Biblical illiteracy is a huge problem | Lessons from Ravi Zacharias (Greg Koukl)

There are those in the next generation that just want to, you know, eschew all the things that we've been discussing from the secular culture, which means that they are ready to go out there and spread the kingdom of God.

These, they will have their own issues coming up, especially those that are going to get into apologetics. And so in light of them, what would be your advice for just.

Foundations for the Next Generation of Apologists

Young up-and-comers just getting started? Well, maybe my bias is going to show here, but you got to get your foundations. I think that a broadly construed classical apologetics and classical Christian doctrine, you got to have those in place.

You've got to know what the Bible teaches about the nature of the world, right? Really, really critical. And you mentioned earlier about biblical illiteracy. This is a huge problem in the church. You got to know more than Jesus loves you and he died for your sins.

And, you know, the Bible speaks to all of reality. And when you embrace the biblical worldview, that understanding of the good and right and true and beautiful is going to dictate certain political policy decisions by their very nature.

It's not separated, it's connected, okay? And so we have to be consistent. We have to live consistently with a robust Christian worldview. And I also think the classical kinds of ways the existence of God and the reliability and the truth of the resurrection, which trades, in my view, the best argument trades on using the Bible as an historically reliable document and not necessarily as the word of God, okay?

But historians take these events seriously, you know? And so you have what's called the minimalist approach to demonstrating the resurrection of Jesus. And more than ever before, being able to defend the distortions that are captured in objections against the Bible, okay?

Anti-woman, anti-this, anti-gay, anti-that. You know, these are all kinds of things that need to be parsed out accurately. If God exists and he created human beings, male and female, to reproduce and whatever, then he's got a purpose for sexuality.

And if you abuse that purpose, bad things follow, okay? I mean, this is like, duh. But so it requires then that we approach these challenges from an understanding of how these things work within the Christian worldview.

If we don't understand that, then we're not going to be able to defend it. We may be easily convinced by others that the Bible got it wrong, kind of thing, on some of these controversial sexual or gender kinds of issues.

One of the great things, though, is we have Jesus as an ally here. And it was in Matthew 19, he makes it really clear from the beginning, male, female, one man, one woman becoming one flesh for one lifetime.

I mean, he covers a lot of bases there when he's instructing about divorce. But that covers lots of things. So if we can trust Jesus' perspective from the beginning, that's a worldview consideration, we can stand on that, okay?

So those are the things. And okay, so with that foundation in place, you got to get your tactics. You know, I know this is self-serving because I wrote the book, but there is, I have never come across anything as accessible as a tactical approach that I described there, which is using questions in a very particular kind of way.

It's a three-step process, but it's simple to conceptualize, but takes practice to get a little more efficient at it. However, it's very easy to get into the shallow end of the pool and start doing it right out of the gate once you learn how to do that.

So I can't think of anything that is better as a means of engagement to put a people's view and have it be nice. So it looks more like diplomacy than DD, right?

Right.

So if somebody, Nate, if you had written that book, I'd be saying the same thing or anybody else for that matter, because I think. And indeed, there is actually a book out, Training Atheists, Peter Boghossian's book, a manual for training atheists.

And he basically advances a very, very similar notion, you know, about how to use questions to upend Christians and put a stone, an atheistic stone in their shoes. So Jesus had like 300 questions or so he asked in the gospel.

So I think we're in good company with that. Very effective and very easy to do.

So Christians should know their fundamentals. They should know their liability of the historical documents, the Bible. They should know the resurrection and arguments for the resurrection. Is there

And for the existence of God.

And for the existence of God.

It's like the classic apologetic issues, you know, the authority of the Bible, the person of Jesus and the resurrection, the existence of God, those kinds of things. So that's foundational and their theology.

Those are all foundations.

And they should know how to communicate in a winsome and persuasive way.

That's the tactics. I sleep with it.

I have my

I think I've heard that before, but yes.

I have my pin, the STR ambassador pin that I still wear occasionally, now my son's wear. Well, related to that, though, especially considering the recent news with Ravi Zacharias, et cetera, et cetera, other Christian leaders falling morally.

How much should Christians be focused on developing their character as they go out and try to engage? And part of the reason why I asked that question is I'm seeing a lot of people that are armed with certain kinds of Christian arguments and they wield it like a weapon.

