Theology in the Raw - 818: Is the Bible Reliable? Evidence from Its Message

Episode Date: September 10, 2020

Whenever people consider the reliability of the Bible, they usually look to historical or archaeological evidence. And indeed, I covered that in the previous video. But in this final video of our 3 part series on the reliability of the Bible, I want to consider the message of the Bible itself as evidence for its authenticity. The Bible critiques power, humanizes women (compared it its surrounding culture), has a deep concern for the poor and marginalized, and exhibits many other values that go against the views of its surrounding culture. Watch this episode of the podcast on YouTube Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. So this is the third of a three-part series on the Bible. The first one we talked about the canonization, the second one we talked about history and archaeology, and then in this episode we are going to talk about the message of the Bible itself and how the message, the nature of the message, adds credibility to the authenticity of scripture. I don't think this is a standalone piece of evidence. I don't think you can just take what I'm about to talk about in the next 30, 40 minutes and say, therefore the Bible must be true. Um, but I do think it does lend credibility and I don't see a lot of people talk about this. I do hear people, you know, critics, especially say, you know, the Bible is,

you know, handpicked by a bunch of men in power, you know, and they use these religious documents to oppress people. Um, I'm going to show in this episode, why I think that that line of reasoning is, um, is really bad and inaccurate and doesn't actually take into consideration the actual message of the Bible. So, uh, we're going to get into that. If you would like to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw show for as little as five bucks a month. And again, just so you know, in case you're just listening to this podcast, haven't listened to the previous two. This was originally a sermon that I preached at Valley Christian Center in Dublin, California.

So you'll hear me, especially in the intro, reference this as a sermon. So that's what's going on there. All right, let's dive in. Hello, Valley Christian Church. My name is Preston Sprinkle, and it's good to be back with you for this Sunday morning together in this weird time that we're living in. What does it mean to be together? I mean, some of you are watching online from your living room. Maybe you're right down the street from the church in Dublin, California. Dublin, California. Maybe some of you are watching this Sunday night or Wednesday night. Maybe you're watching this two weeks after I recorded it. And hopefully the world is still somewhat together when you are watching this sermon, this talk that I'm going to be giving on the reliability of the Bible. Now, this is week five in an ongoing series that Roger and I have been engaging in on the reliability of the Bible. And I know there's a lot of different things swirling around in people's minds these days. And

it'd be easy to only focus on those things, on COVID-19, on politics, on race relations in America. And I've got a huge heart for all those things. And I think it's all the more reason to continue to engage God's word. And that's why I'm really excited about this series. I love talking about things the Bible talks about. I also love, love talking about the Bible itself so that my faith and your faith in the Bible is further strengthened. So we've been talking about evidence for the reliability of the Bible. Roger talked about the manuscripts that go into the Bible. You know, when we hold up our English text in our hands, I guess I got to reach for mine here.

This is one that I went through a few years ago. This is one English text. You know, when we hold this Bible up, like where did this come from? Obviously it didn't come just from, you know, the Apostle Paul's pen to my desk. Like there's a big process that happens to get the original manuscripts into this translation into our hands. We also talked about, I talked about the history and archaeology of the Bible and how, when we look at the historical record, when we look at the archaeological record, that these help support the reliability of the Bible too. Now for today, I want to do something a little bit different. We've been looking at what some people call external evidence for the Bible, external evidence for the reliability of the Bible, like the manuscripts and history and

archaeology. For today, I want to look at the internal evidence for the reliability of the Bible. I want to look at, in other words, the internal message of the Bible itself as a sort of self-reflective testimony to the reliability of the Bible. Now, let me give two quick qualifications to this argument, if you will. First of all, this argument that I'm going to give today, and I hate framing it like an argument, like it's argumentative, but it is, I am going to build a, a, an, a kind of sustained argument for the reliability of the Bible. Um, this argument in and of itself isn't self-sufficient. Okay. We can't just look at the message of the Bible itself and say, therefore, see, it's true. It's, it's, uh, inerrant. It's inspired. It's the word of God. Like we can't draw that conclusion

