Out of the Driveway, Into the Game: Introduction and Chapter 1

Note: I will be taking a little time off from writing the expository commentaries in order to work on a couple of other writing projects. In the meantime, I will post some other articles that I have not previously posted online. Hopefully, sometime in early January, we will return to the New Testament commentaries with the book of Ephesians.

Introduction – Out of the Driveway, Into the Game
Crash and burn; you’ll rarely see that phrase used in a positive manner in our society. No decent person likes to watch someone else crash and burn, especially a kid. Yet, I found myself in a position for eight years where I had to do just that. I knew it was coming every year and it was never pleasant. Nor did I ever really get used to it or hardened by it.

So, what was the position? It was that of a high school basketball coach at an inner city high school. Every year in the early fall, we began the process of forming that season’s basketball team. This was always a time of big dreams, high expectations, and big talk. Usually the biggest talk came from the new young players or the new kids who had transferred to our school.

As the process began, we would spend two weeks trying to get the kids to quit. We would run them more than most of them had ever run in their life. It was always fun to watch the returning players as they observed the code of silence on the first day of conditioning. They refused to tell the new players what we were about to do, but you could see the twinkle in their eyes. They knew what these new young bucks were in for. We took them to a very high and steep hill and had them run up and down the hill twenty-five times, and that was just on the first day. It got worse as the conditioning period went along. Some quit, most didn’t. Most of these new players were buoyed by the belief that they would be the next big star of the team.

Once the actual tryout and practice period began, shooting, dribbling and defensive drills were the order of the day. For a solid week we would run certain drills looking for good form and the hard workers. This is where an interesting phenomenon developed almost every single year. There were always several new players who would begin to shine during this time, but quite often, one of those players would look especially good. I am drawn to think of one year in particular and a player that we will call Nazir.

Nazir was a kid who spent his early years living in a very rough environment in the inner-city, passed from family member to family member. He had also spent time in foster care. The one person he had spent very little time with was his mother, and he didn’t even know his father. Then, at the age of ten, he moved to much nicer and quiet neighborhood with his grandmother. He began to struggle academically in his suburban schools and he missed the inner-city. He had lost any street credibility and wanted to get it back. So, he convinced his grandmother to send him to our school. Once here, he was going to be the next great player at our school.

As the drills began, Nazir looked incredible. His form was flawless, his concentration was impeccable. He was determined too. During conditioning, one of his shoes broke but rather than quitting, he took both shoes off and actually ran the hill another ten or twelve times in his socks. As the week wore on we were extremely impressed by this kid. When we began to participate in light scrimmage-like drills he looked even more impressive. He learned the offense quickly and could shoot like a budding star that he was sure he was. Even the older players were impressed and began to accept him as one of their own, which was very unusual that early in the process of forming a team.

At the end of practice on the second day of the week I told the team that the next day we would be having our first full-speed scrimmage. After practice, Nazir was extremely excited. This would be his chance to finally show off his entire game. It would be his time. We had a brief conversation, however, that began to deflate the balloon of high hopes that I was inflating about him. I asked him where he had played ball before this. He informed me that he had never really played in a league before this. There are no middle school sports in our town so that is not that unusual. What was unusual, though, was when I asked him what park he played at. He told me that his grandmother had not wanted him to go to any parks, especially not back in the inner-city. “Well, where did you play,” I asked him. This is when the vase fell off the shelf. He informed me that he had learned to play by shooting in his driveway. He spent hours every day shooting and dribbling next to his house, in the driveway, by himself. At those words, I wished him luck the next day, but in my heart I knew what was coming: crash and burn.

The scrimmage began and it went exactly as I had feared it would for Nazir. One of our senior guards, who wasn’t quite ready to step aside for this new, young, hotshot, arranged it so he could guard Nazir in the scrimmage. Everyone on Nazir’s team was confident, knowing how good he was. They knew all they had to do was get him the ball and he would carry them to victory. On the first play on his end, Nazir ran the offensive play beautifully, caught the ball and sent up a shot. This shot was different from his many other shots during the first week-and-a-half of practice. Rather than the perfect, eye-catching masterpieces he had been launching, this shot looked more like an injured Canadian goose trying desperately to keep up with the other birds. The shot didn’t even hit the rim; it unceremoniously banged off the bottom corner of the backboard. The senior defender smiled because he now knew what I had feared. Nazir was a driveway player.

The remainder of the practice season went for Nazir as it does for most of the players of this sort. He continued to fail in scrimmages and his confidence plummeted, despite our best efforts to encourage him. We put him on the team, hoping that his great potential might be realized at some point, but he never recovered. He limped through the season without ever making a contribution to the team and quit the team over the summer.

Nazir discovered what so many other hopeful young men had. Shooting in a driveway or a gym all by themselves is of some value, but it is of almost no value if they never learn how to play in real situations. Hitting a shot is one thing. Hitting it when you’re tired, sweaty, and have a determined defender hanging all over you is quite another thing. Nazir was completely ineffective when the real heat came. He looked great in the driveway, but he simply could not handle what a seasoned, gritty defender was going to do to him. It interrupted his flow, broke his concentration, and stifled everything he wanted to do. He simply didn’t know how to respond. Players that looked far inferior to Nazir passed him by in his scrimmages because they were calm and collected under the fire of a real game. Anyone can make basket after basket when they are by themselves in a driveway (My sincerest apologies to those who have tried and cannot yet master the fine art of putting the ball in the hoop), not everyone can do it when the pressure is on and the opponent is attacking.

So, what is the point of all of this? Simply this: this same phenomenon happens to teenagers every day on a spiritual level. There is a disturbing phenomenon that is far too common in the Christian world. Teenagers who were raised in a Christian home and seemingly begin to walk with Christ as His disciple, crash and burn right before the very eyes of their parents, youth workers, and spiritual family. How could this happen? Why does this happen so often? Kids who seem so spiritually mature and sound crash and burn during the test of the high school years and by college have completely walked away from their faith in Christ.

Is this just a normal phase of growing up or is this a problem that can be fixed? I am convinced that this all-too-common phenomenon is not just part of being a teen. It is a result of a well-thought-out plan of attack by Satan. Satan is a formidable adversary, yet he has already been defeated Christ. Anything Satan can throw at us, no matter how fierce it may be, can be overcome by following biblical principles.

What happened to Nazir is very similar to what far too many parents have done unwittingly to their children in the spiritual realm. We have not prepared them fully for what they will face in the world, yet we send them out there anyway. We have given them a false sense of security, mostly because we have a false sense of their security.

“Wait”, you might say. “That is not so. Most Christian parents in the churches of Christ do train their children according to wonderful biblical principles.” Whether that is entirely true or not is not to be considered in this book. Many parents are doing their very best to raise Christian children; children who love and obey God. Their kids can pray, they can rattle off memory scriptures, they sing with all their might, they hug fellow Christians, they volunteer their time, and they are the complete “disciple in training.” The problem is that they are shooting in the driveway. They are learning the art of Christianity in the safety of our churches and homes without the duress of the real world.

Parents are not aware that everyday their children walk out of our homes they are under attack. They are under siege on the way to school, at school, on the way home, while watching TV, while listening to the radio, while talking to their friends, just about everywhere. The world has declared war on our children. More accurately, Satan has declared war on our children and has enlisted the world as his minions.

What surprises most parents is not where the attack comes but from whom it comes. It would not shock many parents if I told them that one of the most dangerous spiritual environments for their children is at school. Most parents know all too well the dangers of peer pressure and bad influences. This is not, however the most dangerous aspect of a public education. The most dangerous spiritual aspect of a public education is the education itself.

Our kids are under a very intentional and specific attack that is aimed at their minds. Right under our noses, our Christian children are being sent to school and taught to think differently and view the world through anything but biblical lenses.

They are being taught that the idea of a creator God is an unnecessary and unscientific view that is little different from believing that the world rests on the back of a giant turtle. It is the same type of people, they are told, that believe in a Creator that once believed in things like the flat earth. Instead they are told that we are all here quite by accident. The blind forces of evolution are the real cause of life on earth. What one believes about the origins of the universe has an inestimable impact on the way one views the world.

With the belief that life is a mere accident, comes the moral relativity that is so common to the worldviews of secular humanism and post-modernism. I know of no Christian parents who would pack their kids a lunch and send them off to a Muslim or Mormon school everyday. If they were somehow in a situation where there was no other choice, they would be sure to do a great deal of work to discover what they were being taught. They would prepare them for it and do a great deal of teaching to counteract the worldview and beliefs that their children were being fed at school. What these same evangelical Christian parents don’t realize, however, is that they are, in fact, sending their children to schools that hold a religious view other than their own. Most public schools in America are firmly rooted in the religious worldview of secular humanism, post-modern secular humanism to be more exact.

Just as there are different aspects of Christianity such as Catholic, liberal mainline, evangelical, protestant, etc., so there are different aspects of secular humanism. The public schools in the United States of America have become temples of post-modern secular humanism.

The problem, however, is not so much the worldview taught in the schools. It is the fact that parents are largely unaware of this worldview training that their kids receive and so they leave them unprepared. The kids are taught a version of Christianity that will fail them in the face of the enemy that they are facing. Just as a basketball team must prepare specifically for the opponent that they are facing, Christian parents must prepare their kids for the test that lies before them.

Rather than preparing them for a world in which the real war is one of worldviews and the battlefield is in the mind, they are being spiritually trained in a way that will not properly prepare them for the real menace.

We, as a Christian community, are simply not preparing our kids for the pressure that the world will put on them. The world will tell them that everything they have grown up to believe is wrong. Sometimes this message will be obvious. All too often it is much more subtle and sinister. We are teaching them to be Christians, yes. But we are not doing so well when it comes to teaching them to be defenders of the faith.

The symptoms of this deficiency are clear. I see them in pre-teen, teen, and even campus ministries everywhere. The parents jump through all the hoops to ensure that their child will grow up to love God and be a disciple of Jesus. They pray without ceasing that their kids will not have to go through what they went through as non-Christian adults. And in fact it appears to work. Their kids sail through their childhood years. They are wonderful, respectful, God-fearing children. Then they hit the pre-teen years and cracks begin to appear. The parents see signs of disrespect, of poor attitudes, and even indifference. The parents shake it off telling themselves that these are just the normal struggles of a pre-teen.

The young teen years get a little tougher. Our kids are beginning to really exercise their autonomy. They have not yet chosen to be Christians, but that is okay we tell ourselves, because we don’t want to rush them. They will make that choice when they’re ready. (Or there are the ones that do become Christians at this age and slowly begin to exhibit these same symptoms. Usually this group shows the same symptoms a little further down the road.) The parents now begin to see signs of what we hope are merely growing up; their sense of clothing and style changes. They want to listen to different music. They begin to develop more friendships outside of church. That’s okay, the parents whisper to themselves, because at least they bring their friends to church.

By their teen years, the wheels have fallen off. The child is suddenly about to graduate from high school and they seemingly have no intentions of living a life for Christ. It’s not that they are bad kids, quite the contrary. They might be rebellious and the like but often they get along with their parents as well as any teen that is still committed to a life in Christ ever did. With each passing day, though, they become more worldly. You can see it in their clothes, music, friends, and attitude. The parents are in a complete quandary. How could this have happened? The parents taught their kids to fear God, to obey his commandments. How could they disrespect God like this?

I have also seen kids who sail through the pre-teen and teen years. They are incredible kids who love God with all of their heart. They show themselves to be leaders in their youth group and are great all-around role models. For many in this group the problems don’t begin to appear until they are in college. They go off to the university with God in their heart, but things quickly change while they are there. They face challenges in college from friends and professors for which they were not ready. Often these are intellectual challenges to their belief system that they are not prepared to handle.

While parents are diligently training their most precious gifts from God to be His servants, the world is working without ceasing. They are evangelizing our children into their own religion. Their evangelists work around the clock. They are relentless. They use an unbelievable potpourri of methods and techniques and they are everywhere.

What has happened? Our kids have been literally brainwashed to view the world and everything in it in a different way than the view prescribed by the Bible. They have been taught to think differently and so, everything we think we are teaching them at home is actually being processed in a much different way than we might hope. It has happened on our watch and we never really saw it coming.

The fact is way too many of our kids are walking away from the faith of their parents. Something is broken and we need to have courage to admit that and look for the solution.

If you are reading this right now as a parent and say to yourself, “this doesn’t sound like my child at all.” I would respond and say, “Great, I hope it never does describe your kid.” I would, however, remind you of a couple of things. Just because your child is not currently going through difficulties like these does not mean that they won’t in the future. I would also challenge you to look around. Maybe your child will never go through a time of walking away from the faith, but many kids are, and we are all in this together. We have to work together as a Christian community to help all of us and all of our children get to heaven.

I don’t know if you have ever noticed this but there are 27 books in the New Testament. You have your gospels of course: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Then you have the history of the development of the church recorded in the book of Acts. Those are pretty good books. In those first five books you have most of the information about the life of Jesus and the formation of His church. The last two verses of the book of Matthew, (28:19-20) are a command from Jesus to make disciples of the remaining population of the world. In other words, to help them get saved. Those words pretty much sum it up. My question is this. If we have the account of Jesus and the early church and it includes all the information necessary to know what our mission is after we have been saved, then why do we need the rest of the New Testament?

There are another whole 22 books. Some of them are encouraging like Philippians and Galatians, some of them are pretty heavy reading like Romans and Hebrews. Then we finish off with the mildly frightening book of Jude and the enigmatic Revelation. All 22 are definitely in the Bible, though. I have looked in several different editions and versions. But why are they there? If our goal on this earth is to get saved, become a disciple of Jesus and make more disciples, then are those 22 books really necessary?

Well, of course they are necessary, I have yet to meet a person who would argue that they are not. I do have to admit, however, that I have never met Martin Luther or Thomas Jefferson, both of whom seemed to think that a few of those books were unnecessary. Most people, though, see them as every bit as important as the first five books.

This is the conclusion to which I have come. Those books are there to teach us how to live our lives the way a true disciple should. They are preparing us to spend eternity with a holy God. In short, those books are teaching us to think like Jesus thought; to see the world through God’s eyes. Paul spends a large portion of his writings in entreating his readers to transform their minds and think about the world differently from everyone else around them. In a word this is called worldview.

