Is Christianity Rational, Relevant, and Good?

In this episode, Dr. Mikel Del Rosario and Kenneth Samples discuss making a positive case for Christianity, focusing on its rationality, relevance, and goodness.

About The Table Podcast

The Table is a weekly podcast on topics related to God, Christianity, and cultural engagement brought to you by The Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. The show features a variety of expert guests and is hosted by Dr. Darrell Bock, Bill Hendricks, Kymberli Cook, Kasey Olander, and Milyce Pipkin. 

Timecodes
01:20
Samples’ work with Reasons to Believe
04:11
Why did you write Christianity Cross-Examined?
07:01
What’s the top question about Christianity and rationality?
15:45
How can a Christian work through a conflict between science and faith?
20:05
What’s the top question about Christianity and relevance?
26:00
What does Christianity say about human longing and meaning?
28:40
What is the top question asked about Christianity and goodness?
32:24
Why are so many Christians not like Christ?
35:52
How can we better equip pastors in our churches to address issues of the mind?
Transcript

Narrator: 

Welcome to The Table podcast, where we discuss issues of God and culture. Brought to you by Dallas Theological Seminary. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Welcome to The Table, where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Mikel Del Rosario. I'm the cultural engagement manager here at The Hendrick Center and our topic on The Table podcast today is, is Christianity relevant, rational, and good? These are three questions we're going to be walking through. It represents a variety of kinds of questions that people ask today. My guest on the show is Kenneth Samples, coming to us all the way from sunshiny Southern California. Ken is a senior researcher at Reasons To Believe. He's also an adjunct professor in the apologetics program there at Biola University, my Alma mater. Welcome, Ken. 

Kenneth Samples: 

Good to be with you, Mikel. It's nice to get a chance to talk with you. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Yeah, I think last time we were together, it was pre-pandemic San Diego. 

Kenneth Samples: 

That's right. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

At Evangel Theological Society meetings. Good to connect with people at Reasons To Believe, including Fuzz and others who we've had on our broadcast before. Well, we just want to start by having you introduce yourself a little bit. Tell us about your role at Reasons To Believe. 

Kenneth Samples: 

Yeah. This is my 25th year at RTB. I'm kind of a bit of an oddball on the scholar team because I'm a non-scientist. I work with Hugh Ross, who founded the ministry back in 1986. But have a number of other colleagues in different disciplines of science. RTB is a science faith apologetics, but I try to provide some support in terms of theology and philosophy. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Today, you are a public advocate for the Christian faith, but it was not always so. Tell us a little bit about your journey to faith. 

Kenneth Samples: 

Yeah. Well, my parents converted to Catholicism in the early 1960s. They were evangelicals, but they embraced the Catholic faith. I was baptized as a four-year-old at St. Athanasius parish in Long Beach, which is a suburb of LA. I kind of had a nominal Catholic faith, I think, growing up. But when I was in college, I was really searching, I was really looking for answers to personal meaning for myself, what life was all about. Began studying philosophy, the big questions of life. And I would say through really kind of providential things in my life, I became very interested in Christianity. My sister gave me a book by C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. I was so pleased that a Christian could think so carefully, lay out the faith in a way that I thought was reasonable. And so, I came back to the Catholic church. Later, I became an evangelical Protestant. But God's grace has been very rich in my life. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Well, that's amazing. It's so interesting how sometimes you see people who you think maybe there are these hurdles to faith. And do you think that they're never going to get beyond those hurdles. 

Kenneth Samples: 

Right. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

The Lord works in their lives through them studying evidences for the Christian faith, a friend who's able to share with them some evidences for the Christian faith. And then sometimes the most unlikely people in our minds at least, actually make a decision to trust Christ, not unlikely in God's mind, because he had them all along and knew where they were going to end up. But I'm glad that you have put together in a little package this book called, Christianity Cross-Examined. That the subtitle is, "Is it rational, relevant, and good?" Because over the past 30 years you've been working in apologetics, you've found some of the questions out in the public square evolving a little bit. Tell us about that. 