based only on the internal message. This, um, argument that I'm going to give, um, is one of several contributing arguments to the reliability of the Bible. And that's why, you know, when Roger and I talked about doing a series on, um, well, when Roger and I talked about addressing the reliability of the Bible, both of us were like, we need several weeks to do this because it's not like you can just capture the whole thing in one week. There's not like one standalone argument. We're looking at sort of a cumulative case for the reliability of the Bible. So that's my first qualification. This argument isn't in and of itself sufficient to justify the truthfulness of the Bible. So that's my first qualification. This argument isn't in and of itself sufficient to justify the truthfulness of the Bible. Secondly, this argument does have

a subjective component to it. I do think the message of the Bible itself is beautiful, beautiful, compelling, is cohesive. It has, if I can say, the self-evident scent of veracity. Veracity just means truthfulness, self-evident scent. Like I think there is something intrinsically compelling about the message of the Bible itself, but that's a subjective statement. Like that's me sharing from my perspective. Now, you know, if, if you're Hitler and you're reading Romans 11, that talks about God having a place, a future place for the people of Israel, for Jewish people, um, you might not see that as beautiful. You might see it as, um, the exact opposite if you were Hitler, or if you're the grand wizard of the KKK, you may read Genesis 127 that says that all humans, all humans are created in God's image and are equal. You may

not resonate with that. Or some people, I know some people, especially, I guess, in certain parts of America, don't resonate with Jesus's command to love our enemies. Okay. So, so there are some things in the scriptures that might not resonate with every single individual human. Okay. So I, so I, I, I just want to lay that out. Cause I, some of you, if I don't say that up front, some of you might say, well, that's just your opinion. That's just because you find it good and true and beautiful. So I just want to acknowledge that not every human is going to see things the same way I do in this talk. However, I would say that many, if not most humans will resonate with what I'm going to say about how scripture portrays humanity in particular, and just the ways of the world throughout its pages.

So let me just summarize my main point, and then I'm going to give you several reasons to support this main point. My main point is this, that the message of the Bible itself testifies to its authenticity and makes the most sense of the world as we experience it. Okay. The message of the Bible itself testifies to its authenticity and makes the most sense of the world as we experience it. So I'm going to break this down into a few different points. Point number one, and I'm just kind of, you know, breaking down that main thesis statement, if you will. Number one, the message of the Bible itself testifies to its authenticity. What do I mean by this?

Well, this point is kind of in response to a critique of the Bible that often here, and I've mentioned this before, I'll just mention it again. The critique goes something like this, that the Bible is simply a product of powerful people designed to oppress other less powerful people. slavery and genocide. And, you know, it was just a bunch of powerful white men that selected which books would be in the Bible so that they can use that as a tool of oppression. It was crafted, it was designed, if you will, to be a tool in the hands of religious elite to keep people who are powerless, to keep them powerless. That's more or less how I hear a lot of people talk about, well, the Bible and other religious documents. They might think that religion itself is intrinsically harmful to humanity. So that's kind of the backdrop of everything I'm going to say today is kind of responding

to that idea. Now, I will say up front, and I hope I justify this, but I'll just say flat out up front, there's little to no evidence that the message of the Bible is designed to support those in power. There's little internal evidence that the Bible is, if you take it as on the whole, now some of you could select a verse here, select a verse there, command here, command there, and rip it out of its context and maybe use that individual verse wrongly to support people in power and oppress those who aren't in power. But if you take the Bible as a whole, the message of the Bible as a whole, it actually does the exact opposite. It actually

is very critical of oppressors, critical of people in power, and it is very much a religious textbook for the marginalized. Okay, let me give you a few things to consider. First of all, the marginalized. Okay, let me give you a few things to consider. First of all, Genesis 1 to 2. Genesis 1 to 2 is what people call the creation account, the creation narrative. You know, Genesis 1 talks about the creation of the heavens and the earth in six days. And I'm not going to get into the day age debate there. Genesis 2 talks about the creation of humanity. Okay. Genesis 1 and 2 is a foundational text for the rest of the Bible. And then at the end of the Bible in Revelation 21 and 22, Revelation 21 and 22 feels very similar to Genesis 1 and 2. I don't know if you've noticed this. Like there's a tree of life in Genesis 2. There's a tree of life in Revelation