Worldview is that strange little world that most of don’t even consider as we walk through the remainder of our lives. A few of us bandy it about from time to time but take very little time to ponder. Virtually none of us take the time to meditate on it and truly develop a well thought out, comprehensive worldview that is consistent with the Bible. Of the few that have taken the time and effort to do that, even fewer have a comprehensive plan of instilling a practical, effective, and thoroughly biblical worldview in our children.

Developing a truly Biblical worldview is a tricky concept. It is not something you study out for a few days or maybe a week, make a list, and then begin to master the concept of seeing the world as God sees it. No one this side of Jesus has ever maintained a thoroughly Biblical worldview. (And he did it without the New Testament; that’s impressive.)

It is my opinion that the concept of developing and living out an authentic, pervasive, Biblical worldview has been something that is very lacking in our current church culture. The life of a disciple goes well beyond the point of justification. In fact, everything that we do following our baptism should be centered on building a biblical worldview.

If we, as adults, have not focused enough on having a biblical worldview, then it only stands to reason that our children do not have a very solid one either. The thing that we must realize is that everyone has a worldview that determines how they act. What you believe determines how you act. If we are not intentionally training our children how to think biblically and instilling a thoroughly biblical worldview in them, they will still develop a worldview. From where they get this worldview and on what precepts it is built is a whole other issue.

I believe that addressing this situation with our children could be a very important key in assisting our young people to come to become baptized disciples in the churches of Christ, and just as importantly, to stay faithful. Too many of our children are floundering right now. They have never come to Christ or they have and have walked away from their faith. This is a sad situation, one that simply cannot be ignored. Nor is it a situation that we can afford to address incorrectly any longer.

I have talked to so many parents who are absolutely clueless as to what has gone wrong. They have tried everything within their power and still their children are not living the life of a committed disciple. For many kids, I believe that the answer is training them in a Biblical worldview from their earliest years. This is the topic of this book.

Keep in my mind as you read this book, I am not saying that the information presented is the only way to do it or the only thing that Christian parents need to do. This is intended to be a supplement to the wonderful things that most Christian parents are already doing. A hole in a screen, however, can let in a whole lot of bugs. You do not need a whole new screen most of the time, though; you just need to patch the hole. View this book as just that – a patch. I believe that most parents in our fellowship are doing a very good job raising their children. If that is forgotten as you read, the tone of this book might seem condemning and condescending, which it is not intended at all to be. You may have a wonderful front door, but if there is a hole in the screen, it needs fixing. To talk about how wonderful the door is will not fix the hole in the screen. Neither is being truthful about the tear and the need to fix in any way condemning the worth of the door. So pointing out the need for a patch in the screen of our collective parenting is not a broad condemnation of us as a fellowship.

Let me also warn you that this book is not an exhaustive resource on developing a Christian worldview. Nor will it serve as a curriculum for training children to have a Christian worldview. I would not even call this book a handbook to helping kids develop a Biblical worldview. Think of this book as a primer. It is really an introduction to the concept of worldview for the parents and youth workers of our particular tradition in the churches of Christ. It is to get us thinking and maybe start a few discussions.

I also realize that the ideas presented here will not apply to all kids in every situation. I firmly believe, though, that if discussed, developed, and applied, the ideas in this book will help many families, youth groups, and churches.










Chapter 1 – From Goo-to-Zoo-to You?
At the tiny Rhea County Courthouse in Dayton, Tennessee on July 25th, 1925, the United States of America changed drastically. What took place in that courtroom did not seem like such a major event at the time but the happenings during the summer of ’25 have left a lasting legacy on American education, culture, and society. The event that had such a profound impact on American culture and society was nothing other than the trial of John Scopes for the crime of teaching evolution in the classroom. This case is more commonly come to be known as the Scopes monkey trial.

In March 1925, the state of Tennessee passed the Butler Act which made it illegal to teach the theory of evolution in public schools. According to the law it was “unlawful for any teacher in any of the … public schools of the state … to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” Almost immediately, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) jumped into action. Their goal was to find a test case that they could argue in court in order to challenge this law. In fact, they began to advertise in papers around the country, looking for teachers who would be willing to take part in a challenge of this law. George Rappleyea, a resident of Dayton, Tennessee, saw one of their ads and quickly hatched a plan. His idea was to find a teacher in Dayton to take up the case in order to draw publicity to the tiny and struggling town. He believed that the trial would attract media attention which would eventually translate into new businesses and industries coming to Dayton.

A meeting of town leaders was held in a local café, and it was quickly determined that Rappleyea was on to something. After a bit of searching, the town leaders came upon a young physical education teacher and coach named John Scopes. Scopes, in fact, was not a biology teacher. He had substitute taught in a biology class for the last few weeks of the school year, and had apparently never taught any evolution at all. It was determined, however, that while preparing for class he may have used a textbook which did contain evolutionary ideas in it. With that as the basis for the case, the town leaders, with the blessing and cooperation of Scopes, filed charges against him for the crime of teaching evolution, and the Scopes trial began.

Assisting the prosecution would be former presidential candidate and professing Christian, William Jennings Bryan. Leading the defense was the famous defense lawyer, Clarence Darrow. The town turned the events around the trial into more of a carnival-type atmosphere than an actual trial in a court of law.

The case should have been a simple matter of whether or not Scopes had taught evolution. Darrow, however, had different plans. He brought in a litany of scientists and theologians to argue the case for evolution. Darrow had no actual interest in defending Scopes; it was already accepted that he would be found guilty. Darrow and his ACLU backers would, instead, put the very idea of a Creator God on trial. Their argument was that evolution was true and the law itself should be struck down. They knew ultimately, that the real battle was being fought in the hearts and minds of Americans listening to the trial on the radio and following it in the newspapers. The outcome of the case in this particular courtroom was incidental.

Darrow’s so-called expert witnesses hammered away at the concept of a creator, as they argued for the veracity of the theory of evolution. Darrow then, in a brilliant move, called Bryan to the stand as an expert witness on the Bible. Bryan, who was no fundamentalist, was hammered with questions of apparent contradictions and scientific inaccuracies in the Bible. Thousands of Americans listened as Darrow ripped holes in Bryan’s biblical credibility. He asked questions that Bryan couldn’t answer, such as “where did Cain get his wife”. While Bryan stumbled on questions that any modern apologist could answer in their sleep, the minds of Americans were turning.

Bryan’s plan was to turn the tables on Darrow and call him to the stand so that he could be grilled on the problems of the evolutionary theory. Before he could do that, and before any experts could be called to refute the testimony of the evolutionary experts, Darrow had Scopes plead guilty, which ended the trial. Scopes was fined $100. This was later overturned on the technicality that the judge had passed down the fine amount rather than being set by the jury.

On the 75th anniversary of the Scopes trial, Doug Linder, a professor of law the University of Missouri, stated in an interview on CNN, “The trial probably had its greatest effect in the success of Darrow in turning the trial into a national biology lesson through the prepared statements of scientific experts, which were distributed to the press, and he succeeded in reversing momentum toward bans on teaching evolution.”

It should be noted that nearly every argument used in Darrow’s biology lesson to the nation has been discredited as inaccurate or untrue and has since been thrown out by evolutionists themselves. The message from the many theologians called by Darrow was that the Bible was merely a human work of religious beliefs. It was the scientists, they said, that would provide the facts about the past. Many of the theologians of the day refused to accept the Word of God as their ultimate authority, and instead accepted the word of the scientists of their day as their ultimate authority.

The damage had been done on two fronts. In the mind of many Americans, evolution was now accepted as fact. The focus of science education quickly changed from a discovery of God’s creation to a search for proof of evolution. Over the course of the next generation, evolution became the teaching norm in schools and creation was pushed out.

The second outfall from the trial was in the damage that was done to the mind of evangelical Christians. Embarrassed by the happenings at the trial and shaken in their ability to answer the questions of the world and the criticisms of the Bible, the conservative Christian community as a whole slipped quietly into the background. Without a fight the arenas of science and education were turned over to the secular evolutionists. Christians quietly exited stage left in the marketplace of ideas and retreated into the safe confines of the church building. It would not be until the late 1960’s that Christians would once again begin to stir and take up the issue of science and the Bible. Even then it would be another twenty years after that before the issue of evolution would be seriously challenged by the Bible-believing community.

Does it really matter whether creation or evolution is taught in schools? Apparently it does matter. Following the Scopes trial, it took a generation or so for evolution to make its way into the textbooks and schools. By the 1960’s evolutionists had taken root in nearly every university and high school science room. Since that time, American has descended into a downward spiral of moral values. We have experienced moral decay and decline like no other time in American history. If children are taught for long enough that they are merely animals, here by chance, it won’t be too long before they begin acting that way. Sex is natural, violence is caused by genetic predisposition, and all standards are relative according to the worldview of the evolutionist. Ideas matter. What we believe determines how we will act.

The issue of creation and evolution is so vital that it cannot be overlooked. We can no longer afford to follow the example of the Christian movement of the 1920’s, 1930’s, 1940’s, and 1950’s and be content to teach our children Bible stories while ignoring the issue of creation except for the occasional reference to the fact that God created everything. These Christians who abandoned science and left it to the world, somehow, assumed that you could separate the Bible from other areas of knowledge and learning. Secular Humanists were quick to capitalize on this. They realized that if you train entire generations into believing evolution and discounting creation, then those generations would eventually reject the Bible as relevant to the real world. If the science of the Bible is not accurate, then why bother reading, let alone believing, the rest of it? Let’s be very clear on that. If the book of Genesis is wrong, and God did not create the universe as the book claims, then there is little point in bothering with the rest of the book. Many kids have already figured that out, while far too many adults are walking around diminishing the importance of the belief in the Genesis creation story.

It is not enough to occasionally reference God as the creator. Charles Potter, a leader in the Humanist movement and devout evolutionist said, “What can theistic Sunday Schools, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching?”1 We will not be able to compete with the constant influx of evolution and evolution influenced ideologies unless we properly arm our children.

The belief in evolution allows people to discard God and develop their own theology. Evolution is not good science; it is a Gnostic myth. Yet, Humanists have managed to slowly change our cultural beliefs because they have eroded public belief in our Godly origins, all the while passing evolution off as good science. Unless we rebuild this foundation, we will have a hard time convincing anyone, including our own children, to listen to the Bible.

I have met many teens that simply did not want to listen to anything to do with the Bible because it was not relevant in their eyes. As one put it, “I believe in evolution, so I don’t have to believe in God. And I don’t need anyone telling me to live my life in a certain way because that’s the way God said to do it.”

It may be necessary to first answer questions for people about this subject of creation and evolution before a serious presentation of God’s law and the gospel can take place. Most parents and youth workers don’t see this as an important issue at all. In an informal survey of area youth ministers, not one had ever addressed the issue of creation with their group. What is frightening is that in an unscientific survey given to fifty area Christian teens, 80% of them answered that they weren’t sure if God had created the universe or not. Of that 80%, nearly 90% stated that this affected how they viewed God and responded to the message of the Bible. Unfortunately, parents and youth workers are often out of touch with this reality.

One youth minister recently told me, “All that matters is Christ, crucified. It’s a matter of the heart and how people respond to the gospel. It makes no difference in what they believe about creation. It all has to do with their heart to obey the Word of God.” This opinion, however, is completely out of touch with reality. If people don’t believe in the existence of a creator, they will have no time for His supposed Word. If Genesis is myth, so is the rest of the Bible. You cannot take the first eleven chapters out of the Bible and still have a book worth reading, believing, or following.

If a teenager believes in creation, he believes in God, moral truth, etc. He will be open to the message of God’s law and the gospel. The message of the cross will be a mere stumbling block. (I Corinthians 1:23) A teenager who believes in evolution will reject God, moral absolutes, etc. He will not be open to the message of God’s law and the gospel. The message of the cross will be complete foolishness. (I Corinthians 1:23) Do we want our children to believe that we came from God or from a goo-to-zoo-to-you evolutionary process?

Most of the ideas presented later in this book in helping teens to come to a biblical worldview will not be effective if they do not have a good grip on this subject. It is very dangerous, however, to assume that because your child is 14 and believes in creation that he will always stay that way. The hardcore attacks are yet to come. When my older son was just five years old I began teaching him about creation and evolution. I have prepared him for what he will be taught. I want him to be able to reject poor information and recognize it when it is being presented to him. This is a process that will continue until he becomes an adult.

Evolution did not rise out of good science. It came about as an excuse to explain away God. The evidence for evolution is virtually non-existent, yet the theory persists. It is outside of the scope of this book to completely examine this topic. I will, however, attempt to give parents a few building blocks on which to start. Below, you will find three devastating objections to evolution, which they have failed to answer in any convincing manner. After reading this it is easy to see that rather than being fact, evolution is a theory in trouble. The very mechanisms that are necessary for evolution to take place simply do not and cannot exist.



Irreducible Complexity

Irreducible complexity is a big term. It has been developed by Lehigh University professor of biochemistry, Michael Behe, in his book Darwin’s Black Box. To put it as simply as possible, irreducible complexity means that something cannot get any simpler than it is and still work. Behe’s classic example is that of a mousetrap. A mousetrap, he argues, cannot be put together a piece at a time and still work. You either have the whole thing working together as one unit or you have a bunch of spare parts that do nothing. You cannot take a piece of wood and catch a few mice, add a spring and get a few more, add a metal bar and get even more, continuing to add on with each addition making the device more effective. To even get one mouse, you must have the entire contraption. It does not work until all of its parts are present and working together.

Every year the high school at which I taught competed in the national Rube Goldberg competition. It is a science contest in which teams must build a contraption that contains at least twenty steps. Each year the teams are given a task to complete and then they begin to build their machines. A few years ago the task was to build a machine that would select and peel an apple. Our school built a pretty cool machine that had over twenty steps and sure enough at the end, it selected and peeled an apple. It was actually pretty amazing to watch.

I went to the competition that year and watched all of the machines compete against one another. They were all very creative and extremely different from one another. There was one thing, though, that they all had in common. If you took out any one of the steps from any of those machines, the whole thing became worthless. They were beautiful, working examples of irreducible complexity.

Darwin’s theory of evolution runs counter to this idea. Natural selection works slowly as new features and organs slowly develop over millions of years. These changes eventually add up and a new type of organism is manufactured. When applied to the real world, however, this slow change theory just does not add up.