Kenneth Samples: 

Yeah. I think if I went back, my first work in apologetics, I worked with Walter Martin at the Christian Research Institute. And in those days I was interested in new religious movements. And when I would go to the colleges and universities, I would say virtually all the questions in those days were what I would call truth questions. Does God exist? Is Jesus' son of God? Was he raised from the dead? How can Christianity be true in light of all these religions? Moving forward, however, I've worked at Reasons To Believe 25 years. I would say about 15 years ago when I went to the colleges and universities, I noticed that there was a change in apologetic questions. 

Kenneth Samples: 

I still get truth questions. But students were often interested in whether Christianity has been a good force in the world. And they have particular questions about whether God was good. Whether the God of the Old Testament was compatible with the person of Jesus. And so I would propose, we've kind of moved from questions that philosophers would call from modernism to postmodernism. And I think in our culture today, we not only have to give reasons why Christianity is true. I think we also have to give reasons why Christianity has been and is a good force in the world. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

That's so true. Because for many people today, they won't even be asking the question, is God real? Is Jesus who he claimed to be? Is Christianity true? Those kind of truth questions. Until they're even convinced that Christianity is a good thing. Like why should I even want that to be good? And so oftentimes now we start with this conversation about the goodness of Christianity and its relevance before people will begin to ask questions about its truthfulness. I know, regardless of whatever presentation I'm giving at a church, if it's about the problem of evil, if it's about the resurrection of Jesus, Q&A time comes and someone will say, "Yeah. But how do I relate to my gay friends? Or, "But what about my Muslim neighbors?" These questions of gender, sexuality. These kinds of things that are in the public square as the hot topics of discussion. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

How can we go from life to the Bible? Ken, you mentioned that you speak regularly on college campuses. And let's just walk through these three areas that you talk about in your book, is Christianity rational, relevant, and good? And let's start with the first category, rational. This is kind of the traditional apologetics that we most often hear about. But today, what would you say is the top question in this rationality category that you get on college campuses? 

Kenneth Samples: 

Yeah. Certainly when people ask questions about Christianity's rationality, they're going to connect it to science in some way. I remember in 2017, the most Googled question about God was, "If God created the world, who created God?" That's an interesting question. I would piggyback on that though, Mikel, and say, a lot of people think that modern science has kind of made God unnecessary. So that early part of my book, I try to focus on Christianity's relationship to science. But in that context as well, I talk about Christianity's relationship to reason and rationality. But I think probably science is still a very important question when it comes to Christianity's rationality. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

How would you answer question if we have science and I want to follow the science, right? So why do I need God? 

Kenneth Samples: 

Yeah. I would say for example, that if you look back to the early part of the 20th century and you took into account what many of the secular scientists were saying then. So I'm talking about Einstein, Eddington, talking about Hoyle and Hubble. All of those secular scientists, and they were all outspoken. And of course this is the backdrop of Darwin. This is a very secular period. All of them thought what we would discover is a universe that is maybe just a brute reality. Maybe the universe is all there is. They thought there was no need for God. God was a concept that maybe was created by human beings, but it was no longer necessary. I think, Mikel, however, if you look at science in the 20th century, what you begin to see is that what these secular scientists thought they would discover, they didn't. They thought they would discover, for example, a universe that was a brute reality. It had always been there. 

Kenneth Samples: 

What came out of that in the mid 20th century is what we call Big Bang cosmology. That matter, energy, space and time, the universe itself appears to have had a singular beginning from nothing. And of course, Hoyle, who is the scientist who named it Big Bang. He said it in terms of derision. Well, if the universe had just banged, if it just came into being, does it then need a cause? And you can look at other areas. The parameters of the universe, the fine tuning in the universe, and even human consciousness and human exceptionalism. By exceptionalism, I mean, humans appear to be different than the other animals. Not merely in degree, but in kind. And I think what we've seen in the 20th century is that when we look at these scientific mysteries, they point to God rather than pointing away from God. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Yeah. I think it's interesting when the big bang theory was first discussed, a lot of naturalistic scientists were the ones pushing back on it because it seemed to line up actually pretty well with the Christian world views idea that God created ex nihilo from nothing. That's not normally... Today, a lot of people just equate that with the Big Bang theory with naturalism. Whereas, actually it's something that secular scientists were actually kind of cautious about because they thought it was too close to Christianity when they were first looking at it. 

