thethingsihavelearned

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Without You, what am I to myself but a guide to my own self-destruction?

Saint Augustine

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As a church, we need to reconsider our perception of “criminals”. Consider the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8. Do we view criminals as people deserving of grace or people deserving to be choked to death. Too often when discussing George Floyd with my white friends, even Christians, they say something to the effect of, “Well he would not have been in that position if he was not a criminal.” That may be so, but his criminal past does not diminish his inherent worthiness as a man made in God’s image.

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You made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in you.

Saint Augustine

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I love this satirical poem about mankind, which I read for the first time in Can Man Live Without God by Ravi Zacharias.

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Systemic Dehumanization

There is a problem in America right now, and it is not the new media buzzword, “systemic racism”. So far, I have mostly been using this blog to write about apologetics, but this idea has weighed heavily on my mind lately, so I want to write about it. Brown v. Board of Education and the various civil rights acts of the 1960s effectively ended systemic racism in the United States. Granted, this legislation did not change the individual natures of the people of the United States; there were then and still are racist people in the United States, but the system is no longer racist. In fact, the system is not even neutral. Under the Title IX and affirmative action legislation, the system actually enforces equality now as it never has in the past. How effectively the system promotes equality is another conversation, but systemic racism no longer exists. That does not, however, mean that the American system is perfect. The issue at the root of the recent police brutality is the systemic dehumanization of those whom the criminal justice system perceives to be criminals. This dehumanization persists from the first police encounter through incarceration. As soon as a police officer identifies a potential criminal, that person becomes something less than an American citizen.

In his book Talking to Strangers, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the human “default to truth” and explains how it is a good thing. When men do not lend their fellow the benefit of a doubt, when we default to distrust rather than to truth, civilization crumbles. We cannot function as a society without trusting one another, and people in general in the USA do trust one another. Normal people assume the next man is telling the truth unless he proves otherwise. However, the criminal justice system in America has become something other than normal. Police officers, correctional officers, investigators, and prosecutors all receive training to disbelieve suspected criminals, whether they have been convicted or not. If their intuition tells them that a person has committed a crime, that person can no longer be trusted. You see it with police stops and in correctional facilities, and it is leading to many unnecessary deaths from Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd to Sandra Bland to Dennis Rodman. Let me also add that this happens to white people as well, about which we do not hear as much because it does not fit the systemic racism narrative.

Removing police officers’ default to truth is a bad idea, and we are witnessing its consequences. It is pernicious because on the surface it seems to be a pretty good idea. Police should assume that criminal suspects are dangerous in order to protect themselves, right? Perhaps there is a measure of wisdom in that. “Caution is the better part of valor” and all that. But they still need to approach even suspected criminals with a measure of grace, and not only is that Biblical, but it is also constitutional. We must not forget that in America, suspects are innocent until proven guilty. To treat them as such in the courtroom and nowhere else is schizophrenic. 

Matters become worse once criminals are convicted. Now the adherents to the system know that the suspects are criminals and are by definition liars, sneaks, and cheats, and they treat them as such. But do these people not have rights? Are they not still American citizens? What is the duty of the American criminal justice system to the convict? These are questions that deserve consideration. It seems apparent to me that the duty of the criminal justice system to the convicts is to help them to become productive citizens if possible. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he could be, and he will become what he should be.” Correctional officers should receive training in that vein, the vein of grace.

Is this not the way Jesus treated criminals during his incarnation? John 8:1-11 comes to mind pertaining to the criminal justice system treatment of suspects. The Pharisees had abducted the woman supposedly caught in adultery and were preparing to stone her when Jesus came onto the scene. The scene ends with Jesus’ famous statement, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” Perhaps the police officers should be more like Jesus and less  like the Pharisees. I am not saying with this illustration that the officers should let everyone go, just that maybe they could be more humble and kind in their dealings with suspects.

How Jesus led men and women speaks to the model for the departments of corrections, board of prisons, etc. Jesus told the people how to act, modeled the standard, and expected them to turn from their sin and follow Him. He knew that many of them had checkered pasts, and He knew that many of them would fail Him in the future; however, that knowledge did not prevent Him from extending them grace and treating them kindly.

To all representatives of the criminal justice system: believe in people’s potential for goodness, and they just might meet your expectations.

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The Historicity of Jesus According to Non-Christian Sources

These last few articles have been leading up to this topic on the historicity of Jesus. We defined truth as being that which corresponds to reality, and we considered why it is actually important to answer the question of the historicity of Jesus Christ – is he a real historical figure, or is he merely a myth or an allegory.

First, understand that it is impossible to know anything from history with absolute certainty. Because no one can capture every aspect of a particular event, we cannot know for certain that the event in question happened in a particular way, in contrast to how we can know precisely the answer to a math or physics problem. For example, I cannot prove without question that Alexander the Great was born on August 8, 358 BC, at night, but I can prove to you without question that 2 + 2 = 4, quite literally. I will spare you from that proof for now, but my point is that historians cannot prove things in the same way that students of the hard sciences can. Historians must determine to what conclusion the facts most strongly point, and we can know things from history with reasonable certainty. It is similar to the dichotomy in law between trying a civil case and trying a criminal case. In a civil case, the lawyer must demonstrate that the preponderance (or majority) of the evidence supports his conclusion. In a criminal case, the prosecutor must prove his case beyond a reasonable doubt. Historical research is more like the civil case than the criminal case. We must determine which conclusion the majority of the evidence supports.

