Which virgin birth do you believe in?

In today's day and age, talking about a virgin birth just sounds like foolishness. There aren't many virgins out there to start with, and they're certainly not giving birth to babies. Then, when we say that we can know someone was a virgin 2,000 years ago and actually gave birth, people throw their hands up and say, "How can you believe something that just seems so foolish?" Only they probably leave out the word seems, because they actually think it's foolish.

That's what we're going to talk about today: the virgin birth of Jesus. We're also going to talk about a different virgin birth. There are actually two virgin births. Christianity believes in the virgin birth of Jesus, and, from another perspective, the atheistic world and culture believes in the virgin birth of the universe. This is pointed out just beautifully in a quote by Glen Scrivener, when he says, "Christians believe in the virgin birth of Jesus. Materialists believe in the virgin birth of the cosmos. Choose your miracle."

I think that's a great, insightful little quote. Because what it does is show that yes, Christians do believe in something that is miraculous and can't be explained by any natural means: how even a normal man could be born from a woman who had not had sexual intercourse. But, the other side, the materialistic side, would say that the universe came about without any cause for no purpose, from no person. Choose your virgin birth. I think that's a very interesting way to think about the divide between Christianity and atheism or materialism.

Just as a recap from previous episodes, materialism is the belief that only material things exist. There would be no God since God's not made out of material. He's not made out of stuff. He's immaterial. There would be no soul. There would be no mind. You are just your brain in your body. That's it. You are reduced to your physical components on a materialistic worldview.

On that worldview, like I've just pointed out, it has its own sort of virgin birth, the virgin birth of everything, mainly the universe and everything it contains. On the other hand, Christians believe in the virgin birth of Jesus. Now I want to answer a question. Is it reasonable to believe in the virgin birth of Jesus? I actually think it is.

There's this interesting kind of dynamic that comes into the Christian life sometimes where you'll hear someone say, "I struggle when I tell people that Jesus rose from the dead." It's like they pause because they know what they're about to stay just smacks a little of the ridiculous. Because to most people, it does.

That same person wouldn't bat an eye a lot of times at saying, "God created the whole universe. God created the world. God created man." When we start to say this guy rose from the dead, that feels different. I think it's also the same type of feeling we get sometimes when we start talking about the virgin birth. We pause because we believe it but we know it just sounds a little silly or ridiculous.

Now I think this is evidence of us living in a very secular society. Even though we don't intentionally go out to believe things that secular society says, I think nonetheless it influences how we think just existing in this society. We have to be very careful about how we think about the core truth claims of Christianity, things like the virgin birth and the resurrection.

I myself have at times felt this tendency to shy back a little from these types of claims, the miraculous claims. Now I still believe them; don't misunderstood me. Nonetheless, there's a slight hesitation because I know this just sounds weird.

I want to put forth a helpful thought. If we're very confident in the universe…