Latest / Real Life Theology Podcast / Bullseye Beliefs: How Apologetics Strengthens Young Christians | Chad Ragsdale

Transcript

Bullseye Beliefs: How Apologetics Strengthens Young Christians | Chad Ragsdale · Real Life Theology Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome back everyone to the Real Life Theology Podcast. Today we are featuring
• 0:07
  Chad Ragsdale who is a professor at Ozark Christian College. He explains how
• 0:13
  apologetics often serves young believers by helping them identify what they
• 0:18
  believe. He walks us through the three buckets, personal, important, and essential
• 0:24
  elements of our faith. I hope you guys enjoy this episode.
• 0:28
  Morning. I've been teaching at Ozark Christian College in Joplin, Missouri
• 0:34
  since 2005. I've been teaching a class on Christian apologetics since the year
• 0:41
  2011, and it's a class that I love to teach. When it comes to apologetics, we
• 0:48
  we tend to think that apologetics is principally for the skeptic, for the
• 0:53
  unbeliever, and it is. I've had a lot of conversations in my years with skeptics
• 0:58
  and with unbelievers about the truth of the gospel, but my experience is that
• 1:04
  those who are most in need of Christian apologetics a lot of times are
• 1:11
  Christians. Oftentimes young Christians, the type of Christians that go to a
• 1:18
  Christian college, those who are struggling with their faith. A lot of my
• 1:24
  students, you see, they grew up in the church. They weren't necessarily
• 1:27
  discipled by the church, but they grew up in the church, and they have
• 1:33
  what I characterize as a functional faith, but it hasn't really been
• 1:38
  stretched. It hasn't really been put to the test. I like to call it a plate glass
• 1:42
  window faith. It's functional. It works, but then the first time somebody picks
• 1:48
  up a big rock and hurls it at their faith, it's at risk of shattering in a
• 1:52
  million pieces. So they come to me. They come to me alarmed. Sometimes they come
• 1:58
  to me embarrassed. They're asking questions of their faith, oftentimes for
• 2:03
  the very first time in their lives, and they aren't confident that they can find
• 2:08
  the answers. And so one of the very first exercises, one of the very first things
• 2:14
  that I do in my apologetics class is I try to help the students identify those
• 2:21
  beliefs and those questions which deserve most of our attention, which
• 2:28
  deserve most of our energy. So there's several different exercises that
• 2:31
  I do. One exercise that I do really quick is I have them sit down, and I only give
• 2:35
  them like two minutes to do this. I tell them, you have two minutes to write a
• 2:38
  paragraph, no more than three sentences. These three sentences have to summarize
• 2:42
  the key beliefs that you have as a Christian person. These are the
• 2:45
  fundamental, unchanging, essential beliefs that you have. Two minutes, three
• 2:50
  sentences, that's all you get. I did this exercise one time at a church camp in
• 2:53
  Colorado with high school students, and I like to survey the group after they're
• 2:58
  done. Read your paragraph back to me. I'll never forget it. One student, he
• 3:02
  raises his hand. He's real confident. He's like, I only needed two sentences. I'm like,
• 3:06
  all right, cool. So I'm like, all right, read it for us. His first sentence was John
• 3:10
  316. I'm like, all right, we're off to a good start. I'm like, what's your second sentence?
• 3:16
  Don't take my guns. Okay then.
• 3:27
  There's another exercise that I like to do with my students though, and I call it
• 3:31
  the target exercise. So I draw a big target up on the board, and I tell them
• 3:36
  this target represents the sum total of everything that you believe as a
• 3:39
  Christian. And there's all sorts of beliefs up here on the target, okay? But
• 3:46
  there's only a small number of beliefs that fit on the bullseye
• 3:49
  of the target. Again, everything's on the target. Some things are closer to the
• 3:54
  bullseye than others. Some things are way out in the margins. What I've discovered
• 3:57
  is skeptics, a lot of times, they like to nibble around the margins of your faith.
• 4:00
  They like to challenge your faith by, if I ever do write a book on apologetics,
• 4:05
  which I probably never will, but if I ever write a book on apologetics, the
• 4:08
  title of the book is gonna be, Please Stop Asking Me About Dinosaurs. I just
• 4:15
  don't care. I'm sorry. I mean, it's on the target, but it's somewhere near the
• 4:21
  periphery, you know. I just, I don't care. I'm sorry if that hurts your feelings.
• 4:30
  But it's important to recognize and identify clearly what is at the bullseye.
• 4:35
  What are those bullseye beliefs where, if those beliefs were to change today, my
• 4:39
  entire life would be turned upside down? What is your bullseye? Now, there's two
• 4:43
  mistakes that I found that people make. There's two mistakes. One mistake that
• 4:49
  people make is the idea, the notion, that everything is at the
• 4:53
  bullseye. The entire target is the bullseye. I call these people, now here's
• 4:59
  the technical word, the phrase that I use, I call these people epistemic legalists.
