No Rocky Horror reference intended.

Here is the audio from the past two weeks of my apologetics series at Crossroads. Last week, we discussed the Church. Is it just an antiquated religious institution, or something more?

Apologetics: the Church (.mp3 .m4a)

This week, we talked about the clash between science and Christianity. Do you have to pick one and discard the other?

Apologetics: Science (.mp3 .m4a)

I’ll have one more lesson in the series. Then, I’ll be preaching in the main service on the 12th. After that, I’ll get back to regular blog posts.

There will be some other changes around the site soon. Good stuff, I promise.

Below are the lessons as written.

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Today, we’ll be discussing the church. Now, I’m well aware that I hardly need to defend the church to a group that actually shows up for a 9:00 Sunday School class. What we’ll focus on this morning is arguments we can use to defend the church to two groups of people.

Now, what do we mean by church? Some of us still think of the building. More likely, we think of the Sunday morning service. I’m not really talking about either of those. What I mean, basically, is the body of believers: the Church. That may look somewhat different in different denominations, or areas of the world, or cultures. That’s fine.

First, we’ll speak to the believers who say they don’t need to be part of the church to be Christian. That’s technically true, in a sense. If you’re in solitary confinement, for example, and are prevented from meeting with other Christians. Or maybe if you have a highly contagious disease and you need to be kept in a hermetically sealed area. Otherwise, church should always be part of the Christian experience.

Then, we’ll address non-believers, especially those who may have been stung by the church. Even some of us in this room have had some difficult experiences with people in the church, or the institution itself.

Jesus established the church and invested it with power.

Matthew 16:17-19

Not only does Jesus establish the Church, He appears to give it incredible power. Whatever this binding and loosing business is — and we could debate that all day — it’s clearly a big responsibility.

Matthew 18:15-20

Here, Jesus assumes the presence of the Church as a body of believers. Furthermore, He upholds the Church’s role as a means of accountability. He empowers the Church to help keep His followers following Him.

Note the repetition of the earlier verse in the context of the Church. He even elaborates further and hints at how powerful prayer is. Jesus established and empowered the Church. He ordained it.

Clearly, the Apostles got the message. His hand-picked, specially-trained followers dedicated their lives to establishing the Church after Jesus returned to Heaven. Much of the New Testament is dedicated to supporting the Church and helping it do God’s work. And then there’s this passage:

Hebrews 10:24-25

The Church is not to be taken lightly. It’s not an ancient, irrelevant relic; it’s one of God’s primary means of grace.

Now, what about the non-believers? First, let’s start with a little sensitivity. If they don’t believe what we believe, they likely don’t have any motivation to come to church. Worse, some have had bad experiences with the church. They may have faced judgment, or hypocrisy, or worse.

Then there’s this. This is a website called Church Marketing Sucks. It’s run by Christians. Why? Because church marketing sucks! We have an image problem!

What I mean by “marketing” is best defined by a guy named Phil Cooke. He described it as the impression you have of an organization. It’s the answer to the question, “when you think of them, what’s the first thing you think of?”

Let me illustrate. The top article here refers to this article in Time that discusses a Catholic church in Florida that will hold a mass to pray for Osama bin Laden’s soul. The editor of Church Marketing Sucks made an excellent point: if this is surprising enough to write an article about, we must be getting the message across very well. Didn’t Jesus say to pray for your enemies?

Typically, Church doesn’t get in the news when we’re doing it right. We get in the news when our leaders fall into sexual sin. Or when they steal. Or when they spread hateful messages toward homosexuals. Or when they prophesy falsely. Our image in the mass media is of a people that’s ignorant, hateful, and hypocritical.

A lot of the objections people will raise against the Church will be related to our failings. People will even bring up the Crusades and the Inquisition to this very day.

How do we address this problem?

We live out what we preach and speak the truth humbly. Be honest, and be vulnerable. We’re not perfect, and we shouldn’t pretend to be. Acknowledge that Christians make mistakes. But also tell them that, when we’re truly following Jesus, we exemplify love. That’s what we’re meant to do. God commands us to be gracious, helpful, self-sacrificing people of integrity.

If we live that out, and give credit to the God to whom it is due, people will have a hard time criticizing the Church. Because when the Church works, it’s amazing. As we follow God together, God works through us for each other.

