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Do the basics of the Christian faith still matter?

Nowadays, it’s hardly received that “Jesus is the answer.” It’s cultural now to think that Christianity is a personal preference that may answer questions for some but not necessarily for everyone.

Cultural thought has keenly normalized objections to the Christian faith. So why should believers continue to build their confidence in Christianity? Isn’t the sophistication of advanced humankind demanding that we rethink our basic tenets?

The short answer is “no,” because when it comes to critiques of our understanding of sin and redemption, in the wisdom of Solomon, “there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecc. 1:9).

I often encounter polite but skeptical comments when conversing casually with people about the Gospel. I don’t mind, but I have realized that staunch skepticism can never be satisfied. Christian faith appeals to an intangible entity, so empirical demands can always reject whatever is presented. It can become a game of heads. Skepticism wins, and tails Christian faith loses.

To illustrate, let’s pretend the Bible did not record any supernatural events or miracles. In other words, the Old Testament was a book of supposed historical events, and the New Testament was a report of Jesus as a great moral teacher. Skepticism could then question why there weren’t any recordings of miracles—commenting that “there is nothing special about the Christian faith. So why didn’t the biblical writers witness God parting the sea and allowing the Israelites to escape enemies, Jesus walking on water and healing the sick, or He rose from the dead?

Such attestations would strengthen Christian faith as probably unique, but there was no witness to anything supernatural.” Determined skepticism will always find something to push back on. Thus our focus cannot be to satisfy a culture of distrust by rejigging fundamental Christian beliefs.

Everyone agrees that we must live in an imperfect and broken world where life hanks for “antidotes.” In his highly successful book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Jordan B. Peterson wrote: “It is my firm belief that the best way to fix the world — a handyman’s dream if ever there was one — is to fix yourself.” Interestingly enough, Peterson entitled them “Rules,” not suggestions “for life.”

We all think with “rules,” even deconstructionists do so. So intrinsic to humanity is an insatiable search for a rule to “fix” the sad predicaments of sin. Such an exercise often becomes complicated, sometimes eccentric, and fraught with intellectual strife. Yet the topic of the Christian faith is inescapably part of the discussion, albeit in a naturalized manner and far removed from what the Lord Jesus intended for humankind. So whether favorably or unfavorably, Christian faith seems unavoidable. It’s not going away.

When properly understood, the Christian faith remains the powerful antidote to fixing lives, but cultural trends have successfully portrayed it as anachronistic. Consequently, many believers are being challenged to rethink the belief that “there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:5). This central tenet has been pressured into silence by a culture that deems it as untenable for advanced people. It’s thus becoming an almost irresistible temptation for a believer to deconstruct one’s Christian beliefs to accommodate cultural thought. However, it’s the temptation’s validity that should be doubted.

Recently, I was delightfully enriched by a less popular essay by C. S. Lewis, “Fern Seed and Elephants.” He was commenting on the critical views of the Christian faith, focused on the minutest discrepancies (fern seed) in the New Testament and ignoring its glaring Truths (elephants). Lewis challenged the critics to “Try doubting something else.” Try doubting the alleged weight of the discrepancies and consider the overwhelming elephants of Truth.

Let us also try doubting the need to deconstruct essential Christian faith. Let’s try challenging that the repackaging of sin better serves humanity. Let’s try to challenge that the grace of God is not sufficient. And let’s try challenging that cultural thought can suggest a better antidote to sin than the Good News of the Gospel. Of course, there are vastly more considerations than a simple juxtaposition of doubt versus belief. Yet when it comes to the fundamental Christian faith, an identified discrepancy is usually exploited with maximum extrapolation toward doubt. So, indeed, let’s “try doubting something else.”

People continue to experience the multi-dimensional efficacy of essential Christian faith genuinely. Existential angst is often remedied dramatically. A Canadian scholar, John G. Stackhouse Jr., once described insightfully what transpires in humanity when the Christian faith is embraced:

“Intellectually, one believes propositions one did not believe before. Morally, one has a different sense of what counts as good and evil, what one ought or ought not to do. Emotionally, one loves what one used to hate or ignore; one shuns former pleasures as toxic and wasteful. One cares about God, other people, the rest of the planet and oneself in a way one didn’t before.”

Believers throughout the centuries have presented Jesus as “the way, the truth, and the life,” He has faithfully regenerated lives for over 2,000 years. Christian Faith 101 has withstood the proverbial “test of time.”

Believers of bygone eras, however, were not challenged in their cultures by a systemic disposition of skepticism. We are called to articulate the Christian faith cogently, while the powerful media default to a skeptical attitude. As a result, our vocabulary is misunderstood and misappropriated, and misrepresentations can go viral now. Movies, documentaries, sitcoms, news outlets, and magazines participate in a narrative that often creates subtle but influential negative assumptions about Christianity.

It’s in the very air that we breathe. Spiritual and intellectual battles are unavoidable. A Christian must now discern cultural thought astutely and courageously engage with it. Let us neither be intimidated nor crestfallen by the task because our confidence is that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:5).

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