April 13, 2017 Show with Mary Jo Sharp on “One Woman’s Journey from Atheism to Christianity” PLUS “Defending the Faith: Apologetics in Women’s Ministry”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 13th day of April 2017, and I am delighted to have on the program for the very first time ever

Mary Jo Sharp. She is a former atheist who now holds a master's in Christian apologetics from Biola University.

She's the first woman to become a certified apologetics instructor through the North American Mission Board of the

Southern Baptist Convention. She's an assistant professor of apologetics at Houston Baptist University, a faculty member at Summit Ministries, author with Kriegel publications and B &H publications, and among her published books are

Why Do You Believe That? She's the producer of a new DVD Bible study with Lifeway Resources and is founder of Confident Christianity.

In the first hour of our discussion with Mary Jo Sharp, we are going to be discussing her testimony,

One Woman's Journey from Atheism to Christianity, and in the second hour we are going to be addressing one of her books,

Defending the Faith, Apologetics and Women's Ministry. That's my honor and privilege to welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio for the very first time,

Mary Jo Sharp. Thank you Chris, I'm so glad to be here. I'm so glad to be here too, and one of the reasons that we are having you on the program is that my very dear friend

Anthony Eugenio and his colleague Nick Mitchell, who are founders of New York Apologetics, have you as one of a three panel, three panel member conference in Smithtown, Long Island, New York coming up very soon,

Friday April 28th 7 to 9 p .m. and Saturday April 29th 9 a .m.

to 4 p .m. at the Smithtown Christian School in Suffolk County, Long Island, and we will be giving more information about that conference throughout the broadcast.

The theme is, Will You Survive the Culture?, and for more details our listeners can go to NewYorkApologetics .com.

New York is spelled out, those two full words, NewYorkApologetics .com.

But Mary Jo, one of the things that is obviously fascinating about you is that you, as I said in your introduction, are a former atheist, and if you could tell me something about your own personal upbringing, the religion of your family if any, and how our

Sovereign Lord eventually, providentially, drew you to himself and caused you to discover and embrace

Jesus Christ and his Gospel. Yeah, thank you for asking. So yeah,

I grew up pretty much outside of church. I say pretty much because my family stopped going to church when

I was too young to remember, so I don't have a lot of, actually

I don't really have memories of church at all. So I grew up in Portland, Oregon, which is a cool little town, actually cool big town, very steep in the arts.

My family loved to go to a lot of musicals and symphonies and jazz concerts.

We were tennis players, we were very into nature and science shows, like my dad loved to watch shows like In Search Of and Nova, Mutual, Roma Hus Wild America, so and he loved to go camping.

So we had a great respect for the outdoors and we loved being outdoors. We were typically camping about every other weekend or as often as we could.

So my upbringing was very rich in learning and knowledge and in culture, but I just was not raised with any sort of Christian upbringing or Christian teachings, and the culture in which

I grew up in, as compared to where I am now, a lot of people don't realize that I am from Portland because they hear my name's

Mary Jo and they just automatically think, that's a Southerner right there, automatically.

And then when they find out I'm in Texas, they're like, okay I know everything I need to know about you. You're a Christian, you grew up in church, you know, you're

Southern, so you're from the Bible Belt. But as you're hearing, that's really not my background.

So the culture in Portland is very different. I like to tease my Texas friends by saying, you know,

Portland is so different from Texas that we don't have a gas station on every street corner, nor a church, nor a

Tex -Mix restaurant, which you can find like everywhere around here. So just a very different feel.

And the other thing was that we were very private about religion. Yeah, I don't remember a lot of people talking about being a

Christian if they were, and they also were more of a spiritual but not religious sort of feel.

If they were indeed spiritual, they were not affiliated with a certain religion.

So that was sort of my upbringing. It was very much apart from God. What I learned about God, I got from television and movies like the

Oh God trilogy with John Denver and George Burns. Not very reliable sources.

No, I mean, as far as being an atheist, I wasn't reading Bertrand Russell and Friedrich Nietzsche and saying, yeah, that's the way.

I sort of tell atheists who are like, were you really an atheist? Well, I didn't believe in God, so I guess you'd call me a non -theist, or if that makes you feel better.

I mean, I wasn't studying atheist philosophy, but it was definitely, I didn't have a belief in God.

Well, did your parents speak of God at all? Because a lot of non -believers who are just members of secular society, secular humanists, and they may have some idea of God that they either invented or that they just get from greeting cards or something.

Did you have any kind of discussion of God in your household? Did your parents have any sort of belief, whether it was true or false?

My parents had beliefs, but they didn't discuss them with us. It was my mom's philosophy that you should let people decide for themselves, so we didn't have conversation on, like, does

God exist, or what my parents believed. Like, I had to, when I wrote Defending the Faith, I actually had to give that chapter that includes some background,

I had to give it to my parents and say, okay, I think this is right. Were you guys atheists, or were you agnostic, or what, you know, what's going on?

My mom said they were agnostic. They were both raised in church, and my mom, specifically

Lutheran Church, and that's the church they were going to. They were going to Lutheran Church when I was really, like, before I was two years old, and that's when they stopped going to church while they were

Lutheran. So that's their background, but they did not talk about church. They didn't talk about God.

We didn't talk about how we know we have meaning and purpose in the universe. We didn't talk about philosophical things.

We talked about, you know, science, like, biology, cosmology, things like that, but not things of a philosophical nature.

So let's hear about how our Sovereign Lord eventually brought things in your path providentially that began to make you wonder, question, reconsider your agnosticism or atheism, and well, actually, before that,

I'd like to actually hear about your actually coming to a resolution where you became a full -blown atheist, and I'm not sure of how active you were in spreading that notion.

I don't know if you were an apologist for atheism, but tell us something about that where you really became more settled in your mind that you were an atheist, and then we'll hear about the providential circumstances

God brought about in your life to lead you to Christ. Okay, that's an interesting statement, like a full -blown atheist, an evangelist for atheism.

I was more of a, like I said, a non -theist. I wasn't a full -blown, a full -blown atheist.

That's really blowing my mind, that statement. You were never a

Christina Hitchens, to use a pun there, with Christopher Hitchens. Right, I was never like Hitch.

I was more of what you might expect to find in the Pacific Northwest with a person who was just raised outside of church.

I didn't know to ask those kind of questions. I grew up apart from that way of thinking, so to me, the normal people, quote -unquote, would be the people who did not go to church.

We were the normal, like that was what I believe most people were. I thought it was like a special group of people or some kind of weird people that went to church.

I didn't know who they were or what they were about. And by the way, there are a lot of weird people that go to church.

Preach it! But not exclusively.

I guess maybe we're all weird in our own way, but the church is not exclusively made up of weirdos, nor are the teachings of the true

Christian church insane. Yeah, as far as being full -blown atheist,

I'm not walking around telling people there is no God and here's how I know, you know, like paganist theory or something.

I'm just living my life, secular, without those kind of questions. Spending my life involved with relationships, you know, with boys, chasing after boys, chasing after tennis dreams, playing soccer, being a band nerd.

That's my life and it's all -consuming, trying to be academically the best. I just filled my life up with other things.

So now we can come to the point where God sovereignly and providentially brought things into your life that made you say, hey, wait a minute,

I think I'm wrong about this stuff about either God not existing or it not being a very important issue.

Right, yeah. So, like I said, I did grow up in the Pacific Northwest and one of the things

I think God used to draw me to himself is just the amazing beauty of the

Pacific Northwest. The Pacific Ocean and the Oregon coastline there is just, it's glorious.

If you've never been, that's a place that I would recommend going, where the mountain range just comes right down into the ocean and creates some incredible coastline of rock formations out in the water, you know, that have eroded away.

Mary Jo, for some reason your phone is cutting out sometimes. Are you there? Oh yeah,

I'm here. Yeah, for some reason your phone cuts out. But you were talking about, just as Romans 1 talks about God's creation making us accountable,

I should say, for whether or not we believe in God or reject him, that he reveals himself in creation.