Let’s look specifically at how God works through the Church. What do you think?

Accountability If you’re a believer who isn’t involved in a local church, this element will be missing from your life. Hebrews 10 reminds us how essential it is to have others alongside you, striving toward God and helping you in your journey. We need to be spurred on sometimes.

Even a non-believer should see the value in this. As Pastor Michael frequently points out, we all have standards that we don’t meet. We all have ideals we don’t live up to. Accountability is a means for us to live up to what we say is important. It means committing to something good and asking friends to hold you to your commitment. It’s a means of foiling hypocrisy.

Educated, gifted teachers I recently read an article commemorating the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. It said that the advent of online Bible software would change the Church as dramatically as the KJV did. It suggested that people may shun church because they can now read the interpretations of other Bible readers as they post them on the Internet.

Consider this passage, though. James is saying something important: teachers are held to a high standard. No matter how accessible the Bible is, there will always be a need for well-informed interpretation. One of the great advantages of the local church is that is has people who are gifted and trained to interpret and teach the Bible.

Shared resources / gifts It’s amazing what the Church can accomplish when we come together. It’s not just the fact that many hands make light work. God specifically brings people together in churches so that our gifts and resources combine. Pastor Michael has said it: the church is a collection of resources. We just aren’t as effective on our own.

When our resources and gifts combine to meet people’s needs, we get some of the best stories you’ll ever hear. Tell your skeptical friends how the church has helped you when you needed it. Tell stories of the church coming together to serve.

Focused worship We’re very distractable people. God knew this back in the days of the Old Testament, so He set up special days to come together and remember everything He’d done and everything He’d commanded. That’s what we’re doing each Sunday. If you’re on your own, it can be very difficult to achieve that level of focus in the environment and the people around you, let alone your own thoughts and emotions.

You may hear skeptics talk about worship music as a type of brainwashing, shutting down the cognitive mind and overwhelming it with emotion. If you get the chance, feel free to clear up the misconception. The intent isn’t to disengage the mind, but to focus it on God. We should be considering the words we’re singing. The idea is to worship God with everything we are: mind, emotions, actions. Everything.

Fellowship When we’re following Jesus like we should, there’s something powerful in the love of the Church. That’s because, when we’re doing our part, we’re passing on God’s love to each other. We’re built to do that. We all need it. When we’re treating each other like we should, it’ll speak for itself.

After the service today, we’ll have our annual Local Church Conference. We’ll get to hang out, then hear about the direction of Crossroads for the next year. Please come. It’ll be awesome.

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This morning, we’ll talk about one of the most controversial topics that comes up in apologetics: the clash of science and faith. Now, this is a big subject. There are lots of individual subjects we could talk about, many of which I know nothing about. I’d like to speak about a few issues in general terms this morning, and a few in specific.

Let me start by saying that this is an area where we need to be ready to say “I don’t know.” We need to be humble when discussing science with people. Speak about what you understand; be flexible with the rest. We’re fighting a stereotype that Christians are aggressively ignorant.

Some of that reputation comes from the Christian reaction to science. A lot of people on both sides of the debate think that the two are inherently opposed to each other. You either believe in science, or you have faith – one or the other.

In some respects, this is an understandable view. Science deals with what is observable and measurable, while faith deals with what cannot be seen. But the truth is, to leave it at that would be simplistic.

Christianity as a whole deals not only with spiritual, unseen matters, but everyday life as well. It makes measurable historical and philosophical claims. It deals in fact.

Furthermore, the popular notion of science – the alternative to faith – is not strictly scientific. Science, by definition, deals with what can be observed, quantified, and tested. That’s it. When someone says they “believe in science,” they’re actually making a personal philosophical statement. Likely, they mean that they’re a materialist: they believe that there’s nothing beyond physical existence. They may also mean that they don’t believe in anything that the scientific community doesn’t approve. They don’t believe in anything that they can’t see and touch.

The big conflict is not between Christianity and science, but Christianity and materialism.

Let me play a clip for you that will help illustrate the issue. There are Christian scientists. It’s not a conflict.

But what about when the conclusions of science seem to contradict the Bible? Doesn’t the Bible say that the universe was created in 6 days? Doesn’t science say that life evolved over a long period?