Francis Schaeffer developed an example of this that is pretty easy to understand. Imagine that a fish were to evolve lungs. That would be an amazing feat all by itself, but then what? Is this an advantage for the fish? Absolutely not, the fish would drown immediately.

There is no evidence that living things can be thrown together piece by piece. They are incredibly complex systems with parts that are interrelated. The only way a fish could develop into a land animal is to do it all at once. Slow development would simply not work. If a fish did develop lungs, (admittedly this is a simplistic example, but it still makes the point quite well) natural selection would immediately ferret out that characteristic as inferior.

Darwin, himself, addressed this problem, saying, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight, modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”2 Well, I hate to tell you this Uncle Charlie, but . . .

Charles Colson in How Now Shall We Live gives another example of this in the form of a bat.



Evolutionists propose that the bat evolved from a small, mouse like creature whose forelimbs (the ‘front toes’) developed into wings by gradual steps. But picture the steps: As the “front toes” grow longer and the skin begins to grow between them, the animal can no longer run without stumbling over them; and yet the forelimbs are not long enough to function as wings. And so, during most of its hypothetical transitional stages, the poor creature would have limbs too long for running and too short for flying. It would flop along helplessly and soon become extinct. There is no conceivable pathway for bat wings to be formed in gradual stages. And the fossil record confirms this conclusion, where we find no transitional fossils leading up to bats. The first time bats appear in the fossil record, they are already fully formed and virtually identical to modern bats.3



Another example of irreducible complexity is the eye. An eye is useless unless the entire structure is fully formed. Even the slightest of changes to the structure of the eye destroys it as a functional device. Even Darwin admitted that he could not explain the formation of the eye.

Behe explains, “Evolution can’t produce an irreducibly complex biological machine suddenly, all at once, because it’s much too complicated. The odds against it would be prohibitive. And you can’t produce it directly by numerous, successive, slight, modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor system would be missing a part and consequently couldn’t function. There would be no reason for it to exist. And natural selection chooses systems that are already working.”4 Behe goes on to say that, “The only force known to be able to make irreducibly complex machines is intelligent design. [God] So scientists are in the curious position of ignoring something they know to be capable of explaining what they see in biology, in favor of phantom or totally unproven explanations. Why ignore intelligent design when it’s a good match to the data?”5

There are many more examples of irreducible complexity. In fact, they are seemingly endless. For example, blood clotting, cilium, bacterial flagellum, knee joints, the intra-cellular transport system; the list goes on and on.

Michael Denton confirms this saying:



And as far as the individual defining characteristics are concerned, one could continue citing almost ad infinitum complex defining characteristics of particular classes or organisms which are without analogy or precedent in any other part of the living kingdom and are not led up to in any way through a series of transitional structures. Such a list would include structures as diverse as the vertebral column of vertebrates, the jumping apparatus of the click beetle, . . . the wing of a bat, . . . the neck of the giraffe, the male reproductive organs of the dragonfly, and so on until one had practically named every significant characteristic of every living thing on earth. 6



Scientist Allan Sandage sums up the point when he says:



The world is too complicated in all its parts and interconnections to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together. Each part of a living thing depends on all its other parts to function. How does each part know? How is each part specified at conception? The more one learns of biochemistry the more unbelievable it becomes . . . 7



Information Theory

One of the more amazing and mysterious things in our universe is when a message gets sent. Imagine a scene in which Jim and Nicole are sitting next to each other at a baseball game. Jim has decided that he wants to ask Nicole to marry him. He whispers a message to his friend Pete sitting on his other side. The message has begun as spoken words which is really just a series of air compressions. Pete then writes it down in paper with ink so that he does not forget it. Pete goes to a more discreet location and sends a text message over his phone to his friend Bill who works at the stadium. Bill then faxes it to Sandra who runs the scoreboard. The phone and the fax machine have transferred the message through a pattern of electrical impulses. Sandra types the message into the scoreboard. Nicole looks up and reads the message on the scoreboard which reads, “Nicole, will you marry me, love Jim?” This is the exact message that was intended for her. Fans around the country also see the message while watching the game on TV. Nothing physical (not one atom or molecule of substance) has been transmitted or has traveled from the stadium to fans around the country, yet it is clear that something traveled all that way.

So, what is it that traveled all that way? The answer is information. Information is not a material thing; no matter was transferred. Yet it seems to need matter to carry it on its journey. The matter on which information travels can change without the information changing one bit.

Evolutionists argue that life is nothing more than matter obeying the laws of physics and chemistry. Information, however, is the thing that differentiates life from dead matter. Quite frankly, evolutionists have no answer for the problem of explaining information. Life is more than just physics and chemistry; all living things carry unbelievable amounts of information. Evolutionists cannot explain where all of this information comes from.

Dead matter does not write information, only minds do. Imagine a pen and paper writing a message without a mind directing it. My younger son’s alphabet blocks do not constitute information until they are put into a specific sequence. That’s an important concept to understand. A string of letters next to each other is not information. Only when the letters are arranged in such a way that they are organized and actually mean something to the person or thing decoding it is it actually information. A mind is an essential component to deriving information.

The information for life is carried on a molecule called DNA. DNA is the matter that information rides on. It directs information from one generation to the next and ensures that you will have human children rather than a wombat. DNA is similar to a couple of long ropes or strings of beads tightly wound inside the center of every cell in your body. It carries the programs of life. It houses the information which is transmitted from one generation to the next.

DNA is a dead molecule, it is not living. It can’t copy itself – it takes a living cell to copy the DNA molecule. DNA is not the information; it is the “paper” on which the information is written. Just as my son’s alphabet blocks are not information until a mind from the outside orders them into a message; unless DNA is aligned in the proper sequence, no useable message will be available, even though it is still DNA.

My older son used to attend a French Immersion school. For the life of me, I could not read his homework. It made no sense to me at all. The work made perfect sense to him and to my wife who could read French, but it was not information to me because I could not decipher it. To read a message, you must have a pre-existing language code or convention, as well as the ability to translate it. This language and the ability to translate it, exists in the cell. Cells do not arise by themselves from raw material anymore than a pile of spare parts would arrange themselves into a functioning automobile. If you throw raw ingredients for life together, nothing will happen without organized information. Information has never been observed to come about by unaided, raw matter with a healthy dose of time and chance thrown in. It simply does not happen.

When living things reproduce, they transfer information to the next generation. This information which is hitching a ride on the DNA is the information which tells the machinery of the cell how to construct the new living organism from the raw materials.

The storage capacity of DNA is about a million, million times more efficient than a videotape. The DNA code stores enough information to fill up 100 complete 30 volume encyclopedia sets. And this is probably a conservative estimate. Even more amazing is the fact that all the information required to specify the exact make-up of every unique human being on Earth could be stored in a volume of DNA no bigger than a couple of aspirin tablets. If unraveled and stretched out, the DNA from one single cell in your body would be over two yards in length. Take into account that there are 75 to 100 trillion cells in the body. If the DNA of one human was stretched out end to end it would span the distance of around 94 billion miles or enough to go around the equator of the earth, three-and-a-half million times.

To make a long story short, information is an amazing thing that comes straight from the mind of God. Try as they might, evolutionist have no credible theory to answer the mystery of information.



Anthropic Principle

The word Anthropic comes from the Greek word for man. The Anthropic Principle simply states that the various systems of the universe are so precise that it is ridiculous to assume that they got that way by chance. The universe is simply too complex and too perfectly designed for life. It becomes little more than nonsense to claim that it does not have a designer.

Author Robin Collins, PHD, gives an example of the Anthropic Principle:

I like to use the analogy of astronauts landing on Mars and finding an enclosed biosphere, sort of like the domed structure that was built in Arizona a few years ago. At the control panel they find that all the dials for its environment are set just right for life. The oxygen ratio is perfect; the temperature is seventy degrees; the humidity is fifty percent; there’s a system for replenishing the air; there are systems for producing food, generating energy, and disposing of wastes. Each dial has a huge range of possible settings, and you can see if you were to adjust one or more of them just a little bit, the environment would go out of whack and life would be impossible. What conclusion would you draw from that?8



The obvious conclusion is that someone of great intelligence carefully designed it and built it. Collins goes on to say that “Over the past thirty years or so, scientists have discovered that just about everything about the basic structure of the universe is balanced on a razor’s edge for life to exist . . . The dials are set too precisely to have been a random incident.”9

Another example of the Anthropic Principle is the structure of the atom. Everything in the universe is made up of atoms. Inside of the atom, the neutron is just slightly larger than the proton, which means that free neutrons decay and turn into protons. If the proton was larger and had a tendency to decay, the entire structure of the universe would be impossible. A free proton is simply a hydrogen atom. If free protons were likely to decay, then everything made of hydrogen would decay. The sun, which is composed of hydrogen, would melt away. Water could not exist. In fact the universe itself, which is over 70 percent hydrogen, could not exist. There is no known reason for the neutron to be larger than the proton. It simply is that way.

According to Colson, “It turns out that the slightest tinkering with the values of the fundamental forces of physics – gravity, electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces – would have resulted in a universe where life was utterly impossible. The Anthropic Principle states that in our universe, all these seemingly arbitrary and unrelated values in physics have one strange thing in common: They are precisely the values needed to get a universe capable of supporting life.”10

Collins gives another example of the Anthropic Principle that has to do with gravity:

Imagine a ruler, or one of those old-fashioned linear radio dials, that goes all the way across the universe. It would be broken down into one-inch increments, which means there would be billions upon billions upon billions of inches. The entire dial represents the range of force strengths in nature, with gravity being the weakest force and the strong nuclear force that binds protons and neutrons together in the nuclei being the strongest, a whopping ten thousand billion billion billion billion times stronger than gravity. The range of possible settings for the force of gravity can plausibly be taken to be at least as large as the total range of force strengths. Now, let’s imagine that you want to move the dial from where it’s currently set. Even if you were to move it by only one inch, the impact on life in the universe would be catastrophic. That small adjustment of the dial would increase gravity by a billion-fold . . . human beings would be crushed.11



The examples could go on and on, but we will stop there. Think about it like this though. I cannot imagine a scientist who would drive to Mt. Rushmore and argue that the figures carved in stone got there by accident. No scientist would conclude that natural forces of wind, rain, erosion, and chance combined to form the faces of the four presidents. Yet, these same scientists would conclude that the men that are depicted on this mountain did get here by random chance. They seem unfazed by the fact that the men are infinitely more complex than the carvings in the side of the mountain. The universe is so obviously fine tuned for life that it is incalculable.

Vera Kistiakowski, professor of physics emerita at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology agreed in summarizing the evidence: “The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine.”12

Patrick Glynn, a former atheist, after examining the evidence for the Anthropic Principle, concluded that it “ . . . does offer as strong an indication as reason and science alone could be expected to provide that God exists . . . Ironically, the picture of the universe bequeathed to us by the most advanced twentieth-century science is closer in spirit to the vision presented in the Book of Genesis than anything offered by science since Copernicus.”13

The more the complexity and wonder of the universe is examined and discovered the more the words of Paul in the first chapter of Romans ring true. We truly do not have an excuse to deny that God exists based on what He has made.



Lies, Myths, and Half-Truths: The Symbols of Evolution

Why do so many people believe in evolution if it is such a shaky theory? Students are constantly bombarded with statements that all scientists believe in evolution, that evolution is no longer a theory but a fact, or that evolution is based on empirical science. Textbooks are full of so-called evidence that has convinced countless millions of the veracity of evolution and has corroded their faith in God. Nearly every example, however, that is given to bolster or prove evolution turns out to be faked, a fraud, an exaggeration, or just a flat out lie.

This is nothing new for the disciples of evolution. It seems that each generation of evolutionary indoctrination has had its symbols that convinced the students of the time that evolution was a plausible theory. One by one, though, virtually every piece of information that has been put forth as evidence for evolution has been proven false or misleading. A generation ago it was Piltdown Man, Peking Man, and Java Man.

Jonathan Wells, in his book, Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?, systematically destroys the ten most currently cherished symbols of evolution. In each case, the icon that he presents is taught in fact in most high school and college textbooks. In the high school in which I taught, we had three different biology textbooks that were used at one time or another as the biology textbooks of choice in the school system of the city in which I taught. That means that every one of the tens of thousands of high school students in this city used these textbooks at least once before they finish school. Each of the ten icons described by Wells, were in at least one of the three textbooks. Below I will give a brief synopsis of four of the ten. All four of these examples were extensively discussed in all three of the textbooks that were used in my former school.



Haeckel’s Embryos

One of the oldest arguments given to support evolution is that of embryonic capitulation. That simply means that every embryo goes through the various evolutionary stages while still in the womb. This includes things like having gills like a fish and a tail like a monkey. Modern science has shown this to be completely invalid. It just does not happen.

There is much more nefarious goings on, I am afraid, than this just being a case of bad or mistaken science that has since been corrected.

Ernst Haeckel first published the original drawings of this theory in 1868. Within months of their release, other science professors showed that Haeckel’s drawings were fraudulent. Haeckel had fraudulently changed drawings of embryos to give them an appearance of similarity. In some cases he made rather dramatic changes. In some cases he used the same woodcuts and claimed that they were different species.

Yet, somehow, the belief in these drawings and this theory still exist. I have seen them in textbooks that were printed as late as 2001. Do not miss the point here. They were proven to be faked over 130 years ago and are still being used today to convince kids of the truth of evolution.

It is particularly amazing to me to think that this is still being printed as truth in textbooks. The 1998 textbook, Evolutionary Biology included Haeckel’s drawings and a section on embryonic capitulation. The author, Professor Douglas Futuyma, responded to criticism from creationists by admitting that he had not been aware of Haeckel’s dishonesty. Think of how many students over the last 130 years have been swayed by these drawings.

Dr. Michael Richardson has also been an outspoken critic of the Haeckel drawings. The Times (London) quotes him as saying, “This is one of the worst cases of scientific fraud. It’s shocking to find that somebody everyone thought was a great scientist was deliberately misleading. It makes me angry. What he [Haeckel] did was to take a human embryo and copy it, pretending that the salamander and the pig and all the others looked the same at the same stage of development. They don’t. These are fakes.”14

This lie of evolution would be bad enough by itself, but the list goes on.