Kenneth Samples: 

That's exactly right. Yes. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Talk a little bit about how the Christian world view grounds scientific inquiry. 

Kenneth Samples: 

Yeah. I think this is very important. Mikel, a lot of people think that science is kind of an enterprise that works independent of worldview ideas, but that's a deep mistake I think in thinking about science. Science has certain assumptions. Science begins with certain beliefs about the nature of the world, the nature of human beings. For example, to do science, there has to be a real world out there. It can't be illusory. It can't be Maya in a Hindu sense. There has to be a real world. That real world has to have certain qualities. Regularity. You have to be able to trust the laws of physics. You have to have confidence that there are these natural laws. 

Kenneth Samples: 

You also have to be able to trust that human beings have a brain and a mind and sensory organs that operate pretty reliably. Moreover, you also have to be able to trust math and logic. So there are a lot of assumptions. And when I talk with scientists, I often ask them, why does science work? Sometimes they kind of are unsure. They just say, "I don't know, it just does." But I like to emphasize that these philosophical presuppositions are what ground science. And some Christian thinkers have proposed that maybe science wouldn't have begun in any other worldview than Christianity because Christianity provides kind of the philosophical framework for science working and being a good enterprise. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

There are some Christians who take the time to study some of these philosophical arguments and scientific arguments. And then they present them to their friends who are scientific people. And this has happened to me, where I talk to somebody and they start with like, "I guess just have to decide what you want to believe, huh? God or science." And then I talk about the Kalam cosmological argument or whatever, to try to show that science isn't incompatible with the idea of God and that there might be good reasons, even for a scientific minded person, to consider the idea of God. And then at the end of the conversation, they just go, "Oh, I guess you just have to decide what you want to believe then, science or God." Talk about some of the non-world view or rather some of the non-rational reasons, the world view reasons that some people aren't persuaded by this evidence. 

Kenneth Samples: 

Yeah. Well, I think that's a great question. I talk with secular people. I regularly we talk with secular people who have real admiration for science. They think science is the way of knowing about the world. Again, I like to point out to them that for science to operate the way it does, you have to have the right kind of world. You also have the right kind of human observers scientists. And then that right world and right human beings have to be connected together. When intelligent people want to solve problems, they appeal to logic. They appeal to mathematics. Well, the Christian worldview I think does a really good job of bringing those together. And I would propose again in a more practical context that Christianity has had a very close relationship to science historically and philosophically, but people make up their minds for a lot of different reasons. 

Kenneth Samples: 

A lot of people are not aware that there are rational reasons for believing something. There are irrational reasons for believing something, but there may be non-rational. We may be predisposed. We may also be biased. So I think kind of talking people into apologetics, we have to be careful that we don't fall into the category of thinking that if we just kind of pour facts and reasons over somebody's head, they're going to become a Christian. I think the critical factor is the Holy Spirit's work in a person's life. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Yes. Sometimes people will say, "Well, I'm just not persuaded by that." And then Christians go, "Well, this is so persuasive to me. Why don't you get it?" And then I tell them persuasion is always person relative. 

Kenneth Samples: 

Exactly. Yeah. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

What might be so convincing to you, that might not be the convincing thing to somebody else. And that's okay. We're all different kinds of people. But the Holy Spirit can use these arguments and evidence as part of someone's spiritual journey, those can certainly play a role. How would you advise a Christian to work through what they might see as a conflict between science and the Christian faith in their own life? 