Let’s take a second to talk about Christianity and evolution. It’s not as simple as some materialists – and some Christians – make it out to be. I wish I could give you simple answer that would put this issue to bed, but I can’t.

Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell you all the reasons why evolution is wrong. Let’s try a different, seemingly crazy approach: let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that life on Earth evolved.

The theory of evolution says that life started millions of years ago, in a very basic form. Over time, organisms developed new traits through genetic mutation. Some of those traits helped them survive and reproduce better. After a bunch of different mutations and selections, we had different species, which kept developing along their own paths. And so, organisms become more and more complex as mutations were added and selected, until this very day.

This seems to fly in the face of the creation account in Genesis, which describes God spontaneously forming creatures and sending them out into the world. Furthermore, it says that He did all of this in six days. Right?

Many Christians take a more allegorical approach to the creation account. Even Saint Augustine suggested that the “days” of Genesis didn’t have to be 24-hour periods. As a side note, the Hebrew word “yom” can mean day – which is most often does in the Bible – but often means “time” or “period.”

If the “days” of the creation account aren’t necessarily 24 hours, that eliminates the conflict between the Bible and astrophysics and geology. The Earth can be as old as those disciplines say it is.

Now, the matter of evolution itself. One argument says that if evolution did indeed take place as science describes it, it would need God to work.

Several scientists over the years have calculated the possibility of life spontaneously generating, or of crucial evolutionary steps occurring. According to them, they are fantastically unlikely, beyond the point of statistical impossibility. With an intelligent designer behind the scenes, it’s no problem at all.

Which leads to one of the primary arguments for God: the design of the universe. The basic argument is that the universe is too well designed for it to have happened without a designer.

Let me walk you through an argument I heard from a presentation by Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, which he called “Our Privileged Planet.”

The environment necessary for life as we know it to exist is very specific.

There’s only a certain span of time that the universe can support life. Things have to settle after the big bang.

For example, our solar system needs to be in a specific area of our galaxy. Closer to the galactic center, the environment is much more volatile, full of dangerous radiation and dying stars. Further out, the elements necessary for life as we know it become more rare.

A planet also needs to be in a certain position in our solar system. Too close, and the planet gets too hot. Too far away, and the planet gets too cold. For that matter, the star needs to be of the right type and age, not putting out too much radiation.

The planet itself needs to have a certain type of atmosphere, be of a certain size to hold that atmosphere. It needs a variety of elements. The planet also needs a large moon, which helps stabilize the planet’s tilt.

Suffice to say, lots of things have to be just so in order for life to exist. But Dr. Gonzalez had a second half of his argument. He noticed that there are several qualities of Earth that make it ideal for observing the universe.

For example, for a certain amount of time after the big bang, what’s called the cosmic background radiation is intense. We live at time when it’s dissipated enough that our instruments can deal with it.

We’re in a great position in the galaxy for observing the universe. Also, our galaxy is an ideal shape for it: a flat disc.

Our atmosphere is such that we can see the stars with the naked eye. The right elements need to be in just the right balance.

Our moon allows us to see eclipses, which allow us to study the sun. Think about this. The moon has to be the right size. It has to be the right distance away, in just the right orbit that lines it up just right between us and the sun.

He ran down the list, citing case after case where the ideal conditions for life were also the ideal conditions for observing the universe. Dr. Gonzalez concluded that the universe is designed to be observed.

This is one of many arguments for God that come from the fine tuning of the universe. Science reveals how carefully God put our world together, how lovingly He crafted everything.

We shouldn’t be afraid of science. We shouldn’t be antagonistic toward it. As we discover more about how the universe works, we find more reasons to worship our Creator.

Even when people find what could be explanations for miracles, we don’t need to be afraid. Suppose someone discovered that seismic activity caused the Red Sea to part, or that a volcano destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, or that a tree in the Sinai peninsula produces flaky sap that some might call manna. Such explanations don’t diminish the Biblical account; rather, they confirm and uphold it. What they’re saying is that the events probably happened, and now there’s evidence.

God’s methods are sometimes beyond our understanding, but not always. We shouldn’t be afraid to discover His methods through physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology, geology…. We should embrace the chance to reveal His craftsmanship.