Character, Humility, and Accountability in Apologetics

Yeah, yeah. Well, here, it's a very important point, and you know what's down to reason, knowledge, wisdom, character, knowledge, the content-based wisdom, the tactical maneuvering character, the way we do it in an attractive manner, really critical.

And that's one of those things you can talk about, but it's something that's caught more than taught. And this is why it's so important for me and our team that we are manifesting in everything that we do, the kind of generous, gracious character that commends the message and doesn't detract from it, okay?

Now, this didn't come naturally for me. As I mentioned, in my early days, I was a handful, and I spread a lot more heat than light, okay? But over the years, it's something that God has helped me with.

And so we have a thing called the ambassador's creed, and the ambassador's creed is at the end of the tactics book. It's just like 10 intellectual moral virtues of a good ambassador with a line or two to describe it.

And that captures a lot of the character elements that we're concerned with. And so this is something that I think as Christians, if we're not careful, that we end up losing our witness because we're not minding ourselves, okay?

A passage that I cite frequently is Colossians chapter four, verse five and six. And what Paul says there is conduct yourselves with wisdom towards outsiders, making the most of the opportunity. So he starts by saying, be smart.

Then he says, let your speech always be with grace, seasoned as it were with salt. So now he says, be smart, but be nice. You know, what a concept, right? Be nice. And I joke about the concept, but it's amazing how powerful the influence of being nice to people has on them, you know?

And then he also says, so you know how to respond to each person, which I think is a tactical element. So he says, be smart, be nice, be tactical. But that's really critical. Now, some of the issues that we've seen, high visibility individuals that have fallen hard, this is a different element of character.

And this is integrity, where your behavior in private matches your behavior in public, okay? And this is a different matter. And this I think takes help from others so that we are accountable to others, and they hold us accountable, ask the right questions, watching over, okay?

But it's also something that we need to be mindful of. And let me just put it, let me put it this way. I mean, it's just a way that it came to in my mind. The higher you get, the lower you have to go, okay?

The higher you get, the lower you have to go. So the more influence a person has in their communities, whatever that community looks like or expansive it is, for some it's the world, you know? The more they have to go low to take the spotlight off of them as appropriate, so that they don't believe their own press, and they don't get too high-minded that they think they're above the law or above getting caught or something like that, that they have to stand before God.

And so this is a kind of, when I say the lower they have to go, I'm talking about humility, just basic humility. You are not drawing attention to yourself in inappropriate ways. You are drawing attention to other people.

You're taking a lower station. You're doing your best not to allow people to make you into something that you could never really be, which is a perfect person. But it's easy for people to think that way.

It's the same way I thought about my spiritual mentors when I was a young Christian. But it's a disadvantage to the younger Christian, and it's a disadvantage to the leaders. So there's a sense in which any particular person of influence needs to have people around him that are courageous enough to hold that person accountable, not afraid of that person, okay, and ask the right questions and require transparency.

And it's also on the responsibility of that individual person to be mindful of their own attitude and what they're doing in the lives of other people, if they're drawing too much attention to themselves and everything.

I mean, it sounds like a simple thing. It is, but it's also hard. It takes vigilance in order to put that into practice.

Right. I mean, I'm trying to wrestle with this too. I think a lot of us are still dealing with, I guess, being shocked, if that's the right word, especially with

I think it is the right word.

The Robbie story. So this is me processing out loud, and I'm curious to get your take. Like, is it just simply a matter of making sure, especially in the area of apologetics, parachurch organizations, that they still stay strong churchmen, that they're still embedded within a church community?

You know, Jesus sent out his disciples by twos. Should we stay in twos, two formation? What do you think?

Parachurch Ministry, Church Community, and Accountability

Well, I think there's something in there that's really important. I'm not exactly sure the iteration of it here, two by two, that was practical in that circumstance. But parachurch organizations are still part of the church, in my view.

I read recently, somebody said, well, I never saw anything like that in the Bible. Well, there's all kinds of things that we do now that are normal parts of Christianity you don't find in the Bible, because we're adapted to cultural circumstances and the needs, but it doesn't mean it's somehow illicit if it's not contrary to something the Bible identifies.

I think that I'm a member of church, a practical member in the sense that I have a church, I have a pastor. Now, that pastor is not discipling me. I'm discipling my pastor, actually, is the way the dynamic turns out.

But there's a lot of people on my team in the parachurch organization who I'm very intimate with and personal with and have visibility of my life and I have accountability relationships with. And so that's where I kind of get that, even though in my church, I don't show up that often, at least in the regular season, not during COVID, because I'm in somebody else's church a lot of times on Sunday.

But I do have that home, that church home, and I know the pastor and I have visibility with people there to some degree. So in general, I think your point is a real good one. The difficulty is like if you're, that requires, okay, you go to church every Sunday.

Well, I do. And I hear the same sermon.

Right.

Mine. It's somebody else's church I'm in, kind of thing. So I think the dynamic of that, or the particulars of it, look different in different circumstances. But the essence of it is just what I was saying here.

You've got to have people around you that can protect you and hold you accountable. People have visibility of your life. They can ask you the hard question. And also you have to have a kind of moral self-discipline.

You have to have self-governance. With regards to the pride issue and the moral behavior issue, and those are connected. People get built up so high that I think the temptation is that they feel they're above the law.

And in the circumstance that you just mentioned, that was part of what I think the dynamic. I do all these things for God. I can be rewarded in this other way.

Right.

That was part of the rationale, rationalization, I should say, of the behaviors in question.

Yeah.

There were a lot of other problems that should have been a lot of signals in that circumstance that people should have picked up on, but didn't. And asked harder questions and circumstances that we're not going to let this happen.

This is not good. And frankly, I've had people on my staff that have said things like that to me. I said, look at this thing. This is not good, Greg. Oh, okay. I can't pull rank on them. I mean, I could do that, but that wouldn't be good.

Wouldn't be virtuous. Wouldn't be wise. Iron sharpens iron. How does the other proverb go? Faithful are the wounds of a friend.

That's right.

Well, and I lead a college ministry at my local church, and those kids have no problem telling me what they think is wrong. So, I mean, I totally agree. And what I've been impressed by, just knowing you and some of the conversations that we've had off camera, you really do pour into your staff here.

It really is impressive. And just encourage you to keep doing that because it is really an essential ingredient.

Yeah. Thank you. Well, somebody poured into me and I'm paying it forward. And you're an example of somebody who's taken the next step and passed the baton, and you are faithfully passing and paying it forward too.

That's the way it works.

Yeah. Well, let's talk about Stand to Reason just in the last couple of minutes.

Sure.

Again, given everything that we've talked about, how is Stand to Reason standing in today's culture so that they can make a difference for Christ?

Stand to Reason’s Digital Strategy and Passing the Baton

Well, we're doing a number of things, and this is becoming more and more a digital world. And so our website and our digital presence in social media is becoming more and more of a priority and our training through the web more so.

For the last 28 years almost now, I've been trying to move off-center. This organization is not me. It doesn't have my name. I work for this organization. I'm not the organization. And so as I move off-center and people's visibility, the organization becomes larger.

And one day I'm going to hang up my cleats or I'm going to get snatched away and I'm gone. And I want this thing to keep moving forward doing what it's doing now, but even more effectively under new leadership and with the team that I've been able to invest in, who is growing and then invest in others.

So the digital world is really important. We've launched a couple of things this last year with that in mind. One of them is planned. The other one was just kind of off the cuff and has been really successful.

The thing that was planned is called STRU, Stand to Reason University. And it's kind of modeled after Khan Academy. Some people aren't familiar with that. We have these short segments, you know, that are easy to handle and digest a little testing segment.

Then you move on to the next one. And as you're moving forward, you get little badges and stars and some of these faux rewards kind of for moving forward. But that helps people. So we've tried to, in these courses, throw the ball so that people can catch it.

And so we deal with a lot of foundational issues. Right now we have three, I think. We have the story of reality. We have truth is not ice cream. Tim Barnett does that. And one other that I own, Ambassador to Basic Skills.

Okay. So those are available right now. People sign up, they get in behind the registration, and then they go to town. Doesn't cost anything. But this is a way of self-directed education that we think is going to be really, really important for the future.

And we're adding every quarter two new courses. So we, at the end of this month, we'll have the tactics course up. It's a mini tactics course. There's a more advanced course that you can, that's on them and it's published.

And people can go from the mini to the advanced if they want to. That's okay. That's what we like to see, actually. We have a course on homosexuality in the Bible. Alan Schleman does that. And then we've got a bunch more in the queue for the rest of the year.

So that is a huge part. And what this is meant to do is a bet our strategy for passing the baton to the next generation. Because in my view, the most important generation, Nate, is always the next generation.

That's right.

That's why it's so important you're working with your group. So we want to pass that baton. And so we have a strategy to do that. And that is a big conference strategy called, now called Reality. It used to be called Rethink.

Now we call it Reality. And we actually have a regional conference in Southern California, in Central South, usually in Texas, somewhere in the South. The next one will be in Augusta, Georgia, and in the Midwest, which is Minneapolis.

And we just opened up in Seattle. And so that just leaves one more region. We're only having six, and that'll be the New England area. And as time goes on, God willing, we'll have a reality there. But when we opened up in Minneapolis pre-COVID, for our first event, we had 2 ,400 students show up in the fall before that, which is our last event before COVID in Southern California.

We had 2 ,700 students show up. So this is really, really popular.

It's awesome.

But it's solid stuff. We don't dumb it down. We don't throw a bunch of candy at them and pizza. But we do try to have a good time. We like to have fun. Now, I'm not in charge of the fun. Now, my girls tell me, Papa, you're not fun.

Okay. Yeah, you're right. I'm not fun. But other guys are fun. And so we just have a lot of fun, but they really get the hardcore stuff, really, really rich. So what we want to see is those thousands of students that we see every year as we are opening up in these different regions through reality, you know, six, seven, 8 ,000 kids a year going through this or more as the future moves on.

We want them to go into our STRU. So we want to funnel in there because that's where we can really establish them much more aggressively as members of our community and then digitally mentor them and the things they need to know.

And I mentioned this one other thing, though, that was kind of a spur of the moment thing. It just kind of came up. And this is the brainchild of Tim Barnett, Mr. Rubberface up there in Ontario, Canada.

And he had this idea called red pen logic because he was a former high school student, a teacher rather, who read pen the papers. And then he'd see these Twitter entries, these tweets, these memes, you know, that were hostile to Christianity, but they were kind of silly and they were not very thoughtful.

But a lot of people, 20 ,000 people, thumbs up on this. What? So he would, OK, I'm going to red pen this one. And so we developed this thing, red pen logic, RPL. It's on Facebook. Just go to Facebook and put red pen logic and they're going to get Mr. B who's got his red pen.

You know, it's so much fun. There are these vignettes that teach clear thinking, answer the challenges, and they're fun in the process. So we've got probably 18 of these now. Is that right? Something that we've done.

Yeah. And they're fabulous. And they're short, seven minutes. Yeah. So you get a short course kind of in this fun little vignette, but teaches really good things. So that has been wildly popular. And Tim's the perfect person to do it.

Our team works together on it. So there's a video element that is all spliced together in a very creative way and lots of eye candy that are fun. And that Greg Cash is our videographer who puts that together.

Tim is, of course, the face there. And he comes up with the ideas and stuff. And then Tim and I work together on the scripts to make sure we button it down really tight, make it very clever, very incisive, but not snarky.

Nice. Yeah. But a little edgy. And so that's Red Pen Logic. And that is another tool that we're using now to educate people of all stripes. The young and the old love it. Yeah. So Greg,.

I know that I'm sure I'm speaking on behalf of everyone that you've affected, but you've done an amazing job. Your heart, being diligent unto obedience to Christ. And I'm sure there are seasons of this where what you do is think less.

But I just want to thank.

You on behalf of everyone else. Well, that's really sweet. I will say that hasn't been the case. Oh, good. Because people have been so thankful. They're so generous with their praise and their thanks, just like you've been.

So I'm very fortunate in that regard. We've had 28 years of a bull market, which stands to reason. And it's because of good people that are part of our community, like yourself, who are learning and paying it forward.

But I don't get tired of hearing that. So I appreciate that a lot. It is a lot of work, and our whole team works really hard. And one thing that I've noticed, even though it's been a bull market for stand to reason, in our private lives, we have all experienced lots and lots of challenges.

And even on the team, Melinda went out just like that more than three years ago now. And so we are vulnerable, just like anybody else. And it keeps us trusting in God and knowing that, you know, that we are, what's the right word here?

We're not just vulnerable, but we're replaceable. Yeah. You know, if God so chooses. We just want to be faithful for the time we're given the job to ultimately hear those words, well done, good and faithful.

Yeah, that's my desire.

Greg Koppel, thanks so much for joining me. You're so welcome.