Peppered Moths

One of the most famous of examples used to prove evolution for the past several decades has been the peppered moths of England. As the story goes, most peppered moths were white in the early 1800’s. The birds could easily pick off the dark colored moths on the white tree trunks. This kept the black moth population to a minimum. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution came pollution. As a result of the pollution discoloring the tree trunks, the population of the moths shifted. Now it was the dark colored moths that were predominant.

Bernard Kettlewell published this example of evolution in the 1950’s. There are several problems with this being used as an example to prove natural selection and subsequently evolution. The experiments do not explain where the alternate colors come from. An intelligent designer seems as likely an explanation as chance mutation and natural selection. Nor does it in any way explain how a moth evolved from a non-moth. This example just does not hold water yet it is still used as one of the primary examples of evolution in action.

What has recently been revealed, though, is far more disturbing than just bad conclusions. It has been found that the photographs that Kettlewell used were faked including the practice of gluing dead moths onto the trees. Further study of these peppered moths showed that left to their own devices they almost never land on tree trunks they stay in the tree canopy.

In one recent instance I gave an article to a biology teacher at my former high school that showed how the evidence for the peppered moth story had been faked. She had just finished doing the day before a lesson on the peppered moth. I gave her the article thinking she would be thrilled to know that the textbook was inaccurate. If I had been put in similar circumstances with a history book, I would be excited to share with my students the truths I had learned. I would use it as an example of critical thinking and searching for the truth. Her response was somewhat disappointing. She said that it did not bother her to continue using this example because it illustrated the greater truth of evolution even if the specific example was not accurate.

This is a perfect example of how these lies of evolution keep getting passed from generation to generation. Evolutionists are so committed to their faith that they will not let it go even if presented with evidence to the contrary.



Homology in vertebrate limbs

Homology in vertebrate limbs simply means that different species have limbs that are similar in structure and function. This, the evolutionists claim, is due to their common ancestry. Textbooks define homology as similarity due to common ancestry. Then they turn around and claim that homology is evidence for common ancestry. In other words they use circular reasoning to convince kids that the only reason that limbs are similar is due to common ancestry. The truth is it would be just as legitimate to claim a common designer as the reason for homology.

Had these commonalities arisen from common ancestry, the biological information responsible for these phenomena should show a discernible pattern. This turns out to not be the case as Gavin DeBeer, quoted by Dr. Wells, points out:



The fact is that correspondence between homologous structures cannot be pressed back to similarity of position of the cells in the embryo, or of the parts of the egg out of which the structures are ultimately composed, or of developmental mechanisms by which they are formed . . . In salamanders, development of the digits proceeds in the opposite direction, from head to tail. The difference is so striking that some biologists have argued that the evolutionary history of salamanders must have been different from all other vertebrates, including frogs . . . Because homology implies community of descent from . . . a common ancestor it might be thought that genetics would provide the key to the problem of homology. This is where the worst shock of all is encountered . . . [because] characters controlled by identical genes are not necessarily homologous . . . [and] homologous structures need not be controlled by identical genes.15



From Ape to Human

For over four decades evolutionists, to prove the long, slow descent from ape-like creatures down to modern human beings, used the Piltdown Man. As it turned out, it was a fraud. The skull belonged to a human and the jaw was from an orangutan. The teeth had been filed down and the jaw treated chemically so that they would be more convincing. It is difficult to believe that it took that long to discover this fraud, but when people really want to believe in something they can be slow in coming to the truth.

Evolutionists constantly trot out so-called transitional forms between apes and humans and claim that they are proof for evolution. This could not be farther from the truth. Most of these transitional forms are pure fantasy. The vast majority of these finds include only a couple of bone fragments. The rest of the creature is built based solely on the imagination of the scientists. They then put these pictures in magazines and in museums and claim them to be fact.

This point is illustrated by a case in which four different artists were asked by National Geographic to give a rendering of a female homo habilis figure from casts of seven fossil bones. The four different pictures were all significantly different. They ran the whole gamut of the ape-to-human sequence. The pictures of “early man” are purely imagination and fiction based on very little fact.

This is true for other allegedly transitional forms. How these “ape-men” are interpreted is highly subjective and prone to the great bias of most pro-evolution scientists.

Beyond being a religious belief, though, evolution means big money. This is another motivating factor in it being defended so aggressively. In his book, Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Wells describes the fact that billions of American’s tax dollars are spent every year to finance evolutionary origins research. Organizations like NASA, the National Institute of Health, and the National Science Foundation continually fund research projects that are committed to developing and proving the evolutionary worldview. The resulting work that comes from these projects helps professors to gain notoriety and tenures at their universities. Students buy evolution-oriented textbooks and attend schools and universities where evolution is taught exclusively and presented as fact. Bluntly stated, evolution means big money for the scientists involved.

The reality of the ape-to-human descent process is that there is no proof of it at all. Ironically, there are less accepted possible transitional models today than there were in Darwin’s time. Evolutionists have no answer to this lack of evidence. They have at best merely a handful of highly disputed fossils that they can even claim are transitional. Most of them have been shown to be either fully ape or monkey, or fully human.



Just the Tip of the Iceberg

The above problems for evolution are, indeed, devastating but they are just the tip of the iceberg. An honest look at evolution will show that neither the necessary mechanisms for macroevolution or the evidence of it happening actually exist. They are many more problems with the theory of evolution, which will be briefly discussed below.

In his work on the many icons in the evolution community, Wells goes on to destroy the rest of the prize horses in the evolutionary stable such as: The Miller-Urey experiment, Darwin’s tree of life, Darwin’s finches, four-winged fruit flies, etc. Once these so-called evidences of evolution are rightly removed, the textbooks are left with scarcely anything to support their cherished myth.

I have met with hundreds of teens either individually or in large groups and simply gone through their biology textbooks with them showing them the myths, errors, and lies throughout the pages of the evolution section. The response has been tremendous. Kids are incredibly relieved to know that there are answers to the onslaught of evolution. Just knowing that there are answers available greatly increases the faith of young people in the Creator God described in the pages of Genesis.

The troubles for evolutionists go far beyond just the issues of Irreducible Complexity, Information Theory, the Anthropic Principle, and the Icons of Evolution. One of the things that evolutionists won’t discuss very often is that there are six different types of evolution. The first is cosmological, which has to do with the beginning of time, space, and matter. This is usually explained through the theory of the Big Bang. The second type is stellar evolution. This involves the development of individual stars, planets, etc. The third type is that of chemical evolution. Before life can happen, all of the chemicals and elements present in the universe must have evolved into separate entities. The fourth type of evolution is that of organic evolution. This is the development of life, which is usually explained by evolutionists by some sort of pre-biotic soup in which life developed from non-life. The fifth type is that of microevolution. Microevolution can also be called variation. It involves the minor changes that organisms undergo as a result of genetic variation. The final type is that of macroevolution. This is the supposed process through which one type of species undergoes so many microevolution changes that it becomes a new species. It is important to understand that of the above mentioned six types of evolution, only the fifth entry, microevolution, should be considered actual operational science. None of the other five types can be observed or reproduced, and thus, should not by definition be considered scientific disciplines. Evolutionists spend a great deal of time trying to argue biological evolution, but, for instance, say virtually nothing about chemical evolution. The reason is simple; not only is there virtually no evidence for chemical evolution, there are not really any plausible theories. The average biology textbook will have dozens, if not hundreds, of pages covering the theory of evolution, yet most chemistry textbooks will not have anything to say. This is a curious omission considering the truth that it is not even worth considering biological evolution if there is not chemical evolution first.

In order to believe evolution, astronomical odds must be overcome millions of times in each of the six areas. To be an evolutionist one must take thousands of leaps of faith in order to cling to their faith. For the Christian there is only one: That there is a God. Once one has taken that leap of faith and believes that there is a God, everything falls into place. It simply takes much more blind faith to be an evolutionist and a Humanist.

I believe that one day evolution will be looked upon as one of the most laughable frauds of all time. In today’s society, though, it cannot be underestimated. Our children must be trained to defend their way of thinking against it. It is also vital that they be taught to detect evolutionary thinking in any areas in which it might pop up. If we can protect our children from this line of Humanist attack, we will go a long way towards protecting them from some major worldview problems in the future.



Evolution: The Gateway Drug

Much has been said in the last 40 years concerning the belief that marijuana is so dangerous because it serves as a gateway to more intense and more dangerous drugs. Marijuana definitely has dangers inherent to itself, but the larger danger is that is lowers the defenses of the user. The argument goes that those who use marijuana are more likely to begin to use drugs that have a far more devastating effect physically and mentally.

In many ways, evolution is a gateway drug for worldviews. It doesn’t appear to be such a dangerous belief system in and of itself. After all, it’s just an alternative belief about how we all got here, isn’t it? The problem is that whatever you believe about your origins affects how you view everything else in the world. What a teenager is taught about the origins of life makes a huge difference in every other area of their life. What a teen accepts as the cause of the universe sets in motion a cavalcade of beliefs throughout every area of their life.

If there is a Creator God that made the universe and everything in it, then we are left with the conclusion that life is intentional and sacred. If the God of the Bible is the creator of the universe then we know that there is a moral lawgiver and a moral law that must be followed. Knowledge of the creator gives us a sense of purpose and a responsibility to our fellow man. The existence of a creator means that there is such a thing as absolute truth on which we can rely.

On the other hand, if evolution is true, all bets are off. There would be no need for God. There would be no moral law because there is no lawgiver. This means that relativism rules the day. You can do whatever you please because there is no responsibility to God or anyone else. Satanist Aleister Crowley’s famous saying, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,” becomes the guiding principle for our worldview. Whatever suits one’s fancy is just fine, because we are all here by pure dumb luck, we have no innate purpose, and we come to nothing when we die.

Holding to this belief of evolution, then, opens the door to much more dangerous views. It opens people up to other worldview like Secular Humanism (which will be discussed in detail in the next chapter). It can also be argued that a rejection of God is the cause of most, if not all, of the ills of our society. Since evolution is, at its core, a rejection of God, it opens the mind of the young person who believes it for a dangerous litany of beliefs.

Psalm 11:3 asks the question, “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?" Allow me to answer that question. If the foundations are destroyed the righteous will crash and burn. In many respects your belief in origins is the foundation for everything else you believe in your life. It is ground zero. Parents and youth ministers can simply not afford to give this topic anything less than a great deal of attention.

Every Christian parent holds to the belief that God created the universe and nearly all of them communicate that to their children in some way. The problem is this has to go far beyond reading the creation story in the Bible and reminding our kids that God made everything in the world. Those are great things to do, especially when children are younger, but when kids get older, it is not enough. They will be attacked in middle- and high-school on a very sophisticated level. Evolution will be taught as fact. The ability of parents and youth ministers simply has to be able to match the level of sophistication of the evolutionary teaching. The most effective way to prepare our children for this topic is to arm them with answers before they are given the questions by their biology teachers. Suffice it to say that a child who is prepared for what evolution teaches and the values that are subsequent to those beliefs will help to inoculate them. There is an extremely important principle at work here that I will reference throughout this book: When you understand something, it loses its power over you. A teenager who is well aware of what the world believes, what it will teach, how it will teach it, and how it will attack their belief system, is a teenager who is far safer than their uniformed peers.

Taking up the challenge of thoroughly equipping our children with scientific reasons why creation rather than evolution is the much more plausible approach to science can seem daunting to most parents. It is not the easiest of topics for many people to comprehend and then feel confident in explaining to children. The problem, however is that is too important of a topic to be ignored. If parents do not feel capable of tackling this topic, then I offer two solutions. The first is to educate yourself on the topic. Read as much as you can. It will build your faith and do an incredible amount of good for the faith of child. If that seems like too daunting a task, then I would recommend that at the very least parents of the local church pool together and find someone who is knowledgeable about the issue and who is capable of explaining it to teenagers. This person should be allowed to teach regularly to the teens on the topic and be accessible for questions from kids as they go through various science classes. Just knowing that someone has answers provides a great deal of security and comfort to teen who is wrestling with these ideas.





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Chapter 1



1 Potter, Humanizing Religion, p.3.

2 Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species (New York: New York University Press, 1988), p. 154.

3 Colson and Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live, p. 89.

4 Lee Stroebel, The Case For a Creator (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004), p. 198.

5 Ibid., p. 214.

6 Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Bethesda, MD: Adler and Adler, 1986), p. 107.

7 Allan Sandage, “A Scientist Reflects on Religious Belief,” Truth: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Christian Thought, Volume 1 (1985).

8 Stroebel, The Case For a Creator, p. 130.

9 Ibid., p. 131.

10 Colson and Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live, p. 64.

11 Stroebel, The Case For a Creator, p. 132.

12 Vera Kistiakowsky, “The Exquisite Order of the Physical World Calls for the Divine,” In Henry Margenau and Roy Abraham Varghese, Cosmos, Bios, Theos (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 1992), p. 52.

13 Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence (Rocklin, CA: Forum, 1997), p. 55, 26.

14 N. Hawkes, The Times (London), August 11, 1997. p. 14.

15 Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why Much of what we teach about evolution is wrong (Washington: Regenery Publishing, 2000), p. 73.

2 Corinthians 13:11-14 & Commentary

Final Greetings

11Finally, brothers, good-by. Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you.

12Greet one another with a holy kiss. 13All the saints send their greetings.

14May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.



Dig Deeper

Whenever I write a letter, I tend to use a pretty standard form for letters that is common to our culture. That actually makes a great deal of sense, seeing as how I was educated in this culture and if I did something significantly different, people might have a hard time understanding it or would be so distracted by my unique form that they didn’t pay attention to what I wrote. The same holds true for Paul. He was a well educated man of his day and when he wrote letters like this one he tended to use the form and styles common to the culture of his day. Even in his concluding remarks, Paul normally ended with something quite similar to most letters of this type.

In this letter, in particular, however, he uses a salutation that is expanded from a normal ending. What is important for us to understand is that Paul doesn’t just string a bunch of words together, ending the letter with some standard words without really thinking about them. We often tend to do that as we bring our letters to a close. We throw a standard ending like "sincerely" out and then sign off. This is not at all the case with the apostle. Although he does follow the standard form, every word he says in his closings are important. Paul’s closings are a summation of his letter, highlighting and emphasizing the most important themes from his letter.