Kenneth Samples: 

Yeah. That's a really good question. I think really recognizing. You know, we hear the expression, follow the science. And then we see that scientists disagree with each other. I think being aware that scientists are like everybody else, they have their strengths, they have their biases, they have their perspectives. And as you point out, persuasion is person relative. I would uh, I think my recommendation would be to become very literate. That is read really good sources about science, read a spectrum of opinions. Realize that secularists and Christians and Hindus and Buddhist people come from different points of view. But I would say this, Mikel, I don't think Christians need to be afraid of science. I think science is an extraordinary enterprise. It has limits. We shouldn't exaggerate the role of science. But, I also think we shouldn't ignore it. And so some good study in the area of science can be very helpful. And we have some very distinguished scientists who are Christian. My boss, Hugh Ross, is a very good example of that. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Would you say it's fair to say that the vast majority of 'science' quote unquote, the body of scientific knowledge is actually not in even perceived conflict with the Christian faith, but there's only a small sliver of scientific inquiry, which either our perception or under of that might be in conflict with our perception of the Bible or vice versa? 

Kenneth Samples: 

I think the 20th century has indicated that the universe appears to have a beginning. That's pretty consistent with Genesis, I would say. That human beings seem to be exceptional. We're made in the image of God after all. The universe is fine tuned. We call that design in a Christian context. Sure, there are areas, evolution remains a question. What about human origins? Where did humans come from? Were we created directly or was there some type of evolutionary? I think you're exactly right. There's a lot in science that I think robustly supports a theistic or Christian view. There remain issues of debate. But, uh- I think overall Christianity and science have been historically allies, not enemies. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Yeah. I think for some people, they kind of take their interpretation of the Bible and then say, "Well, if that doesn't quite line up with science, maybe the Bible's wrong." Or their interpretation of scientific data, even scientists, and say, "Well, if that doesn't line up with my interpretation of the Bible. Well, maybe the Bible and science don't work together here." But a lot of it is interpretation, wouldn't you say? 

Kenneth Samples: 

Absolutely. Historically, Christians have talked about the two books. There is the metaphorical book of nature. That would be science, history, all of the areas of learning and knowledge in the book of Scripture. Those two books. One, a metaphorical book. The other, a literal book. They can conflict. But a Christian perspective would be, if both of those books are written by the hand of God, if they're interpreted properly, they're going to cohere. And so it is possible we might misinterpret the book of nature. And the book of nature might give a suggestion that we might be misinterpreting an aspect of the Bible. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Yeah. So much of it really is wrapped up in our interpretation. 

Kenneth Samples: 

Right. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Well, let's move on to the next section, which is relevance, the relevance piece. These next two sections really are where most people today, in the 21st century, begin when they start to ask big questions about the Christian faith. Speaking in the public square, what would you say is the top question that Christians should really be ready to discuss in terms of that relevance piece? 

Kenneth Samples: 

I think in many ways in history, Mikel, Christians kind of look through the prism of what I would call truth, goodness and beauty. Now, we often look, our society looks at reality in terms of race, gender, and class. And so, issues relating to the sanctity of human beings. Has Christianity been good for racial minorities? Has Christianity been good for women? Is Christianity been you know, an oppressive force in the world or has it been good in terms of liberating people? I think those cultural questions are right at the fore. The question of race and slavery would certainly be one of those. But, also how God dealt in the Old Testament with various groups. That tends to come up frequently. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Let's go there since you mentioned those two things. Let's talk about the slavery piece. Well, first of all, what question do you get in relationship to slavery and the Bible? And then how do you respond to that? 

Kenneth Samples: 

Well, one that's a very sticky topic is why doesn't the Bible condemn slavery? What I do in that chapter is I say, look, the leading abolitionists in history who wanted to abolish slavery, both in Europe and in America, were by and large Christians. And one of the profound arguments that they brought against slavery is that all human beings are made in God's image and have dignity and have value. And that includes all of the races of people. There are questions that people raise about the bond servant or the indenture servitude in the Old Testament. And I try to point out very clearly that Yahweh in the Old Testament, there is what we call indentured servitude. It was more of an emphasis on economics than it was enslaving people. But I think what we find is the Old Testament really modifies and draws attention to the dignity of human beings. 