This was something that started to percolate in your mind, his existence in Oregon, because of the beauty of his creation there.

Hello, Mary Jo? Yeah, for some reason, Mary Jo, we're having some difficulty here.

We're having you cut in and out. Can you hear me, Mary Jo? Well, I'm going to go to an early break right now.

For some reason our guest is not connected with us right now. We are going to go to a break, and hopefully she can call back or something, because she is not on the line with us right now.

If she's on the line, we cannot hear her. Our email address, if you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Mary Jo Sharp, and God willing she will be with us momentarily, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. So don't go away. We're going to be right back, God willing, after these messages with more of Iron Sharpens Iron, and hopefully with our guest

Mary Jo Sharp. So don't go away. Have you been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio?

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We hope that Iron Sharpens Iron Radio blesses you for many years to come. Welcome back, and I believe we have

Mary Jo Sharp back on the phone. Do we not? Mary? Yes.

Oh, you're back on the phone with us. Oh, good. Yes, I'm not sure what happened there.

Do you know what happened? I don't know. It's, you know, phone service. It could have been cut in and out.

Okay. Well, we reached a point in our discussion where you were saying the beauty of God's creation there in Oregon.

I believe you were saying that was just as Romans 1 teaches us that all men are accountable for belief in God because of the fact that he reveals himself through creation.

And it was kind of interesting how you were saying, you were beginning to say that the surroundings, the gorgeous surroundings in Oregon got you starting to think about the existence of God.

Yes, that's exactly right. That's what I was saying. There's also, you know,

I saw power in the Pacific Ocean as well as living through the eruption of Mount St.

Helens. And so I began to question how it is that something such as, where does this come from?

What is this all for? What is this all about? And it really sort of had a profound effect on me because I hadn't been on any of those science shows that said things like, you know, we're a small blue dot in this vast universe.

And I began to wonder, you know, if we're just a small, little, bigger part of the universe and if I'm just a selection of atoms on that small blue dot, then how do

I know I have meaning or purpose? How do I know I matter? It seems like I matter, but I couldn't really believe that I had intention or purpose if all this was just insignificant in this vast universe.

So that got me questioning things like, is this all there is? And I'm assuming, obviously, that there were

Christians that began to providentially show up in your life, either just people you would meet that were strangers or those who were acquaintances or even those who were friends.

Tell us something about how these message bearers started to bring the message of the

Gospel to you. Yeah, so I had a great love of music. That was one of the areas that I really think introduced me to the transcendent, something that was beyond myself.

And my high school band director was a Christian who was very close to my family, and he had never shared his faith with anybody.

Remember, again, beliefs are kind of private, especially religious beliefs.

That's a private issue for some of us Northwesterners. It's not something you just bring up, and it's just a different cultural field than where I live now.

So he took a risk, and he decided in my senior year of high school, he was close to my family, and he knew that I was going to become a band director, so I was close to him.

And he took a risk by saying, hey, Mary Jo, you have a gift for me my senior year.

And he said, when you go off to college, you're going to have questions, and I want you to turn to this.

And he gave me a Bible. It was an NIV one -year Bible, so it had like a plan for reading.

And it really shocked me, because he had never attempted to witness to me or, you know, to take me to church or anything like that.

But, you know, I really respected him, and I have been exposed to some other Christians. I had had a

Christian boyfriend whose parents said that to date him, I had to go to church. Of course, I went, but I slept through church, all

I thought. And I just kind of thought, well, those are nice people, but, you know, whatever.

This is not for me. I'm doing this so I can date my boyfriend. And anyway, but my band director comes around at just the right point, takes that risk of sharing his faith.

And apparently, I did not respond in any way that encouraged him. And he actually felt like he might get in trouble, like I might actually report him to the administration.

And so my reaction wasn't all that great. But what I ended up doing was I ended up reading through that Bible faster than the plan.

And I started to see that I was really, really grossly misinformed on Christianity and on belief in God.

And reading the Bible is what gets me around to the point where I think, you know, I think there is a

God. That starts to make sense of things to me. But I didn't become, I didn't trust in Jesus until I went off to college and started going to church for the first time on my own, started visiting different churches.

And eventually I landed in a church where they clearly explain my need for a

Savior. They clearly explain, you know, why Jesus is trustworthy. And so that's when

I come around to the point where I'm like, all right, I'm ready to do this. I'm ready to trust Jesus for salvation.

It wasn't a huge emotional moment for me. It was more of a end of a journey, you know, and then the start of a new one.

So I was ready at that point to trust in Jesus and accepted Him as my Savior. Amen. And I'm going to give our listeners our email address again.

It's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA.

And please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter. So you come to faith in Christ and obviously you have to be grounded in truth.

And one of the key ways to do that and also to be obedient to those scriptures that you read is to be submissive to elders in a local church, to be a part of the life and body of a local church.

What were your experiences? Did you have a lot of failed experiences that kept you moving on from one church to another?

Or did you quickly find a wonderful, biblically sound church? Yeah, the either or there is not quite.

I kind of had both. I initially, you know, where I'm saved, the church that I'm saved at was in a college town here, or here,

I'm not in Oklahoma, but in Oklahoma. And I got involved with, first of all, with like a

Master Life Discipleship course on prayer. And I was married to my husband at the time, we were married young.

And I mean, he's off at work, I'm walking the church in the rain in Oklahoma.

It sounds like an old man story, you know, like I walked the school. But I wanted to get there,

I was so excited, so on fire. And so I get there, and I, you know, I'm in this discipleship course, and then

I'm studying to be an educator, so my heart is for kids. I'm quickly picked up by the smaller church to work with the

Youth Ministry, probably, in my estimation now, a little too early, it's like within a year. I really should have had more discipleship in my life.

But I get involved with the Youth Ministry, and then eventually, my husband comes on board, and we take over the

Youth Ministry position, because the Youth Minister left. And this is where I began to see that Christians weren't necessarily acting like the

Bible was describing we should act towards one another. And I start seeing a lot of failure within the church.

And not just a failure, like, okay, somebody messed up, and they said something mean, and now they come back and apologize, because that's the biblical standard.

No, it's just like an ill regard for what the New Testament has to say about how we're supposed to be patient with one another, greatly loving one another.

I've just seen a void of any kind of concern for this whatsoever. And in fact,

I mean, there's some people that, you know, it's not everybody, I'm kitchen -thinking here, but it's at the point where I'm thinking, man, my atheist and agnostic -type friends growing up, they're better people.

Like, they treated me better and treated each other better than what I'm seeing within the church, and that was really disconcerting to me.

I'm not a church shopper. We just stayed at our churches, and we would deal with the problems that we found there.

But what I started seeing over time about how Christians didn't really seem concerned with the truth of what the scriptures were saying, they would call it the truth, this is the

Word of God, this is the truth, they didn't seem real concerned to, like, put that truth into action in their lives.

And so I started to have some emotional doubt about what I had done. And where were you living at this time?

Where in the United States? I was in Oklahoma. Okay. Yeah, because I'm wondering, of course, what you described could be something that occurs anywhere on the planet, but there is something about the nominalism of the

Bible Belt, where people think they're Christian just because their daddy and their granddaddy and their great granddaddy were

Baptists or some other Evangelical Protestant kind of Christian.

Perhaps they even had pastors in their family lineage. But they think they're

Christian because of that, and in reality they're not. They're just people who are going through the ritual of whatever denomination they are in.

And very often you have Baptist families in the

Bible Belt who will have their children baptized automatically when they turn 12 or 13 or something, even if there's no transformation.

But anyway, I was just wondering if you think that that was a part of what you were experiencing. Oh yeah, the culture of Christianity, where you have what we call cultural

Christianity. Yes, yes. Yeah, we got that, yeah, definitely. I saw a bunch of that. And it caused me to question, do these people really believe in God?

That's how cultural it was. So that in turn caused me to have questions about my belief, because I started to wonder, well, you know,

I think I had a true salvation experience, but what is it that I believe in?