There are several ways to address this question of the historicity of Jesus that occur to me. First, one can examine the historical record, other than the Biel, pertinent to the time period during which Jesus lived, which is what we will do here today. In Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Josh McDowell looks at the allusions to Jesus Christ in the following sourced: Toledot Yeshu, the rabbinical source from the fifth century; the Qur’an; Suetonius, the second century Roman historian; Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia from 111 – 113 AD; Mara bar Serapion, the 70 AD stoic philosopher; Cornelius Tacitus, the Roman historian who wrote his Annals around 100 AD; and Flavius Josephus, the first century Jewish historian. All of these sources have one thing in common, which is that they were not Christians, but in their writing about the first century, they had to discuss Jesus because he was the most prominent historical figure of that time period; otherwise, their records would have been woefully incomplete. McDowell also discusses the historical document about that time period that the Christians wrote. Some example he examines are the First Clement and the letters of Bishop Ignatius, both from the early part of the second century. Another mode of attack would be to prove the veracity of the New Testament, which liberal scholars seem to doubt for no verifiable academic reason, and consider what it says about Jesus. Finally, from a philosophical standpoint, one could use syllogisms to elucidate the logical necessity of Jesus based on what we perceive about God’s character. The philosopher would show how the triune God’s perfect harmony of love and holiness logically necessitates the life, death, and resurrection of God the Son. It makes sense for a beautiful argument, but at this juncture, it seems pertinent to me to use the works of Jesus’ critics to draw conclusions about his life. I hope you will enjoy it as well.

Using these non-Christian sources to glean information about Jesus is useful because no critic of Christianity can label them as biased toward the Christian position. Early church fathers such as Polycarp and Clement of Rome, not to mention the Bible, certainly have a lot to say about Jesus; however, the critic could claim that these Christians lie or exaggerate to support their own arguments. I would disagree with this contention. Many of the early church fathers died a martyr’s death, never renouncing their faith in Jesus. I am no psychologist, but I would think that if these men were lying regarding Jesus, they would have admitted to their lying in the end to save themselves from the hangman’s noose. The fact that these martyrs maintained their position even to death strengthens their argument, showing at least that they believed strongly in their claims about Jesus; therefore, their writing is worthy of consideration. Notwithstanding, for now, we will consider Josephus, Tacitus, and some of the other non-Christian sources.

In History, as in law, the most valuable evidence is first-hand. In a court of law, second-hand evidence is inadmissible as hearsay. For example, if Sally witnesses Johnnie’s car wreck and tells Suzy all about it, Sally’s testimony is admissible and relevant, while Suzy’s is inadmissible because only Sally actually witnessed the wreck. In like manner, the further in time a historian writes his record from the time at which the event happened, the more likely it becomes that the report contains inaccuracies. First-hand reports recorded on the day of the event make the best evidence, and other records lose value loosely in proportion to a combination of the distance in time they are from the event and distance in people. There is a children’s game where children gather in a circle, and child one whispers some phrase into the ear of child two. Child two whispers phrase to child three, and the process continues accordingly around the circle. Without fail, the phrase is always different when it makes its way back around to the first child. Similarly, time and the people chain tend to weaken the strength of historical documentation such that the report of an eyewitness on the day of the event is best, and second-hand and third-hand testimony becomes weaker the further in time the testimony is recorded form the original event. With this historical analysis lesson in hand, let us now attempt to examine some of the historical record regarding Jesus.

Fist, consider the attestations to Jesus in the Qur’an. The Muslim prophet Muhammed dictated the Qur’an. Ergo, it stands to reason that the Qur’an probably harbors some polemic devices against Christianity, yet look at the information it contains about Jesus. According to the Qur’an, Jesus performed miracles, uttered prophecies that came true, and was born of a virgin. It also argues against the Christian doctrines of Jesus’ divinity, the Trinity, and even Jesus’ crucifixion. I believe the only reason that the Qur’an mentions Jesus at all is because his fame was already so widespread at the time of its writing. The Qur’an, purporting to be a religious book, had to include some true information about Jesus to give it any credibility whatsoever. Although its denial of Jesus’ crucifixion, as well as several other errors, probably tolls its death bell, its information about the miracles surrounding Jesus’ life mirrors that of the other historical accounts we will analyze. The Toledot Yeshu is similar to the Qur’an in that it is likely polemical against Christianity by its very nature. It is a Jewish commentary written around 450 AD that discusses Jesus Christ, calling him essentially a false prophet, certainly denying his godship. The Toledot proposes that Jesus was a disrespectful charlatan who mastered demonic magic to gain a following. It says that the Romans crucified Jesus and erroneously reports that his body was stolen by his disciples and ultimately recovered by the Sanhedrin. Clearly a Christian would disagree with this polemic’s contention about the recovery of Jesus body, but notice the tacit referent to three core Christian tenants. First, where the Toledot says that Jesus mastered magic, it is attempting to account for Jesus’ well-documented miracles that he performed throughout his life, interestingly doing so in the same way that the Gospels say that the Jewish leaders did so during Jesus’ lifetime. Second, it agrees that Jesus was crucified. The Toledot disagrees with the Christian as to the purpose of Jesus’ crucifixion, but it agrees that Jesus was indeed crucified. Finally, it attests to Jesus’ resurrection. It says that Jesus’ body was stolen and later recovered, again mirroring the story that Matthew, in his Gospel, tells us that the Jewish council fabricated. The Toledot Yeshu had to address these three issues regarding Jesus because his story was already so widespread by the fifth century. Like the Qur’an, the Toledot Yeshu likely does not contain any independent information about Jesus due to its late date, but, here again, Jesus’ critics help to verify the Gospel account of Jesus’ life.