Kenneth Samples: 

Mikel, I think many of the debates we have today come down to how can we defend the idea that human beings really do have dignity and they have value. I think the Christian or biblical perspective is very powerful. That human beings have dignity because they're made in God's image. Therefore, we need to treat people fairly. We need to treat people graciously. Regardless of their skin color, regardless of their sex, regardless of whether they're rich or poor, they're sick or well. Human beings have dignity. And of course, what I raise with my secular friends is this, if you don't believe in God and therefore don't believe in the image of God, how do you condemn slavery? 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Yeah, it's interesting. There is no naturalistic equivalent to the image of God. There just isn't. There's nothing that separates us from animals or any other organism if naturalism is true. What tends to be ignored in those conversations about the Bible are laws against anti kidnapping laws in the Old Testament, for example. The way that Christians were to treat people of all backgrounds, even people who were slaves. And that there was a time where the Romans hated Christians because they were pro-slave, pro-women. And they just thought too highly of people in the Roman mind. And so oftentimes people just ignore these parts of Christianity. When you see in the Scriptures Jesus, or rather God, is in the Old Testament, creating this trajectory where he's elevating the human being from the cultural situation that they are in. So that's definitely a very nuanced and sometimes sticky discussion, but Christians definitely should be able to at least begin to have that conversation with people that affirms the dignity of all human beings and that that's in the Bible. 

Kenneth Samples: 

Mikel, some historians would say that the two largest people groups that joined Christianity almost immediately were women and slaves. They saw something in the Christian gospel that they didn't see in the Greco Roman world. They saw a God that had sent his son into the world and that Jesus related to women and slaves very differently. So, yeah. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

We've done a world religion series on this podcast before where we took a look at a variety of world views. Muslim people. Sikh. Sikhism, we talked about that. We talked about people from no faith, atheists. And we asked the question that we hope that every Christian would ask their friends who seek Christianity differently. Questions like, what is the draw to this faith for those who are converts? Two, what keeps people loyal in these systems? And then three, how does the gospel speak into that space? Because there are these universal human longings that we can find in world religions, even in all kinds of storytelling, visual storytelling, movies, literature. And so to engage with those things, talk about how Christianity explains these kinds of universal human longings say versus naturalism or pantheism? 

Kenneth Samples: 

Yeah. I find this very powerful. This is kind of the last chapter of my book. I really talked very personally about it. I was drawn... My brother, after a long period of troubled with psychological issues and drug addiction, my brother took his life. And I remember being a teenager thinking to myself, I don't have much more meaning than he had. And it bothered me that I really couldn't offer him. That led me to think very deeply about what is it about human beings? We long to live forever. We desire fulfillment and satisfaction in life. We're looking for something to worship. C.S. Lewis, of course, in light of people like Blaze Pascal and Saint Augustine, they lay out the idea that we're made for God. We were created to know and love God. When the fall comes along and were separated or alienated from God, we go looking for something else to fulfill us. 

Kenneth Samples: 

But the reality is that sex and money and fame, none of those seem to kind of fulfill it. And so somebody like a C.S. Lewis would say that we have these desires. Typically, when you have a desire like hunger. Well, there's food. If you hunger for drink, there is water. You have sexual desires, there is sex. And of course within a Christian context, sex within marriage. But we also have these other kind of longings for significance, for meaning, to live forever. I think there's a rather existential, if you will. And the argument is that if God exists and if Jesus is the son of God, then those human desires would be there because we're both made in the image of God and we're fallen. And I don't think that naturalism or even the other religious world views of the world, do a very good job of explaining what I would call the human condition. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Well, let's talk about the goodness piece now. Because this is another one that is a major driving force in the kinds of questions that people ask today. There's a little bit of overlap between that relevance and goodness, I think, in terms of the issues that you had raised earlier. But what would you say is the top question that Christians should be ready to discuss in terms of goodness? 