Just as in 1 Corinthians 16:13-14, Paul begins his closing with five commands. They are, however, difficult to translate. The meanings for several of his exhortations depend upon whether they are understood in the passive or the middle voice. Many leading commentators feel that the NIV incorrectly understands these verbs in the passive rather than the middle voice. If they are understood in the middle, they are much more consistent with the themes of the letter that Paul is summarizing. Thus, rather than saying "[G]ood-by. Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in peace," we should likely understand Paul to be commanding them to: Rejoice; aim for restoration; to encourage one another; to be of one mind; and to live in peace.

First he tells them to rejoice. He has already made it clear that he wants the Corinthians to be a source of his rejoicing (2 Cor. 2:3; 7:9, 16; 13:9). He also desires for them to repent so that when he comes he will be a source of their rejoicing. They will have reason to rejoice in the Lord, with one another and with Paul. It is an expression of unity in the community. Second, he tells them to aim for restoration, which has been one of the major themes throughout the letter. Third, Paul exhorts them to encourage one anther. As they rejoice and seek restoration, they will and should continue to encourage one another. Fourth, he desires that they be of one mind (literally he says "think the same thing"). Just as they are being transformed into the image of the Messiah (2 Cor. 3:18), so they will reflect his image by thinking in the unity of Christ. This would have been particularly challenging and important for the Corinthians who had struggled with factious thinking from the onset. Finally, he directs them to live in peace. This makes sense as it flows from the previous command. Thinking the same thing will bring harmony and is the basis for peace. If they do all of this, the God of love and peace will be with them (cf. Rom. 15:33; 16:20; Phil. 4:9; 1 Thess. 5:23; 2 Thess. 3:16; Gal. 6:16). Once again, even in his closing, Paul stresses the importance of obedience, and the results that will come from that obedience. It is not that obedience earns God’s love and peace, but rather Paul is alluding to the reality that our obedience is the sign that we are willingly choosing to stay under the umbrella of His love and peace.

Paul, after completing his exhortations, encourages them to greet one another with a holy kiss (cf. 1 Thess. 5:26; 1 Cor. 16:20; Rom. 16:16). This command is found nowhere else in the ancient world outside of the New Testament and the practice of the early church. The holy kiss was probably a reference to the kiss of greeting that holy ones would give one another when they met rather than referring to some special sort of kiss like a secret handshake.

Finally, Paul ends with one of the most beautiful benedictions in all of the Bible. Paul’s thinking here is incredibly Trinitarian, even though it comes a good century before that categorical word was invented. It makes clear that if the word "Trinity" had not been coined to capture the theology and thought of the early church, we would have to invent one. He first mentions the grace of Jesus Christ. Jesus embodied the grace of God as he became human, because that’s what graced had to do in order to be fully manifested. Behind that grace, though is the love of God. The love of God is not simply one aspect of His nature, it is the very essence of who He is. Flowing out of God’s grace, embodied by Christ, and His essence of love is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. It is the work of the Spirit that keeps us in the grace of Christ and the love of God, which we fully experience in fellowship with God and with one another in Christ.

One of the questions that often arise from Paul’s benediction here is why he chose the precise attributes that he did. Why did he specifically assign grace to Christ, love to God, and fellowship to the Holy Spirit? I believe that the answer to that comes in Ephesians 1, where we see Paul’s thought process more fully. In that passage it is God who, "in love, he predestined" a group of people to be reconciled to Him in Christ (Eph. 1:3-5). As a result of God’s desire to manifest His love in the reality of human existence, He gave us redemption and His grace through the person of Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:6-10). Thus, God chose the plan of redemption, born out of His love and embodied in the grace of Jesus Christ, but that is all brought together by the work and seal of the Holy Spirit, who brings God’s people together in the fellowship of Christ.

Based on the recent tumult in Corinth at the time Paul wrote this letter, Paul’s exhortations might be an extreme challenge, but he really leaves them with no choice. If they don’t move forward and embrace the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, then they simply did not know the love of God that entered the world through the grace of Jesus Christ. The love of God, embodied by Jesus and experienced in the fellowship of the Spirit came at great cost to God. For the Corinthians to move forward into the light of godly fellowship, it was going to be costly, but Paul has written this entire letter, encouraging them to do so. We must only assume that he would expect no less of us.



Devotional Thought

Take a look at Paul’s five exhortations to the Corinthians. Are those five elements apparent in your life? Have you embraced the love of God and the grace of Christ by embracing the fellowship made available by the Spirit?

2 Corinthians 13:5-10 & Commentary

5Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test? 6And I trust that you will discover that we have not failed the test. 7Now we pray to God that you will not do anything wrong. Not that people will see that we have stood the test but that you will do what is right even though we may seem to have failed. 8For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth. 9We are glad whenever we are weak but you are strong; and our prayer is for your perfection. 10This is why I write these things when I am absent, that when I come I may not have to be harsh in my use of authority—the authority the Lord gave me for building you up, not for tearing you down.



Dig Deeper

Some young people were standing around late one night, not particularly doing anything wrong, but certainly when a group of teenagers hang out in a parking lot around midnight it raises some suspicion. Just then an undercover policemen, whose job was to patrol the downtown area and keep the young people, who like to cruise around at night, under control. He questioned the young people about what they were doing. They began to question his authority and credentials in a fairly respectful manner, though, so he pulled out his identification and established who he was. Once that was done, he turned the tables and began to question them about their activities and the legitimacy of being where they were.

Paul’s authority and legitimacy in Christ has been questioned and he has spent a great deal of time establishing and legitimizing that authority. They have given him a test and Paul has clearly passed that test. With that firmly out of the way, he now turns the tables and asks the Church in Corinth to test themselves. They have been so busy questioning Paul that it hasn’t occurred to them that the problem might lie with the claims of Paul’s opponents, or with themselves. Paul is confident that he is in good standing before the holy God, so if there is a problem, it might be in the fact that the Corinthians have drifted from the faith. Paul, of course, feels that they are in the faith and wants them to realize that. He does ask them to test themselves and holds out the possibility that some might fail the test, but as a whole, Paul has already stated that he has great confidence in them. He has, as he says in verse 6, great confidence that we have not failed the test.

Why would Paul say "we" if he is talking about the Corinthians testing themselves? Because he believes firmly that his apostolic legitimacy rests in part on them, they are the seal of his apostleship (1 Cor. 9:1-3). Paul’s heart is so directly tied to the Corinthians that even though he believes that his sufficiency and competence have come from God (2 Cor. 2:16; 3:4-6; 12:9), if they fail the test of faith, Paul’s leadership would also fail. This attitude is, perhaps, instructive for leaders who might continually blame problems on those that they are shepherding. There are possible situations where that may be true, but more often than not the attitude of followers reflects their leadership. If an entire church has problems, perhaps the core issues have more to do with the foundation laid by the leaders than with anything else. Paul leaves that possibility open, but more as an opportunity for them to see his connection with them. Paul does not seriously believe that they will fail this test. He will stay with them to the end, though, as they go, he goes. The last thing Paul would do is call them lukewarm and weak in their faith and abandon them, even when they questioned his legitimacy. A true spiritual shepherd would never do that.

The principles Paul lays ouot should also be instructive for many liberal theologians and churches that reject much of what Paul taught (which is becoming increasingly popular to do these days). The principle is the same, in many ways, as it was for Corinth. If we reject Paul, a true apostle of Jesus Christ, we reject the gospel. We simply cannot dismiss Paul without doing serious damage to the gospel message that was handed down to us.

So what test of their faith did Paul have in mind? He doesn’t say precisely in this passage what test of faith he has in mind, but based on this letter and his previous one to the Corinthians we can assume that it had to do with whether the crucified and risen life of the Messiah was present in their life. Did they have a life that reflected both the willingness to die to self and suffer in the life of the Messiah as well as allowing the power of the risen Christ to make manifest in their lives? Did they talk like Jesus, forgive like Jesus, see the life of the Messiah in fellow believers rather than all of their faults? Did they know the gently guiding peace of the Messiah despite the circumstances that life might offer up? These are the sorts of things that we need to consider when examining the veracity of our own faith.

Paul turns to prayer, though, to ensure that they will continue to follow the path of truth. Paul will pray for them but that does not take away the fact that it is still largely up to them to do the right thing. Paul says that he is more concerned with them passing the test than with his own reputation, and although that was no doubt true, he also knows that their spiritual health and his reputation are intertwined.

In everything he has done, Paul works for the truth; that is all that really matters. What he wants most for them is to embrace that truth and be brought to perfection in Christ. When Paul talks about perfection, he is not referring to what we tend to think of, which is to be without flaw. The term has more to do with maturity, with being complete. All of the struggles and trials that we go through teach us and refine us, bringing us closer to the final product that God is crafting us into. This is why we can view trails as a source of joy when we are in Christ. We know and can trust that God knows that what we will learn and how we are changed from that trial is better for us than if we did not go through the trial at all. Regardless of how difficult situations may be, we can have faith that if we remain in Christ, he will use it to develop us towards our perfection.

Paul ends this section by summarizing why he has written the sometimes harsh and confronting things that he has. It was not to avoid the situation or to make things easier for himself. He has done it because when he comes he wants to use his legitimate and God-given authority to encourage, strengthen, and edify the Church. He does not want to have to use his authority for harsh discipline when he comes. We should not miss the fact that Paul does not want to do that, he does not dismiss the legitimacy of church discipline. Church discipline is necessary sometimes. Yet, Paul’s genuine love for the Corinthians is so strong, that he truly hopes and prays that he will not be put into a position where he has to.



Devotional Thought

When was the last time you examined yourself to see whether you are in the faith? Is that a prospect that fills you with enthusiasm or dread. Will an honest examination reveal the powerful life of Christ in your life or something quite different?

2 Corinthians 12:19-13:4

19Have you been thinking all along that we have been defending ourselves to you? We have been speaking in the sight of God as those in Christ; and everything we do, dear friends, is for your strengthening. 20For I am afraid that when I come I may not find you as I want you to be, and you may not find me as you want me to be. I fear that there may be quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, slander, gossip, arrogance and disorder. 21I am afraid that when I come again my God will humble me before you, and I will be grieved over many who have sinned earlier and have not repented of the impurity, sexual sin and debauchery in which they have indulged.

2 Corinthians 13

Final Warnings

1This will be my third visit to you. "Every matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses." 2I already gave you a warning when I was with you the second time. I now repeat it while absent: On my return I will not spare those who sinned earlier or any of the others, 3since you are demanding proof that Christ is speaking through me. He is not weak in dealing with you, but is powerful among you. 4For to be sure, he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God's power. Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God's power we will live with him to serve you.



Dig Deeper

The young Bible teacher spent two hours on the phone with a young man struggling in his faith. It was at least the fifth time they had had such a conversation. The young man had become a Christian but now he was struggling in his faith. He had come upon some other teachers who began to teach him some false doctrines. He had once admired and been quite close to the teacher who helped him become a Christian, but now he had become quite critical of his one-time teacher. These other teachers seemed so impressive and seemed to make so much sense. So, each time they talked, they spent some time talking about doctrine and what the Bible said, but they spent more time talking about the validity of the teachers. The Bible teacher spent a great deal of time trying to convince this young man that what he taught him was valid. He wasn’t particularly comfortable with talking about himself and how God had used him, but he felt it was necessary in order for the young man to see that he was getting dangerously close to walking away from the truth and following false teachers. After quite some time and many conversations, the young man realized that his teacher had been presenting the true gospel to him all along. What, perhaps, surprised the young man is when he realized that the teacher had never been defending himself or his teachings; he could have walked away from the young man at any time. Rather, he was taking all of that extra time in meeting with and talking to the young man for his benefit, to strengthen him.

This is exactly the reasoning Paul gives for what he has been doing in this letter. He hasn’t been doing all of this boasting and defending for his own sake. Everything he has done, he has done because of who he is in Christ and to strengthen the Corinthians. All of the time, energy, struggles, abuse, humility, worry, and effort has been for their sake so that they might not be fooled by the false apostles and teachers.

We might have thought be some of Paul’s earlier statements that all of the problems between Paul and Corinth have been dealt with (particularly 2 Cor. 7:5-16), but that doesn’t seem to be the case any longer. Paul says that he is afraid of what he will find when arrives. So which is it? Does Paul have confidence in their repentance or is he still worried about them? The truth is probably that both statements are true. Paul knew human nature quite well and he knew that what someone truly believed and intended to act upon one day, might change drastically the next day if they weren’t careful. No doubt, Paul has every confidence that the majority has turned back to him and his apostolic ministry but he also knows that the teachers who caused all of the problems are still around and people might be susceptible to being fooled again if they’re not careful. Just because the church declared and even demonstrated their loyalty to Paul does not mean, by any stretch, that all of the sin and problems disappeared over night. His fear is that there will still be evidence of the type of sins that he lists in v. 20. We should note that Paul has already made it quite clear that he sees himself as a type of Moses and what has been happening to him as having had many analogies and parallels to Korah’s rebellion. Korah and his followers began to quarrel with Moses due to their jealousy (Ps. 106:16-18). Korah and his followers certainly had outbursts f anger against Moses and tried to create factions among the people. Korah certainly engaged in slander against Moses (Num. 16:3, 13-14) and according to Jewish tradition, Korah questioned Moses’ role as the revelatory mediator between God and the Israelites (cf. Philo, On the Life of Moses 2.176-177, 278). As we continue through the list f gossip, arrogance, and disorder we realize that not only is Paul talking about very real potential sins in Corinth, he is also, once again, drawing a parallel between his situation with the false apostles and the situation between Moses and Korah.

Paul still has some apprehensions, then, that when he does come, despite the encouraging signs to this point, things will turn out more like his painful second visit. It is clear that Paul will not be as patient as he has been. If he does find any situations like have existed in the past, he will deal with things swiftly. What does he mean though when, in quoting Deuteronomy 19:15, he says that "Every matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses"? Paul probably does not intend to say that each of his visits have counted as a separate witness against them, and that this is now the third one required by the law. No, the issue to which Paul is referring is his own apostolic authority not whether or not they have sinned. When Paul comes into his God-given apostolic territory, they will be judged if they fail to accept his apostolic authority by questioning whether or not Christ is speaking and working through him. It is probable, then, that the witnesses to whom he refers would be himsef (2 Cor. 1:12); God the Father (2 Cor. 1:23), and to Jesus who made a similar defense of his own questioned authority (John 8:12-20). Those who continue to question Paul and his ministry will not be spared this time around. Presumably, Paul is referring to the type of church discipline that he prescribed in 1 Corinthians 5. If the troublemakers persist in questioning Paul, they will find themselves on the outside of the Christian community looking in.

