Answer the Call of Christ Today

I MAKE no secret in this blog that I am a devout Christian. In my introductory article to Anti-Communism Month 2022 I stated towards the end that “[s]ince socialism is fundamentally anti-Christian, I believe God is on our side in fighting the cadres of socialism, in liberating the minds of His children from its deceptive promises.” My article “Libertarianism and Morality” was all about the intersection between Christianity/evangelism and libertarianism, plus their compatibility. So, yeah, it’s no surprise that I’m a Bible-thumper.

Because I am a disciple of Christ I am faced with verses such as Matt. 5:15-16, “Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in Heaven.” More importantly, I am faced with the Great Commission, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit…” (Matt. 28:19). As this blog continues to grow, as the community of people that read it diversifies, it becomes ever more imperative - to me - to not squander such an opportunity to make an impact. In this page, then, what I want to do is present the Good News of Jesus Christ and connect it to the mission of this blog.

In 1 Corinthians 15 the Apostle Paul presents what is essentially the Gospel in the nutshell: “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve” (vv. 1-5). This contains much of the essential Christian message, which is that Christ Jesus - our namesake, God Incarnate - came to Earth, shared in all our experiences (from love to joy to sadness to pain to, ultimately, death) and was hung upon a cross in order to make atonement for our sins, and then came back to life to triumph over sin and death and show us the Way. We worship Him for all that (the Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection).

The next foundational question that should be answered is, “Why did Jesus have to die?” This question is answered in two parts by the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Romans. In Romans 6:23 he says that “...the wages of sin is death…,” and in Romans 3:23 he asserts “...all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Up until the First Coming the main form of sin-offering was a slain lamb, but even in the Old Testament God was not pleased with this system, asserting that, “Because I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hos. 6:6; cf. Mal. 1:6-14). When Christ came He would be the ultimate example of steadfast love (also translated “mercy”) and of true knowledge of God; Hebrews 7:27 summarizes it perfectly:

“He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for His own sins and then for those of the people, since He did this once for all when he offered up Himself.”

Christ, then, fulfilled and embodied the perfect sin-offering. Mere human effort and mere animal blood was not sufficient, but the blood of God’s Son? Nothing could be more satisfactory. We can tie things together now with John 3:16-17, often referred to as “the Gospel in a nutshell”:

“For this is the way God loved the world: He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him.”

Because Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice, and because He makes us holy, something we cannot attain on our own (cf. Tit. 3:3-5 and 1 Cor. 6:11; see also), it is belief in Him, His divinity, His message, and the grace of God that made all this possible, that are integral to the Christian faith (these are traditionally known as the Five Solas). This is the Gospel.

What I want to address now is the significant role that reason and logic play in our lives, and the effect this has on ministering/accepting the Gospel. Extolling reason and logic is not bad, as these are virtues the Bible also extolls, and rationalism works best with a theistic basis. Still, the importance of reason and logic has become a significant obstacle to many people’s belief, since they do not think there is such a thing as a logic- and faith-driven lifestyle.

In response to this I want to make two points: first, as I discussed in my article “Demoralization”, higher education in the West has become overwhelmingly infiltrated by far-left/Marxian thinkers, corrupting its teachings. As a consequence, a fundamentally anti-Christian ideology has taken over academia, meaning that we should be skeptical of any scholarship arguing against the validity of religion/Christianity and against the compatibility of logic and faith. Second, there is absolutely a relationship between logic and faith and a logical case for faith.

Just as I have read a lot about the more secular subjects on this blog, I have read a lot about religion. If you are convicted by the message of Jesus Christ, and want to bridge the gap between logic and faith, then I suggest some of the following books and articles:

  • A very beginner’s level case for the Christian faith is presented in two books that I adore and which were what I read early in my Christian life that solidified my faith. These are the books The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel and Evidence That Demands A Verdict by Sean and Josh McDowell. The Case for Christ is a classic written by an ex-atheist who has become one of the most popular apologists in modern history; this book presents the case for the historicity, divine/messianic identity, and Resurrection of Christ. McDowells’ 700-page tome is a very detailed but absolutely readable textbook on Christian apologetics that covers the existence of God and Jesus, the Resurrection of Jesus, the reliability of the Bible, and many other important topics.

