- The following is excerpted from “Most Christians Cannot Explain Their Faith,” Christian Post, June 3, 2010.

Josh McDowell is New Evangelical in his philosophy, but he is right about reproving evangelicals for their gross ignorance and inability to defend the faith scripturally, and what he says is widely applicable to fundamentalists, as well.

“The faith of most Christians, even that of many pastors, will not stand up to intellectual scrutiny, according to renowned apologist Josh McDowell. This is a concern because pastors’ inability to present biblical truth comprehensibly and relevantly has led to children from Christian families leaving the church, research has shown. In the United States, the age at which nearly all such children leave church has decreased to 18 years.

… During the past six years, he asked hundreds of Christians and leaders why they see themselves as Christians. Again no one gave him an ‘intelligent’ answer. In the past 17 years, he has asked over 4,000 pastors, leaders and parents why they believe the Bible is true. A mere six ‘came close to giving an intelligent answer,’ McDowell noted. … Ninety-five percent of Christians gave disappointing responses when asked why they believe Jesus is the Son of God. Asked why the Bible is true and historically reliable, Christians replied that it was what they had been taught by their church or parents.

A common response that most Christians gave to both questions was that it is ‘what I believe.’ McDowell responded: ‘That’s voodoo thinking. Where did we ever get that crazy idea that something is true just because we believe it? If that is true, then there will never be heresy. Everybody would be right.’ On one occasion, 13 youth pastors at a large convention were unable to reasonably answer the apologist’s question.

Finally one young person stood up, walked toward him and told him he knew the answer. The young man promptly held up his Bible and said, ‘Because I believe it.’ And to McDowell’s dismay, all the youth pastors applauded him. McDowell said, ‘Young man, do you know the difference between you, me, and the majority of Christians in the world? ‘To you, it is true because you believe it. For me, I believe it because it is true.’

http://wayoflife.org/files/f621e908c3a0de4041524baa5f227ea4-592.html

Listen to me now about the difference in meaning between the short-term matters of our physical beings and the eternal relationships between the believer and his God.

If you save a person from diptheria when he is a baby, or save him in his teens from smallpox, or save him in his fifties from a heart attack, what have you done?

If that man lives to be ninety and still is without God and does not know why he was born, you have simply perpetuated the life of a mud turtle. That man who has never found God and has never been born again is like a turtle, with two legs instead of four and no shell and no tail, because he still does not know what life has been all about.

I am thankful that I have found a promise from the God of all grace that deals with the long-term and the eternal. I belong to a company of plain people who believe the truth revealed in the Bible. We believe that it was God who made man in His own image and breathed into him the breath of life and said unto him, “Now, live in my presence and worship Me — for that is your chief end. Increase and multiply and fill the earth with worshipers.”

Yes, these plain people, these believing people, will tell you that God created the flowers to be beautiful and the birds to sing so that men and women could enjoy them. The scientist, with an entirely different  kind of perspective, would never admit that fact. The scientist contends that the bird sings for a totally different reason.

“It is the male bird that sings, and he sings only to attract the female so they may nest and procreate,” he tells us. “It is simply biological.”

It is at this point that I ask the scientist, “why doesn’t the bird just squeak or groan or gurgle? Why does he have to sing and warble and harmonize as though he had been tuned to a harp?”

I thin the answer is plain — it is because God made him to sing.

If I were a male bird and wanted to attract a female I could turn handsprings or do any number of tricks. But why does the bird sing so beautifully?

It is because the God who made him is the Chief Musician of the universe. He is the Composer of the cosmos. He made the harp in those little throats and the feathers around them and said, “Go and sing.”

Thankfully, the birds obeyed and they have been singing and praising God ever since they were created. The scientific man may protest and say, “No, no!” But my heart tells me that it is so. ”

Ecclesiastes  3:11 He hath made every thing beautiful in his time:

1 Corinthians 1:21-24 For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.  (22)  For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:  (23)  But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;  (24)  But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

The people of the world consider believers in Jesus Christ to be foolish. They think that we are ignorant, brainwashed idiots to follow someone who they have never seen. They mock our Saviour and state that it is foolish to have faith. Even atheists have faith, but unfortunately their faith is not in God or Jesus Christ. Their faith is in themselves and the things around them. Those of you reading this are probably sitting down. How do you know that chair will not fall apart? How do you know someone did not come in earlier and loosen all of the bolts? Or that they had not rusted through on one of the legs? You probably never considered that either of those two things could happen. Why? Because you have faith in the quality of that chair. Recently at a parade, I had faith in the chair I was sitting in. We have had that chair for a few years now and I have used it many times. I was sitting in it before the parade started and I shifted in the chair a little when suddenly the fabric gave way and I sank down into the frame. I trusted the chair and it let me down. And that is precisely the difference between trusting in Jesus Christ and trusting in people or things: people or things will fail you and let you down – Jesus Christ will never fail you or let you down.

You cannot trust in your works or actions to get you into Heaven, because you cannot trust yourself. Jeremiah 17:9 tells us that our hearts are deceitful and we can all too easily deceive ourselves. We probably lie to ourselves more than we lie to anyone else. Jesus Christ never lies — He is absolute Truth, in fact, He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We can never do enough to merit salvation, we simply need to trust in Jesus Christ’s finished work on the cross. He only needed to be sacrificed once for our sins. Amen!