How do I know God exists? How do I know Jesus rose from the dead? And I started asking these questions of myself, and I realized

I couldn't answer that. I couldn't answer that beyond like a testimony that I'd heard

Mormons give, like I know within my heart, you know, this is what I believe. Right, the burning of the bosom.

Yeah, I didn't have the burning of the bosom testimony, but it was something like that, you know? And I thought, oh no,

I don't have answers for this. And it caused me to then have some intellectual doubt.

And I think really Christian was also a volitional doubt going on, because over the years I'd gotten to a point where I was very disappointed with Christians, and I almost did not want to be a part of the

Christian church. By the way, I don't think that that ever ends.

I think we're always going to be disappointed with Christians. Right, yeah. I just didn't have very good training in the sinner -saint problem that we, you know, were redeemed, but we still continue to sin.

And I didn't have a lot of training in that. My education and discipleship in the church wasn't very deep, so I didn't have a good understanding of what was going on.

And so I got to that volitional doubt point where I'm not even sure I really wanted to be a part of the

Christian church anymore. I kind of wanted it to be untrue that this, you know, I could just go back to being atheist,

I could just go back to being maybe an agnostic or something like that, but then

I wouldn't have to hang out with Christians. Well, because of the fact that we unfortunately are plagued with sin in our own hearts and lives until we are in glory for eternity, these are things that are going to be perpetually facing us,

I believe, in the body of Christ until we're dead. And it is a sad testimony, but that's why

I thank God for Jesus Christ and Calvary, because we would never be in heaven without that.

Right, yeah. And, you know, the test that I had did push me on towards apologetics.

It pushed me on towards getting answers. So I am thankful for that, although the experiences were hurtful.

But, you know, being human, you're going to have hurtful experiences inside the church or outside the church.

It's just part of being human. Yes. Well, we're going to go to a break right now.

And, by the way, Mary Jo, whatever you're doing with the phone is perfect, because you sound great right now. And when you first got back on the phone after you were disconnected, you were very staticky.

But whatever you're doing now, it's working very well. Okay, great. And if anybody would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old

USA. And please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter. And, by the way, as always, we do welcome people who disagree with what we are saying, or agree, or you just don't know.

chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Mary Jo Sharp.

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Iron Sharpens today. Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune into A Visit to the

Pastor's Study every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE Radio, www .wlie540am

.com. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you, and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your questions.

Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon

Eastern Time for A Visit to the Pastor's Study, because everyone needs a pastor. Welcome back, this is

Chris Orens, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours, with about 90 minutes to go, is

Mary Jo Sharp, founder of Confident Christianity. In the first hour of our broadcast, we are discussing her journey from atheism to Christianity.

The second hour of the show, we are going to have Mary Jo discuss the topic of one of her books,

Defending the Faith, Apologetics in Women's Ministry. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisorensen at gmail .com,

chrisorensen at gmail .com. And right now, we've got quite a number of listeners who have already emailed us questions, but none of them are women.

That's kind of interesting. But Mary Jo, you reached a point in our discussion where you were saying that you were just becoming very disappointed with the the testimonies of Christians that are surrounding you, meaning that they were not really living the

Christian life, in many regards anyway, and not living up to Christian standards laid out in the

New Testament. And you started also questioning why you were a

Christian to begin with, and there were some basic questions about the Christian faith that you knew you could not adequately answer if you were challenged on that.

So where did that take you? That took me to a point where I had to decide what

I was going to do. At that point, I was a music and youth pastor's wife.

That was quite the position. And I had to determine, I've got to figure out what

I believe. I have to figure out if I believe this is true, specifically since my family is involved with ministry.

So I began to try to find some answers to my questions, and I went looking in our church library, and I found

Norm Geisler's Christian Apologetics, that book, and I picked it up.

But at the time, I was a band director, and I'm working like 70 -hour work weeks, because we were one of those competitive marching bands, and we did the whole gamut of football games and everything.

So I picked that book up, and I read a little bit into it, and I think

I hit the word metaphysical, and I thought, okay, I'm not going to have time for this. I'm going to be real honest with you, right?

So then I took it back, and I thought, maybe for another time.

But I started looking again. For any book that had answers to how do I know God exists, things like that.

And I found Lee Strobel's The Cage for Christ, which came out last weekend, the movie of it, of the book, of his life.

And that was the book that I really, I started reading it, and it started to make sense to me. Like, okay, here's some answers.

Here's some of the answers I'm looking for. And as he would interview somebody, I would find that person, find some of their other works, somebody who really spoke to me.

I would look them up, and then I would try to find maybe a debate that they had done. I wanted to see what the responses were to these guys.

So I started listening to, like, William Lane Craig debates. I remember he debated Austin Dacey, and started listening to his, like, he would do the five reasons for God's existence type debates.

And I was listening to those things, and I started coming to the conclusion there that not only were there good answers, but these were the best answers.

Like, to my question, I started finding answers that I thought were the most reliable and made the most sense to me.

So that's how I got, I didn't know apologetics was a field. Like, I didn't know that there was a whole field of study which was making a case for what you believe and why you believe it.

And it was from answering my own doubts about God's existence that I came around saying, yeah, you know what?

This looks like it's true. Which, again, I had to say, oh man, that means that I'm going to be in church around these

Christians, and I'm going to have to figure this out. Because just because Christians behave poorly or don't behave in congruence with what

I'm reading doesn't mean that it's untrue. And, you know, I started,

I'm blaming other people, really. Part of it was looking at myself, thinking, well, I'm not much better than anybody that I'm pointing fingers at.

You know, I know myself. I know my thoughts. I'm not much better than some of the people I'm accusing of being not good and not matching up to what the scripture says.

So I had to come to that point where I was like, you know, it's like doctors standing outside of a medical building when

I see them and they're smoking. And yet I know they believe and teach and practice that smoking is bad for humans, right?

It's bad for human health. But here they are, not behaving consistently with their beliefs. And that doesn't make it untrue that smoking is bad for you.

So I started to think, man, I've found what

I believe is true, and now I have to deal with that now. People aren't always going to act like it's true. They're not always going to act in congruence with what

Jesus is teaching. And that's the way of the world. So what led you to the point where you said, you know something,

I am going to dabble in the uncharted waters.

I'm going to stick my toe in the uncharted waters of the apologetics realm as a woman.

Because even as your bio indicates, you are the first woman to become a certified apologetics instructor through the

North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. And so this is obviously when you became certified, it was not like you were surrounded by other women doing this.

What was the thing that said to yourself, I really want to get involved in this? That's a great question.

I have a teacher's heart. You know, I taught band at the public schools for eight years. So for me, once I find something,

I want to get it back out. Like if I find the truth, I want to share it. And I saw that, you know, part of the problem with what

I went through was when I had doubt, I didn't know who to talk to. Nobody talked about doubt in the churches that I was in.

They all just assumed the stuff they were teaching was based in truth. So I thought if I went through this, and there's got to be other people in the church that have had these issues.

And they just, maybe they don't know how to, what the outlet is for them. Maybe they have the same concern I did. Maybe that it would be well -received.

So I just, my first step into the politics was really just bringing it back to the church, developing a course for my own church.

I actually surveyed my church after services. I was like one of those annoying mall people, had a clipboard and like, of all these topics, which one would you be interested in if I were to teach a class on it?

So I started there. And then I saw an advertisement in the

Christian Research Journal for Biola University's MA in Apologetics. And I looked at that, and I was actively seeking a

Master's of Music Education at that point. And that's what I thought I was going to do, get a Master's in Music Ed and teach in college.

And then I saw this advertisement, and I just knew right away, that's where I'm going.

And that's not like me, Chris. I'm one of those people like, I'll stand and overanalyze buying a kitchen towel.

Well, I hope I don't sound like a chauvinist, but I think all women do that. But I do this with everything.

Like, you know, if we're buying a house, I'm looking at all the home warranties comparatively online, doing all the research.

