Bible Difficulties Archives

6 Ways Christian Students Can Prepare for College: #5 Doubting Your Faith Does Not Make You a Bad Christian

April 18, 2023

I am in the middle of a 6-part series helping Christian students think through how to prepare for life at a big university. This topic is particularly relevant, I hope, given the number of high school seniors who are in the middle of deciding where they will go to college in the fall.

This little series is based on a recent lecture I gave to the Regents School in Austin, Texas, where I laid out 6 principles designed to help rising college students think more clearly about what’s ahead. It’s also based on my book, Surviving Religion 101. You can read the prior installments here, here, here, and here.

We now come to a fifth thing that rising Christian college students need to know: “Doubting your faith does not make you a bad Christian.”

The great nineteenth century Baptist preacher, C.H. Spurgeon, once confessed: “On a sudden, the thought crossed my mind—which I abhorred but could not conquer—that there was no God, no Christ, no heaven, no hell, and that all my prayers were but a farce, and that I might as well have whistled to the winds or spoken to the howling waves.”

The above quote reminds us that nearly all Christians, even those who seem strong and confident, face periods of doubt about what they believe. Indeed, sometimes those doubts can swell up into a crisis of sorts. Even Spurgeon admitted his doubts were difficult to conquer.

So, how do we handle these doubts when they come? Or, how do we help others who admit they are struggling with what they believe? Here are a number of things to consider. [Read more…]

6 Ways that Christian Students Can Prepare for College: #2 You Won’t Have All the Answers

March 6, 2023

Last week I began a new 6-part series helping Christian students think through how to prepare for life at a big university. The series is based on a recent lecture I gave to the Regents School in Austin, Texas, where I laid out 6 principles designed to help rising college students think more clearly about what’s ahead. It’s also based on my book, Surviving Religion 101.

In the first installment my advice was simple: “Take this transition seriously.” Yes, students can be overly skeptical about their future college experience—what I call a “martyr complex”—where they begin to think everyone is out to get them. But the opposite is a danger too. Some students mistakenly shrug their shoulders as if this whole college thing is no big deal when it comes to their spiritual lives.

We now come to my second principle: “You Won’t Have All the Answers.”

As students jump into the intellectual fray at their university, it will quickly become clear that there are many questions they don’t know how to answer. Maybe it will be questions about God (if God is good, then why is there so much evil in the world?), or questions about the Bible (how can you believe in inspiration if there are contradictions in the Gospel accounts?), or even questions about science (hasn’t genetics proven that the human race did not originate with just two people?).

Whatever the question might be, it can be very uncomfortable not having an answer. The intellectual give-and-take of a big university environment can be intimidating. If you get caught on the losing end of an exchange with your professor or classmates (whatever that may mean) you might feel silly or embarrassed. It might make you withdraw from future conversations or even lead you to doubt what you believe.

But should a lack of answers lead to this sort of reaction? Not at all. [Read more…]

Keeping the Faith in College

August 1, 2022

Now that it’s officially August, the “back to school” conversations have begun. For many parents, however, it is not back to school for their kids, but “away” to school. Some parents are sending kids to college—perhaps for the first time.

My family is in exactly that position. My second child, John, heads to college in just a few weeks. My oldest, Emma, already left three years ago. And I know what parents are feeling. They are wondering how their child will survive the intellectual and spiritual challenges of university life.

Indeed, I can still vividly remember my own college experience as a believer on campus. In the fall of 1989, I began my freshman year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Like many freshmen, I was excited for the next chapter in my life, eager to explore the new opportunities and experiences that college had to offer.

Of course, I knew there would be challenges. College life would not be easy, especially for a Christian. But I had grown up in a solid Christian home, was taught the Bible from a young age, and was a faithful member of my church youth group. So I figured I was ready.

I wasn’t.

The problem stemmed not from what I was taught but from what I wasn’t taught. I wasn’t prepared in the one area that would matter most in a university environment. I wasn’t prepared intellectually. And I would soon learn (the hard way) that intellectual preparation was what I needed more than anything.

My lack of preparation reached a head in the spring of my freshman year when I took a religion course titled Introduction to the New Testament. The professor was a young scholar who was bright, engaging, funny, and persuasive. It didn’t take long to see that he lectured with an eye toward evangelicals, even sharing how he was once an evangelical himself not long ago.

And then during his graduate studies, after deep engagement with the text, he realized he could no longer maintain his evangelical beliefs. The New Testament wasn’t inspired after all but was full of mistakes. It wasn’t reliable but was filled with made-up stories and fabrications. And its original form wasn’t even accessible to us but had been badly corrupted by scribes over years of transmission.

That professor’s name was [Read more…]

One of the Most Overlooked Arguments for the Resurrection

April 13, 2022

Well, soon it will be Easter. That wonderful time of the year when we remember (and celebrate) the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

But, not all will be celebrating. There are many that find Easter to be a senseless holiday—apart from, perhaps, the joys of Sunday brunch or chocolate eggs. After all, it is argued, we all know that people don’t rise from the dead. And there are no reasons to think it happened in the case of Jesus of Nazareth.

In response to such skepticism, apologists have been making their best arguments for the resurrection. There’s the empty tomb. There’s the fact that women were the first eyewitnesses which was unlikely to be invented. And there’s the larger appearance to the 500 witnesses.

But, of course, each of these claims has been contested. As for the empty tomb, scholars have argued that standard Roman practice was to put crucified criminals in a common grave, not a private tomb. As for the women as the first witnesses, some have pointed out that women were the ones who typically prepared bodies for burial and so would naturally be the first to visit the tomb. As for the 500 witnesses, maybe those were just “bereavement visions.”

Now, to be clear, I don’t believe all of these rebuttals are cogent. And I think there are good rebuttals to the rebuttals. But, what these typical proofs lack is an overall context that makes them persuasive.

And that brings us to another fact that I think is harder to challenge. It is an often overlooked fact that provides the necessary context for the discussion. That fact is simply this: [Read more…]

Struggling with Doubt? Here are 5 Important Truths to Remember

December 2, 2021

So, how do we handle these doubts when they come? Or, how do we help others who admit they are struggling with what they believe? Here’s a five truths that can perhaps help us be more careful and more compassionate in such situations. [Read more…]