21 and 22. There's a statement about marriage in Genesis two, there's a tree of life in Genesis in Revelation 21 and 22. You know, there's a statement about marriage in Genesis two and you see marriage imagery in Genesis or Revelation 21 and 22. Um, you see garden, you know, the garden of Eden talked about in Genesis two, you see garden imagery used in Revelation 21 and 22. And this is something that's not really debated. People often notice that the author of Revelation, who I think is John, sort of wrote the end of his book, which ended up being the end of the Bible in such a way to give a fitting conclusion to how the story began in Genesis 1 and 2. It's almost like there's these two bookends of the Bible, which is, I mean, beautiful in its own right. But here's the thing. When you look at Genesis 1 and 2, you see, I mean, a beautiful picture of a God who's walking with humanity, of men and women and all humanity being created equal in God's eyes. You see a God

who's sovereign, a God who's intimate. You see a beautiful creation that is good. I mean, everything about Genesis 1 and 2 would resonate with any human being, okay? I mean, this is just a beautiful picture of God and his relationship with humanity. Now, after Genesis 1, after Genesis 3, where we have the sin of humankind, everything kind of spirals downward. And you can almost summarize the rest of the Bible, the rest of the Bible as this. How can we get back to the garden? God is establishing a redemptive plan to get humanity back to that perfect, pristine state that he created it to be in Genesis 1 and 2, where he has perfect harmony, perfect communion with his image bearers.

That's really important because that means that all the ethics, all the statements in the Bible, all the stories are ultimately on some level trying to get us back to Genesis 1 and 2. Well, in Genesis 1 and 2, we see humans are created fully equal. Genesis 1.27, male and female, he created them in the image of God, he created them. Men and women are created fully equal, fully valuable, fully worthy of love and relationship in Genesis 1 and 2. People of different ethnicities are created equal in the eyes of God. There's so many issues surrounding justice that we're wrestling with today that are relevant for understanding Genesis 1.27 and really Genesis 1 and 2 as a whole. There's another beautiful statement in Genesis 2, well, 2 to 20 to 24, where it talks about God, when he creates Eve, he creates a woman.

And it says he, well, in most translations that say he took one of Adam's ribs and created the woman from that rib. And I don't think this is intended to be so literal. I think there's a lot of imagery here, but the word translated rib is everywhere else in the Old Testament translated side, not rib, but the side of something. Most often it's the side of a sacred piece of architecture. The Hebrew word selah is often used to describe the side of the tabernacle or the side of a temple. And this shouldn't be too shocking because Paul says in other passages, you know, that our bodies are the temple of the living God, that our bodies are sacred. So here we see this beautiful passage where God takes Adam and takes from his side,

denoting full equality from the side of Adam, not the head, not the foot, but the side of Adam, another sacred human being, which again, that just correlates with Genesis 127 that says we are all infinitely valuable in God's eyes. Some people get hung up on some of the laws in the Old Testament, and I'm not going to get into the details of these. I'll admit that there's some laws in the Old Testament that if you read them from a modern lens, they seem like they could be dehumanizing, especially towards women, some of these laws, or perhaps towards a conquered enemy.

There's some laws about, you know, when you conquer an enemy, here's what you do with the soldiers and their wives and everything. And we can read this from a modern lens and say, gosh, this seems crazy, you know? Now, read in light of the ancient Near East context, these laws in the Old Testament, when I say laws, I'm just thinking Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. There's tons of laws scattered throughout there. And these were designed to be the ethics for Israel under the Old Covenant. Now, again, when you read these laws in light of the ancient context, they're actually a lot more humanizing than you may think.