And it's hard. I'm that way. And I don't usually do this, but I looked at that, and I went, that's where I'm going. Because they had the professors like I would be,

I have already read, and that I was engaging with. And so I got involved in a degree program that way.

And it was through the degree program that I was challenged to do a blog. And I didn't want to do a blog, because I grew up in the

Pacific Northwest, and religion's very private, so I didn't want to do a blog on the defense of the

Resurrection that would just tell everybody how much of a weirdo I was. So I resisted it, and I did the assignment in defense of the

Resurrection class, where you either had to defend the Resurrection one -on -one with somebody, or you did the blog defending it.

So I was like, nope, on the blog, I just went and did the email conversation, and it went great, got a good grade on it, and then for about five, six months, somewhere along that, it was like the

Holy Spirit would not leave me alone. I kept thinking, why am I such a chicken? Why am I backing off?

Why won't I go public with this? So finally, I gave in and just put up Confident Christianity blogs to defend the

Resurrection, and I was writing articles defending the Resurrection. And that's really why I'm on your program today, was that I stepped into the world of apologetics out of conviction, not really thinking, wow, we need women in apologetics.

I didn't even notice that. Like, I wasn't even thinking that way. I was just, all right, I need to do this.

I don't know why I'm resisting it, and so I was just trying to be obedient. And to now enter into probably something that's quite sensitive to a lot of our listeners,

I happen to be very conservative, complementarian in my understanding of gender roles, and I believe the

Southern Baptist Convention, after having swung the pendulum from liberalism during a period of time that they were saturated in to biblical conservatism and orthodoxy and so on,

I believe that they would have similar understandings of gender roles as I do and so on.

Was there any opposition to a woman being a part of the

Southern Baptist Convention's North American Mission Board's apologetics course?

Oh no, I didn't receive any opposition, and I think that's largely in part to the fact that the

Southern Baptist Convention, though we maintain doctrine and a message, the

Baptist faith and message, we also maintain that the churches, they're autonomous. So individual churches would ascribe to what they want to see there as far as gender roles within a framework, and so I think that the churches who would like to have me come speak, they have me come speak.

The churches who don't, they don't. That's the autonomy of the churches within the Southern Baptist Convention. Now, what was your views of like the complementarian egalitarian debate?

Do you believe there are distinct roles for men and women in the home and in the church? Well, I appreciate you asking this,

Chris, but this is not my field of expertise. I didn't get into apologetics thinking, how can

I do the apologetic argument for women's roles? And so I leave that specific evidential conversation up to the people who have done this task, and I'm reading through their works.

Like the Four Views on Women in Ministry, there's like the Four Views series, there's that one. So I don't tend to be the one that's giving the information on this.

I know that sounds like I'm avoiding the question, but I am because I'm not the expert. You're being honest about it.

Yeah. And I'm going to go to some of our listener questions right now.

Let's see, we have John in Peoria, Illinois, and I think that this may be his first time sending in a question to Iron Sharpens Iron.

But John says, does Mary Jo think her atheistic background serves her work in apologetics as opposed to someone who came to faith early in life?

Mary Jo, you got a response to that? Sure, yeah. I think it does.

There's always a use for your background. If you come out of a Christian background, you've known

Jesus all your life, and you've known that grace and mercy and love, and that's a wonderful place to come from in order to minister to other people.

For me, I think my atheist background, what it does for me is when I hear an atheist argument,

I can say, like, wow, I remember thinking that way. I know this argument, and so I don't get as defensive.

I can think I know what this is coming from, or at least I'm familiar with thinking this way.

So I think that would be how it's serving me, and I think that does serve me well in that I don't see it as an us versus them, us

Christians versus those atheists. I see it as more of all of us together. We're all on a journey, and I can relate to some of these questions.

We're all made out of the same lump of clay, as Romans 9 talks about, and we all have a sin problem that needed to be dealt with, and the answer is the same.

It's the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and Calvary. But John, thank you very much for your question, and guess what,

John? Not only are you receiving a new New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the

NASB, since you are a first -time questioner to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. You're also getting a free copy of Mary Jo's book,

Defending the Faith, Apologetics in Women's Ministry, compliments of our friends at Kriegel, who have donated these books for folks such as you, and also you'll be receiving that in the mail, compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com,

and we hope you keep listening to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and keep spreading the word about it in Peoria, Illinois, and beyond.

We have Daniel in Bakersfield, California, who says, what was your greatest objection to Christianity when you were an atheist?

So, because I wasn't like a full -blown atheist,

I was more of a non -atheist.

Like, I wasn't raising objections to belief in God, and I think a lot of people miss that about certain cultures here within the

United States. They miss that there are people that could just be raised without God. They're not saying, well, how can

God be good when there's so much evil in the world? Or, you know, look at the Christians. They're such a bunch of hypocrites.

So, how could you say, you know, that you go to this church? It's like I didn't have that background at all to be able to formulate those questions.

The only thing we'd be able to say is that I would say I distrusted the church because I thought they were always asking for money, and that always made me concerned about them.

I didn't understand tithing. I had no clue what was going on in churches. So, I just saw them always asking for money, and that caused some distrust.

And then, what I saw on TV was like the Jim and Tammy Faye Baker, when there was that scandal back in the

Yeah, so, like, I learned my distrust. I just learned to distrust the church, and it wasn't because somebody was teaching it to me.

It was just because of my own thoughts, like, hey, why are you always asking for money? Religion seemed kind of weird to me.

I thought they were those people over there, and the normal people were those who didn't believe in God. So, I didn't have a specific objection.

Sorry that I don't have that for you. I can tell you now, I deal with a lot of objection from evil, a lot of people who they themselves have experienced great evil, like the death of a child, things like that, when

I speak at conferences. So, it's going to be the objection from the existence of evil that really is the one

I deal with the most now. Now, I seem to recall from your own bio on your website, you did think that people who were

Christians or religious were weak -minded. Yeah, yeah, I did.

That's why I say I think they were odd, and they needed a crutch, because I didn't need that.

Like, I didn't know why they thought they needed that. I was good. I could play my saxophone. I could play tennis, and, you know,

I was in the AP courses at school. I didn't need God. That's, of course, what you thought.

You wrongly thought, because you wouldn't even have the breath to blow into that saxophone if you didn't have a

God beating, keeping your heart beating, and keeping your lungs pumped with air.

Right. But we are going to our mid -break right now. It's a bit of a long break, because we have to keep our program in a format that the

Grace Life Radio 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida finds conducive to their programming format.

So, bear with us as we have a longer commercial break in the middle here, but while we are going to the break, please write some questions and email them to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

We already have a number of you still waiting to have your questions asked and answered by Mary Jo, and we'll get to you as soon as possible.

I would love to hear from some of the sisters out there with a question, or even some non -believing women, women who are atheists or anybody.

But, of course, we invite our brothers and men to continue sending questions as well.

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Don't go away.

We'll be right back, God willing, with Mary Jo Sharp and more of our discussion on her journey out of atheism to Christianity.

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Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about an hour to go is

Mary Jo Sharp, who is founder of Confident Christianity, and we have been discussing her journey out of atheism into Christianity, and now we are going to speak more specifically about her book,

Defending the Faith, Apologetics, and Women's Ministry. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Before I return to our discussion, I want to remind you that Mary Jo Sharp and Greg Kokel and Frank Turek are three speakers at the

New York Apologetics Conference, Dare to Defend, in Smithtown, Long Island, New York, at the

Smithtown Christian School. The theme is, Will You Survive the Culture? and it will be held

Friday the 28th of April from 7 to 9 p .m. and Saturday the 29th of April from 9 a .m.

to 4 p .m. If you would like to register or find out more information, go to newyorkapologetics .com,

and the words New York are spelled out, so don't abbreviate them. Newyorkapologetics .com,

that's newyorkapologetics .com. And also, I do not want you to forget about a minister's conference that I will be attending, that I hope many of you will also attend, and that is the

Banner of Truth Conference, and that is being held in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, at the

Elizabethtown College. And Banner of Truth, as many of you know, is a bulwark of faithful biblical books that they have been bringing back into print from the past for many years, and also they have been bringing into print for the first time wonderful books by biblically sound authors and preachers and evangelists.