Paul will come to them in the same sort of strange mixture of weakness and power that we see on display in the life of Christ. The Messiah was crucified in weakness, yet was resurrected by the power of God. Paul is weak because he is in Christ; the Corinthians have already seen that side of Paul and didn’t particularly care for it. Yet, Paul is also quite strong when he needs to be, precisely because he is in Christ and has the power of God in the Messiah in his life as well. By God’s power, Paul will come to serve the Church in Corinth, but he wants to give them just one more reminder that if they continue in their worldly ways, he will be forced to serve them in the power of God by brining judgment upon them.



Devotional Thought

We often find it difficult to strike the balance between weakness and strength that Paul did. We either want to treat others in Christ in a tyrannical fashion, never demonstrating the love and humility of Christ, or we become complete doormats, never allowing the power of Christ to become evident in our lives. To which extreme do you more often tend to drift to? How can you find a godly balance between those two extremes?

2 Corinthians 12:11-18 & Commentary

Paul's Concern for the Corinthians

11I have made a fool of myself, but you drove me to it. I ought to have been commended by you, for I am not in the least inferior to the "super-apostles," even though I am nothing. 12The things that mark an apostle—signs, wonders and miracles—were done among you with great perseverance. 13How were you inferior to the other churches, except that I was never a burden to you? Forgive me this wrong!

14Now I am ready to visit you for the third time, and I will not be a burden to you, because what I want is not your possessions but you. After all, children should not have to save up for their parents, but parents for their children. 15So I will very gladly spend for you everything I have and expend myself as well. If I love you more, will you love me less? 16Be that as it may, I have not been a burden to you. Yet, crafty fellow that I am, I caught you by trickery! 17Did I exploit you through any of the men I sent you? 18I urged Titus to go to you and I sent our brother with him. Titus did not exploit you, did he? Did we not act in the same spirit and follow the same course?



Dig Deeper

A young lady I once knew was constantly paranoid about people lying to her and stealing from her. She was a student of mine, and she was constantly accusing other people of lying and taking her things. She was also often convinced that her friends were stabbing her in the back. It was often in situations where it was pretty obvious that she was mistaken and that the other person had done no such thing. What we didn’t know, at least for a while, was that she was a frequent liar herself. Then we found out that she had quite the theft problem, and it was she who often ran behind her friend’s back and said things about them. It seems like that happens quite a bit in our world. When someone constantly thinks that everyone else is dishonest, untrustworthy, a liar, or using other people, it is often because they are like that, and they assume that everyone else is like that too. They project their own behavior onto others.

Paul’s critics have accused him of being dishonest, of taking advantage of the church and not really loving them. They claimed that Paul was mistreating the people in the church for his own advantage and that his ministry did not have the tell-tale signs of being a true apostolic ministry. Although we don’t know much about Paul’s opponents, and are left to speculate quite a bit about them, it does seemingly become clear that they are, in fact, guilty of all the things that they accused Paul of. They were the ones who were dishonest, who were lying to and taking advantage of the Corinthians. They were the ones who were not fit to be spiritual leaders, nor had they been chosen by God to be His apostles. Paul had not been a burden to the congregation, they had been.

Paul continues to clear the road for his third and final visit to Corinth (the first was when he planted the church and the second was the painful visit of 2 Cor. 2:1). The one thing he wants to make very clear before he comes is that he is coming to serve and love them. That is it.

Yes, he has made a fool of himself, but it is due to his love for them. It is also true that they drove him to it. It they would have defended him the way they should have, then none of his foolish self-defense would have been necessary. The moment that Paul’s character and ministry was attacked, the people of the Corinthian Church should have leaped to his defense. Instead Paul had to defend himself against their charges which further opened him up the charge of bragging and boasting about himself. What the Corinthians needed to learn is that, often, not doing anything is as harmful as acting negatively. They didn’t stand up for Paul when they should have and it cost Paul a great deal of trouble and sorrow.

Paul wants to make it clear that the Corinthians are not getting some sort of second-rate Christian experience with a quasi-apostle who doesn’t really care about them and treats them as inferiors. This is how the false apostles characterized the situation and the Corinthians listened to them. They should have known better because that was not at all the situation.

One of the things that clearly bothered the Church in Corinth was the fact that Paul would not take money from them, but would from other congregations. They believed that this was a sign of disrespect, showing that he didn’t think much of them and was, in effect, embarrassing them. Paul doesn’t feel any of that. They have listened to the wrong people and have completely read the situation incorrectly.

It’s not that Paul didn’t love them, it’s that he loved them like his own children. Perhaps it is here that Paul gives a clue as to why he would not take money from the Corinthians. He has already stated that they are still spiritual children, needing to mature (1 Cor. 3:1). In the Jewish culture, grown children were expected to provide for their parents (Ex. 20:12; 21:17; Mark 7:8-13), but parents would obviously provide for their minor children. This might explain why Paul refused support from Corinth, but would take it from other churches that were more mature in their faith (cf. 2 Cor. 11:8-9). If this is true, then this might have fueled the belief that Paul didn’t think much of, or love, the Church in Corinth. His treating them like children, though, wasn’t a matter of disrespect, but of deep love that a father has for his child. He was protecting them from things for which they were not yet ready. If they really wanted to show the maturity of their faith by giving their money, then they could do so by contributing the collection in Jerusalem. Paul, evidently, felt that they were ready for that, but not yet ready to handle the responsibility of supporting him without taking it as a patron-client relationship that was so common in their culture (in that relationship, the client would be beholden to the patron).

The very thing that Paul sees as a sign of his true love for Corinth, has been interpreted by them as a reason to withhold their love from him. Paul wants them to be clear on the fact that they have indeed misunderstood him. He hasn’t caught them by trickery. If anyone has done that it has been Paul’s opponents. Not only has Paul not exploited or taken advantage of them, neither has Titus or the other brother that Titus has sent to them. They have behaved with the same sort of love, integrity, and godliness that Paul would have had he been there.

Paul’s experience, as recorded in this letter, is not a popular message, but one that should not be forgotten. Even when we are acting the most Christian, and expressing the most love for others, it is very possible, if not probable, that we will be misunderstood, attacked, and unfairly accused of things. We must, however, learn from and imitate Paul’s patient, kind, and loving response and he calmly explains the truth of the matter.



Devotional Thought

Have you ever been in a situation where your motives were misunderstood or mischaracterized? How have you responded when those situations arise? Do you handle it with patience or irritability? Paul certainly defended himself, but in a calm and loving manner. Surely he would expect no less from us.

2 Corinthians 12:1-10 & Commentary

Paul's Vision and His Thorn

1I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. 2I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. 3And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— 4was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell. 5I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. 6Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say.

7To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. 10That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.



Dig Deeper

One of the things that really gains a lot of respect for one another among teachers is to have a great deal of education and degrees in your area of expertise. Teachers are usually quick to share with one another what degrees they have and talk about their ongoing education. Not necessarily in a bragging manner, but it’s just regarded highly, and so is talked about quite a bit. I knew one teacher, though, who never seemed too concerned about that; he just went about his business of being a very good teacher. He only wanted to be considered as a good teacher based on his actual success in the classroom. What most of the other teachers didn’t know, because he never discussed it, was the fact that this teacher didn’t just have a masters degree in education, he had two doctorates degrees. Yet, he rarely, if ever, mentioned them because, although he valued what he had gained from them, he just didn’t find them valuable in the discussion of whether or not he was an effective teacher.

In Corinth, visions, revelations, and receiving a "word" from God were highly valued. It appears that Paul’s opponents were claiming experiences of visions, revelations, and special "words" from God as part of their claim to apostolic authority. They talked about them quite a bit and used them to justify their status as those who would claim leadership in the Church in Corinth. In the previous example, we noted that the teachers didn’t necessarily brag about their education but did value it. Conversely, the super apostles in Corinth did brag and boast about these visions. In fact, it would seem that one of their many criticisms of Paul was that he did not have any of these incredible visual experiences, at least he never talked about it.

So, even though he is reluctant, Paul will, because of the situation forced upon him, continue to talk about his boasts in the Lord. Even though he questions the overall effectiveness of this strategy, he will engage in it for a time to counter the boasting of his detractors. Yet, even in talking about the visions and revelations that Paul has received, he demonstrates that he is reluctant to really talk about them or take much stock in them establishing his apostolic authority. First, is the fact that he has apparently not mentioned these visions before, even though he had spent quite a bit of time in Corinth. Second, is that he puts this passage in the third person, intentionally making it vague and demonstrating further his reluctance to appeal to this aspect of his spirituality. Finally, is the fact that, although he does talk about his visions, he does not give any details. Paul simply refuses to appeal to these revelations as important for establishing his authority or his approval by God. The Corinthians must be content with what they can see and hear in Paul’s earthly ministry. This stands in sharp contrast to his opponents who were quick to share their experiences as a key to their authority to preach the gospel.

Paul did not want to take this debate beyond what could be evaluated objectively, so he downplayed his experiences. Yet, once again, he has taken the ground out from under the feet of his opponents. Here is another area in which they attacked Paul and now he turns the tables one more time. They value visions, Paul has had authentic visions of the type that they could never claim, yet he doesn’t try to add a bunch of fabricated details to make it sound better. He was allowed into the third heaven (the realm of God’s presence in the Jewish understanding), but he wasn’t even sure the details of it all; he didn’t even know whether he was in the body or out of the body. Here is another area in which Paul could easily surpass the boasts of his opponents if he so chose, but he makes it clear that he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t need to play their game in order to establish his authority. He could play that game and would win, but no, rather than boasting about these wonderful things, Paul will once again take his boasts back to his own weakness and suffering.

The NIV omits the fact that in verse 7, Paul actually twice says, "To keep me from becoming conceited," stressing the importance and purpose of his thorn in the flesh. He has been allowed, by God, to suffer so as to keep him humble. This would have been shocking to Paul’s Corinthian opponents, who would have always blamed illness and suffering on the individual in question; it would have been blamed on their own lack of faith. Once again, though, Paul has brilliantly turned the tables. He is arguing that that the very cause of the weakness that his opponents have decried is the very types of visions that they valued so highly. He has taken the most effective argument that his opponents had against him and systematically dismantled it one piece at a time. Paul has shown one more way in which his suffering and weakness are not signs that he has been rejected by God, rather they are markers of his apostolic authenticity and approval by God. The more often that an apostle has ascended to the throne of God, the more his pride will need to be stifled by earthly suffering.

Because of his incredible visions and access to the throne of God, Paul has been given a thorn in his flesh. He initially did what anyone who believes in the sovereignty of God would do, he pleaded with God to take it away. The references to three prayers is most likely a Jewish figure of speech, implying that he had prayed repeatedly, but had since ceased. There has been endless speculation as to what Paul’s thorn was, but it is impossible to know, and we should not miss the fact that Paul has intentionally not named it. The language most appropriately leads us to believe that it was some sort of ongoing illness. But Paul does not want any sort of medical diagnosis, he is only concerned with the theological origin, which was sent by Satan and allowed by God. Paul has learned the key to the Christian life. The more that we learn to accept our weakness and frailty, the more we learn to rely on Christ. The more we learn to set ourselves to the side, the more the transforming power of Christ can come into our lives. Paul has realized the great dichotomy of the Christian life. When we rely on our strength, we are weak because we are limited to abilities of the flesh. When we embrace our weakness and reject the strength of the flesh, the true power of Christ explodes in our lives.



Devotional Thought

Paul had all kind of impressive spiritual experiences, but he knew that spirituality wasn’t what was most important. The most important thing was God’s grace released in his life. Have you embraced your own weaknesses so that God’s strength and grace can be fully released in your life? In what areas of your life are you still trying to rely on your own strengths, talents, and abilities?

2 Corinthians 11:21b-33 & Commentary

What anyone else dares to boast about—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast about. 22Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they Abraham's descendants? So am I. 23Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. 24Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. 25Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, 26I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. 27I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. 28Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. 29Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?

30If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. 31The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, who is to be praised forever, knows that I am not lying. 32In Damascus the governor under King Aretas had the city of the Damascenes guarded in order to arrest me. 33But I was lowered in a basket from a window in the wall and slipped through his hands



Dig Deeper

I had only been a Christian for a short time, and I had never been to a men’s devotional and prayer meeting. On the way to the event, I imagined that the meeting would be full of testosterone and inspiring talks from men who had faced the world and overcome it for Christ in powerful and impressive ways. Once we arrived and the meeting began, however, that is not at all what happened. I was quite surprised when the first speaker got up and began to talk of his weaknesses and failures. He spoke of intimate details and made himself extremely vulnerable in front of a room of men who did nothing but support and encourage him. My first thought was "what kind of encouraging men’s meeting is this?" Instead of getting a pep rally that demonstrated the strength of the Christian men, I got a confession session that put all of their weaknesses on display. Yet, as the night went on, I realized that there was a strange sort of dignity, strength, and power that would not make sense to the world, but was still very real. It was the strength and power of Christ that was being displayed through the weakness of these men who had entered into Christ.

It is this same counterintuitive sort of strength in weakness that Paul will put on display for a people that are having great difficulty with the concept of the strength of Christ being made manifest through suffering, persecution, and weakness. In the Roman culture, in which Corinth was deeply steeped, suffering and persecution were a sign of being in disfavor with your gods. This was why Paul’s experiences were so difficult for them to comprehend and why they were so vulnerable to the wealth and health gospel being proffered by the opponents of Paul.

Paul knows, however, that if he simply presents his weakness and suffering, that it will leave him open to the assaults of his detractors. They will simply charge that Paul is arguing for weakness and suffering, because he does not have the blessing of God upon him, and has no choice but to turn around the gospel to fit his impotent life. Thus, Paul will take away that ground from which to launch an attack. He will boast in a worldly manner just to show them that his ministry of weakness in self and strength in Christ is a choice not an excuse. Everything that they might want to brag about to make them look good in the eyes of the world, Paul can match. He could play that game if he wanted to, and he does just long enough to make that point clear. His weaknesses are not because of his own inadequacy, but because he is willing to suffer for Christ and identify with those to whom he has shared the gospel.