• 5:03
  Now, let me unpack that for a little bit. We know what legalism is, don't we? We
• 5:07
  know what legalism is. Moralistic legalism is this idea that I can earn
• 5:11
  God's favor, I can earn God's salvation, or maybe lose my salvation through my
• 5:17
  own moralistic behavior. By being a good boy, God will recognize that, pat me on
• 5:22
  the head, and welcome me into heaven. That's moralistic legalism. So what's
• 5:28
  epistemic legalism? Epistemic legalism is basically this. If I, God has this answer
• 5:34
  key up in heaven, and unless I get a hundred percent on that test, if, unless I
• 5:42
  believe everything in precisely the right way, I'm sorry, what was your
• 5:47
  hermeneutical position on the book of Jonah? If you answer the question in the
• 5:52
  wrong way, trap door is gonna open and you're going downstairs. That's epistemic,
• 5:59
  and a lot of people justifiably, they reject moralistic legalism, but they kind
• 6:03
  of dig epistemic legalism. You got to believe everything, everything, precisely
• 6:10
  in the right way, otherwise I'm not sure that you're saved. So basically, the
• 6:14
  entire target is the bullseye. But there's another mistake, and it's the
• 6:20
  opposite mistake, which is to say that nothing is on the bullseye. There's no
• 6:26
  target at all. I call these people Christian relativists. It doesn't really
• 6:31
  matter what you believe. After all, everyone has their own target, and that's
• 6:35
  just fine. The fact is that the language of belief and truth, however, in Scripture,
• 6:41
  it's inescapable. To Jesus, to Paul, to every writer in the New Testament, and
• 6:49
  most every prominent thinker throughout Christian history, what you believe, or
• 6:52
  more specifically, who you believe in, it matters, and it has eternal consequences.
• 7:01
  So what is needed is a biblical reflection on what's on the bullseye of
• 7:07
  the target. Now, this is tricky. This is tricky, especially in a movement where we
• 7:15
  have historically, anyway, not been super in favor of creeds, although I would
• 7:20
  remind you that we are also a movement that has said things like, in essentials
• 7:24
  unity, in opinions liberty, and in all things what? Love. So the minute you start
• 7:32
  talking about in essentials unity, you got to kind of identify, well, what
• 7:35
  actually is an essential? But I have discovered that whenever you start doing
• 7:40
  this target illustration, it kind of puts a target on your own back, too. So looking
• 7:46
  at Scripture, we can, I think, identify pretty clearly these bullseye beliefs.
• 7:51
  For instance, it's essential that a person believes that God exists and
• 7:55
  earnestly seeks him. Hebrews 11 6. It's essential that a person believes that
• 8:02
  Jesus is the resurrected Lord. Romans 10 9. Additionally, it's essential that a
• 8:09
  person trusts in the sufficiency of grace for salvation. I'm not gonna earn
• 8:15
  my own salvation. I'm saved by grace through faith. While it isn't technically
• 8:21
  a belief, it's also essential to recognize that only those who are born
• 8:26
  again by the Holy Spirit truly, truly have life. It's also essential that a
• 8:32
  person persevere in these beliefs, not abandoning these beliefs throughout
• 8:36
  their lifetimes. Now, here's my point that I want you to hear, though. Identifying
• 8:44
  these bullseye beliefs, these essential beliefs, it helps us so much in our
• 8:51
  discipleship, not just in our personal discipleship, but in our discipleship of
• 8:54
  others. Not just because it helps us to identify essential beliefs, which
• 9:01
  obviously that's important, but also because it helps to put other beliefs in
• 9:04
  a more helpful context. Because we recognize, don't we? We recognize that
• 9:10
  there are a lot of other beliefs that are very important for a Christian to
• 9:13
  have. There are a lot of beliefs that come close to the center of the target,
• 9:16
  but they're not quite on the bullseye. Now, this doesn't mean simply because
• 9:21
  they're not on the bullseye, it doesn't mean that they're unimportant or that we
• 9:24
  shouldn't talk about them or that we shouldn't teach them, urgently teach
• 9:27
  them. We absolutely should. They're important for a reason. But when we
• 9:32
  recognize that these beliefs aren't at the absolute center of the target, here's
• 9:37
  what this frees us up to do. This frees us up to have conversations, urgent
• 9:41
  conversations, urgent teaching about these things, without the anxiety and
• 9:45
  without the defensiveness that our very salvation is at stake. We also recognize
• 9:52
  that there are even more beliefs that we hold that amount to our own personal
• 9:59
  convictions and opinions. And these are important beliefs too. These are
• 10:05
  often the types of things that make one group distinct or separate from another
• 10:09
  group. Personal convictions aren't necessarily bad, but I will tell you they
• 10:14
  can become harmful. They can become divisive, especially with young
• 10:24
  disciples. Friends, I've seen it. I teach a lot of your students, and I've
• 10:31
  seen the damage that is done to a young Christian's faith when personal
• 10:37
  convictions and opinions, things like politics, things like worship styles,
• 10:43
  things like the cult of personality, things that are just personal
• 10:49
  convictions, when these get turned into the essentials of the faith, it harms the
• 10:54
  discipleship of young believers. And so recognizing the essentials of our faith
• 11:03
  will make us better disciplers. It will make us better disciples. And I just want
• 11:10
  to close my talk just by repeating the simple affirmation of Romans 10 verse 9.
• 11:17
  You've heard it. You know it. If you declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord,
• 11:22
  and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be
• 11:28
  saved. Amen?
• 11:37
  Thank you guys for listening to this episode of the Real Life Theology
• 11:41
  podcast. Please comment, like, subscribe. We'd love to hear from you guys. Stay
• 11:45
  tuned for more great content on theology and disciple making.