Next, let us examine some documents written much closer in time to Jesus’ life. In the second century, knowledge about Jesus had not been disseminated as widely as it would be, but the process had begun. Suctonius, the second century Roman historian, mentions “Chrestus” as the reason for Jewish disturbances and their expulsion from Rome in 49 AD. “Chrestus” almost certainly is a misspelling of “Christus”, which is the Greek spelling of Christ, and Suetonius’ record tells us, at the very least, that differences in opinion about Jesus within the Jewish community aroused the attention of Rome. Mara bar Serapion, a Syrian stoic philosopher, writes about Jesus in a letter to his son in 70 AD. Mara describes Jesus’ teaching, calling Jesus the “Jew’s wise king.” Neither of these men were Christians, nor were they particularly invested in the Christian movement. Nevertheless, both discuss Jesus in their works around the end of the first and the beginning of the second century.

Cornelius Tacitus presents a different situation altogether. From his works, it is obvious that he despised Christians. Tacitus lived between 56 and 120 AD, and historians today consider him to be the greatest Roman historian of all time. He writes about Jesus in his Annals toward the end of the first century. Tacitus claims that Christians worship Jesus Christ as their god and that Pontius Pilate, under Emperor Tiberius, crucified Jesus in the 30s AD. Tacitus considered the Jews to be an inferior race, likening them to rodents, so he would not have used Jewish sources in his records; ergo, Annals represents a source that is completely independent from the Gospels and that attests to Jesus’ life and death by crucifixion. How about that lasting confirmation from a man who admittedly hated the Christian way.

Finally, Flavius Josephus mirrors Tacitus in his timeline and his disdain for Christianity, as well as his independent support of the Gospel record of Jesus’ life. Josephus was a Jewish historian and politician who lived between 37 and 100 AD. He wrote Antiquities of the Jews to explain Jewish history to the Romans. Josephus was probably related to Caiphas and Annas, the two Jewish high priests during Jesus’ life, who instigated Jesus’ crucifixion, and Josephus shared their opinion about Jesus and his followers. They viewed Christianity as a cult that endangered the Jewish nation, and they wished to eradicate it. In Antiquities, Josephus mentions James, the brother of Jesus Christ, being one of the early leaders of the Christians and describes James’ death by stoning. He also discusses Jesus being the crucified founder of the sect and the man who Christians worship as God. Josephus describes these two topics while castigating the Christian faith, and his information likely came from the very men who crucified Jesus. With Flavius Josephus, we have another source independent from the Bible that calls Jesus the founder of Christianity who really lived and whom the Romans crucified. In fact, Antiquities of the Jews even presents Jesus as resurrected, although, admittedly, this detail seems to have been added at a later date by an interpolator.

These works represent only a sampling of the references to Jesus in ancient historical documents. McDowell refers to even more documents in Evidence That Demands a Verdict, but these should be enough to put to rest any doubt about whether or not Jesus really live in history as the Bible claims. These sources, other than the Qur’an, also confirm the Gospel account of Jesus’ crucifixion. Frankly, the last two references alone, one from a Roman historian and the other from a religious Jewish historian, disprove the absurd contention that Jesus never lived or was not actually crucified. Jesus Christ really in live in “space-time” as Francis Schaeffer like to say. He is no allegory or mythical character invented by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It is up to you to decide if you will believe God’s promises and accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. If you have not already, I sincerely hope that you will.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” – John 1:14

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The Truth of the Christ

Last time, we defined truth. We determined that truth, that which corresponds to reality, is a worthy pursuit, especially in matters of religion. Today, I want to apply that concept to Jesus Christ. I want to answer the following question: does it matter whether the Jesus Christ of the Bible was an actual historical figure? Is that so significant a question, or can Christianity continue whether Jesus is real or a myth?

The reason I pose this question is because I have spoken to people over the years about what I have learned about the historicity of Jesus, and some people, even Christians, do not find the topic nearly as interesting as I do. Learning that there is substantial evidence that Jesus lived and died exactly as the Gospel writers say that He did had a tremendous effect on my life. In my formative years, I vacillated between Christianity and agnosticism precisely because I did not think the stories of the Bible were compatible with the historical account. I actually wanted to believe the Bible and to believe in God because I had been conditioned to do so by my culture in the Bible Belt, USA, but I could not believe something in my heart that I understood in my brain to be false. As a result of my admittedly insubstantial studies at the time, I thought that the Bible was a book of mostly fictional stories that some adults wanted me to believe but that enlightened people should scorn as outdated. When I learned that the Bible is actually a better account of the history it records than my high school and undergraduate textbooks, I began to give its teachings the respect its factuality earned for it. My thoughts on the Bible changed from, “It has some interesting philosophical and moral ideas that I can incorporate into my life if I feel like it,” to “It is true, and I need to do what it says.” Since then, as I read and reread the Bible every day, I have fallen in love with it, and I now use it as a sort of litmus test by which I judge all other theories and ideas. I give it the same credit I would give to an acclaimed historian’s book and actually more so because the historian’s book, however well researched and documented, could be wrong; the Bible is the inherent Word of God. I did not give the Bible its credit on face value (as some people do whose faith is stronger than mine). I needed convincing, which came by way of striding such classics as Evidence That Demands a Verdict and The Case for Christ, among others.

Circling back to my original point, because of my ‘literal’ nature, I needed to know that the Bible was true before I could believe its message, but upon discussing what I learned about the Bible with others, I have found, to my surprise, that not all people have that nature. Some people can take the teachings of the Bible whether they understand that they are anchored in fact or not. These people have that childlike faith, which Jesus praises in the Gospels, and which I did lack. That is good in the sense that those people possess that kind of faith; however, I think some of them are living in a bubble that could be burst if they listened to the wrong kind of teaching. I think, perhaps, if you are one of those people, you may be susceptible to believing a lie. Jesus also says that we should love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. If we never consider why we believe what we believe, we are violating that command. Furthermore, He commanded us to make disciples of the nations. If we do not know why we believe the Bible, how can we evangelize? If I do not know that the Bible is true, how can I answer the man’s question who asks me why he should believe it? I could explain to the man how he should believe it because it works for me, but then he might respond that I should come with him to the bar and get drunk because it works for him. If I cannot tell my friend that he should believe the Bible because it is exclusively true, then I am merely a salesman trying to convince him to buy an iPhone instead of a Samsung. For now, I want to take this broad concept of the importance of the truth of the Bible and narrow it to the life of Jesus. I want to discuss six reasons why it is important to know if the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life are true.