And I'm not going to get into the details there. This is something many Bible scholars have pointed out. But we also have to understand that the laws, the laws revealed to Israel on Mount Sinai, recorded in Exodus through Deuteronomy, these were not designed to be the complete final ethic. These were designed to help Israel live a faithful life during their cultural time period, during their time period in a distinct culture. But it was never meant to be the definitive revelation of God or God's ways in the world. Where do we see the definitive revelation of God and his ways in the world? It's through Jesus Christ, in particular, the Sermon on the Mount and other speeches of Jesus. And so we have to read some of these troubling laws in the Old Testament in light of

the full revelation of who God is under the New Testament, specifically in the person and work of Jesus. And so when we look at the person and work of Jesus, we see women fully affirmed in their humanity. We see racism addressed very specifically, for instance, in passages like Luke 10, the parable, the good Samaritan where Jesus, I mean, he goes straight after Jewish people who would have been quote unquote racist toward Samaritans. We see it again in John 4 with the Samaritan woman and other passages. I mean, there's few people, few people with some sense of morality who aren't impressed and attracted to Jesus, Jesus who is revealed in the New Testament. Now they might say, as Gandhi used to say, you know, it's not Jesus that I have a problem

with, it's his followers. And so, you know, I could see where he can say that, you know, Christians obviously fall short of imitating the way of Jesus. And sometimes they fall really short. Sometimes they look nothing like Jesus. And that's on us. We need to embody the life and presence of Jesus in a way that reflects the Jesus of the gospels.

But if you just look at Jesus of the gospels, most people would say that is a beautiful picture of how humans, how humans should live. Okay. So that's just my kind of first point under my first point. Okay. So this is like 0.1 a okay. So the message of the Bible testifies to its authenticity. And we see this in how Genesis one and 2 gives us the ideal and the rest of the Old Testament is trying to get back to that ideal. And Jesus reveals to us the first major step towards that. Well, not the first major step, but the closest picture we get to getting back to the garden. Secondly, throughout the Old Testament, here's what's

fascinating. And this is unlike other religious texts in the ancient world. The Old Testament constantly critiques power. It critiques power all over the place. For instance, as you might know, priests weren't allowed to own land. Well, like they weren't given their own kind of tribal allotment. So you have the 12 tribes of Israel and the two sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh became two separate tribes. And so if you add the Levites in there, you actually have 13 tribes of Israel. But Levi was not given a portion of the land. They were to depend on the tithes and offerings of the people. So in a sense, they were under the economic support of the average farmer Joe living in the tribe of Benjamin and whoever else.

Now, you may think, so what? I don't care about land rights in ancient Israel. But that's a profound statement about power because in every other ancient context, the kings and the priests owned all the land because land was a means to economic flourishing and wealth and power. And it was the kings and the priests that owned all the land. Well, that's exactly the opposite in the Old Testament. The priests did not, we're not given a tribal allotment of a chunk of land and the kings were not allowed to own land. We see this in, at the end, well, again, I don't want to get into the details here, but

at the end of first Kings, we see Ahab, you know, looks over at Naboth's vineyard outside of his palace gates. And he's like, oh, I want that plot of land. He's got such a great garden. And Jezebel, his wicked wife, was like, well, just go take it. You're the king. So he goes and takes it. And it's like, that was a huge violation of the way things were supposed to be done in Israel. It is profound that, and let me just, let me just play the neutral judge here.

The neutral, let me just remove my Christian perspective now. It is profound that whoever wrote these texts in the Old Testament portrayed God as one who did not just give land rights to priests and kings and those in power. The law of the Jubilee in Leviticus 25 is unprecedented. That at the end of every 50 years, the land would return to the family to which it originally belonged. Scholars, whether you're liberal, atheist, conservative, whatever, we're all scratching our heads thinking, this is absolutely remarkable that this God of the Bible would care so much about the average person so that even if you had a successful landowner who kept gobbling