  • For those who are more brainy and up for a highbrow read I have another two books I can suggest; these are both written by some of the most high-profile Christian scholars in recent history. The first is Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview by J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, a 700-page volume intelligently addressing issues such as “What is real?” “What is truth?” “What can we know?” “Is there a God?” “Do Christian doctrines make sense?” among many others. The second is To Everyone an Answer, a book written in 2014 as a Festschrift to Norman Geisler, truly one of the greatest Christian intellectuals of the last century, and contains essays that address epistemological, theological, philosophical, and other subjects with a Christian answer.

  • If you are interested in books that directly tango with the philosophies and arguments of atheist scholars then here are another two books that just do that: Eric Metaxas’ book Is Atheism Dead? is a modern response to the infamous 1966 Time magazine cover, and the assertions of the militant New Atheist movement, exposing the flawed foundations of atheism and atheists while showing off the ironclad foundations of Christianity. Then there is Frank Turek and Norman Geisler’s co-creation I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist which similarly acknowledges the claims of atheist scholars (and important beliefs of theirs, such as Darwinism, materialism, and moral relativism) and responds to them with the evidence for the Way of Christ.

  • And, finally, I want to give those that are curious some online resources that are free-to-access, can be turned to whenever, and contain a bunch of articles that build the case for Christianity and against its foes. The three websites are CrossExamined.org, Bethinking.org, and CARM.org. The hundreds of articles spread across these three sites contain more than enough information to create or strengthen someone’s faith. Various issues, topics, and questions have been covered by these sites, and it is very unlikely you will find a question unanswered between the three.


I hope that this article will have an impact on you, dearest reader, and that you will indeed answer the call of Christ today. God is One “Who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth,” and He is delaying the End just for every last one of you who haven’t accepted Him yet. Still, He cannot delay forever, subjecting His Church to the pains of a fallen World eternally, and so the Time must come. Before then, of course, you have all the time to accept Him, and I have given you more than enough in the list and discussion above to believe in Him. I should also mention that this blog has a keen focus on promoting liberty, and this is another positive of Christianity, which has a fundamentally libertarian message, as books such as Anarchy and Christianity and Called to Freedom demonstrate (get these books if anything, oh and The Case for Christ!). I wish you the best of luck and all the spiritual growth you can muster; I, as God does, love you and want the best for you, both on Earth, through liberty, and in Heaven, through salvation.

Godspeed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Conquest's Second Law and Libertarianism

  IN political science there is a concept known as “Conquest’s laws of politics.” It is named after Robert Conquest, a conservative British historian best known for his books on the Soviet Union . Similar to Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics,” Conquest’s laws define three principles of political action that can be considered reliably accurate. These three laws are: Everyone is conservative about what he knows best. Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that is controlled by a cabal of its enemies. All these laws have interesting implications and can be looked at one by one. However, today the one law that I want us to focus on in particular is the second law, that, “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.” It certainly sounds interesting and can have broad implications for political strategy. For libertarians in part
Read more

Active Measures: Part I, "Demoralization"

  This is the first of a planned three-part series that will focus on analyzing the origins, perpetrators, and fulfillment of Soviet-style subversive “active measures” in the United States and elsewhere in the West. Because of the amount of information that there is to talk about, owing to the enormity of data that is revealed through thorough research of this subject, this multi-volume approach has been taken. This first installment is focused on the strategy of “demoralization”.             BACK in the 1980s a now-infamous interview was hosted by George E. Griffin with KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov. This interview, little known to the general public, exposed the four-part strategy by which the Soviet KGB sought to subvert enemy nations. Many commentators, especially in recent years, have noted that these “active measures” that Bezmenov exposed are highly reminiscent of situations happening in contemporary society. Along with George Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four , Bezmenov’s revelat
Read more

Divide and Conquer

THE  political situation in America is pretty awful, and has been for probably up to a decade (although, I’d argue it has always been bad, and has only become obvious in recent years). Every month, every week, every day even, we must watch on in an ashamed stupor as the assembly of people elected to direct with steadfast loyalty our country act like toddlers left alone in a classroom. A simply net positive GDP growth means nothing, because the cogs of the machine have grown greasy and old. As a great exhibit of the condition of our country, recent statistics show a very legitimate desire for secession among certain Americans. This is not good, it is as simple as that. Every nation-state, every civil society, is a human experiment. Locke, who I oft differ to, saw civil society as the consensual assembly of humans under common principles (Locke 2015, p. 77). The State, therefore, is consequently obliged to be sensitive of and accommodating to the human condition; not sensitive or acco
Read more