Well, they are having their minister's conference, so if you are in a position of leadership in your church and you would like to attend this, go to banneroftruth .org,

banneroftruth .org, then click on events, then click on the U .S.

Minister's Conference, and this is going to be an exciting conference. I'm looking forward to being there myself, and the speakers at this conference include

Joel Beeky, Jeff Thomas, William Vander Waard, Mark Johnston, Jonathan Master, Carlton Wynn, and Ian Hamilton, and I've interviewed a little more than, a little over half of those men in the past, and I would love to meet many of you who are listening.

So if you are in a position of leadership in your church and you'd like to attend that conference, go to banneroftruth .org,

banneroftruth .org, click on events, and then click on U .S. Minister's Conference. Of course, we have many listeners in the

U .K. as well, and they also have U .K. conferences for you as well, so just click on the

U .K. Minister's Conference if you care to attend that, if you happen to be already living in that area anyway.

So I hope to see you at the U .S. Minister's Conference if you are indeed intending to go.

And I'd also want to remind you very quickly that Iron Trip and Zion Radio is in desperate need, or urgent need, of donations and new advertisers and sponsors, so if you would like to help us remain on the air, go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

click on support at the top of the page, and then you'll be given a mailing address where you can mail a check of any amount made payable to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

So if you'd like to advertise with us, just send me an email, chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

and put advertising in the subject line, and we can discuss how you can advertise your business, your corporation, your church, your parachurch ministry, your special event, or whatever it is that you want to promote to our listeners, keeping in mind that you will have to have some kind of an affinity or agreement with the theology and worldview of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

So we look forward to hearing from you if you would like us to remain on the air and can find ways to help us.

Our email address, again, if you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Mary Jo Sharp is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and Mary Jo Sharp is the founder of Confident Christianity.

And by the way, Mary Jo, I forgot to ask you, since you are affiliated with the

Houston Baptist University, do you know Diana Lynn Severance?

Diana, what's her last name? Diana Lynn Severance, S -E -V -E -R -A -N -C -E.

She is the director of the Dunham Bible Museum at Houston Baptist University. Oh, yes, yes,

I've met her, but yeah, I'm not, don't know her real well personally because I'm on campus to teach class but then

I'm out speaking a lot, but yes. Yeah, she's a great lady. We've had her on the program several times, so I would look her up the next time you're over there and try to make a better acquaintance because she's a wonderful woman.

Yeah. And we have some more listeners who have written to you, and by the way,

Daniel, I forgot to mention, I think, that you, Daniel, in Bakersfield, California, you have also won a free copy of the book we are talking about today by our guest

Mary Jo Sharp, and so please make sure that we have your mailing address and we will have

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service send you a copy of Defending the Faith, Apologetics in Women's Ministry, and obviously, although men should read this and benefit from it, pass it on to a sister in Christ, perhaps even your wife or your daughter or someone when you're finished with it, and perhaps be perfect for a

Mother's Day gift because that's not far away, but in fact, we hope you buy more copies after you get the free one.

So thank you very much for contributing to our program today with your question. We also have

Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker, Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker, who is of Shepherd's Fellowship of Greensboro, North Carolina.

He says, what is the greatest apologetic challenge that you have experienced with your personal atheistic friends?

Yeah, that's a good one. You know, this is what's tough in the field of apologetics, because it's not just about an intellectual game.

Like, if I can move enough chess pieces in the intellectual game in the right place that I can checkmate my friend, you know, my atheist friend in this game, because we're dealing with human beings and human beings are much more complex than just like a set of arguments or rational propositions that they're holding.

In fact, many times human beings know what's true, but they don't act on it.

Like my doctor example, you know, doctors and nurses smoking out in front of their medical buildings.

So I think one of the greatest challenges, and I believe that the pastor here from Greensboro is actually kind of, he's asking probably what question is tough, but and I would say that might be the objection from evils, but I would also say is that it's coupled with the fact that our experiences as humans, our experiences in this life, are disappointing and painful.

Oftentimes people experience horrific evil in their lives.

So what I think is the apologetic challenge is that while we make excellent arguments with maybe our friends who are atheists, we also have to have excellence in a relationship with those people.

We have to demonstrate that love that Jesus, you know, shares with the

Father. And that's the John 17 passage, that Jesus is praying that we would be one, like he and the

Father are one. And this is the whole Francis Schaeffer, you know, the mark of a Christian, the final apologetic is this great love that we demonstrate.

And I think what is very hard for humans in general, but Christians who are trying to engage people with these apologetic arguments, is that we come to the person as a fully -orbed

Christian ourselves. That we aren't just putting all of our cookies over in the rational argument, but that we have actually allowed those arguments to affect us spiritually, so that we're living as if these truths we're discovering were true, you know, that they haven't affected our own lives, so that when we do engage with the atheists on the problem of evil, we don't just throw a bunch of philosophical arguments at them and start quoting philosophers, but that we actually care to understand where this argument is coming from in that person's life.

Maybe they lost a loved one. Maybe they've been sexually abused, you know, even as a child.

Maybe they've seen great horrors in their life. Maybe they're just seeing what's going on in the world, and they're greatly affected by the amounts of evil that they see across the world.

So, I think one of the greatest challenges for us with our friends is that we really have to be attentive to our own

Christian life and develop in our knowledge and in our spiritual life our own walk with God, so that we don't mistakenly throw a set of propositions at someone and say, hey, here's the truth.

That we remember when we're talking about truth, that we're talking about a person, Jesus Christ.

Like in John 18, when he is asked, are you a king? And he says, you say that I am. When he's asked by Pilate, he says he is a king, but he says, for this purpose

I was born and for this purpose I've come into this world, which is to witness to the truth.

That's what Jesus is here for. He's the King of Truth. So, truth is a person.

It's about relationship, and I think that's a challenge for me, because apologetically, I would just like to throw down arguments on a table and say, there you go.

Maybe the one with the most logic wins, but that's not going to, at the end of the day, that's not going to be the case.

I've seen guys say, your argument makes logical sense. I understand that.

I actually believe that's true, and then just not commit to belief in God, not commit to Jesus Christ as a

Savior. And I've watched some guys take several years to come to that point where they can commit to Jesus.

So, I have the roundabout way of dealing with the question, but I think you've got to keep that in mind, that no matter what the greatest objection is in our culture, in our day, the tough part is that you're dealing with a human being.

You can't just input facts into them like they're a computer and then out pops belief in God. Well, thank you,

Pastor Sterling Vanderwerker, and you have also won a free copy of the book that we are addressing today by Mary Jo Sharp, Defending the

Faith, Apologetics in Women's Ministry. So, I'm asking you also to read that book, absorb what you can from it and benefit from it, but please pass it on to your wife or your daughter or a sister in Christ or any woman that you believe needs to hear what is, or read what is written in this book.

Thank you very much for contributing another fine question to Iron Sharpens Iron, and keep spreading the word in North Carolina and beyond about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

We have finally a female listener, we have

Bebe in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, asking you, Mary Jo, is it difficult at times for you to remain humble in the midst of an encounter with an unbeliever when you are going back and forth attempting to refute each other's truth claims, and does the pride often well up in you irresistibly that you have to fight while conversing with these people who are enemies of the faith?

What a great question. Thank you. What a great question.

Yeah, you know what? I'm not going to mess with you guys. That's the truth.

Knowledge puffs up, and I've seen it not just in myself, I've seen it in people who don't profess to believe in God.

You know, we tend to be very proud of our academic achievements, very proud of our knowledge, and it's difficult for just humans in general to not, you know, engage in such hubris as thinking that, wow,

I know a lot. I mean, going back to Socrates, right? The more that I know, the more that I know that I don't know, and that should be humbling.