First, Jesus’ life represents the distinction between Christianity and Judaism; in fact, it defines the words. Before Jesus, Christianity and Judaism were one and the same. Actually, there was no Christianity, and there was no Judaism. There were Hebrews who believed in the one true God and were expectantly awaiting the Messiah to whom their scriptures pointed. When Jesus came onto the scene, those Hebrews who understood that He was the Messiah became Christians, along with Samaritans and gentiles the world over who reached the same conclusion. Those who believed in God, but did not understand that Jesus is the Messiah, we now call believers in Judaism. Before Christ, Jew was an ethnicity; after Christ, the term attained the potential to denote a religion as well. If Jesus was not, Christianity and Judaism are not.

Secondly, the majority of the Christian Bible focuses on Jesus. The Old Testament predicts this coming and the New Testament discusses His life and its ramifications, how He fulfilled and will fulfill Old Testament prophecy. All these depictions describe a real man who lived, died, resurrected, and will return again one day. The prophecies are incredibly specific and numerous, but consider this mathematical exercise as it pertains to forty-eight of the major, obvious prophecies fulfilled in Jesus Christ; the odds of one man fulfilling all forty-eight of the prophecies is one in 1 in 10157. That means that the fulfillment of the prophecies in Jesus proves that God inspired the prophecies to a definiteness, which lacks only one chance in 10157 of being absolute. Put another way, say one hundred billion people have lived on Earth throughout all of history – obviously the actual number is much smaller, but bear with me. Then, the odds of any random man who lived being the man of prophecy is 100,000,000,000: 10157 or 1:10157, which any gambler can tell you are pretty long odds, indeed. If Jesus did not actually exist, then no man has fulfilled the prophecy and the New Testament writers merely invented this elaborate story, and most of them were killed for their trouble.

Third, it is important for Christians and prospective Christians to know how Jesus lived this life, if in fact He did live. Christians claim that Jesus is God’s physical manifestation on Earth, that the Jesus who lived in the early years of the Annus Dominis was God in the flesh. That is an incredibly important doctrine of Christianity, one of the main points, which separates it from Islam and Judaism. We would expect that if God did walk the Earth in a fleshly body, He would live a certain kind of way. If I found some information that led me to believe that Jesus lived just like I live, that he succumbed to temptations and made mistakes, no one would be able to convince me that He is God. IT is hard enough to believe that God was a carpenter; it is impossible that God was a sinner. Jesus’ sinless, purposeful, self-controlled, miraculous life substantiates his claim to godship, which is the substance of Christianity. For Him not to have lived would make this central idea nonsensical.

Similarly, if Jesus’ sinlessness confirms His godship, then His resurrection confirms His teachings. In Deuteronomy 18, God explains to the Hebrews about the ultimate Prophet who is to come and also about God’s prophets in general. The ultimate Prophet Moses mentions is Jesus, and after this discussion of Jesus, he gives a practical method for determining whether or not a man or woman who claims to be a prophet is indeed a prophet: if what the person predicts comes true, the Lord is speaking through that person, and he or she is a prophet; if not, the self-proclaimed prophet is speaking presumptuously and is a liar. The Gospel writers record several prophecies that Jesus makes. Jesus prophecies the destruction of Jerusalem, which occurred in 70 AD almost forty years after Jesus’ death. Jesus prophecies about the end of this world, which has not yet occurred as of this writing but which is surely bound to come! But he most important and most provocative of Jesus’ prophecies is about His death and subsequent resurrection: “When they came together in Galilee, [Jesus] said to them, ‘the son of man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised to life,” (Matthew 1722-23 NIV). All four Gospel writers record this prophecy multiple times in their Gospels, and its importance cannot be overstated. If this prophecy was false, then Jesus’ words can perish just as He did, but it is true, if Jesus Christ rose from the grave, it is merely our moral imperative to believe Jesus in every sense of the word. Woe is the man who rejects the words of Jesus Christ.

While these first four points are logical in nature, forming natural, philosophical syllogisms for how a person should receive them, these last two are more theological in nature. They are the basis for the theology to which the Christian church subscribes. If my distinction between logical and theological seems murky, bear with me, and our discussion will illuminate my meaning.

First, Jesus’ death served as the true sacrifice for human sin. The Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi makes one point if it makes no others, and that point is as follows: man’s sin deserves God’s wrath. You hear people say from time to time, “I just want what’s to me,” or, “I just want to be treated fairly.” My friend, you do not want to be treated fairly by God. God is perfect, absolutely moral and sinless. In fact, God is morality, just as He is truth, love, knowledge, and many other things. With that said, He created us, and He is duty-bound to punish us for our sin. Otherwise, He would be condoning our sin, acting immorally, which is something God cannot do, (for more on this, refer to my post, “Dealing with Moral Law.”) However, God built in a loophole whereby He takes upon Himself the punishment our sins deserve, namely death by crucifixion. Our sin earns for us eternal separation from God, the result of which is death. The Bible teaches that even the very best human is guilty of sin and deserving of death, and if we merely look inwardly, we see this truth in ourselves. I want to do right, and I want to be good, but I still find myself cursing sometimes and lusting sometimes. I think ill of my neighbors more than I care to admit. I do not want to do these things. I want to be like Jesus, but I find that I just cannot always carry it out. That is the main reason why Jesus had to come. On the cross, Jesus took the punishment that our sins deserve. He was our scapegoat, our whipping boy, and if we accept His sacrifice for us, God forgives our sin. Jesus’ death implies our forgiveness, the negation of which implies we are still deserving of God’s wrath – no Jesus, no sacrifice.

