Greg discusses why many people reject Jesus.
Transcript
I have a talk I give that’s titled, “Bad arguments against God,” and there are lots of legitimate ways, I think, to go after Christianity. Like Paul says, if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead then we are of most people to be pitied, okay. And so if there is no resurrection, we’re wrong. If there is no God, we’re wrong. If there was no Jesus, we’re wrong. I mean so there are legitimate ways to go after Christianity, but in this talk I I deal with what I think are bad ways, ill-informed ways of challenging God’s existence or challenging Christianity.
And in that talk I make a an observation, and the observation is, there are lots of people who make very foolish mistakes in thinking who are otherwise intelligent. They’re bright. They’re doctors, they’re lawyers, they’re PhDs, they’re academics of all sorts. They’re really smart people, but when it comes to spiritual things, they make really foolish mistakes. And this brings us to the question of why is it that Jesus is not accepted by the rank-and-file? Why aren’t more people Christians? And I think some people are tempted to think that it’s because Christianity is not intellectually credible in some fashion, you know.
There’s not good reasons for it. There’s not good evidence for it. But see, this is just not the case. Because we can marshal all kinds of great evidence in favor of the existence of God, or the reality of the Resurrection, or the historical Jesus who did miracles, and said the things that Jesus said, and a whole host of other things. Virtually every area that is vital to the Christian worldview we can give solid reasons why believing in that is better than believing some other alternative. So the reasons are there. Why is it that people don’t get it if it seems so simple, it seems so straightforward?
And the reason is—which is the same reason that very intelligent people make very foolish mistakes in thinking when it comes to God—is because it’s not based simply on thinking. There are lots of reasons that people reject the claims of the Gospel and Jesus of Nazareth. Sometimes it’s for rational reasons. Maybe they’ve never been exposed to some of the things that we know about through Stand to Reason and other organizations like us, apologetics. Sometimes it’s just through prejudice. They have a narrow focus. They don’t want to think about the alternatives. They have prejudged them without looking at them, and they’re prejudiced against them.
Sometimes there are emotional reasons. People say, “I can’t believe in Christianity because if I believed in that then I would have to admit that my parents, who now died, are not with God, and I can’t countenance that.” So that’s an emotional reason right? Understandable. Sometimes it’s just bull-headedness. People do not want to to bend the knee. And you know, there are a whole bunch of atheists that have said just that. “I don’t want to believe in God. He messes with my social life, He messes with my sex life. I do not want to bend the knee.”
And that really, I think, is the ultimate issue. Why is it that most intelligent people don’t believe in Jesus? Well, it’s the same reason most unintelligent people don’t believe in Jesus. Has nothing to do with intelligence, it’s because that Jesus makes too big of a moral and ethical demand on peoples’ lives. They have to bend the knee. People don’t want to do that. That’s the reason most people don’t become Christians, and not any other.