Kenneth Samples: 

Yeah. I really think that people want to know, well, how has Christianity been good? What has Christianity done for the world, if you will? I think there's a lot of things we can say about historic Christianity. There have been troubling things in church history. There have always been Christians who have said one thing and done another. After all, Christian people are still human and they're fallen, they're broken. But I think that Christianity has had an extraordinary influence on the world. Again, thinking about the ancient world. It was the early Christians that created orphanages. It was early Christians who created hospitals. It was the early Christians who said marriage is a sacred thing and children are important. I mean, the Greeks, you could abandon your children. Men could have as many women as they wanted. It was Christian moral values that said human beings matter. 

Kenneth Samples: 

Even the term hospice, Mikel, it comes from a Christian context. Maybe we can't heal everybody, but we can comfort them and care for them in their death. I think of education. We talked a bit about science. Well, where did those universities come from that propelled the scientific revolution? They were medieval universities like Oxford and Cambridge, the University of Paris. In even think of the time of the reformation, Mikel, and concepts such as economics and Liberty. When Jefferson talked about people having value and having rights, I think by and large, that comes from a Judeo-Christian view of human beings. We could talk about literature, philanthropy. There are problems in Christian history, but there's no doubt that Jesus is the most consequential figure in history. And that Christianity has shaped many of the best and most eloquent elements of Western civilization. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Yeah. It's interesting. We owe so much to Jesus and his followers, even if you're of no faith. To think about from art, literature, music, the scientific things that you had talked about, medicine. So much of that goes back, not only to just the work of Christians, but the ethos of Jesus for caring for marginalized people, for the sick, for people who can't take care of themselves. And it's not so much that we're saying, well, Christianity has done more good than evil. Or to kind of balance it out or try to weigh it in some kind of an incremental or statistical way. But I love how John Dixon points this idea out that the more people are adhering to the teachings of Jesus, the more beauty that you see in the world, in society and that human flourishing. So it's not that Christians have never done anything evil, but those evil actions that we see are deviations from the teachings of Jesus. 

Kenneth Samples: 

I walked into a Catholic hospital a couple years ago, St. Jude, here in Southern California. In the lobby in large letters, Matthew 11:28, "Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." That influence has been a very powerful one and a wholesome one. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Now, you have a chapter on the question, why are so many Christians not like Christ? For many Christians who are beginning to deconstruct their faith, it's because of hypocrisy that they've seen in the church, it's because of a bad experience they had. Where a Christian, sometimes a Christian leader, has hurt them or done some horrible thing to them. How would you counsel a Christian now who's beginning to deconstruct their faith because of these kinds of concerns? 

Kenneth Samples: 

Well, one, I want to be sympathetic to them. I've experienced difficulties in churches I've attended. But I would want to remind people, remember what the Bible says about human beings. Human beings are fallen. Human beings are broken. Even Christians. They're part of salvation. They may be forgiven in a moment by God's grace, but this process of rebuild their lives, called sanctification, it's a long one and a difficult one. I want to remind people that people are broken and fallen. Now, I identify two types of hypocrisy. One is a lower case hypocrisy, which means that all of us sin and need to repent of our sin, maybe to apologize to people. But there is hypocrisy with a capital H and that's terrible. That's when Christians are living a double life. They may not be Christians at all. But, Mikel, what I try to help people with is Mikel might step on your toes. 