Then, after Jesus died, He resurrected on the third day. Many Christians celebrate Easter as the day that Jesus rose, although historians cannot tell us with certainty on what day of the year Jesus actually rose. The Gospels do make clear the point that Jesus rose on the first day of the week, which is the reason you cannot purchase a Chick-Fil-A biscuit on Sundays. Some Christian thinkers still debate on these days of the week, but on one point regarding the resurrection, there is no debate because the Bible is crystal clear: Jesus’ resurrection was the beginning of a new trend. God raised Jesus, or you could say Jesus resurrected Himself, as a model and foreshadowing a “first fruits” of what is in store for His followers. All who accept Jesus as Lord and Savior will be raised after their bodily death to live forever in Paradise with Jesus. If Jesus was not literally raised from the grave, then neither will His followers be. If you are one of His followers, you would be foolish not to know for certain that Jesus resurrected. Otherwise, you are giving up the pleasures of this world and setting your hope on Heaven in vain. But take heart, Jesus did rise. Not only does the Bible explain the resurrection, but every bit of historical evidence points to the same conclusion. Christianity is historical, and it is factual. Christianity is the truth, and I take my oath on it. Next time, I will discuss why.

“And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless, and so is your faith.” – I Corinthians 15:14

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What Is Truth?

We live in a culture that has devalued truth. Kantian philosophy has finally prevailed in the West. Mysticism has long dominated the East, and the crux of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and his ilk is mystic in nature. I do not mean to be disrespectful because these people are great thinkers and highly intelligent, I am sure, but their concept of truth is absolutely irrational. Ask someone (perhaps even yourself) to define the word truth and how it applies to their life, and the majority will give you an answer that is subjective at its core. They may begin by saying that truth is “what’s real” or “reality.” These answers are close to accurate, but if you delve deeper, especially if you delve into matters of religion or philosophy, people will tell you that truth is subjective. They will give you the existential answer: truth is what you believe; or they will give you the pragmatic answer: truth is what works for you. If they are especially erudite and progressive, they may even tell you that truth is unknowable and not worth pursuing. My friends, all of those are lies, and a lie about truth is the worst kind of lie of all.

Truth is that which corresponds to its referent, that which corresponds to reality, and the nature of truth is the same whether we are discussing border walls, mathematics, history, or religion. Granted, truth can be difficult to determine when it comes to historical matters, but difficult is not impossible; and something is true whether a person knows or believes it or not. All other definitions of the word truth are self-defeating. Allow me to use an illustration to make my case. Say John and James are riding down the road in John’s new truck. James claims that the truck is a Chevrolet Silverado, and John corrects him by telling him that it is, in fact, a Dodge Ram 2500. The truck, which John bought new from Scott Evans Nissan and Dodge, is a Ram, not a Chevy, no matter how hard James believes it is a Chevy. They arrive at their destination and park, James gets out of the truck to look at it, and James admits to John that the truck is, indeed, a Ram, not a Chevy. This is an illustration of the correspondence theory of truth, proven by the law of noncontradiction. Truth is that which corresponds to its referent. In the case of the truck, the pronoun “that” is the predicate Ram 2500, and the referent is the truck. The truth is the truck is a Ram 2500. The truck cannot be both a Chevy and a Ram at the same time. That would be a contradiction in terms. An object is what it is and cannot be both itself and something that it is not at the same time. A is not non-A. I know this illustration seems silly and elementary, but when someone says that truth is subjective in any way, they are saying that John’s new truck is both a Chevy and a Ram at the same time, a position that is irrational, untenable, and frankly unworthy of discussion.

As I was saying before, the correspondence theory of truth applies to trucks, just as it applies to religion. Now, it can be harder to know what is true in matters of religion than in matters of trucks, but truth is not changed by knowledge or a lack thereof. In the illustration with the truck, it was a Ram the whole time James thought that it was a Chevrolet. James’ search for the truth about John’s truck in no way affected the truth that the truck was a Ram 2500. The point to understand is this: often when a truth is difficult to substantiate, it actually becomes vitally important that we set forth to do so, and that premise is never more critical than it is in discussing religion. Religion is a life-shaping philosophy, and everyone alive actually has a religion by which they live. Some are obvious, what people are used to calling religions, like Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the rest. Others are less likely to be typified as religions but still govern how people choose to live their lives, like pragmatism, atheism, agnosticism, humanism, existentialism, nihilism, and others. How does a person decide by which they should live their life? I would posit that they should live by the one that is true, the religion the ideas of which correspond to reality. 

Ideas have consequences. In a world where any idea can be true, and the more irrational the better, anything goes. Morality goes out the window, and genocide comes crawling in. Do you think I am exaggerating? How many mass shootings has the United States seen this millenia? Why is suicide the second-leading cause of death in Americans aged 15-34? Why do Islamic extremists seek to annihilate people who disagree with their beliefs? Not because they are living as Jesus Christ commanded. Next time, I intend to share my thoughts on why it is important that we know the truth about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection 2000 years ago. Then, I will elucidate why I believe the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life are accurate.

“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth...” II Timothy 4:3-4

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Dealing with Moral Law

I know I said that I was going to write about Jesus this time. I will explain some of what I have learned about Jesus today, but when I was considering what I wanted to share about Jesus, it occurred to me that I should write some things about morality first, about its objective nature and how societies deal with it. The objectivity of morality that we observe in our world speaks to God’s nature and reveals the purpose of Jesus’ life and death.

