Contradict #14 – God Bless All Nations and Postmodernism

This is the first Contradict – They Can’t All Be True video that does not present the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  For that, I apologize.  Watch the other videos to hear the Gospel message.

Before the Modern world, we blindly trusted in authority.  For God, that meant we just trusted the Bible as the Word of God and believed whatever the Church taught us.

In the Modern world, we trusted in logic, reason, and science. These were helpful tools in helping us interpret the Bible.

In the Postmodern world, an emerging worldview that hasn’t yet fully replaced Modernism, we are confronted with many opposing beliefs, religions, morals, and customs and many of us can’t apply our logic and reason to justify why one belief system is true and another false, especially since we can see elements of truth in all of them.  This has led to relativism.  We now trust in experience and intuition to guide our beliefs concerning God.

I found a God Bless All Nations bumper sticker.  This is a good depiction of postmodernism.  Words and symbols can be deconstructed to mean anything an individual wants.  In relativism, everything goes.  What’s true for you is true for you.

Overtime this can leave us in a state of being dazed and confused, and when it’s been so long, we can’t tell what’s true anymore.  God Bless All Nations!  If God is blessing nations why don’t we see flags representing countries?  Are religions now nations?  Or it is trying to say that religions are now so spread out over the world that these religions can be found in many  nations, and since God blesses all nations, then he must therefore be blessing all religions too?  Of is it trying to say that God can be found in all of these religions and that that God blesses all nations?  Or is it saying that America isn’t a Christian nation?  Or is it saying that Americans shouldn’t say “God Bless America,” they should say “God Bless all Nations?”  In postmodernism, it can mean anything I want it to mean, and you can’t tell me I’m wrong, except I think words do have meaning, and so do symbols… these meanings can change overtime, but we still have to be able to recognize the different definitions, but in postmodernism changes can happen overnight based on some video or image going “viral,” and we don’t have to recognize the contradictions anymore, since everything is now true! So I am left in complete frustration.  Come Lord Jesus, Come!

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Civil Righteousness is Subjective!

I teach one Christian Doctrine class this year for high school students.  We use, Called to Believe: A Brief Introduction to Christian Doctrine, edited by Steven P. Mueller, as our class textbook.  We just finished a chapter that mentions two types of good works, those from our perspective, and those from God’s.  Those works that our good from a human perspective are referred to under the classification of “civil righteousness.”

For a work to be considered “good” in God’s eyes the work must be in accordance with his will (his Law), it must must be done from faith in Christ, and proceed from a love for God.

Such a strict standard, makes it impossible for someone who is not a Christian to do any good work in God’s sight.  The world might see a “work” as good, such as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie adopting kids from Africa, but unless their work is done in faith in Christ and from the love of God, it won’t be a good work in God’s eyes, even if it is in line with his Law.  Sad but true.  Such a strict definition of good works is very helpful to us; it reminds us that we cannot save ourselves by our own actions.  We are in desperate need of God’s saving grace, offered through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

On a test, asking for students to list the two views of good works, a student wrote, “Civil good works are like buying everyone a pack of cigarettes, and God’s view of good works is doing objectively good things in line with God’s will.”  Obviously he missed the point of God’s view requiring the work to be done in faith and from love towards God, but his answer did strike a chord with me…

Thank You for Smoking
Would everyone agree that it is sinful to smoke? Yes or no?

Civil-righteousness, humanity’s view of what counts as good works, is totally subjective.  One person might think it is the best thing every to generously buy everyone a pack of cigarettes, while another person might think that promoting smoking in such a manner is horrible.  The smokers would rejoice and praise the man’s generosity, the non-smoker’s like myself would care less, and the anti-smokers would want to string him up and flay him for all to see.

The student pointed out that God provides an objective standard of morality.   We do not.  If anyone ever says, “God wouldn’t send me to hell people because I’m a pretty good person,” respond by sharing the two views of what’s good, let the person see that he or she might be good in some people’s eyes, but even by some of our own standards, he or she might not make the cut for being considered a good person.  By God’s standard, we’ve all fallen short, but praise be to God, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, that righteousness has been credited to us and that through faith we are declared holy in his sight apart from any of our merit and worthless ranking of civil-righteousness!

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“Jesus could have had a twin brother.” – the script.

Since I had a conversation recently with someone who actually believed that Jesus probably had an identical twin brother that no one knew about who faked the resurrection, rather than Jesus having real bodily resurrection, this student written script from my apologetics class came to mind.  Hopefully, you like it.  Share some comments so the students can get some feedback on their work from outside our class.

Scenario: Jesus Christ had a twin brother

Setting: Ash Wednesday Chapel at school

Twin 1: Hey! Why did you get one?

Christian: This is symbol of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from physical death to life. 

Twin 2: Resurrection sounds rather impossible. 

Twin 1: Yeah, what if the resurrection of Jesus Christ was all a lie? A fragment of people’s imagination?

Christian: What do you mean?

Twin 2: What if Jesus was like one of us? What if he had a twin brother?

Twin 1: Yeah, what if people mistook Jesus’ unseen twin brother as Jesus Christ?

Twin 2: As you can see, we are identical twins. [Pause] People mistake us for each other all the time. What if it was the same for Jesus? After all, Jesus Christ was fully human – so there is no possible and rational explanation for his coming back from the dead. 

