospel more than it needs us. And we see the gospel best when we actually see through it—when it’s like a pair of reading glasses giving us a clear vision of reality.

That’s why Christians should never be ashamed of the gospel in the private or public domain, in our churches or in the marketplace of ideas. We shouldn’t shiver at the thought of subjecting the gospel to the test of sincere scrutiny. If it’s false, then we have nothing to gain, and if it’s true, we have nothing to lose. As C. S. Lewis once said, “One must keep on pointing out that Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.”1

This may be a good place to offer a disclaimer: I make frequent references to Lewis throughout this book. I teach a class on Lewis a couple times every year at Boyce College, and in all my reading related to worldview analysis I find that few writers illustrate worldview thinking in terms of their private lives, public debates, and published works as well as he does.

I’ve written this book for students like Thomas who are torn between faith and friendship. I’ve also written this book for students like Zach who have walked away from the gospel. My prayer is that somewhere between their polar positions, through the ambient noise of skeptics and religious sound bites, a healthy conversation can take place about what Christianity looks like in the real world—or better yet—what the real world looks like in Christianity.

1

Much Ado about Nothing

For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are.

C. S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

The twentieth-century journalist and Christian apologist G. K. Chesterton once said, “There are two ways of getting home; and one of them is to stay there. The other is to walk round the whole world till we come back to the same place.”1 Chesterton’s point was that truth might be closer than you realize, perhaps right under your nose. And sometimes, like with the prodigal son, truth is found at the end of a long road back to the Father’s house.

Chesterton was specifically speaking of Christianity. And in his book The Everlasting Man he contrasted two helpful forms of analyzing the Christian faith. The first is from the inside. The second is from a million miles away. As he said, “The best relation to our spiritual home is to be near enough to love it. But the next best is to be far enough away not to hate it.”2

In other words, sometimes stepping just outside the front door of a particular worldview leaves you too close to have a clear perspective. You can be standing beneath the awning while complaining of the shade. Your proximity itself creates emotional and intellectual blind spots.

As Chesterton put it, “The popular critics of Chris­tian­ity are not really outside of it. . . . Their criticism has taken on a curious tone; as of a random and illiterate heckling.”3 The modern-day terrain of heckling, as Chesterton describes it, is fraught with emotional landmines and intellectual blockades. Safe passage to meaningful conversations can be hard to find.

A Bridge over Troubled Waters