Apologetics & Worldview

Apologetics & Worldview gathers Christian Standard articles that help readers understand, defend, and live out the Christian faith in a skeptical and changing culture. Here you’ll find thoughtful engagement with questions about truth, Scripture, Jesus, science and faith, suffering, morality, and competing worldviews shaping public life. These articles aim to strengthen confidence in the gospel, equip believers to answer objections with humility and clarity, and encourage a Christ-centered perspective for navigating everyday decisions and cultural conversations.

July 18, 2012

Christian Standard

Their Questions, Your Answers with These Two New Titles

By Mark A. Taylor Questions are good. We can welcome questions when they come from a person with honest doubt. Most people we”ll meet with questions about our faith are not at peace with their uncertainty. They want answers. They want time to ponder our conclusions and the reasons we believe. But sometimes Christians are threatened when confronted by questions from folks who don”t believe in God, can”t accept the Bible, or consider Jesus as nothing more than a great teacher. Sometimes Christians take the questions as a personal attack. Sometimes we react with anger or derision because we don”t

July 17, 2012

Christian Standard

Why Are Christians SO Intolerant?

From the new book by David Faust Natalie started attending the church I led in New York. A quiet, pleasant person, she seemed to appreciate the biblical teaching and friendly atmosphere she found in our church. After some time, she dropped by my office one day. She said, “I like this church very much, but from listening to the messages each week, I get the impression that you think it”s necessary to believe in Jesus Christ in order to go to Heaven. That sounds awfully intolerant to me.” “We do believe it”s necessary to trust and obey Jesus,” I replied,

September 14, 2011

Christian Standard

Teaching Islam and Learning to Love My Neighbor

By Craig Farmer Like most Americans old enough to remember, I have a clear memory of what I was doing on the morning of September 11, 2001. I was standing in the front of Hyder Auditorium administering a humanities exam to some 200 Milligan College sophomores when an ashen-faced colleague entered from the side door and whispered into my ear that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Little did I know this event would eventually reshape the kind of work I would do as a professor at Milligan. In the months and years that followed 9/11, students

September 14, 2011

Christian Standard

Learn More About Islam

By Craig Farmer John L. Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). John Esposito, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, produced this magisterial survey of the history, theology, and politics of Islam. Now in its fourth edition, the book provides a primarily historical review of the development of Islam, including an analysis of its contemporary resurgence.   Michael Anthony Sells, Approaching the Qur”an: The Early Revelations (Ashland: White Cloud Press, 1999). Michael Sells, professor of Islamic history at the University of Chicago, produced an introduction and translation of the Koran (also written

August 13, 2011

Christian Standard

Embracing Mystery, Remembering Churchill, and Reconsidering the Classics

By LeRoy Lawson Einstein”s God: Conversations about Science and the Human Spirit Krista Tippett New York: Penguin Books, 2010 Churchill and America Martin Gilbert New York: Free Press, 2005 Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek and Latin Tracy Lee Simmons Wilmington: ISI Books, 2002 There”s no yelling in Krista Tippett”s Einstein”s God, no name-calling. This book is not another shootout of science and religion. Instead, these transcripts from 10 episodes of her radio show Speaking of Faith thoughtfully raise issues that thinking people can”t avoid: Can science and religion get along? Can you believe in God and evolution? What is the primary

May 19, 2011

Christian Standard

God Loves an Honest Question

By Brandon Smith Everything changed on March 20, 1998. I was a sophomore in college and had just arrived home for the weekend when my parents, red-eyed and somber, broke the news that would forever change my life. “Carrie is dead. She was killed in a car accident this afternoon.” Carrie and I had been dating since high school. In “normal time,” that was only three years. But in “high school and college relationship” time, it was an eternity. We had a healthy relationship, even surviving the long distance between us while she finished high school and I started college.

March 18, 2011

Christian Standard

Thinking About Hell?

With all the current flap about Rob Bell”s new book, Love Wins, perhaps you”d like to read again what CHRISTIAN STANDARD writers have said about Hell, universalism, and God”s wrath. Here are links to four helpful articles: How Could a Loving God Send Anyone to Hell? By Jeff Vines The Wide Road Is Still the Wrong Road By David Faust What Should We Believe About Hell? By Glen Elliott In Praise of Wrath By Tom Lawson

January 10, 2011

Christian Standard

The Cure for Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

By Jon Weatherly Nothing alarms church folk quite so much as problems with the young folk. So it was about five years ago with Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton”s book, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. Smith and Denton”s research produced the phrase “moralistic therapeutic deism” to describe the typical American teen”s view of God. It”s “deism” because the god of the typical teen is mostly distant and uninvolved. It”s “therapeutic” because that distant god still wants everyone to have a happy life and occasionally is willing to get involved when a person has an

December 14, 2010

Christian Standard

The Tyranny of the Paradigm (Part 2)

Read “The Tyranny of the Paradigm (Part 1)” Read “The Tyranny of the Paradigm (Part 3)” _________________ By Jack W. Cottrell Previously I noted that Michael Denton speaks of how modern science regards Darwinian evolution as the determinative paradigm or controlling interpretive principle to which all scientific data must be made to conform””even when the data are in conflict with the paradigm. He calls this faulty methodology the “priority of the paradigm” (à la Thomas Kuhn). In that earlier essay I applied this concept to certain faulty theological systems, which likewise are distorted by the tyranny of their respective paradigms.

December 10, 2010

Christian Standard

Emerging for the Rest of Us

By Josh Tandy In 2003 I was in college and reading Brian McLaren”s A New Kind of Christian. It was unlike anything I had ever read in Christian literature. The book simultaneously bothered and encouraged me. I thought I understood about half of the issues discussed, but I actually grasped far less. Despite my ignorance, I was hooked””even though I didn”t fully know why. To varying degrees I think many church leaders, whether paid or unpaid, have had a similar experience with their first contact with the emerging church movement. Perhaps you were like me and had no context to

November 17, 2010

Christian Standard

The Whole Truth

By Jeff Faull It”s getting harder and harder to get the truth these days. We are constantly called to discern truth in every realm and at every level. We used to say, “Don”t believe everything you hear.” Then we said, “Just because it”s in print doesn”t make it true.” After that we said, “You found it on the Internet but that doesn”t mean you can trust it.” Now we have to say, “Seeing is not necessarily believing.” Have the photos been doctored? Am I looking at a computer-created image? There never has been such an obvious culture of spin and

July 18, 2010

Christian Standard

The Tyranny of the Paradigm (Part 1)

By Jack Cottrell In 1986 Michael Denton wrote Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Adler & Adler, 1996), in which he is severely critical of evolutionary theory. He presented compelling arguments for intelligent design, especially from the living cell, before most of us ever heard of Michael Behe. This is significant because Denton is a respected molecular biologist and medical doctor””and a complete agnostic. Though he argues for design, he professes ignorance as to who or what the designer might be. Nevertheless, throughout this large volume, Denton offers many examples of scientific evidence that the phenomena of nature could not have

May 16, 2010

Christian Standard

Embracing Our Questioners

By John Castelein Christians ask two kinds of questions: (1) safe questions, conceived and answered from within the faith; and (2) difficult questions about the entire faith enterprise itself. In many churches, small groups, and adult Bible school classes, persistent questioners can feel ostracized because difficult questions are not pursued. Willow Creek Community Church led many churches to respect the questions of seekers outside the church. However, in spite of such openness at the front door, church membership and attendance appear to be on the decline in the United States, especially among those 30 and younger (this follows the pattern

October 25, 2009

Christian Standard

The Wide Road Is Still the Wrong Road

  by David Faust What do you get when you cross a Jehovah”s Witness with a universalist? A knock on the door for no apparent reason. Actually, universalism is no joke. It”s a widely accepted philosophy imbedded in the psyche of our generation. The idea that one must believe in Jesus Christ to be saved sounds antiquated, judgmental, and narrow beyond belief to postmodern ears. The church isn”t immune to this trend. In 1985 I wrote an article for Christian Standard called “Taking the Wide Road: The Subtle Menace of Universalism.” Nearly a quarter-century later my concern about this issue

May 24, 2009

Christian Standard

To Know and Speak

  By Joe Bliffen I am a Disciples of Christ pastor. I am “certified by the Christian Church in Ohio”s Commission on Ministry as a clergy person who has standing with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)” (from a letter confirming this recognition dated October 2004). I also believe the 66 books of the Bible are the inspired, inerrant revelation of God and that the 27 books of the New Testament are the only authority for the faith, practice, morals, and ethics of both individual Christians and the church. I believe creation took place over the course of six 24-hour

April 12, 2009

Christian Standard

Evidence of Providence

  By Eddie Lowen Providence is the forseeing care and guidance of God over the creatures of earth. We can agree on that. But has it ever occurred to you that God may not want credit for some of what is attributed to him by human beings? My theology could be flawed, but I don”t imagine God will be disappointed if the next hot dog eating champion or Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover girl fails to credit him for their fame and success. To go further, some religious statements seem unlikely to have originated with God, despite the claims of those

March 22, 2009

Christian Standard

The Point of Christianity

  By Douglas Foster If you were to ask a non-Christian, “What is the point of Christianity?” what do you think he or she would say? Based on many people”s experience with professed Christians, he might say the point of Christianity is to make people as miserable and uptight as possible. Or that it is to shape people into vigilantes who get great satisfaction from attacking and destroying those with whom they differ””in the name of Christ and sound doctrine. Unfortunately there is ample evidence to back up these impressions. But what would you, a Christian and a reader of

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