The Bible Nerd Podcast

In our pluralistic society, it's easy to get sucked into the idea that all religions can "coexist" with one another, in the sense they can all be true (or at least carry some significant measure of truth value). In this episode, we talk about how Emily struggled with this throughout her time in college and how Christians can respond to this claim.

Hello my friends! In this week's conversation with Emily, we take a dive into Molinism; or, the view that God's sovereignty is compatible with the free will of man in a meaningful way. I can't wait for you to listen in!

Have you ever wondered why God bothered to create us at all? I mean, if God does not need us, why go through all of the trouble? As we discuss the episode, the reality is the beautiful truth that God's love and desire for family transcends even the depths of our sin.

Welcome back to the podcast! In this episode, we are starting a conversation series with my friend Emily! We talk about lots of things including questioning God, the right way to share your faith, and the idea that Truth is like a medicine label, not like ice cream. Enjoy!

“Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

These days, it’s harder than ever to get to the bottom of the truth.

Unfortunately, relativism is alive and well. And sometimes, it’s downright painful and even deadly to accept the truth.

We are commanded by Jesus, though, to live in the truth. And in this week’s episode, we are going to take a look at holding a firm commitment to true things, even in the face of a backwards culture.

The post The Importance of Believing True Things appeared first on Steve Schramm Ministries.

When it comes to the very first chapters of the Bible, there is no shortage of disagreement about the meaning.

Some, like myself, think that Moses wrote these early chapters and that he intended to teach God’s creation of the world in terms of six, literal, 24 hour days. Others believe that while he did write that, that is not what he intended to teach.

Still others believe that’s not even what he wrote—or that he wasn’t even the writer!

So I have one simple question for those who take a view other than my own. Listen in to this week’s episode to find out what it is.

The post The One Question Critics of a Literal Genesis Need to Answer appeared first on Steve Schramm Ministries.

In our day and age, it’s common to hear that people are no longer interested in church.

After all, many churches are having to resort to gimmicks in order to even get people in the door!

But I wonder if the problem is of a different nature entirely?

That’s the subject of this week’s episode. I hope you enjoy!

The post God’s Word Builds God’s Church appeared first on Steve Schramm Ministries.

In our pursuits to be careful and skilled apologists, I think we often get concerns relative to objectivity and subjectivity out of balance.

Don’t get me wrong—the distinction is vitally important, but we must remember that our own subjective stories about how the gospel impacted us are, for some people, going to be more persuasive than arguments and evidence.

Full Transcript:

All right. My friends, it’s been a little while since we have been able to connect, but I had something on my mind that I just wanted to go ahead and share with you this week. And that is about the power of subjectivity. Now there’s a reason why I want to talk about this. And I think it’s pretty important over in against a, a thought stream that appears in apologetics conversations quite a bit, and it’s an important thought stream. But there is the other side of it that sometimes as people who are really interested in apologetics, we can drift off into.

And I think it’s dangerous if we do not give proper due and proper respect to the other side of the coin. So what I’m speaking to here primarily is the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity. Let me explain what I mean by that. If for some reason you are not familiar with these terms, if you, if you’ve never really given any thought to what these terms mean and how these terms should be put into practice. So if if something is objective, that means that it is outside of you. It’s, it’s not something that you are coming to determine rather it’s it’s something that you are coming to a believe about the real objective world, whatever it is, you know, maybe you’re coming to believe it, or maybe it’s just a fact that exists, whatever. It’s something about the real objective world.

In other words, the, the earth is, is round. The earth is not flat. The earth is round. Now that’s not something that is, is, is the way it is because of something we decided inside of ourselves. But it is something that is true about the world out there. It’s something that is an objective fact about the way the world really, really is. And we are coming to recognize that that fact, or that bit of information about the world. Now on the on the flip side of the coin is the subjectivity. And this is where the, the source of the belief or whatever is coming from within the subject instead of outside of the subject case. So this is the inside outside distinction that I, I first heard this from Greg Koukl. So I want to give him the credit.

I don’t know if maybe he heard it from somewhere else. Probably not. He’s a pretty brilliant guy. So he probably came up with it. But, but subjective is, is all about what’s inside and then objective is all about what’s outside. And so that’s a careful distinction now what has happened in popular culture is that those items have become very confused. And so that is in fact why the team at Stand to Reason (Greg Koukl’s organization) have a theme for their reality apologetics conference. The one for, I believe it was 2020, I believe the 2020 theme was truth is not ice cream. Now, the reason they titled it that way is multifaceted. I mean, first of all, it’s just a catchy title. That’s pretty cool.

But the reason is because of this confusion that has happened in culture and it’s been happening for awhile. Truth is not like ice cream. Truth is something objective. There is no your truth. Truth is not a subjective thing. It’s just not. It’s a, it’s an objective thing about the way the world is out there. No, somebody you know, me and my wife for example, have a differing opinion on the best flavor of ice cream. We have a different opinion about the tastiness of pickles. Ah, okay. For me I think pickles are absolutely horrible and my wife thinks they are one of the best things on the planet. So understand that there is a key distinction between deciding that you like pickles and deciding that the earth is round and not flat.

Pickles have a taste, but how you feel about that taste, how that taste appeals to you is a very, very different thing from being able to objectively identify the existence of the pickle or the shape, for example, of the pickle. These are objective features of reality. So truth is not ice cream. These are two kinds of separate things, and it’s very important that we do maintain this distinction. However, what we don’t want to do is drift into the unfortunate place where we disregard the power of storytelling. So I actually wrote a book about this (shameless plug) called God, the Great Commission, and You, and the subtitle, which attempts to kind of really get at the thrust of the book is How to Tell the Greatest Story Ever Told. And incidentally, I think Justin Brierley and the team at Unbelievable must’ve stolen that from me because that’s also what they decided to title their most recent, Unbelievable conference that they had.

Obviously I’m just kidding. But I did not steal that from them. I I came up with that first. So anyway that is how I frame the conversation aspect of that in the book, how to tell the greatest story ever told and it is about sharing the gospel. It’s about being able to bring people to Jesus. The idea there is though there, I think in many of our churches, we have a skewed understanding of how this must be done. I mean, I come from a background where basically, if you didn’t spell it out in exactly this way, and you didn’t attend certain events and this, that, and the other thing then you weren’t doing it right. There were a certain sort of elite in the church who were doing this the correct way, and everybody else was essentially living in sin.

And I’ve, I’ve come to a different view of that these days. I think that you can share the gospel in ways that are that some would consider to be an unconventional. And I’ve spoken of Mike Bechtle’s work in the past. He’s written a great book. Actually the name of it is slipping my mind right now for some reason, but Oh, I know it’s called Evangelism for the Rest of Us by Mike Bechtle. And it’s a really great book that speaks about how you can be introverted and still actually be very confident sharing the gospel. And so that’s a great book, but there is a, a subjective element to what happens to each and every one of us, whenever we get saved, whenever we come to the Lord came. And I think that that story is unique to me, that story is unique to my son who just asked the Lord to save him the other night.

It’s unique to the apostle Paul as well. The apostle Paul had he conversion experience on the Damascus road that you and I did not have. He had a story to tell others. And you have a story to tell others, and I have a story to tell, tell others. So it’s very important that we don’t get this confused. And now, now we kind of dig even deeper into this for, for just a moment. Oftentimes this question comes up of how early in a conversation do we get into the apologetic stuff. How, when do we go for the stuff about you just resurrection arguments for the existence of God, et cetera. And I’ve actually heard William Lane Craig response to this and given his status, I guess you would say that other people have given him as, as, as you know, basically being the greatest living apologists there is today, you might find his answer to this fascinating.

And I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna paraphrase it. But essentially what he believes on this is that actually we should not be starting with apologetics, what we should be doing is...

Young age creationists may be some of the most misunderstood people in Christendom. In this week’s episode, we discuss some of the core differences that surround the divide.

Recently, a Facebook friend of mine (and good brother in Christ) raised a startling proposition: Should one be compelled by Scripture to take a young age view of world history, it would be preferable to regard the Bible as teaching error.

Now, there’s some context to this (which we discuss at length in the episode), but is this really the best path to take? Is the evidence for an old earth SO untouchable that we should regard the Bible as teaching error if we are compelled it teaches otherwise?

Listen in to this week’s episode here to hear my response: https://www.steveschramm.com/rant-creation-frustration/

Enduring Together,

The post RANT: Creation Frustration appeared first on Steve Schramm Ministries.

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The Bible Nerd Society is a group of intensely passionate Bible-believers. We explore the world of the Bible, endeavor to fall more in love with Jesus every day, and build a thoughtful defense for the Christian worldview. We study topics including biblical studies, theology, Christian apologetics, creation science, and philosophy.

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The post Join the Bible Nerd Society! appeared first on Steve Schramm Ministries.