Once that has been demonstrated, however, Paul will begin to show the things that a Christian should boast about, if one is going to boast at all. It’s not about the things that might impress the people of Corinth, in fact, it’s the things that would horrify them. If you could make a list of everything that would show disfavor with the gods in the eyes of pagan Corinth, this would be it. Paul says that he has been in prison (seven times according to the early church writing, 1 Clement 5:6), flogged, and exposed to death repeatedly. He had subjected himself to the authority of the Jewish synagogue so that he might continue to share the gospel with his fellow Jews, and had subsequently received 39 lashes five times. He had been in constant danger, gone without sleep, food, and basic shelter. On top of all of that, Paul has had to deal with his own worry and concern over the state of the churches that he has helped to plant. When they are weak, Paul is weak. When they are in sin, Paul burns with shame. Paul realizes that when we enter into Christ, we become one body with out fellow believers and we share in their joys and their sorrows. The fact is, Paul would rather not boast at all, since any kind of boasting other than boasting in Christ is foolish, but the situation in Corinth requires it, so he will boast in such a way to reveal his weakness and demonstrate the power of Christ in his life.

If the false apostles insist on playing a game of boasting, Paul will do that, but he boasts of all the wrong things. This is a strategy that would make a clear distinction between these two versions of the gospel and force the Corinthians to choose between which one sounded more authentic and in keeping with the life and ministry of Christ. Paul will appeal his veracity to the very God of the universe, would his opponents be willing to do the same?

Paul has shown that he doesn’t need to display any sort of human strength in order to show the approval of Christ in his life. Now he will finish it all off with an example that is over the top, so to speak. The Roman Empire gave an award of bravery called the corona muralis, ‘the crown of the wall’. It was given to the first brave soldier who went over the wall of a city that was under siege. If the person lived to actually receive the award, they had to return to Rome and wear a solemn oath to the gods that they were actually the first over the wall.

Rather than being like a culture that made a practice of listing one’s great accomplishments and bragging about how brave or successful you were, Paul will continue to brag about quite the opposite. He, in effect, gives himself a reverse corona muralis. Throughout his two surviving letters to Corinth, Paul has encouraged his spiritual children to resist the dangers of being sucked back into the their surrounding culture. Paul has listed his achievements the way anyone in their society might, but he has assembled a list of all the wrong achievements. These were things that anyone in the Roman world would be ashamed of, let alone put together in a public letter. Paul has topped it off with his achievement of being the first over the wall, but in the wrong direction. In order to continue his work of spreading the true gospel, he was willing to engage in an act that would be considered cowardly and then boast about it because it shows his commitment to the cause of Christ and his disdain for the things that bring honor in the world. The gospel turns things upside down. He had gone to Damascus to persecute Christians, now he would leave Damascus in a basket as a persecuted Christian.



Devotional Thought

One of the great battles of the Christian life that we all face, is to resist the urge to be exalted in the eyes of men. Have you been willing to advance the cause of Christ by being vulnerable about your weaknesses or do you still try to get other people to see your strengths and accomplishments?

2 Corinthians 11:16-21a & Commentary

Paul Boasts About His Sufferings

16I repeat: Let no one take me for a fool. But if you do, then receive me just as you would a fool, so that I may do a little boasting. 17In this self-confident boasting I am not talking as the Lord would, but as a fool. 18Since many are boasting in the way the world does, I too will boast. 19You gladly put up with fools since you are so wise! 20In fact, you even put up with anyone who enslaves you or exploits you or takes advantage of you or pushes himself forward or slaps you in the face. 21To my shame I admit that we were too weak for that!



Dig Deeper

The kids at my school used to love to rap at lunchtime. They would all gather round and play beats or make their own and then have a great time rapping to each other. I actually used to enjoy it quite a bit, as they used to do it in my classroom. One year, however, a new group of students came in and joined in the tradition, but through the influence of two or three new students, the rapping began to take a nasty tone. They introduced something that is done on the streets but had not been in our school, the practice of ribbing and battle rap. This is a style of rap where you make fun of anything you can about the other person, and then they answer back by making fun of you.

After becoming aware of what was going on, I warned them not to do but it kept managing to creep in, especially when I would step out of the room. I was close to ending the lunchtime rap sessions altogether when I decided upon a different approach one day. I joined in. I wouldn’t normally do that, but desperate times call for desperate measures. As I walked up, one of the boys had the nerve to take a few shots at me, even though they were marginally good-natured. Then he challenged me to rap back at them. He was sure that I was going to decline and maybe yell at them, but by doing that, he would have won in the eyes of the other students. I smiled wryly because they never expected that their old history teacher had spent a lot of timing rapping in his youth. I quickly sent out a few good-natured but verbally intricate shots at them, which caused all the other students to "ooah and aaah." Then I took a few shots at myself to disarm the situation, and finally I launched into a rap about how silly it was to make fun of other people. By the time I was done, it was obvious that I had beaten them at their own game, and in the process shown that they really weren’t very good rappers and that making fun of others was counter-productive. The problem of battle rapping was over and things went back to the good-natured rap.

As I mulled over what Paul is about to do in the next section, I immediately thought of this story, because it is very similar to the mindset that I believe Paul had, and is almost identical to what Paul is about to do. His opponents have been boasting in the way that the world does, in order to exalt themselves, and Paul is about to expose them as frauds, by playing their own game for a brief moment.

These other teachers had blown in to town, and no doubt, seemed quite exciting and authoritative. They were preaching a gospel of self-fulfillment and excitement and appealing to the weaknesses of the Corinthian’s culture. These guys were impressive. They were witty, clever, good speakers, and said that their version of the gospel could deliver on things like health, wealth, and happiness, the types of things that people want to hear. Yet, there was apparently a downside. They were bossy, they demanded a lot of money, and they were rude and dismissive to the people in Corinth. They had put up with quite a bit of foolishness in order to receive the wisdom of these so-called apostles, all because they were so wise, Paul says rather sarcastically. If they would just wake up and take a look, though, they would see that the result has been anything but the freeing power of the true gospel. They have been enslaved, exploited, taken advantage of, and even slapped in the face (Paul is probably speaking metaphorically here, but it is possible that these teachers had actually slapped people in a demeaning fashion, putting them in their ‘place’.)

The Corinthians have allowed themselves to get sucked in by a worldly view of wisdom, one that values things like flash, charisma, and impressive communication skills rather than actually having the blessing of the Holy Spirit upon them and their ministry. Because they have been so willing to engage in this type of foolishness, however, Paul will enter into that realm, if only for a moment. He will, just for a minute, become all things to all men, in order to help them to see not only that his opponents have engaged in a foolish, worldly brand of wisdom and boasting, but also that they really don’t have much to boast about. Even if Paul were to sink down to their level and look at the things that they value, God has allowed him to be more impressive even by human standards. Once Paul has their attention, though, he will turn things around and boast in the very things that his detractors never would. He will boast in his weakness. He will brag about the suffering that he has endured on the behalf of the Messiah. We should be clear that Paul only boasts at their level in verse 22 and 23a. In 23b, he will engage in the type of boasting that would horrify his opponents, by talking of beatings, danger and imprisonment.

What Paul is about to do is not serious biblical teaching; he is quite clear about that. Yet, in a sense, he feels that engaging in this is necessary to expose his opponents so that the real gospel can be recognized and heard. The next passages will make clear that the gospel will shine through even when Paul engages in what he calls foolishness. In 1 Corinthians 1:25, Paul declared that the foolishness of God was wiser than any human wisdom. He is about to show the truth of that in living color.



Devotional Thought

It was a bold move by Paul to engage the world at their level in order to expose their foolishness and demonstrate the differences and the superiority of the true gospel. How many of us would be willing to do the same thing in with our culture?

2 Corinthians 11:7-15 & Commentary

7Was it a sin for me to lower myself in order to elevate you by preaching the gospel of God to you free of charge? 8I robbed other churches by receiving support from them so as to serve you. 9And when I was with you and needed something, I was not a burden to anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied what I needed. I have kept myself from being a burden to you in any way, and will continue to do so. 10As surely as the truth of Christ is in me, nobody in the regions of Achaia will stop this boasting of mine. 11Why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do! 12And I will keep on doing what I am doing in order to cut the ground from under those who want an opportunity to be considered equal with us in the things they boast about. 13For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. 14And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. 15It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.



Dig Deeper

One of the teams in the high school athletic conference in which I used to coach was a major problem for years. The school was an inner-city charter school just like all of the other schools in the conference but this one had a very poor reputation. The principle had been under investigation for misuse of funds, as had the entire school. The basketball coach had been discovered intentionally using a player who did not even attend the school (false grade reports had been manufactured by someone inside the school office) and on several occasions, teachers were involved in or responsible for inciting altercations at basketball games. Unfortunately, the students seemed to act just like the teachers and administrators at the school. It was no surprise to those familiar with the school that the students would behave in a manner in keeping with the behavior and reputation of the school. In fact, the school was actually thrown out of the athletic conference due to the uncontrollability and potential violence of their fans at games.

Paul is simultaneously defending his apostolic ministry while making it quite clear that the position of his opponents was not just a local variation of the more traditional Christian practices. It wasn’t that Paul just didn’t care for the gospel being preached by the super apostles. In this passage, he gets right to the heart of the matter. Earlier, Paul called those who would oppose him ‘unbelievers’ (2 Cor. 6:14). Now he is even more specific. Paul has acted the way that he has because he belongs to the true Messiah, and they acted the way they had because of who they belong to. They had followed the example of their superior.

We certainly don’t have any written records of the charges that Paul’s detractors were making, but when we look at the areas where Paul defends himself, we can begin to piece together, with a few gaps, the sorts of things they were charging Paul with. The attacks against Paul had, apparently, become so unfair that he was in the position of being damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. On one hand, Paul was accused of being dishonest and stealing money. Yet, on the other hand, when he refused to take any sort of support from the Corinthian Church, he is charged with not loving them enough to take support from them. Paul, however, vigorously defends himself on both ends. On one end, he would not take any sort of money or support, so as not to appear in any way that he was benefiting from the people of Corinth. This makes sense considering that Paul was spreading the gospel in a culture that valued prosperity and thought that the value of the speaker was equal to the amount of money he made. They also believed that it was a sign of respect and patronage for disciples of a teacher to support that teacher. Paul didn’t want any of those things being associated with his ministry (and he wanted disciples of Jesus, not Paul), so he refused to take any support from them.

On the other end, Paul wants them to understand that he has not done all of this because he doesn’t love them. God knows that wasn’t true. He did it all precisely because he loved them. It was the right of an apostle to receive support for his ministry, but Paul lowered himself in status and raised them above the obligation to support him. He shared the gospel free of charge to them, to the point of robbing (Paul is, of course, speaking hyperbolically here meaning if there was theft it was for not from them) churches that were extremely poor. He has not and would continue not to take support from them because he don’t want them to ever see Paul in any of the worldly ways that might have come so naturally to them.

Despite the fact that this would open himself to more criticism form his opponents, Paul would keep on doing what he was doing. He knew that by doing this, it would cut the ground (a military word that meant the place from where an attack was launched) from under his opponents. Paul realized that the criticism of him for not taking money was more of a result of the fact that his opponents knew that once the Corinthians began to understand his reasons, it would make them look badly. If Paul would compromise on this, it would make them look a little better in comparison.

Paul now hits the real reason that his opponents have attacked him so violently, have preached a different gospel, and have masqueraded as authentic apostles of the real gospel. The one to whom they belonged was not the Messiah, but Satan. This explains their behavior. Satan was known to masquerade as an angel of light (see Isa. 14:12-15), so it only makes sense that those who belong to him would pretend to be something that they were not. Paul has already stated that they taught a different Jesus, were animated by a different Spirit, and spread a different gospel (v. 4). Now he explains why. They were acting just light Satan, obviously implying that they belonged to Satan. In the end, though, they would receive exactly what they deserved, which will presumably be the lake of fire (Gehenna) that was prepared for Satan and his angels (Matt. 25:41).

Throughout this section, Paul has carefully crafted a parallel that should not be missed. Korah was the man who led a rebellion against Moses (Num. 16). Korah and his followers wanted honor and authority that was equal with Moses, all the while they questioned and sought to undermine the authority of Moses. They tried to gain equality with Moses, but were shown by God to be false leaders while Moses was demonstrated as the true leader. In the end, Korah and his followers were swallowed up by the earth and went down into Sheol, the place of the unrighteous dead. In the same way, Paul’s opponents have not just made a mistake in doctrine, they have attacked the authority of the true leader and the man of God. They have desired for themselves the honor and authority that were due only true apostles. They made an attempt to undermine the authority of Paul that had nearly led many people away from the true gospel. They would get precisely what their actions deserved, just as Korah had.

Clearly, Paul does not pull any punches here. But his reasons are valid. This is no mere doctrinal squabble. He is in a battle for the very gospel itself. He was trying to protect it from being turned into another Corinthians philosophical system with a Christian twist. He was, in essence, fighting to keep it the as the true vehicle of God’s new creation. That was a fight from which Paul would never back down.



Devotional Thought

Much of our version of Christianity in America today is in desperate need of a close examination that would rid it of it’s unhealthy cultural influences. In what areas do you see that your surrounding culture has crept in and watered down your own Christianity or that of your church?

2 Corinthians 11:1-6 & Commentary

Paul and the False Apostles

1I hope you will put up with a little of my foolishness; but you are already doing that. 2I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. 3But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. 5But I do not think I am in the least inferior to those "super-apostles." 6I may not be a trained speaker, but I do have knowledge. We have made this perfectly clear to you in every way.



Dig Deeper

In a movie I saw recently, one of the characters was supposed to be the pilot of a futuristic helicopter that served as a shuttle for rich people. It was his birthday, however, and one of the other pilots offered to go in his place so that he could go home to his family. He said that he couldn’t because the client had requested him specifically. The other pilot pointed out, though, that they didn’t know what he looked like, so he would just go and pretend to be his friend. He did, and no one was the wiser, until, of course, a little later in the plot when the mistaken identity became a major part of the plot twist. They didn’t know the real pilot from the imposter, however, because they didn’t really know the real pilot.

