My father is 85. He’s as sharp as ever. Just as stubborn too.
When I discovered Apologetics I recognized it as the bridge to those who are on the other side as I once was. Apologetics was the answer to their rejection of Christianity! They just didn’t have the supporting facts, evidence and logic! I will show them, they will see and be set free!
My heart danced with joy!
But I was only partially right.
I had underestimated the complexity of human beings. We are a combination of heart, soul, mind and WILL.
Those who lead with their minds and thinking aren’t necessarily WILLING to follow the evidence where it leads. Just the opposite in fact. They surround themselves with thoughts that support what they WANT to believe. It isn’t a matter of using their minds to seek and find the truth, rather it’s a matter of using their minds to rationalize what they want the truth to be. Truth to them is merely a smorgasbord where they pick and choose that which vindicates their own particular tastes and desires.
I can be guilty of the same misuse of my mind. In all fairness if we are honest this is everyone’s default mode no matter what their worldview may be.
It takes an ongoing effort as well as intellectual and emotional honesty to commit our minds to seek, find, recognize, acknowledge and submit to the truth. Especially when it reveals something we don’t like.
Even Einstein was guilty of this when the conclusion of his own calculations, his own General Theory of Relativity clearly proved the universe had a beginning! He wasn’t willing to follow the evidence of his own equations where they led when they didn’t corroborate what he wanted the truth to be. *(Do you know the story? More details at the end of this blog)
So back to my father.
I’m a chip off the old block. He is as I once was. Anti-Theist. Anti-Christian. Too “smart” to be suckered into a lie.
In the beginning I knew he would respond positively to Apologetics. He wasn’t a Christian merely because he didn’t have the supporting facts, the evidence and the logic! I would show him, he would see and be set free!
Not so much.
Like any son who loves his father I wanted him to understand how my life had been changed by the truth, but more importantly why. I wanted him to see how belief in God is not only rational, but why it is the best explanation for the evidence. I wanted him to join me in Freedom from the true lie.
But it seems as if I’m getting nowhere.
We frequently engage by phone in intellectual discussions about truth, God, morality, good and evil, logic and Jesus. His intellectual footwork is dazzling. But if I slow it down and examine the intellectual constructs on which he bases his world view it’s clearly riddled with logical contradictions, false premises and invalid conclusions.
He contends that there is no absolute truth. Then when I point out that the statement “there is no absolute truth” is itself a statement of absolute truth he scoffs “that’s just a trick of semantics!”
But that’s the way he WANTS it.
He is given the freedom to choose, the free will to choose whatever he wants in this life. We, every one of us is willful -meaning we choose what we want.
God respectfully grants us the dignity of free will, and will not hijack and robotize our minds even when He knows our choices will lead us to destruction. It’s our choice.
It’s not His choice, but ours.
As a loving father He wants nothing but the best for each of us His children. And because of that He gives each of us enough information so that whatever each of us wills to choose it is an informed choice.
But He doesn’t meddle.
Please pray for my father. He doesn’t know that I’ve asked for your prayer on his behalf. I wish he did because that would mean he had read this. Even so he would probably say he doesn’t want your prayer. He may not, but he needs it!
He tells me “I’ve been Where you are. I know what you’re thinking. But you don’t know where I am because I have gone beyond that.”
I pray that’s not true.
*Einstein found the results of his own equations “Irritating” because if the universe had a beginning then it had to have a cause. But the cause of all creation, by definition, would be God. Like my father, Einstein didn’t want to believe in God even if the evidence pointed beyond all reasonable doubt to His existence. So he deliberately and WILLFULLY added the “Cosmological Constant” to his equations to make the universe look as if it never had a beginning. He did this by dividing by zero! He later admitted this mistake and repented of the Cosmological Constant when his friend Edwin Hubble invited him to look through the Mount Wilson Observatory telescope to see the red shift of the stars. The red shift, also known as the Doppler effect, is empirical (observational) evidence of an expanding universe. Which means that if we follow the process in reverse we can see that the universe began at a specific point in the past from nothing. There was no Space, Time and Matter, then suddenly it leapt into existence with great precision from nothing!
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