When you think about what some of the guys, the scientists at Rice saying, we only know about 4 % of what's in the universe, and then other scientists at Rice, like Dr.

James talking to him, he says, like, well, how do we get to 4 %? That seems pretty high. Things like that cause you to have to say, well, you know,

I don't know why I would get puffed up about what I know, because ultimately,

I don't know that much in the grand scheme of things, but do I fight it? Sure, I fight it.

I try, though, I'll tell you what I try to do. The way that I try to combat this is that you have to actually care for the person that you're talking to, and I find out when

I put the person first, when I'm dealing with a person -centered approach to conversation or argument, rather than just a position -centered approach, so, you know, position being atheist or Christian or whatever,

Muslim, if I deal with a person -centered approach, that tends to tear down that pride, because I want to serve the person, and, you know, there's no service in me just being puffed up and, you know, like, hey,

I've got all this knowledge, I've dealt with these arguments, and apparently you haven't. I mean, that doesn't serve anybody at all.

So, yes, I would say that it is difficult to remain humble.

That's just to be honest with people, but at the same time, I would say the way that, like, a path forward on that is that we remember, and this is what

I try to do, remember that you're serving people. That's the whole point is to share

Jesus with others, and also to remember that it's not you that does the saving.

This is the Holy Spirit draws people to Himself. It's not me. So, I'm not doing the saving work.

That's God. Keeping those things in mind, I think, really helps, you know, it helps us to avoid that hubris of thinking that we are doing this in our own power, and then getting puffed up.

Thank you for that question. Yes, thank you, Bibi, and you have also won a copy of Defending the

Faith, Apologetics in Women's Ministry by our guest Mary Jo Sharp, complements of Creagle Publications, and you'll be receiving that in the mail, compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com,

CVBBS .com. So, look out in the mail for a package from CVBBS .com,

and we thank Todd and Patty Jennings for their faithful support of Iron Sharp and Zion Radio.

They are the owners of CVBBS .com, and Todd and Patty have been supporting what we do for quite some time by shipping out all of our listeners their

Bibles and books and DVDs and CDs and other things when they win them by asking questions.

So, thank you very much. Let's see, we have

CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who asks, what is the most difficult religion that has faced you with questions about the

Christian faith that gets you tongue -tied, if any at all do?

The most difficult religion that I have faced? That's an interesting question.

I would never have thought to ask that. I haven't really thought on this one. I have done some work with early in ministry.

I met David Wood and Nabeel Qureshi, Nabeel being the author of Seeking a Law, Finding Jesus.

Yes, David Wood is actually a close personal friend of mine who's been on this program many times, and I've met Nabeel and am praying for his bout with cancer, as all of our listeners should be, but yes, a couple of wonderful gifts to the body of Christ, both of them.

Yeah, well, those guys introduced me to Islam and to, you know, the challenges that we face regarding Islam, and I think, as far as difficulty, maybe that one is difficult, because you're dealing with a monotheistic religion that believes that the

Christian religion is polytheistic, and so that we worship three gods.

So, I think there very imposes a challenge, because you're dealing with a body of believers, as far as Islam, that is very pious, and it's a very different sort of religion than what we're dealing with.

So, I would say that one poses more of a challenge to me, but that's just a question

I've really never thought that much about. I mean, as far as encountering Buddhists and Hindus, they're very open to discussing beliefs, and they tend to just kind of throw

Jesus in there as a great teacher as well, whereas Islam, they believe Jesus was a prophet, they do honor him, but then, you know, with Christians saying that he's

God, that poses a challenge when it comes to Islam, because they see that, I think they call it shirk, and you're actually, that's sort of blasphemous.

Well, I guess it would be blasphemous, because you're ascribing deity to a human. Right, in fact, they believe that is the worst sin a human being can commit.

Right, yeah, that's right, thank you. So, yeah, I think that would be the challenge right there.

That one would be the challenging religion. Thank you, I've never thought to think through, you know, which faith maybe is the challenging one.

I don't know, I say Islam, it is difficult when you encounter a religion where they're sort of accepting of all of their views, and they're incorporating that into their belief.

So, more of a New Age -type feel, that is difficult, because you're going to have to break down that sort of relativistic viewpoint and say, here's why we believe there is only one way, and it is through Jesus, like the

John 14 -6 passage says. So, I don't know if I answered it, but there you go. Well, thank you,

CJ, and Lindenhurst, Long Island, and you have also won a free copy of Defending the Faith, Apologetics in Women's Ministry, compliments of Kriegel Publications, and compliments of CVBBS .com,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. Thank you for joining us on the program, and keep spreading the word on Long Island and beyond about Iron, Sharp, and Zarn Radio, and by the way,

I hope you attend CJ, and that goes for everybody listening who is able to get to Long Island, and especially those who live on Long Island.

I hope you attend the conference that Mary Jo Sharp is speaking at, at Smithtown Christian School, along with Greg Kokel and Frank Turek.

That's the New York Apologetics Conference, Dare to Defend. This is in Suffolk County, Long Island at Smithtown Christian School.

Will You Survive the Culture is the umbrella theme, the main theme, and that's

Friday, April 28th, 7 to 9 p .m., Saturday, April 29th, 9 a .m.

to 4 p .m., and for more details, go to NewYorkApologetics .com, NewYorkApologetics .com,

and the words New York are spelled out. Mary Jo, what themes specifically, or themes plural,

I should say, underneath that umbrella of surviving the culture, what are you actually speaking on at this conference?

Yeah, I'm speaking on the conversational apologetics, so how to have a better conversation with those who disagree with you.

I think they're calling it dialogue with an atheist, but sort of that, yeah, just getting people talking to people who disagree with them, and then

I'll be covering Jesus as a pagan myth. Is he just the Christ myth theory? Is Jesus just another

Osiris for us? Right, right. I'm also doing a talk on, does life have meaning apart from God?

You know, light material. And they have me doing one more, which is addressing the issue of tolerance and intolerance in our culture.

Yeah, one of my favorite authors, D .A. Carson, wrote a book not long ago called

The Intolerance of Tolerance, and it's interesting that those who are waving the battle flag of tolerance in our culture from the left, they seem to have absolutely no tolerance for Evangelical Bible -believing

Christians at all. Yeah, yeah, and it's, without giving too much away on my talk, it's really interesting in that it seems to be cycling back around.

It's something that Jesus was specifically teaching against when he gave the Sermon on the Mount in using

Luke 6. He's actually teaching against that, love your neighbor and hate your enemy, which is where I see tolerances today.

It's like loving those people who think like us, and they, you know, believe like us, and they act like us.

That was the tolerance that Jesus was specifically preaching against in the Sermon on the Mount when he says, love your enemy, be good to those who persecute you.

You know, it'll pray for those who persecute you, and be good to those who aren't doing good to you, because if you just do good to those who are thinking like you, acting like you, and doing good to you, he says, what good is that?

Even the sinners do that. So I think that's interesting that he's preaching against that, that whole turnabout on tolerance, and he's preaching against that in the

Sermon on the Mount. Yeah, and that is obviously the issue that probably, if people, if Christians are being honest with themselves, that is the issue that is most likely, when we examine our lives, to bring us to shame, and to realize that we have not arrived, and we have a lot more transformation left in our lives to occur, because most of us are very poor at loving our enemies, and praying for them, and doing good for them.

I know that firsthand myself. I know one thing, I am glad that I am not

God, and I'm sure that all of humanity would be glad that I am not

God, because I don't think I would be as merciful, I know that I would not be nearly as merciful towards my enemies as God is.

But we are going to our final break right now, and if you would like to join us, now is the time to send in your emails, because we're running out of time.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away, we'll be right back after these messages with more of Mary Jo Sharp in our discussion, so don't go away.