In this section Paul begins to identify for the Corinthians how they can know the difference between those approved by God and those not. The real issue can be boiled down to who is presenting the authentic versions of Jesus, the Spirit, and the gospel. Implicit in this appeal by Paul is that the Corinthians must know the real Jesus that Paul presented to them so that they can identify the imposters. This section can be particularly instructive for those of us who live in such confusing pluralistic times where it seems as if on every street corner and every TV channel, someone else is presenting a different version of Jesus and claiming it to be the real one.

Paul begins with a bit of irony. If the Corinthians can put up with the foolishness of his opponents as they have, then they can bear with a little foolishness from Paul as he makes a point. He is jealous for them in the sense that God was jealous for the Israelites in the Old Testament. God did not want the Israelites harming themselves by seeking after false gods, and Paul does not want the Corinthians to harm themselves by seeking after false versions of the gospel.

Paul has gone to a great deal of work to prepare the people of Corinth as a beautiful bride for the Messiah. In the Old Testament, it was quite common to refer to YHWH as the husband of Israel and Israel as His bride (Hos. 1-3; Ezek. 16; Isa. 49:18; 50:1-2; 54:1-8; 62:5). Mark 2:19 makes reference to the Messiah as the bridegroom and in Ephesians 5:22-23, Paul applies this image to describe the relationship between Christ and His Church. Paul makes a double point by using this imagery. The first is that the Messiah’s people, the Church, have now become the true people of God, replacing the nation of Israel. The second is that, as the betrothed, they must remain faithful to the Messiah. The last thing he wants is the bride to start taking a look at other men before the final wedding.

Paul has talked quite a bit about his opponents, but now he gets to the heart of the matter and accuses them of something far more serious. When they teach the things they have and stand in opposition to Paul, they are actually teaching a different presentation of what Jesus accomplished in his ministry, a different version of how one receives and grows in the Spirit, and completely different conditions for belonging to the people of God.

These false apostles were teaching that Jesus had come and suffered so that we didn’t have to. He hadn’t opened the door to the Kingdom, allowing people an access to it that would bring misunderstanding and persecution from those who did not possess and did not understand the Kingdom. Rather, they taught that Christ had brought the entire fullness of the Kingdom now, and that the true signs of that were health, wealth, and freedom from suffering. Any lack in someone’s life or any suffering were sure signs that that person did not possess the fullness of the version of the Kingdom of Jesus they were teaching. This was a Santa Claus Jesus who would give anyone anything they wanted. Paul’s concern was that it was enough like the true Jesus, with enough similarities to the true Kingdom, that people who didn’t intimately know the authentic Jesus might be confused. This Jesus, who would give all the benefits without repentance and dying to self was just that sort of thing that appealed to the felt needs of people and could be extremely dangerous. It is dangerous because it convinces people that they can have everything that makes them happy. It keeps people focused on themselves when they should be learning to embrace the fact that they have died to themselves.

The true gospel, however, is not that at all. It is the truth that Jesus did suffer, die, and raise from the dead. He does allow us to enter into His Kingdom and the age to come in the present age but it isn’t so that we can have an eternal Christmas morning, with Christ giving us everything we want like some spoiled little children. The real gospel is the fact that Christ preached that we will suffer and go through many difficult times, but He promised to walk with us and take us through those times, more refined and purified than we had ever been. Paul’s opponents didn’t like this version of the gospel. It didn’t give them the status, reputation, wealth, and comforts that they wanted. If you really believed in Paul’s version of the gospel and patterned your life after the suffering Messiah, you might wind up looking like, well. . . Paul. And that’s the last thing they wanted. Paul preached and lived as though the Kingdom had been inaugurated but not fully consummated, and that it was up to the Messiah’s people to share in his life of suffering in order to expand the Kingdom. His opponents wanted a Kingdom that was already here in full and could be accessed like an eternal, bottomless ATM machine, constantly dispensing anything that we can set our hearts on.

Paul didn’t have all the rhetorical prowess in presenting the real Kingdom, but rather than that making him inferior as his detractors had claimed, it made his humble presentation of the gospel all the more powerful. But the question remains, how could the Corinthians (and us) know the authentic gospel? The answer is simple. By making every effort to know the real Jesus. Once we do that, we can spot the Santa Claus Jesus from a mile away.



Devotional Thought

Which Messiah do you seek after? Are you faithful to the suffering Messiah, the crucified and risen Messiah? Is that the Messiah that you embrace and live out in your own life or do you occasionally find yourself seeking after the Santa Claus Messiah?

2 Corinthians 10:12-18 & Commentary

12We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise. 13We, however, will not boast beyond proper limits, but will confine our boasting to the field God has assigned to us, a field that reaches even to you. 14We are not going too far in our boasting, as would be the case if we had not come to you, for we did get as far as you with the gospel of Christ. 15Neither do we go beyond our limits by boasting of work done by others. Our hope is that, as your faith continues to grow, our area of activity among you will greatly expand, 16so that we can preach the gospel in the regions beyond you. For we do not want to boast about work already done in another man's territory. 17But, "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord." 18For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends.



Dig Deeper

My students were sure they had it all figured out. They had completed their timeline projects on Egyptian history and were busy comparing one another’s work. Some of the students had adorned their work with some beautiful drawings and impressive artistic additions that really impressed the other students. When they reviewed one another’s work, it was those extra artistic flairs that convinced them that those students would be the one’s to receive a high grade. The problem was that the students were not the one’s determining the grades, nor were they determining the criterion on which the assignments would be graded. I was the one doing that. What they had failed to understand was that, although the extra artwork was nice and helped their grades slightly, it was the fundamentals of accuracy, thoroughness, and good writing that were far more important. Because of that, several of the timelines that received the highest grades were not the fanciest or most attractive, they were the ones who had followed the guidelines of the assignment and completed the important work excellently.

This is one of the things that Paul is trying to help those see who might still be swayed by his opponents in Corinth, or still sitting on the fence. His opponents, those claiming to be apostles, only appeared impressive if they were judged by the wrong standards. They looked impressive and flashy but that is not how an apostle or any worker in the gospel should be judged. On this point, Paul was extremely clear, and so should they be.

Paul’s opponents were claiming that Paul had shown that it was they, not Paul, who had the right to exercise apostolic authority over the community in Corinth. Paul, in chapters 11-12 will pick up the question of whether these men should be considered apostles at all, but for right now he will deal with the topic of his own claim of apostolic authority over the Church in Corinth. To do so he will first, establish the proper criterion for determining apostolic authority and second, he will demonstrate that he, not his opponents, meet that standard.

His opponents evidently spent a lot time judging their worth by comparing themselves to one another. Paul points out that this is a fundamental flaw in their understanding that shows that they did not understand the true nature of apostolic authority. They are not wise because they are judging by flashy human standards of their own abilities, spiritual gifts, and rhetorical excellence. Paul, though, will have none of that. He sarcastically confirms that he wouldn’t dare to use those standards because he knows he won’t match up well in that contest. He will limit himself to the things that God uses to establish authority. Paul is only interested in God’s standard, which is that God established Paul as the one to reach Corinth with the gospel. That is the marker of Paul’s authority because that door was opened and established by God. Paul is not trying to boast in the Lord of authority that he does not have. His point is obvious. This is what his opponents have done by claiming authority in a community in which they did not establish. Paul believed that the founding of a community was the only appropriate and divinely instituted measuring stick for determining true apostolic authority.

Paul’s authority has been demonstrated by the fact that God had allowed him into Corinth and had ordained him as the one who would preach the gospel and establish a Christian community there. Now Paul hopes that he can complete the establishment of the gospel community in Achaia in the East so that more areas in the West, like Spain, can have the gospel preached to them. Paul, presumably, will only go to areas opened to him by the will of God and he believes that God will not call him to expand his areas of ministry until his work in and around Corinth has been firmly established. These are the things that Paul will boast of. In Paul’s eyes, the only true grounds for boasting in the Lord, the only rightful standard of exercising authority is that the approval comes directly from God’s will. Boasting in the Lord is to boast in the divine mercy of God. The fact that Paul’s opponents were boasting in and claiming authority because of their own abilities and talents was a clear indicator that they were trying to grade themselves based on the extras rather than the necessary requirements.

For Paul, the problem with his opponents is not that they are boasting, it is that they are boasting in all the wrong things. They are comparing themselves to one another and boasting in their own natural abilities. Paul is not interested in the things that most humans value. What is important for him is that the object of the boasting is what God has done. In verse 17, Paul quotes from Jeremiah 9:23-24, which is a call from Jeremiah to acknowledge God for his grace and provision. Paul’s opponents were claiming authority in Corinth because of their impressive stature, their prosperity, and their flashy abilities. The fact that they claimed authority based on these criterion were a demonstration that their boast of authority came from the wrong source. They were not relying on and acknowledging God. By commending themselves and claiming authority that was not given to them by God, they have shown themselves to not be wise and to fail to have an understanding of divine approval. Just as in Paul’s day, the church in our day must constantly be on guard for those that would commend themselves according to human standards but are not commended by the Lord according to His standards.



Devotional Thought

When you consider who is effective in Christian ministry, do you tend to judge or commend others by God’s standards or by human standards? Paul says that his apostolic authority was established by the fact that God allowed him to spread the gospel to Corinth. By what ways, in our own churches and ministry, might we determine who is approved by God?

2 Corinthians 10:1-11 & Commentary

Paul's Defense of His Ministry

1By the meekness and gentleness of Christ, I appeal to you—I, Paul, who am "timid" when face to face with you, but "bold" when away! 2I beg you that when I come I may not have to be as bold as I expect to be toward some people who think that we live by the standards of this world. 3For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 6And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.

7You are looking only on the surface of things. If anyone is confident that he belongs to Christ, he should consider again that we belong to Christ just as much as he. 8For even if I boast somewhat freely about the authority the Lord gave us for building you up rather than pulling you down, I will not be ashamed of it. 9I do not want to seem to be trying to frighten you with my letters. 10For some say, "His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing." 11Such people should realize that what we are in our letters when we are absent, we will be in our actions when we are present.



Dig Deeper

The young teacher was rather quiet and unassuming. He didn’t really care to engage his students in discipline if he didn’t have to. He much preferred to lay down the rules of the class quietly and without much fanfare. That way when he was actually in class with the students, he could get down to the business of teaching and enjoying the topic of the class. Most of the students greatly enjoyed the class and the teacher, but one year a couple of students came in and began to challenge the young man. They took his good nature and quiet way fro weakness and begin to attempt to convince other students that the teacher was weak and wasn’t a good teacher like they had all thought.

A few days later, a situation happened outside of the school when a couple of non-students came up to beat up a current student in the teacher’s class. The teacher happened to be outside and ran right into the middle of a clear gang attack. He immediately and swiftly dealt with the situation and actually scared the assailants away. The next day in class things were different. The students that had questioned the teacher because of his demeanor, suddenly realized that there was much more to him than that. What he had down outside of the class, he was surely able to do inside of it if need be.

What the students discovered on their own, Paul tells his Corinthian detractors outright. They have accused him of being timid and bold in person, but bold in his letters. This was an act of cowardice in their minds. By this point, Paul in comfortable in the knowledge that he has the hearts and support of the majority of the Corinthian congregation. In a sense, now, he turns his attention towards his detractors and those that might still be swayed by him.

Paul begins by appealing to the meekness and gentleness of Christ. In doing so he accomplished two things. First, because he has claimed all along to be a minister in the same manner of Christ, he sets up the problem that if he is weak, then so was Christ. Second, was the fact that everyone at that time understood that Christ was meek and gentle when appropriate, but he was also fierce and bold when he had to be. Paul’s message is that as Christ was, so am I as His apostle. Paul does not want to have to be that way when comes, but he will. In essence, this passage is all about Paul balancing gentleness and meekness with the type of boldness that can tear down the strongholds of the world.

The world of Paul’s day was full of religions, philosophies, and wisdom from which to choose. What Paul is offering is decidedly not just another alternative but a way of life. A manner of living that uses a whole different set of weapons because it is part of an entirely different reality. Paul firmly believed that reality had been revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and because of that the task of every Christian is to demolish the strongholds of the world. This is an allusion to Proverbs 21:22, where the wise man goes up against strong cities and tears down the stronghold in which the ungodly trusted. When put side-by-side with worldly philosophies, the reality of the Messiah shows them to be mere pretenders. That doesn’t mean, however, that every position other true Christianity is devoid of any truth. All truth is God’s truth. We must be clear that there is no truth that is so great that it cannot be perverted by man’s pride, nor is there any morsel or tidbit of human insight, truth, or reality that cannot be taken into service to the true King of the world. This is what Paul means when he says to take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. This is precisely what he was doing when he did things like take Caesar’s title, Lord and Savior, and applied it to Christ, or even in his speech that was inspired by the altar to an unknown god in Athens. He was taking small glimmers of reality and turning them over to the obedience of the true King. We share in this task even today. It is our job to find the small glimmers of truth that man has perverted because of our own pride and turn them back over in obedience to Jesus, the Messiah and King of the world.

If anyone claims to be an apostle belonging to Christ, as Paul’s opponents did (he will soon pick up that thread and demonstrate that they are certainly not true apostles), then they need to reconsider things. They have been looking at worldly things and have convinced others in Corinth to do the same. Paul is doing something that those who are caught up in worldly things don’t understand. Human pride has perverted things like boasting and boldness, but Paul will make those very things captive and use them for the glory of God. He will boast about the authority the Lord has given him to build up and expand the Kingdom of God.

In the same vein, he hasn’t used boldness in his letters because he is a coward. Quite the contrary. He has used painful letters in an effort to avoid painful visits. He was not trying to use boldness in a human way, in order to frighten or intimidate them. No, he was using godly boldness for their own good. Again, his opponents had judged him according to human standards, claiming that he was weighty and forceful in letters but unimpressive in stature and a poor speaker in person. Paul can be bold in person, but even then it won’t come through vehicles of human pride like an impressive stature and forceful speaking skills. His boldness, force, and authority will come through in his godly actions when he arrives. We certainly can learn both from Paul’s reluctance to use his authority and boldness, and his godly willingness to when needed.



Devotional Thought

Paul was willing and able to take human things like boldness and boasting and turn them over to Christ in obedience. What are ways that you can take the things of the world and turn them over to the Lord that you have not yet thought of?