The Geographic Objection

“Have you noticed that Christians tend to live in the West, people in the Middle East are Muslim, and people in the Far East are Hindu or Buddhist? Being a Christian is just a matter of where you were born, and if you were born in Iran, you’d be Muslim.”

Have you heard this objection before? The implication (if they don’t flat out say it) is Christianity is just another regional myth, and you simply subscribe to the one that’s local to you. Let’s look at how we can answer this.

The God Who isn’t Fooled

Action is character. We all know people who say one thing and do another. Maybe they even do the right things for a while. But eventually the truth comes out. What people end up doing eventually, what they do when things get hard, or what they do when no one is looking, this is what reveals who they really are. One of the hard parts of growing up is learning this truth, usually painfully, and learning to see through the masks.

Amos tells us that God sees through the pretense quite well. Let’s look at one of the most famous passages in the minor prophets.

The Problem of the Likable Lost

For many people, the thing that makes Christianity hard to believe is the miracle stories — talking donkeys, burning bushes, and walking dead people.

But for another group of people the hard thing is the people they meet. This can be true for both non-Christians and Christians, and it's the latter that I want to talk about.

The God of Discipline

Does anyone like disciplining their kids? I could happily have gone my whole life without ever having to do that. Before our first was born, we agreed that we would not punish mistakes but only willful disobedience, only when they knew exactly what they ought to do and refused to do it. And that’s all they did! If you don’t nip that in the bud, you can’t take your kids out in public. Undisciplined children become adults no one wants to be around, not even their cell mates.

We do not punish our children because we enjoy it; we discipline our children for their own good. God also disciplines his people for their good.

The Puzzle of Scripture

I enjoy reading fantasy, but whether it’s high fantasy or urban fantasy, there’s a trope that I find incredibly frustrating: the wizard who won’t tell people what they need to know. Even Gandalf sent poor Frodo to walk to Bree without telling him one tenth of what he knew about the One Ring. Instead, everything is need-to-know until something forces them to share their secrets.

I feel some of that same frustration at times with the Bible. Couldn’t it be, you know, ... clearer? Why do we have to work so hard to make it give up its secrets? Why didn’t God just tell us what we want to know?