up all the land, that at the end of 50 years, the land would go back to the original family. This is a major check against economic power. Number three, kings didn't have, well, I already kind of said this, kings didn't have absolute power. We see this all over the place. When David sinned against Uriah and Bathsheba, well, with Bathsheba, you know, the prophet Nathan stuck his finger in David's chest and said, what do you think you're doing? You know, you're, and he confronted him. You would never see anybody in the ancient world do that to a king. No way. And yet the prophet, the one who mediates God's voice almost has more authority or does have more authority over the

king, not because the prophet is authoritative in and of himself, but because he's mediating God's authority over the king. Number four, women are elevated and humanized all throughout the Old Testament, especially in relation to its surrounding culture. And look, again, I'm going to be the first one to admit that there are some tough statements in the Old Testament law about women. We need to wrestle with those tough statements in light of the many other statements that elevate women much, much higher than what we see in other cultures. Okay. So just for example, in Exodus 1 to 5, Exodus chapters 1-5, all the human heroes are women.

Have you noticed this before? This is, it took me many years to even notice this, probably because I have male lenses that I'm reading the Bible through, and so we kind of gloss over this. But if you look at the early chapters of Exodus, it's all the, it's a bunch of women that are saving the day. So for instance, in Exodus chapter 1, you have Shiphrah and Puah, the two midwives that feared God rather than Pharaoh, and they disobeyed the king's edict to kill off all the firstborn. Those are two women. Yahabed, Moses's mother, disobeyed the

Pharaoh's order to float Moses down the Nile so that he wouldn't be killed. Miriam, Moses' sister, watched over the Babel and made sure that he was going to be okay. Then Pharaoh's daughter changed the course of history by taking in this Israelite child, this baby, and raising him up. And then later on, Zipporah, Moses's wife, stepped between Yahweh and Moses. God was about to kill Moses because he hadn't circumcised his son and Zipporah steps in and circumcises his son. And I mean, this gets a little graphic. Okay. She throws the foreskin at his feet. It's one of those passages that you don't hear a lot about in Sunday school, but it's just a really dramatic way of saying, you know, Zipporah stepped in and

saved Moses's life. I mean, this is so counter-cultural. It's so counter-cultural. And this narrative just infuses women with tons of value and power in a culture that absolutely did not do that. Number five, all throughout the Old Testament, we see that the God of the Bible cares for the marginalized. There's many commands throughout the Old Testament. And again, I know there's commands that are troubling. There's also commands that are really beautiful. Commands to care for the orphan, the widow, the poor, the elderly, the foreigner, the people who maybe don't have land rights like a foreigner, or maybe a widow who doesn't have a husband, maybe doesn't even have any kids, doesn't have men around her to help her succeed economically. And the Bible builds in

safety nets to help make sure that those who are poor, those who are marginalized, those who don't have means to economic success or survival are taken care of. This is so beautiful. success or survival are taken care of. This is so beautiful. You know, you read the story of Ruth. Ruth has three strikes against her. She's a foreigner, she's a female, and she's a widow. And precisely because she has that many levels of marginalization, precisely because of her status, she is elevated to becoming part of the very genealogical line of the Messiah, the Son of God. Number six, we see, so I'm just kind of focusing on the Old Testament, but again, in the life of Jesus, and this is something that's, you know, some people don't know as much about the Old Testament, but most people, when they read the life of Jesus, we know in the life of Jesus that he elevates women, that he confronted racism, that he restored value among people that were

considered valueless in that society, that he cared for the poor, that he frequently critiqued power. that he frequently critiqued power. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. Or Luke 22, 26 to 27, let the greatest among you become as the youngest and the leader as one who serves. Now, you could, so all of this, you could say, okay, that doesn't prove that it's reliable.