Kenneth Samples: 

Ken Samples might step on your toes, but Jesus won't. He will not. He was, and is not a hypocrite. And at least within Christianity, when Christians violate the law of God, it's very clear that what they've done is not consistent with scripture or consistent with Christ. In a secular context, what standard do you have? What standard do atheists need to live up to? How would you judge a hypocrite within the naturalist worldview? So it's true, Christians can be difficult. You can go to a church and have people walk all over you. But I encourage people to be realistic. I encourage people to recognize that all of us are that way and we all need God's grace. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Definitely. We need God's grace every day, no matter if you've been a Christian for one day or 50 years, or if you're not a Christian, we all are in need of God's grace and forgiveness. I think one thing to suggest as well as people do what you just said is also to consider what they're going to. Because they're deconstructing one set of beliefs about their early beliefs about God, let's say. For what? For atheism? For naturalism? Well, let's deconstruct that and let's see what are you going to? We had a show with Mary Jo Sharp called Deconstruction and Hypocrisy and Keeping The Faith, and our viewers and listeners can check that out too. Because that whole show goes into this very question and expands on it. In closing now let's turn to the church and how can pastors, ministry leaders, youth pastors, how can we better help equip Christians in each of these areas in our churches? 

Kenneth Samples: 

I appreciate that. I want to courage pastors to recognize that sometimes intellectuals have a hard time fitting in the church. We're often thinking about non-believers or we're appealing to various groups of people. I want to encourage pastors to address issues of the mind, the life of the mind, how important it is to think carefully and critically. So introduce, maybe have a logic class, a critical thinking kind of component. I would also want to tell them that... But it's not all about truth. I think Tim Keller said it well. In his experience, you have to want to believe before you can believe. I would encourage pastors to also talk about why Christianity has been good. And that it is relevant. That questions about gender and sexuality, questions about race, questions about oppressors and oppressed. I think these are all issues that the Bible addresses. And so in their sermons, I would encourage them to think about that. Is Christianity rational? Is it relevant to my situation? And has it good thing? I think that will hit a lot of people's interest. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Yeah. Something else we talk about here at The Hendrick Center is how Christian education in general has done a good job of helping to train future pastors and ministry leaders to go from the Bible to life. But we need to be just as good at training people to go from life back to the Bible. And so that is where a sermon can... It could be a sermon that's that's straight up exegetical, but to start with a situation, an issue of the day and show how that ties back in. How the gospel speaks into that space. That's a good thought. Well, Ken, how can people get in touch with you if they're interested in learning more? 

Kenneth Samples: 

Yeah. Well, at Reasons To Believe, you can go on our website reasons.org. My book is there. There's a lot of good resources about apologetics and particularly science and faith issues. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Awesome. Well, if you want to continue the conversation with me as well, you can at me on Twitter @apologeticsguy. I'm also ApologeticsGuy on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook. I'd love to continue the conversation with you. Feel free to reach out to Ken and me, and we'd love to continue interacting with you. Well, Ken, thank you so much for being on the show. We appreciate it. 

Kenneth Samples: 

It's a pleasure. Keep up the good work. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Thank you so much. And we thank you so much too, for joining us on The Table podcast today. Please do leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, wherever you happen to be listening or watching this content. It really does help people discover the show and help us produce more content like this. So thanks so much for being with us. We hope you'll join us next time here on The Table. Where we discuss issues of God and culture. 

Narrator: 

Thanks for listening to The Table podcast. Dallas Theological Seminary. Teach truth. Love well. 

Kenneth Samples
Philosopher and theologian Kenneth Richard Samples has a passion to help people understand the reasonableness and relevance of Christianity’s truth claims. He is the senior research scholar at Reasons to Believe and the author of several books, including Christianity Cross-Examined, Classic Christian Thinkers,and God Among Sages.
Mikel Del Rosario
Mikel Del Rosario (ThM, 2016; PhD, 2022) is a Professor of Bible and Theology at Moody Bible Institute. While at DTS, he served as project manager for cultural engagement at the Hendricks Center, producing and hosting The Table podcast. You can find him online at ApologeticsGuy.com, the Apologetics Guy YouTube channel, and The Apologetics Guy Show podcast.
Contributors
Kenneth Samples
Mikel Del Rosario
Details
January 11, 2022
apologetics, evangelism, worldview
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