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Or go to BatteryDepot .com. That's BatteryDepot .com. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. If you just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes and the next half hour to come, our guest has been and will continue to be

Mary Jo Sharp, founder of Confident Christianity, and we are discussing right now her book,

Defending the Faith, Apologetics, and Women's Ministry. Please don't forget about the

New York Apologetics Conference in Smithtown, Long Island, where Mary Jo Sharp will be one of three speakers, including

Greg Kokel and Frank Torik, on the theme, Will You Survive the Culture? It's Friday, April 28th, 7 to 9 p .m.,

and Saturday, April 29th, 9 a .m. to 4 p .m. And for more details, go to NewYorkApologetics .com,

NewYorkApologetics .com. And I just received word from one of the founders of New York Apologetics, Anthony Eugenio, that we are now offering free tickets to the

New York Apologetics Conference for the first 10 listeners who use the code

IRON, I -R -O -N. So if you go to NewYorkApologetics .com

forward slash conference and use the code IRON, you will get a free ticket.

So that's wonderful news. We thank Anthony Eugenio for offering that to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners, and we hope you can attend.

And to repeat again also, going back to my discussion before about the

Banner of Truth U .S. Ministers Conference, that's in May, and actually it's

Tuesday, May 30th, and Thursday, June 1st, in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, at the

Elizabethtown College. That is on the theme, The Living and Enduring Word, and the speakers at that conference include

Joel Beeky, Jeff Thomas, William Vanderwerde, Mark Johnston, Jonathan Master, Carlton Winn, and Ian Hamilton.

This is a ministers conference, and I believe they allow all men in ministry leadership to attend this.

And so if you want more information on this conference, which again is Tuesday, May 30th, through Thursday, June 1st, in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, the website is banneroftruth .org,

banneroftruth .org, click on events, and then click on U .S. Ministers Conference.

So I am going to be there, and I hope that many of you listening can be there and will greet me at that conference when

I'm there, when you're there, I should say. Again, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

If you have a question right now for Mary Jo Sharp, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and our listener that asked us a question earlier from Bakersfield, California, Daniel, he has a second question for you, and that's specifically on the issue we are discussing right now.

His question is, and I have to enlarge the font of his email because it's so tiny and I'm going blind, so let's see, what are the most common issues you come across in women's ministries?

What do women's ministries need to be aware of and be on guard against in their apologetics?

Oh, that's interesting. So in women's ministry, the thing that I've been noticing was that there's a need for apologetics, first and foremost.

For it to even exist, you mean? Yes, yeah. My ministry's been around for about 10 years, my apologetics non -profit, and that's what

I spent a lot of time doing for about a five -year span of time, around 2008, 2009, 2010.

I was just really going into women's ministries to present why apologetics, and I think that we're still there.

We're still saying, hey, you know, our culture's becoming more secularized and your kids are getting exposed to more and more things that are antithetical to the

Christian faith, and so we need to take responsibility in women's ministries for the life of the mind.

We need to engage with these hard questions. It's not just for those ivory tower theologians or for philosophers.

It's not for them over there. This is stuff that's now affecting us in intimate parts of our life with our own family members.

So I think one of the challenges is that we just need to show the need for apologetics within women's ministries.

So that's one thing I would say. A lot of women are... I've brought this up over and over, the objection from evil, how can

God be jealous of people in the world, and a lot of women's ministries are bringing that up. So if they invite me to speak and I'm not doing a, hey, rally the women's ministry to apologetics, if I'm not giving that talk, then what a women's ministry usually has to speak on is encountering the problem of evil in everyday conversation.

So how do we talk about God's goodness versus the presence of evil? That's going to be the objection that I find a lot of women's ministries are interested in, and that's just from my own experience with them.

That's the one they want to hear that talk in particular. Good question, Daniel. Yes, excellent, and it is an interesting question because no matter what one's view is on gender roles, even the most conservative complementarian out there who doesn't want women in any leadership roles, they must obviously acknowledge that a woman in the church must be taught and understand properly because the

Bible commands that women teach the younger women, that older women teach the younger women, and women, it is very obvious that women are the ones that are primarily in charge of teaching children in the home and in the church.

They're with children predominantly more often, and therefore the raising of those children in the faith is predominantly being done by women, and look what

Paul, the Apostle Paul, when he was writing to Timothy, he was commending

Timothy's mother and grandmother for how they instructed him in the faith.

So those of you, my fellow brethren who are complementarian and have very conservative views of gender roles, don't be so stupid about your views that leads you to believe that it is unimportant that women, whether women are properly instructed, they're not

Christians by osmosis just because they're married to Christian men. They need to be able to have an answer ready for the hope that lies within them when they have their own conversations with people, no matter where providentially the

Lord has placed them, in their either their professional careers or in the shopping center or wherever they are, having lunch with friends, having discussions with their own children, they need to be able to properly instruct others about the faith.

So they obviously must understand it properly to do so.

You're also dealing with a lot of women who, that I encounter anyway, who do not have

Christian spouses or their spouses are stepping away from belief in God. So you have women who are encountering these situations where they don't have the male in their home, their husband, their dad, whoever, they don't have that influence in their house.

And you can see this actually in the case for Christ, you see that Leslie Strobel comes to Christ first before her husband.

So women need to have this teaching. Amen. And let's see, we have

RJ in White Plains, New York, and he says, what do you do in a situation where a man is an unbeliever married to a

Christian woman and the woman wants to be a part of the body of Christ in an active way and the unbelieving husband is constantly trying to distract her and to prevent her from being involved in the church?

What is a woman to do who is supposed to be submissive to her husband and yet not forsake the assembly of the brethren?

Yeah, that's hard because I've not been in this situation. So I've got to say, like, if I have any answer here, first of all, check it against Scripture.

And secondly, know that I don't have this experience. So I'm not speaking from personal testimony or knowing what that's like.

You know, that's an interesting case in that your

Bible says that the woman is supposed to submit as the man, but it says as is fitting in the Lord. And the

Lord is supposed to love the woman as if—sorry, the Lord—the man is supposed to love the woman as if she were his own body.

And so when you have a man who is not loving his own body, not in the way that he was created to, by being in relationship with his

Creator, that poses a really tough challenge to that woman, because, yeah, she wants to be in relationship with her

Lord so that she can grow spiritually. So, you know, without telling her that I'm the expert, here's what to do,

I would definitely say that, you know, first of all, you really need to pray for that husband.

I know you know that, but I would say don't forget it. Like, sometimes when things get bad enough, you can feel like giving up, or if they go on for a long enough time, you feel like giving up.

So don't ever give up, because you don't know the person's heart the way that Christ knows them.

So I would say the real battle that you're facing there with this gentleman who's not wanting to go to church, and is even being distracting, is that you should pray for him.

Pray for his heart, and pray for your circumstance, that it would become easier, and continue to go to church.

Continue. This is who you are, and this is what is important to you, and if he loves you, and this is one of the, by the way, this is one of the great points about,

I know I keep bringing up the Case for Christ movie, but this is a great point in the movie. I mean, if you really love somebody, you want what's best for them, and if, so if the husband really loves her, he wants what's best for her, and if she believes that this is the best path right now, he's going to be willing to listen to her, and understand where she's at.

So I would say they do need to have some conversation. They need to talk, and that would be good.

Maybe get some good counseling as well, because of the situation that they're involved with. I'm going to guess that both of them don't feel listened to.

They feel like the other person is pulling away from them, because the other person has a different set of beliefs.

So I don't know, without, you know, they're definitely text scripture, but you can sit down and listen to each other, and have this conversation, and see what the concerns are.

Why is he so concerned? Are they founded? And here's where it would be great for the woman to have some apologetic background, and that she can maybe provide some answers to those fears.

Like, maybe he believes that she is just a duke. She's brainwashed, and that this is destructive towards her life.

She needs to sit down and have that conversation with him. That needs to be handled, so that he can see that this is actually something that is very beneficial to her.

It's ultimately beneficial to her, so they can have that talk, and maybe there's a lot of superstition, and he may be bringing in some background assumptions.