That doesn't prove that it's from God. I guess that's true. It's true. That doesn't, everything I'm saying doesn't directly show. Therefore, this must be God's spoken word to us. But the Bible simply couldn't have been a product of those in power. If it was, it would have had a completely different message. Why would people in power hand select books that directly and roundly and consistently critique power? You

think they could have done a much better job at that. Now, again, this doesn't prove that it's reliable, but it does say that the Bible is very unique and beautiful. And I would say it does contribute to its authenticity. Okay. Meaning when I say authenticity, I'm saying the Bible doesn't have the feel of certain higher ups trying to pull the wool over your eyes. It gives every impression that whoever wrote these stories down, whoever recorded them, not only did we already see from history and archaeology that they did so with remarkable accuracy, but the message itself bears the stamp of authenticity. It's much more likely that there was some other hand at work in, in, in, in moving through these human authors. It's that I find that to be much more likely than just a bunch of random human

writers were trying to pull the wool out over your eyes and trying to record something that ended up critiquing the very people that were in power. You know, so one of the classic examples of this is at the resurrection of Jesus, at the death and resurrection of Jesus, it's a bunch of women that stood by his side, that were portrayed as being the most courageous and fearless while all the male apostles were scattering. They were scared. They were doubting. They were running away. They were denying Jesus. Like Peter, you know, denied that he even knows who Jesus was. That's crazy. Their leader, the rock. Hey, I think you're with Jesus. Jesus, Jesus. I've never even heard of the guy. Really? And it's a bunch of women that stay, that courageously stand by Jesus in his final

moments. And it was a bunch of women that showed up at the empty tomb. Why would the biblical writers record it that way? If they were fabricating all of this, it seems less likely that they would record a bunch of women whose testimony wasn't worth as much as men. Either they were fabricating this and they did a really poor job, or when they recorded a bunch of women showing up at the empty tomb, it might be because a bunch of women showed up at the empty tomb. Why would a bunch of early Christians die for the testimony of Christ? Why would they be martyred if there wasn't at least some, a good deal of credibility to their witness that this person, this Messiah, this king,

this prophet, this priest really did rise from the dead. secondly the second uh so so just to summarize that the message of the bible itself testifies to its authenticity and secondly as i read the bible i think it makes the most sense of the world um in other words the biblical worldview as a whole does seem to make the most sense of the world as I look at the Bible and see how it talks about humanity and God and the world and human nature and how things are unraveling. And when I experience the world, it does seem to match up. Not perfectly. Nothing's ever perfectly, but it does match up very well, especially when I compare it to other guides, other religious documents. Do they make a better sense of the world? Or I just scrap religion as a whole and say, okay, if I just go with no creator, no designer, just non-creation evolution,

no designer, that to me presents more problems. Cause when I look at creation, when I look at the human body, when I look at the galaxy, the solar system, there is that there does seem to be more evidence that there was a designer based on the intricacies of the design itself of the creation itself. So what do we see when we read the Bible? We read about a God who is a designer, a God who is a God of order, a God who created everything here and has engineered humanity to reflect his own image. Do we see evidence of something like that, that humans are valuable, that humans are intricate, that we should care for fellow man and woman. Yeah, that makes sense. And that resonates with most people. Again, maybe not Hitler, maybe not the grand wizard of KKK, maybe not Stalin. I don't

know. But for most people, they would agree with that. They may still say, yeah, but I think science is, you know, all the rules, Bible or whatever. Okay, we can have that conversation. But there does seem to be intricacies in how the human body is designed and how the universe is designed. The Bible's view of human nature, I think most makes very good sense of what I know about human nature. See, the Bible portrays human nature as like a blend of, if I can say good and evil, okay? We are created in God's image, meaning we're going to reflect something of God in the world. Romans 2 says that we have, that humans have this kind of moral impulse, some tug to do the right thing, some conviction when we do the wrong thing. And yet the Bible also is very clear

in Jeremiah 17, Ephesians 2, and many other passages that at the core of our human nature, that we are fallen, that we are sinful. And we're sinful, not in the sense that we just do sinful acts, but we have a sin problem etched into our very human nature. So this sort of blend of good and evil. So it doesn't make sense when you have certain worldviews that kind of divides the world in terms of there's good people who are in this group and bad people who are part of this group. This race is good. That race is bad. Or all people who are wealthy are bad and everybody who's poor is intrinsically good. Or those who are in leadership or in positions of political power are intrinsically evil. And those who are being oppressed are intrinsically good.

The Bible doesn't divide humanity in such a way. Now, some of those, there's some truth to all those categories, maybe, you know. But the Bible doesn't divide the world in terms of there's good people and then there's bad people. It divides it in terms of we are all wrestling with good and evil. Even Christians who have been redeemed by Jesus aren't redeemed by Jesus because we're good, but precisely because we recognize that we are bad and in need of Christ. The view of human nature, you know, you also see in,

especially in Paul's letters, this idea of being enslaved to sin, that very language of not just committing sin, but being enslaved to it actually resonates with what we now know from certain brain research, neuroscience, or if you've studied or have been through an addiction, you know that like, man, I, you man, I couldn't not do that thing over and over and over. That's not just committing sin, that's being enslaved to sin. And there's actually some recent books coming out that are noticing that the biblical language of sin and human behavior matches what has just recently been revealed to us through studies in neuroscience. what has just recently been revealed to us through studies and neuroscience.

The view of human nature fits in perfectly. The biblical view of human nature fits in perfectly with what we know about grace. That if we are sinful and if we are enslaved to that sin, then we need somebody outside of us to rescue us. And so the Bible, more than most, if not all religious books emphasizes God's initiative grace in such beautiful ways that we cannot save ourselves. We cannot just pull ourselves up by our moral bootstraps and start walking in a righteous life. We need God to come down and initiate this relationship to take that last step to bring us back to Eden. And that again, is that true or not true? Well, I don't, you know, I think it's true.

And it also makes sense of how I see the world. So are there unsolved questions in the Bible? Yes. Back when I was a Bible college professor, I used to pretend like I had no doubts, no questions about the Bible. I had it all sorted out. Boom, boom, boom. That's why I went to seminary to get all the right answers and never have any questions. Uh, I stopped that charade about 12 years ago. I still wrestle with stuff in the Bible. I still wrestle with the Christian worldview. Um, just to be completely blatant and honest, the problem of evil still keeps me up at night. If God is good and God is all powerful, why does he not stop evil from happening in the world? And I know all the answers that I memorized in seminary. And so you can, you don't need to

email me. I've, I've looked through them all and then some, some are decent answers, but at the end of the day, none of them a hundred really satisfies that little uneasiness in my heart with the problem of evil. That's okay. There is no worldview that will perfectly solve every sort of question or doubt or problem you have with how you view the world. of all the other religious texts, in light of other non-religious options, atheism, agnosticism, I find the Bible and the worldview that's contained within its pages to be the most compelling view of God, humankind, and the world. Let me give you just two quick takeaways. Okay. First of all, the Bible is, um, trustworthy. Uh, I just kind of bring us back full circle. Uh, early on a few weeks ago, I said that, um, the Bible does take faith to believe it, but it's not blind faith. Yes. There's unanswered

questions. Yes. There's things like miracles that we can't scientifically prove that they happened without a shadow of a doubt. There is an element of faith. Every worldview that you're thinking of embracing takes a measure of faith. I personally think the biblical worldview takes the least amount of faith than other options, but it still does take faith. However, it's not a blind faith. There is both external and internal evidence that the Bible is authentic, is reliable. It's not without any kind of, it's not, it's not that there's nothing to wrestle with. Um, but of all the options that makes the most sense of the world. And secondly, um, I do think the Bible is very relevant to speak to us today. It can be very tempting to let, I'm just going to say it,

and I'll be neutral here. It's very tempting to let CNN and or, probably not and, but or Fox News shape your view of the world, society, humankind, politics, more than the Bible. That's really tempting. And I say that to my own shame. I found myself, especially in the last few months, struggling with paying more attention to various news outlets rather than listening to the scriptures. The scriptures are profoundly relevant. They don't speak directly to specific things going on in our time right now, but they do lay down tremendously relevant values and ways in which we should think through and process what's going on in society today. So again, the relevancy of the Bible, I think, testifies to its authenticity

and its reliability. So thank you so much for watching, for listening. It's been so fun engaging this topic of the reliability of the Bible, and I'm excited to continue to engage with you through some Q&A time that we're going to have right now. God bless. you