Christian: Hmm….. That is an invalid argument. As seen in Scripture, Jesus’ town knew of his family well, many people grew up among them (Matthew 13:55-56 “He’s just the carpenter’s son, and we know Mary, his mother, and his brothers– James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas. All his sisters live right here among us.  Where did he learn all these things.”). Also people didn’t find Jesus in the tomb,  there were guards there the whole time (their life was on the line so they didn’t lie) and the rock that covered the tomb was way too heavy to move.  The shepherds came to the stable and saw him right after birth with his mother and father.  There was no way for Joseph and Mary to hide a twin, because they had no idea that Jesus was going to die in 33 years.   

Twin 1: Okay. So then, Jesus really did come back to life?

Christian: Yes. There are six evidences that support the resurrection of Christ. These are the empty tomb, the postcruxifixion appearances, the transformation of the apostles, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, emergence of the Christian Church, and a switch to Sunday as a Day of Worship. I would love to spend more time discussing these evidences in more depth, but we are running out of time. Chapel is about to end. 

Twin 2: Okay. Now, Jesus’ resurrection makes more sense. Hmm.. we should get the ashes! 

Twin 1: Yeah!

Christian: Let’s go!

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All the NT manuscripts were written in the first century!

The Gospel of Thomas is Scripture, or, it is not!

English: Gospel of Thomas or maybe gnostic Gos...
English: Gospel of Thomas or maybe gnostic Gospel of Peter

The Gospel of Thomas and other “Gospels” came much later than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Much, later, after the first century. One of the standards for a book to be canonical is that it was written by a prophet, or apostle, or came from with the apostolic circle. For a New Testament book to have been written from someone within the apostolic circle, clearly it would have had to have been written within the first century. Mark wasn’t an apostle but he knew the apostles and relayed Peter’s message. Luke wasn’t an apostle, but he knew the apostles and traveled with Paul. James, well, he was the brother of Jesus, but he was in the inner circle of the apostles, made evident as he was present at the first “Church Council” in Acts 15, and seems to have had the final word at that meeting quoting Scripture to provide his verdict!

Check out this blog post.  It’s the first of ten by Canon Fodder:

http://michaeljkruger.com/ten-basic-facts-about-the-nt-canon-that-every-christian-should-memorize-1-the-new-testament-books-are-the-earliest-christian-writings-we-possess/

The first fact shared that Canon Fodder shares in this series of ten facts is that every Christian should know that the New Testament is the earliest Christian writings we possess.  Hence, the reason I ranted about the Gospel of Thomas and the early writing of the NT manuscripts.  Read the blog and you’ll get more details.

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Jesus had a twin brother! Sort of like the movie, The Illusionist?

Cover of "The Illusionist [Blu-ray]"
Cover of The Illusionist [Blu-ray]

Continuing the dialog I shared in the last post.  Someone told me that the Bible was just a story written by one person.  That it was all made up, like Harry Potter, but people came to believe it, because it gave them hope, etc.

After being confronted with some reasons for why we can trust the Bible not to be made up with some good reasons to believe that Jesus actually was raised from the dead, he quickly proposed, “Jesus probably had a twin brother that no one knew about.  That’s why people saw him back from the dead.”

I was stunned.  I had read about this argument before, but I had never actually met someone who thought that this was more likely than the resurrection and Jesus’ divinity, and he was ready to argue it.

He proposed that it was a trick, like magic, just as in the movie, The Illusionist.  I haven’t seen this movie, but I knew that it starred Jessica Beil and Edward Norton Jr.  He told me that it also starred the X-Men guy who played Wolverine.  So likely Hugh Jackman is in the movie too.  He told me that the movie was about a magician who had a twin brother that knew about and so they could do magic tricks easily and fool people.  He said one of them would cut off a finger and the other one would then the would switch places and the other one would appear and have the finger and everyone would be amazed!

Like I said, I haven’t seen the movie, The Illusionist.  After posting this blog, I received some comments saying that the movie he was referring to was actually, The Prestige.  That actually makes me feel a little better.  I’d hate to think that Edward Norton was in a movie that seemed so illogical, but who knows, the guy didn’t even have the right movie title to begin with, so maybe he had the story all wrong too.

The Prestige (film)
The Prestige (film)

Here are some rebuttals (mostly questions that he don’t have any likely explanation or answer) that I gave to him in reply to this twin theory:

  • Why did no one else know about Jesus’ twin brother?  His mother Mary would have known if he had a twin brother.  She was alive and present at the crucifixion according to one of the Gospels.
  • The Bible says that shepherds were there the night of Jesus’ birth.  Where would Mary and Joseph have stashed the other baby, and why would they abandon him?  Who would have raised him?  And if they were separated at birth so no one knew he had a twin, how would Jesus have discovered that he had an identical twin?  Plus the shepherds who visited Jesus at his birth, weren’t any ordinary shepherds.  They were the shepherds who kept watch over the Passover Lambs, in a specific field.  Anyone could have found them or people who knew those shepherds by going to that field and asking questions about his birth to see if he had a twin.
  • Why would Jesus decide to die a horrible, agonizing, public death in order for his twin brother to trick his best friends into risking and losing their lives to share such a devious and deadly trick as faking a resurrection?  Would you die like that for a trick that you wouldn’t even know for certain would work or have any lasting impact?
  • What would be the gain in doing this?
  • How do you explain his other miraculous feats recorded in the Gospels?  They wouldn’t have needed a twin brother to accomplish them.
  • The disciples spoke with him, ate with him, and touched him.  They would have been able to tell that it was a fake, since they had spent about three years in close communication with him, sharing their entire lives together.  The twin wouldn’t have had the same memories of everything they had shared together, so there is no way he could have convincingly reminisced with the disciples.
  • Thomas is recorded as having touched the scars on his hands, feet, and side.  How would those have been faked in the first century?
  • Do you really think that Jesus having a twin is a more likely explanation than a divine resurrection?
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