That all needs to come out into the light. So that would be my suggestion, is that they need to have this conversation, but that she should pray for him, that she should continue to be committed to her church, and that she should definitely seek to listen to his concerns, and then be ready to engage with some of his arguments against belief in God.

That she should be willing, if she doesn't know him, that she should be willing to, if she really loves him, to go through that and try to find those answers together.

And remind him that they're still together. They're on a journey together. Amen. And being committed to that church, she should be obviously having the involvement of her elders and her pastor as much as possible.

And obviously, sometimes you may have a severe circumstance where the husband doesn't allow that man or men from the church into his home, but at least some effort or attempts should be made in that regard.

And who knows, there may be even a commonality between elders or pastors in the church and the unbelieving husband in a recreational way, or something that they could actually enjoy together, get to know each other.

They might like golfing. They might like hunting and fishing, or whatever the case is. They might even become friends, and you never know.

I mean, if God could create the universe in six days,

I'm sure he could soften the heart of an unbelieving husband. But thank you very much,

RJ. And you have also won, by the way, a free copy of the book that we have been addressing during this hour of the program that we hope that you enjoy, and that's

Defending the Faith, Apologetics in Women's Ministry. And that's compliments of Kriegel Publications, and also compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who will be shipping that out to you.

And their website is cv, for Cumberland Valley, bbs, for BibleBookService .com, cvbbs .com.

And before the time escapes from us, without us even realizing it, because we are approaching the end of the program,

I want to make sure that you have several minutes, Mary Jo, to uninterrupted, in summary, give us what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

Wow. No small task. Let's take

God. I just, you know, my apologetics that I engage in, what

I attempt to do through my non -profit and my ministry, is I just want people to understand that, again,

I said this earlier, that when we engage in these arguments, the reason that we engage in arguments with excellence, we're searching the

Scriptures, we're hitting these theological and philosophical issues head on, deep and hard, and really thinking on them, the reason is for the sake of others.

You know, it's for God's creation. That's what we're here doing. We're here having these hard discussions and thinking about ultimate purpose and meaning and what's behind the universe, because we greatly love mankind.

That's what I want to leave etched into the hearts and minds of the people, because if God Himself saw fit to die on a cross and then to defeat the consequence of our evil by rising from the dead, that's how much

He loves the creation, and certainly we need to reflect that in our apologetic endeavors, in that, when we have these arguments, that we keep that in the back of our mind.

This is how much God loves the people to whom I am speaking, that He would be willing to go through a horrific death and take on—I don't even know what—I can't even fathom that—taking on the sin of the world.

Just think about that for a moment. You know, billions of human beings sinned, taking it on Himself, the punishment of that, so that we might have life.

What an amazing gift, and it's something we, as humans, fail to be able to aptly express.

We can't even—gratitude's not the big enough word. Thankfulness is not a big enough word.

So, when you are engaging with people, and you've got that uncle or that friend that's just—they seem angry, they seem incorrigible, they won't be corrected, they're stubborn—just remember, that is the situation that God was facing with His creation.

That's every one of us. We're rebels. We rebel against God, and in that rebellion,

He loved us enough to die for us, to take on that burden, and to give us back life, to redeem us.

Just keep that in your mind as you—that's the impetus for why we study, that's the impetus for why we search the

Scriptures, that's the impetus for why we give arguments for belief in God. It's out of a great, unfathomable love that we are attempting to mirror in any aspect that we can because of the grace given to us.

Amen. And we have time for at least one more listener question.

We have a Christian in Suffolk County, Long Island, who asks, in the churches that you have visited, what do you see as being the greatest things lacking in the

Church today in regard to bringing the Gospel to the lost world around them?

These are such great questions. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Christian. I would say the reason that people are not evangelizing—and it's not the only reason—but one of the reasons that I've encountered is we're not greatly discipled.

We don't know our own Scripture, we don't know our own faith. If we knew our own faith at a great depth, we would begin to understand that sacrifice.

We begin to understand what's really going on, what salvation history means, and our place in that story of redemption, and wanting to share that truth with other people because it's a reality of the universe in which we live.

So I think one of the major problems we're faced with within this Church is a sincere and earnest discipleship.

Also, along with that discipleship, knowing the Scripture, but also knowing our history.

We don't know what we've come from, we don't know who we are, and we don't know the rich knowledge tradition that has come down to us through thousands of years.

So I'd say it goes back to discipleship, because until the

Gospel is deeply woven into your own heart, you're not really going to be able to give it out. In fact,

I believe that's a Ken Sandy quote. In order to engage others with the

Gospel, we have to have the Gospel deeply woven into our own lives. So thank you for that question.

I believe it goes back to an earnest and intentional discipleship within our local

Church bodies. Amen, thank you. And by the way, would you say that in our politically correct world that even

Christians are more concerned and sensitive over hurting the feelings of others than they are over the never -dying souls of others?

They would rather keep their mouths shut and spare someone's feelings and stand by while they are being prepared for eternity in hell, when obviously that is demonstrating that they are not really loving that person.

They're not really looking at what's best for that person. They're looking out for what keeps their relationship with that person most pleasant and comfortable.

Isn't that like a really huge problem in our world today, not only with friends, but with family members?

We would rather just keep the peace and keep our mouths shut than trouble them with the truth, the truth that may save their lives eternally.

Yeah, and I think that's true, but it goes back to the root problem coming out of the sacred -secular split, and Francis Schaeffer was writing on this, and then

Nancy Piercey, one of his disciples and my colleague at Houston Baptist University, she wrote on this in Total Truth that once we sort of divided our beliefs into two different realms, where we think there's a secular realm and these are the kinds of things that we can talk about at the dinner table, right?

And then there's the private realm, like where religion belongs, the sacred realm. That's where this is based in, like, well, you don't—at the table, you don't talk about religion or politics, right?

Because we just want to be friends, so we don't bring up the hard issues. Well, that has left our society sort of inept at handling issues that are the most important, and so we'd rather—we've got this philosophy that has been ingrained in us, this sacred -secular split, which has led to this we -don't -talk -about -those -kind -of -things.

So, yeah, I see that as, rather than caring about whether this person has truth, whether they're going to spend eternity in heaven or hell, we're more concerned with the niceties of our culture, what's culturally acceptable at the time.

So, that, I believe, stems from that sacred -secular split, which needs to be addressed. Like, we need to say, not all religious ideas are subjective.

There are things that are objectively true or false, like Jesus is God or Jesus is not God, and those are the kind of things we need to address, and we need to talk about, and we need to become conversant as a culture in these topics once again.

Amen. Well, I want to make sure our listeners have your website. It's confidentchristianity .com,

confidentchristianity .com, and of course, don't forget about the conference that Mary Jo Sharp is participating in with Greg Kokel and Frank Turek on April 28th and April 29th in Smithtown, Long Island, New York, being run by the

New York Apologetics Ministry. That website is newyorkapologetics .com,

newyorkapologetics .com forward slash conference, and keep in mind that tickets to attend this are $39 apiece, but if you want to be among the first 10 to get free tickets to this, just register and use the passcode

IRON, I -R -O -N, that's I -R -O -N, and take advantage of free tickets to this conference.

I want to also remind everybody about those in ministry that if you would like to attend the

Banner of Truth U .S. Ministers Conference on Tuesday, May 30th and Thursday, June 1st in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania at the

Elizabethtown College, the conference is on the theme, The Living and Enduring Word.

Go to banneroftruth .org, banneroftruth .org, click on events, and then also click on U .S.

Ministers Conference, and of course, if you live in the UK, in the United Kingdom, click on the UK Ministers Conference.

There's several of them, and attend one of those that is more convenient. I want to thank you so much,

Mary Jo, for being on the program. I look forward to your return to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I want you to say hello to Anthony Uvino and Nick Mitchell and to Frank Turek and Greg Kokel for me when you're at that conference.

Since I am unable to attend, I will be at another conference, but thank you so much for being our guest today.

Hey Chris, it was wonderful. I really appreciate what you're doing, man. Thank you. I want everybody to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater