Frank Turek, President of the apologetics ministry CrossExamine.org delivered two addresses at the Southern Evangelical Seminary National Apologetics Conference on October 11-12 concerning Christians and politics and why they must continue to engage politics, despite the desire of many to withdraw.
A major problem in engaging the contemporary world is that people today are conditioned to be guided by feelings rather than logic. Turek began by reviewing the basic logic we need to reason about anything. Christians, like everyone else is familiar with such statements as “you got your truth, I’ve got my truth,” and even “there is no truth.” But “if there is no truth, then Christianity can’t be true.” In fact, nothing can be said, since all claims are truth claims. Everyday activities like attending school or catching someone in a lie or mistake would be pointless.
In today’s public schools, students are taught what they should feel rather than how to think. “If you just follow your feelings, without any moral restraint … you’re going to end up in a very dark place.” Logic makes life safe enough to be livable. One of the most basic laws of logic is the law of noncontradiction. This simply says that an assertion and its denial cannot both be true “at the same time and in the same sense.” Attempts to violate noncontradiction are self-defeating, if they are true, then they are false. Denials of truth in general are claims to be truth, and thus necessarily false. Attempts to deny absolute truth must be absolutely true – even one exception shows absolute truth, as would the denial of absolute truth itself, which must be absolutely true if there are no exceptions., Thus the denial of absolute truth is disproven. “There’s no such thing as your truth, there’s no such thing as my truth, there’s just the truth,” Turek said.
Some expressions of religious pluralism (that all religions lead to the same deity) are also self-defeating. More than one exclusivist religion cannot be true. If instead all religions lead to the same ultimate truth, then this is true for everyone, rather than the individual religions. Turek rejected fideism, maintaining that “faith is trusting what you have good evidence to believe.” Opposite of fideism is the claim that only science tells the truth. But this is a philosophical claim, not a claim “of science” but a claim “about science.” Further, he said that really “science doesn’t say anything, scientists do.”
Our psychology must not be allowed to govern reasoning, although it does in much modern thought. Psychology changes with moods, logic does not. For example, evidence shows that the safest means of transit is by airplane, Turek said, yet many people are afraid to fly.
Another contemporary fallacy is to appeal to the Bible to support the admonition “don’t judge.” Jesus indeed said not to judge (Matt. 7:1-2), but explained that what he really meant was that we will judged by the standard we use, and so should be careful to follow the rule we use for others. Elsewhere Jesus tells us to judge with righteous judgment (Jn. 7:24). And so Jesus’ admonition was a warning against hypocrisy, not a command not to judge others. Indeed, we have to make judgments simply to live. But we ought to make judgments according to the truth.
Turek next examined the common self-defeating claim “don’t impose your morals on me.” But this is itself a moral judgment. An “ought not” is being hypocritically imposed against other “ought nots.” Beyond that, there must be a moral system for human beings to live together. The question is “whose?” Without transcendent grounding, there is really no basis for objective morality. Essentially, advocates of non-transcendent morals are doing the same thing (imposing their morality) as they accuse traditional moralists of doing.
With this, Turek said, relativism and postmodernism are disposed of. Although dominant in universities, there can be “no truth that there is no truth.”
Other claims are not self-defeating, but “are still wrong.” The claim that “there are more than two genders” really presupposes that there are only two genders (or more correctly, sexes). A man who thinks he’s a woman must have some idea of what a man and a woman are to think that. To attempt a physical transition to the opposite sex assumes that maleness and femaleness are real and physically based. To show that there are only two sexes, one need only ask the question “what’s a woman?”
Another case of bad reasoning holds that one must approve of others’ desires in order to love them. But behaviors and inclinations cannot be incorporated into an individual’s humanity. If they were, the worst crimes would be legal, since there can be no adverse judgment (discrimination) against a person’s humanity. Loving parents do not necessarily approve of their children’s desires, in fact, the loving thing may be to correct them. Quoting I Cor. 13:6, he said that “love does not rejoice in wrong.” Pointing both to same-sex relationships and opposite-sex divorce, Turek said that we often tell people what they want to hear rather than having them mad at us. But the loving thing is to tell the truth, not doing so is unloving. Against the morality (really anti-morality) of self-determination, he said that families divided over these issues “should be.” Christ came to put family members against one another (Matt. 10:34-39). We should follow Christ, no matter “what your family thinks.” The same is true for other people in society who may disagree with divine precepts.
Sometimes people dismiss Christianity because many Christians are hypocrites. But in fact everyone, and especially Christians, are hypocrites in the sense that they affect a manner of living properly while violating the law written on our hearts. The hypocrisy of others is no excuse for disobeying moral precepts. “Just because I’m not true and beautiful doesn’t mean Jesus isn’t true and beautiful … we’re not the standard, Jesus is the standard.”
Contemporary society incentivizes people to remain silent against sin. Speaking against LGBT indoctrination may result in the loss of one’s job, taking a cell phone away from a 13-year-old may result in “World War III.” “Sorry, life’s hard,” he said.
Specific issues on which Christians should engage in the political world will be reviewed in a subsequent article.
It can be viewed here.
Comment by Tim on October 22, 2024 at 5:21 pm
I have four issues.
First, John 7:24 does not at all say “go judge other people.” It is a rebuke of the Pharisees we see over and over again in the New Testament for their knowing the letter of the law and not the meaning behind it. Basically “you are judging people on what you think is written but you should judge based on whether God’s will is fulfilled” See for example Mark Chapter 7.
Second, why the dig at public schools? We teach kids plenty of logic. No public school is teaching kids what they should feel. I’d love to hear more about this – was this a dig at social emotional learning, or is someone mad that their evangelical kid can’t control the lives of other kids?
Third, the claim “don’t impose your morals on me” is not a Christian claim; it is at the heart of the first ammendment of the US Constitution. You can debate for hours about the superiority of your religion over another. But in America the red line is you can’t force your sectarian views on someone else.
Fourth, there’s literally nothing in the transgender argument. You’re claiming that because someone wants to be the other gender there must therefore only be two genders. It’s like saying you proved zero=zero. But I sympathize; you have to resort to tricks like this because Scripture doesn’t say anything against transgender folks.
Comment by Tim Ware on October 22, 2024 at 8:26 pm
We get into trouble when we depart from just what the Scripture says and say it means something different than what it says. We might say something like, “Jesus said not to judge. But let me tell you what He really meant.”
Of course, the determination of “what He really meant” is a subjective process, so hence we see the disagreement between the author and the commenter over the issue of judging. Each has a different idea of what Jesus meant. Both can’t be right. Perhaps neither is right.
We are all tempted to put qualifiers on some things Jesus said that we might not like in order to make them go more in our direction, and we will have no trouble finding selected verses we can pull out and interpret in a certain way to support our position.
When we choose to depart from just what Scripture says and start assigning our own meanings to it, more than a little humbleness is called for.
Comment by MikeB on October 22, 2024 at 8:39 pm
Tim,
You have a lot of issues, on the first issue you are conducting a dishonest reading of the verse, and the chapter in a very illogical way. No one would read any other book and try to make it say the opposite.
On the second issue, again you have shown that as a public school teacher you will gladly abuse vulnerable students and then gossip about them. Of course you are the exact type of groomer that parents worry about. You were just mocking others telling them how glad you will be if their children fall to the sin of homosexual behavior and how you will take advantage of that.
Third, you have gone on an immigration war about how America needs to follow your beliefs on immigration… hypocrisy much?
Fourth you still seem to ignore biology, can someone born male indeed become female.
A logical person would state no, but you are indeed the pope of the church of Timmy and logic holds no sway over you again.
No sense of irony how you live to attack those who’s words and life show how false your is?
Comment by Tim on October 23, 2024 at 6:30 am
Tim Ware
Generally I agree with you on humbleness in interpreting scripture. This is why I enjoy pastor-lead Bible studies; there’s the plain meaning, there’s traditional interpretations, there’s what scholars think, etc and it’s enlightening to balance the perspectives.
That said, I think the way John 7:24 is dropped in here by the author is misleading. I’m open for a debate on how it isn’t though. I will also concede that if one looked at the verse without any surrounding verses or context (as certain Bible websites show verses) then it looks more like what the author is claiming.
Comment by MikeB on October 23, 2024 at 7:14 am
Tim,
Again why the lies, you somehow assume that if you ignore being called out as a pathological liar based on your comment history you won’t have to address the elephant in the room.
That you pretend to believe different things each time you comment. There’s a persona of you that pretends to be fair and balanced and one that threatens to harm others children.
Have you literally no shame.
To Tim Wares point once you throw out plain meaning and traditional interpretation you have thrown out Christ.
But you know that, at this point you come only to attack the flock.
Your problem is not that you are unsure how to balance the interpretations, it is that you have fully rejected God as owner of your life and you mean to take as many with you as possible.
Again you have no shame.
Comment by Wilson R. on October 23, 2024 at 1:40 pm
Let me just focus on two things. First, this claim:
“In today’s public schools, students are taught what they should feel rather than how to think.” That’s a whopper of an unsupported statement. It should be all the more embarrassing for the author because it occurs in a column about applying logic. In the college class I took in logic, I remember learning about false premises. Here’s a textbook example.
Second, there’s this statement:
“Sometimes people dismiss Christianity because many Christians are hypocrites. But in fact everyone, and especially Christians, are hypocrites in the sense that they affect a manor [sic] of living properly while violating the law written on our hearts. The hypocrisy of others is no excuse for disobeying moral precepts.”
The logic is not the problem here. Nevertheless, this paragraph is problematic. From my observation, while it is true that sometimes people distance themselves from Christian institutions because of the hypocrisy they see in Christians, it’s not because they reject Christianity per se. Nor is it because they see Christians failing to live up to their own lofty standards. Rather, it’s because they feel judged and preached to by people who don’t practice what they preach. If they saw Christians as a community of flawed and damaged people mutually supporting each other in their struggles while aspiring to become holy people, the church would take on a whole different feel to millions who feel disaffected from it. This disaffection should not be seen by Christians as the fault of the disaffected but rather a result of their own failings. In its own way, ironically, the author’s paragraph is an example of the very hypocrisy he is dismissing as illogical.
Comment by MikeB on October 23, 2024 at 8:30 pm
Wilson,
While agreeing that the first statement went unsupported in the paragraph, ” social and emotional learning”, is very popular across schools and has complete support of the Department of Education.
I honestly don’t see SEL as a bad thing, there are a lot of benefits to it, but it’s not made up whole cloth in this article.
Second point, there is not a conflict between the author’s “sometimes people” and your “my observations”
Those who are not Christians seem to be who the author is referring to. You seem to be referring to those Christian or Christian adjacent.
Comment by Rick Plasterer on October 23, 2024 at 9:20 pm
There’s much commentary here, and I won’t try to respond to all of it, but I do wonder what Tim means by “God’s will.” I believe I’m not unreasonable in assuming he takes the viewpoint of religious (and political) liberalism, that Jesus’ anti-Pharisee polemic is an attack on authority in the name of love, and that love is to be understood as good will. I responded to this interpretation a couple of years ago:
https://juicyecumenism.com/2022/08/25/christs-gospel-pharisees-todays-christians/
The reference to Mark chapter 7 is interesting. There is essentially the same account in Matthew chapter 15. In both cases Jesus sets aside ceremonial requirements that are burdensome (similarly in Matthew 12), but each account in Matthew 15 and Mark 7 is followed by a vice list (Matt. 15:18-20, Mk. 7:18-23). These show that Jesus considered the moral law of the Old Testament binding (the Ten Commandments and other Biblical commands relating to God and neighbor). It is according to these we should judge ourselves and others. If on the other hand, we simply ask what “the loving thing” is, we might get many answers depending on the good one wants to protect (e.g., adult quality of life vs. the life of an unborn child). The Sixth Commandment, however, tells us not to kill.
Transgenderism indeed makes sex meaningless (or “gender” if you want to call it that), because sex is separated from the body. “Transitioning” indeed assumes two sexes. I’ve never heard of anyone trying to physically “transition” to something other than the opposite sex.
I regret the misspelling of “manner.” It has been corrected.
Rick
Comment by Tim on October 24, 2024 at 6:34 am
Thank you for the reply Rick. I enjoyed your older article. I agree with the idea that morality is centered on how we treat God and neighbor. I don’t think we’ll find common ground on the definition of sexual immorality (I would argue that this is rooted in how we treat neighbor, like rape or other power imbalance situations like the temple prostitution and idol worship described in Paul’s letters and not so much about a stable, same sex couple that has consented to a lifelong relationship) but I think that’s the exception to my otherwise broad agreement with you about what morality matters to Jesus.
On the point of transgender, I think we have to be humble approaching a transgender person in that we can’t understand what’s been going on inside of them (or really any person for that matter.) Each year we grow smarter in terms of genetics and epigenetics. We know there are genotypes other than XY and XX. Intersex conditions are relatively common and sometimes children were wrongly assigned a gender at birth. With all those asterisks against a strict gender binary, the ethical response to transgender just appears to be treat the person kindly and let them be who they are. There’s more to life than gender and we owe it to that person to help them develop the fullest life we can. At the end of the day this is a very different question than sexuality issues. A transgender person is not asking consent for a sexual relationship. They’re just hoping we’ll be kind.
Comment by Wilson R. on October 24, 2024 at 11:15 am
MikeB:
Thank you for your reply. You’ve touched on something with social and emotional learning. It’s an important component of the overall learning experience, and there are literally decades of educational research to support that. And it’s not exactly a new idea, much less a reflection of “wokeness.” I remember my own HS English teacher applied it in the classroom. That was 50 years ago. She was one of the best teachers I ever.
But it was not at all clear that Mr. Plasterer was referring to social/emotional learning when he wrote that kids are being taught how to feel instead of how to think. If so, then he seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding of social/emotional learning, which was never designed to replace educating students on how to think.
It came across, frankly, as another unsupported attack on public schools from someone who doesn’t know much about public schools and simply wants to demonize.
And in any event it was lazy, and it’s the height of irony to present a false premise in a discussion about applying logic.
Comment by Wilson R. on October 24, 2024 at 12:26 pm
Tim:
The first transgendered person I ever met was at church.
A male at birth, he began attending our worship services after being part of an AA group that met in our building two nights a week. He was a middle-aged man recovering from alcoholism, depression, and (I think) a history of drug abuse. He had considered suicide. He had been married and had an adult son, but the marriage had ended because of the alcoholism, and now he was somewhat estranged from all of his family. He wanted to rebuild those relationships. He was a sad and lonely figure. He lived alone in a small apartment, and he had lost his driver’s license due to DUIs. I came to know him because I often gave him a ride home from church.
During our conversations in the car, “Chip” opened up to me about what he had come to realize had been a lifelong struggle with his gender identity. He identified as a woman, felt trapped in a man’s body, and had seen no other options except to live as a man and try to suppress his feelings. I realized that’s what had led to the alcoholism and depression. I’ve heard people argue that transgenderism is a mental illness. I realized that feeling trapped in the wrong body can cause all kinds of illnesses–and that being able to live into that person’s true identity also can help cure the illness.
Chip had been a white-collar professional but was taking classes at a community college to be a hairstylist. Sometimes I would give him a ride home from class if the buses weren’t running. He told me he had begun hormone therapy. He hadn’t told anyone else at church. He was afraid that some of the older women—especially one who he always sat next to and who was very conservative in theology and politics—would reject him, and he didn’t want to risk it.
One week before I picked him up at school, he warned me that he would be wearing a wig and women’s clothes. He had become comfortable enough with his classmates to come out to them, and they embraced him. He began using a woman’s name around them and me.
I gave him a ride one Saturday to a picnic held by the local trans community. I stuck around a while and met a lot of them. I learned a lot. I met one person who said they had been born with both male and female genitalia. The father made the decision to surgically alter them so they would be female. But the person realized as a child that they actually identified as male. I realized there was a LOT more nuance and complexity to his issue that I had imagined.
Here was the thing about Chip: When he outwardly transitioned to female, it was like a demon had been cast out of him. She was not yet a completely different person physically (no surgery), but emotionally the difference was like night and day. She was liberated and happy. She no longer felt a desire to self-medicate with alcohol.
Gradually, Chip worked up the courage to appear in church as a female. But she was still afraid of how the conservative older lady she sat with (I’ll call her Rose) would react.
Rose accepted this new person, hugged her, and told her she loved her. It was everything Chip dared to hope for.
I have since come to know 2-3 other transgendered people, including one I mentored as a teenager when they were going through confirmation class at church and who I never suspected at the time was struggling with gender identity.
These experiences have necessarily shaped my thinking about how the church should treat transgendered persons.
It’s easy to stick to judgments and legalisms. But I learned from Jesus that the heart of the Law is mercy.
Not once but twice, Jesus quotes Hosea’s verse to the Pharisees: “I desire mercy and not sacrifices.” He tells them to go study what that means. His most familiar parable starts with a discussion about the meaning of the Law. Jesus praises an expert in the Law who says the most important commandments–the keys to inheriting the kingdom of God–are love of God and love of neighbor. At the end, Jesus asks the lawyer which of the three people in the story was a neighbor to the man who was beaten, robbed, and left for dead.
Given what Jesus has said elsewhere, the lawyer’s reply is interesting and instructive: “The one who showed MERCY.”
And you already know what Jesus said after that: “Go and do likewise.”
So I conclude that mercy is the beating heart of the Law. Not legalisms. Not judgment. Not ritual or even church tradition. It’s mercy.
And God help me if I don’t show that to people who are bound and struggling because of their gender identity.
Comment by Tim on October 24, 2024 at 2:25 pm
Amen Wilson
Comment by Dan W on October 25, 2024 at 7:47 am
Responding to Wilson R’s comment.
Modern Science/Medicine cannot change our biological sex. It’s coded in our DNA. A person can only change how they appear to themselves and others. It’s like a costume, and the person pretends to be the opposite sex. Eventually the person realizes it’s all an illusion, and it probably ends tragically. Just my $0.02.
Comment by Rick Plasterer on October 25, 2024 at 8:37 pm
WilsonR,
I would point out Hos. 4:1-2:
1. Listen to the word of the LORD, O sons of Israel, For the LORD has a case against the inhabitants of the land, Because there is no faithfulness or kindness Or knowledge of God in the land.
2 There is swearing, deception, murder, stealing and adultery. They employ violence, so that bloodshed follows bloodshed. (NASB)
This was God’s indictment of Israel. Hos. 6:6 is variously translated as “mercy,” “love,” or “loyalty.” I believe “loyalty” is the best word to use, because God commanded Hosea to marry a prostitute as an illustration of Israel’s faithlessness to God. That God is not primarily concerned to religious ceremony is clear in the Old Testament. Another passage with the same message is I Sam. 15:22, where Samuel rebukes Saul for not utterly annihilating the Amalekites. Saul had instead spared the best of their livestock to sacrifice and the life of the Amalekite king, Agag. For this disobedience, God deposed Saul from the kingship. This idea of the loyalty God requires isn’t at all in line with today’s progressive thinking.
This is why I pointed to Jesus’ vice lists of Matt. 15 and Mk. 7. I maintain that they show that Jesus was not saying the moral law may be bent in the name of “mercy.” The reasonable meaning of Matt. 12:7 is that God desires a pure and humble heart, issuing in good works, not mere external religious observance.
Regarding transgenderism. a moral command repeated in the Bible is truth telling. Deut. 22:5 (couched among many divine commands for merciful action) specifically condemns transvestism as an abomination to God. And the truth is that sex was made by God, and is discerned from physiology, not inner feeling. Determining sex (or gender) by inner feeling means the terms “male” or “female” have no public meaning. They are simply words one chooses for oneself, at the expense of most people in society (especially women and girls) who want sex to have public meaning. It is also at the expense of the many minors who are having their sex destroyed by the current transgender craze. Puberty is a traumatic time for many; the demand for “transitioning” is not surprising. A person who is distressed by their (normal) sexual physiology should accept that it is what God has determined for their life. This is a matter of following Jesus’ precept of walking the narrow path (Matt. 7:14).
Rick
Comment by MikeB on October 26, 2024 at 10:27 am
Wilson,
You made a very telling statement about a demon inside Chip.
Demons are indeed real, they don’t leave unless they are cast out. No demon left Chip, it has Chip right where it wants him, causing as much harm to the followers of God as it can.
Notice who says Amen to you, someone who makes an effort to deceive. So is it with those possessed by demons.
Pornography, pedophilia and trans are closely related, individuals who claim trans status are in dire need of Christ. We are speaking of people who are not mentally well, people who hate themselves so very much that they are literally listening to another spirit in their heads.
If you encourage these spirits, you send them further down the path of sin, abuse, death and hell that all those not in Christ shall go.
They need Christ, they might go to church and behave as you wish, only because the mockery of God’s creation blasphemes the gathering.
They need Christ, who can heal their mental wounds, they need us to tell them that they were perfectly made by a perfect God.
Comment by Rick Plasterer on November 4, 2024 at 12:17 pm
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