People sense that there are objective moral truths, which apply to only humans. First, consider king snakes, which kill and eat other snakes for sustenance. We do not call king snakes murderers when they live out their natural, animalistic instincts, but we hold ourselves to a higher standard. In Georgia, if a man was found to be killing and eating other men, a judge would sentence him to life in prison or probably death by lethal injection, and the people would say justice is served. Furthermore, there are different types of killings in human society. If a man kills another man for the fun of it, we would say he is sick, twisted, and certainty immoral, but if a man kills another man in self defense or in war, he is not called immoral and may be praised for it. There are other actions that we brand based on intent, like stealing and lying. If a prisoner-of-war lies to his captors, the people in his native country consider him to be a hero, and even his captors would understand him to be loyal, a trait they would provide in their minds even while they hate the soldier for it. Clearly, as humans we judge one another based on a specific moral standard.

Similarly, there are actions that men praise as decisively moral and good. These types of actions are usually selfless: the person commits the act for the betterment of another while receiving nothing good for their toil. Mother Teresa is praised as a morally virtuous person because she selflessly gave of herself to the poor. People may disagree on just how selfless one should be to be considered morally good, but selfishness is consistently denounced as immoral. When we consider the world religious, they are pretty similar to the actions that they trumpet as good things for a person to do, and the general idea is something that the Golden Rule of doing to others as you would have them do to you. The essential theme is to love one another. If we are loving one another, we are generally acting morally, and if we are acting out of hatred or selfishness, the chances are good that we are acting immorally.

When we consider human nature, it becomes quite clear that objective moral truths exist, and humans do not always live by them. There is a good reason: living a moral life usually does not advance one’s personal interests in this life, while selfishness does. That is why the existence of moral truths is important and why I am writing about it now. If living by the moral laws that we perceive does not advance a man’s interests, that leads to the question, from where did moral law come? Naturalism cannot account for moral truths because naturalism leads to snakes eating snakes, survival of the fittest, nihilism, and Adolf Hitler. The existence of moral truths is explainable only by the existence of a moral lawgiver (if you need more convincing on the origin of a moral lawgiver, I would recommend reading the chapter “Law and Order” in the book God’s Crime Scene by J. Warner Wallace). Then, it stands to reason that if there is a father of moral law, He would be bound to follow and uphold His laws.

If we acknowledge the existence of moral laws in this universe, then we see that humans, even ourselves, fail to follow all the laws all the time. Consider how a perfect person would live. Are you that person? Do you know that person? The answer to both questions is a resounding no by my account. The world religions recognize that no human is perfect, and each prescribes a way to deal with that problem. Islam says basically that a man’s good deeds should outweigh his bad deeds, and that will save him. Buddhism tells a man to find the middle path of enlightenment for himself, and Hinduism speaks of reincarnating to pay for the previous lifes’ sins until one reaches Nirvana. There is a parallel between each of these religions and every other religion I know of, save one. The common theme is man triumphing in a way that earns him salvation for his eternal soul.

Only the Christian acknowledges that good is not good enough. The moral lawgivers God, is perfect, and no matter how hard I try, I can never measure up to His standard, nor can any other man who has ever lived. Compared to His perfection, I deserve only punishment, and He is duty-bound by His sinlessness to mete out that punishment, which all humans deserve, because He caused our existence. As our ultimate Creator, He is responsible for our actions; therefore, if He allowed us to sin unchecked, He would no longer be sinless. He would be defying His perfect nature and would become a sinner by definition, which God cannot do. That is the problem with the solution for sin to which all the other religious subscribe; they turn God into a sinner. They attempt to bring God down to our level or to eliminate Him altogether, which betrays their falsehood. God, who will not be mocked, had a plan from the beginning to deal with our resultant sin in His perfection. He would come to Earth in the flesh and form of a man whereupon He would live a perfect, sinless life amid all the temptations that man faces. Then, after living the perfect life, He would freely take the punishment we deserve by experiencing the torturous death of crucifixion while harboring all of our sinful acts in Himself, to the point of forsaking His blamelessness. His death paid the debt that we sinners owe, which is our very lives, so that man can be justified and sanctified should we choose to accept His gift in humility. The humility part is critical because in order to accept God’s gift of salvation, we must first acknowledge our inability to save ourselves. Accepting God’s gift of salvation is the only path to salvation, and do not be deceived; it comes at a price. The price is your pride. When we understand that we require God’s help, there is a logical transformation that takes place in our minds. We realize that His way is better than our way. Following His calling trumps following our personal ideas’ because we are flawed, but He is perfect. That is the price of our salvation, but when we realize what our salvation and the resultant transformation entails, we realize that it is actually no price at all; that is why we call it a gift. When I am following God, I love life. Bad things may happen to me, but I accept them with a smile on my face because I see the bigger picture. Life is more than my current circumstance, and I am more, much more, than my flesh and bone.

Now, all of this that I have written about today makes for a nice story. It has a certain symmetry and logical beauty to it, but if the crucifixion and indeed, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, did not actually happen, then it is nothing more than a nice story. Next time, I will explain how I know that Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection happened exactly how the Gospels say it did.

[thethingsihavelearned]

God’s actions reveal this nature

In my last post, I explained how the origin of time and the universe leads me to believe in a grand Creator God. I think it is pretty clear from what we know of our universe that Someone had to have actualized it, and it is not a difficult leap to conclude that the same God played a role in the evolution of life on Earth. Assuming that He did, assuming that the current state of like on Earth is the result of God’s divine plan, tells us a lot about His nature.

 First, it is clear that He values relationships. The majority of living organisms on Earth do not live up to their potential when they are alone and spend a large portion of their existence either seeking companionship or living with their companions. One example exists in ants. One solitary ant cannot do much, but, together, ants are pretty tough. They team up to build these terrifically intricate anthills, and when they work together away from their anthills, they can move objects that are many times their collective size.

 Another cool example is in the lifestyle of horses. Growing up, my family always had horses so, naturally, I spent a lot of time around them. Horses hate being alone, starting from when they are foals and all the way through adulthood. Weaning a foal from its mother takes weeks and is a painful process for the baby and the mother, both. They search for each other and cry for each other, and adult horses can act similarly. If the trainer moves a horse from its herd to another pasture, the horse that has been moved will often pace the fence line for days trying to get back to its friends. Horse people even have a term for horses that are overly attached to the herd. They call them “buddy-sour” and it is a natural trait that a trainer must remove from the horse in order to use it effectively.

Finally, humans, God’s highest order of Creation, are more effective and generally happier around other humans. There is an overused term in the business world - synergy. Just saying “Synergy” in a business meeting results in eye rolls, but is so overused because the idea there is critical to a strong team. That is, an effective team is greater than the sum of its parts; each individual on the team carries greater value as a part of the team than alone. And, they yearning to be part of a strong team permeates all of mankind. Men and women seek to belong to a team, and we naturally classify ourselves into groups. In high school there are jocks, preps, goths, and so on, and in adulthood, it is Republicans and Democrats, or we typify ourselves by what we do for a living or whatever particular hobby we enjoy. Think about it, and you will see that you place yourself in a group. Are you, perhaps, a Dallas Cowboys fan? A quilter? A member of the NRA? A computer programmer? You get the idea. That search for a place to belong is ingrained into mankind, and when an individual finds nowhere to belong, disaster often ensues in the form of violent gangs and mass shootings. Yes, I think it is quite clear that God created us to value relationships, and that should tell us something about God.

Another trait of humans that reveals some of God’s nature is our free will. As a part of their argument against God’s existence, some atheists (indeed, all philosophically coherent atheists) will argue that men do not have free will. They claim that we just appear to have free will but that in fact, our biology predetermines what choices we will make. Well, without delving too deeply into the argument for free will, it seems to me that when people choose to believe in determination over free will, they are exercising their freedom to choose, so going forward, I am going to assume what seems obvious, that God gave humans free will.

Considering this God who existed prior to Creation, He had three choices for what He could do going forward. First, He did not have to create this universe at all. He could have continued in the way He was. Second, He could have created a universe in which there were no agents in possession of free will. People would have been essentially robots that functioned however God programmed them, and the concepts of good and evil would have been irrelevant. Third, He could have created the universe that He did indeed create where humans have the ability to choose how they interact with the rest of Creation, including God Himself. The fact that He chose the third option, giving men free will, reveals much of God’s character.

Giving mankind free will allows us to experience true love and joy, which would have been impossible for robots, but also allows for the existence of evil. Obviously, if God would have chosen the option one, no Creation, we would feel nothing because we would not be here. If he had chosen option two, we would be mindless slaves. There would be no such thing as good or evil because everyone would unconsciously do what God told them to do without ever making a choice, and neither would there be joy or sadness, love or hate. 

Human existence has no meaning and no distinction from that of the other animals without man’s ability to choose, and that is the reason why God gave us free will. He wants us to experience the love and joy in life that we can only experience upon putting our faith in Him, but the cost of that joy was steep - for God, not for us. The flip side of free will is the ability to choose evil, and that ability is in every single human being. Choosing evil is denying God and leads ultimately to despair. No one who is living a life apart from God is ever truly happy. I have seen it in others and experienced it myself, and so have all of you. Choosing good, choosing to live for the Creator, is the only path to true peace, contentment, and joy. I know - I have experienced true joy even in a prison cell, and I want that for all of you, minus the chains.

The difficultly with free will is that, even though it is in our best interest, humans do not consistently choose God on their own. That is why there is evil in the world; evil is the natural result of choosing against God, but God had a plan for that as well. That is why I said earlier that the cost of our joy is steep for God - because the solution to the problem of free will is in the life, death, and eternal life of Jesus Christ. God died the torturous death of crucifixion to solve the resultant problem of evil, and this is how our free will reveals God’s character. It reveals how much this all-powerful, eternal Creator God loves every single human being. He could have made a world of robot-slaves for Himself. Instead, He made people who can choose to deny His very existence because He loves us enough to allow us to choose. Next time, I think I will write about what I have learned about the Creator’s relationship with Jesus Christ, who Jesus was and is, and why He had to die. That seems like a lot. I may have to break it up, we will see.

[thethingsihavelearned]

Is there a God?

Go outside and look around, or look at pictures of nature on the internet. There are things in nature, living organisms and inorganic formations, that are intricately complex and captivatingly beautiful. Consider, if you will, the Grand Canyon or a well-formed horse running across a field. Look at a beautiful sunrise, a big full moon that looks like you could reach out and touch it, a red-tailed hawk flying through the sky, or a cute little baby. There are things in nature the beauty of which will literally stop us in our tracks. 

I remember one time when I was working at PPI, my crew was placing safety barrels down the side of the road that we were going to pave the following day. As we were driving, we came upon a beautiful field of Bermuda grass. There was a gently sloping hill out toward the treeline way off in the distance. The grass was long, and it was a gorgeous deep green color, Maybe someone had fertilized and weed-killed the pasture to make it look so beautiful, or maybe it grew that way naturally. I do not know, although in my mind, I like to believe the latter. Anyway, my coworker and I both found the field so beautiful that we stopped and took pictures of it with our smartphones, and I changed the background on my phone to that picture. I still enjoy looking at that picture.

These beautiful images in nature inspire us, and they should prompt us to give God glory. At this last point, some readers may scoff, why glorify God when everything I see in nature is simply the product of natural selection on random mutations? I do not want to get into the details of the process of evolution at this juncture, but I will suffice to say that I do not agree with the Darwinian theory of evolution. Instead, I am a proponent of structuralism and laws of order in nature. I may write evolution another day, but right now, I want to focus on the origin of things, the beginning.

Albert Einstein posited that the dimensions of our universe are constantly changing; that is, the  size of the universe is not fixed. Although he was unsure of which direction it is heading. Einstein correctly speculated that the universe is growing, and, since then, Stephen Hawking has confirmed that the universe is, indeed, growing - and has been since its inception. Now, if the universe is growing, then, clearly, it began growing. If it began growing, then it has a beginning, and if it has a beginning, then it has a beginner. Anything that has a beginning self-evidently must have been started by something that pre-existed it. It did not start itself because it did not exist to do so; that would be a contradiction. So, what entity pre-existed the universe?

For that matter, consider the construct of time. Time itself has a beginning. Time cannot be eternal, or we could not exist at this point in time. If you are dubious, think about it mathematically. First, what is the biggest number you can think of? If you asked that question of a young child, he or she might say one thousand or one million, but those of us who know more of numbers would answer with the idea of infinite, meaning there is no such thing as a biggest number. There is always one bigger. Just as, no matter how hard you tried, you could never count up to infinite, neither could you start at infinite and count down. You would not even be able to begin, and so it is with time. If time was eternal, it never could have started; it never could have reached this point because it would still be searching for that elusive biggest number from which to start. The fact that time necessarily has a starting point implies that time has a beginning, which implies that some Entity started the clock, if you will. Therefore, some entity pre-existed time, which is to say it has existed forever and actualized time itself.

What in the world has existed forever and has the power to create the whole universe? Call Him what you will, but I call Him my Lord and my God, the Alpha and the Omega, the One who was and who is and who is yet to come. Next time, I will tell you what I have learned about His nature.

[thethingsihavelearned]

Introduction

Hello, before we get into the introduction of this blog, I think I should first introduce myself. If you are going to take the time to read what I write, it is only fair that you should know a little about me and about my background. My name is Cory Camp, and I was born on July, 22, 1990, in Carrollton, Georgia. I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Math from the University of West Georgia, and I am currently serving a fifteen-year sentence for vehicular homicide. The defining point of my life so far, other than birth, was the night of the car wreck that brought me to prison so I want briefly to elucidate that event. 

In the fall of 2008, I started at UWG directly after graduating from Carrollton High School, and, like a lot of college students my age, saw two dual purposes for going to college, which often stood in conflict - earning a degree that would advance my career opportunities and partying. The former was a decent, if ignoble, goal; the latter was imbecilic but all too prevalent among young college students, unfortunately. 

Speaking to the issue of partying, my parents did not particularly like it but could see the pointlessness of forbidding it, as I am stubborn and have to learn many lessons the hard way. However, they were adamant on one point; never drink and drive. I followed their rule for the majority of my time in college, but at 21, I began to fall victim to the slippery slope of justification. See, Georgia law at the time said that a 21 year-old can drive legally so long as his blood-alcohol content is below .08. I figured that was about two drinks over an hour so as long as I stayed below three, I could drive legally. Well, I am sure you can envision how two became three, three became four, four became a six-pack, and a six-pack became I can drive drunk just as well as I can drive sober. 

On May 2, 2012, at about 2am, I learned another lesson the hard way, and what a price three families had to pay. Now, six years later, I am still in prison, and I have learned and experienced some truths that I never would have, otherwise. The dire price of these truths requires that I do not hoard them but, instead, share them with as many people as I can, and here we are.

 My wonderful sister Kaylee has been kind enough to agree to act as a scribe in transcribing my handwritten notes to the medium in which you are reading them now. If you wish to reach out to me personally, you can write me at the following address:

Michael Cory Camp

Co #18

Coweta County Prison

101 Selt Road

Newnan, Ga 30263

Now, on to the matter at hand: I propose to use this blog to discuss that most worthy topic, ideas. Someone once told me that small men talk about themselves, average men talk about other men, and great men talk about ideas. Here, we will attempt to be great men (and women) because ideas are critically important  to the trajectory of a society, and I think we have an idea problem in many societies today, especially in America. The United States is the greatest country in the world, but I fear we are walking a dangerous path. See, the USA was founded by Christian men on the beautiful Christian idea of freedom of choice. As God allows men and women to choose to Him  or not, the leaders of this country would allow people to choose to pursue whatever ideals they like as long as they do not infringe on others’ ability to choose, thus the separation of church from state. Our founders made the correct choice in that society should litigate morality as little as possible.

 Obviously, there must be some laws to keep people from destroying one another when their idea for life leads them to such a choice. However, since the government should not and does not tell people which ideas to hold sacred and which to discard, other than the basic idea of freedom, that leaves other groups to propose and discuss ideas. It is important that we do not take that responsibility lightly because ideas have consequences. Viktor Frankl the philosopher and survivor of Auschwitz, posited that the Holocaust was born not in the mind of Hitler but by the pen of nihilistic philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche. Some of the groups that take up the mantle of proposing ideas in our society are religious institutions, universities, talk shows, bloggers, and, frankly, anyone with a platform. 

There are a lot of good ideas out there, and there are also a lot of bad ideas. From my point of view, it looks like the bad ideas are winning. So I propose to be another voice on the side of the good ideas. I am vastly oversimplifying things for the sake of this introductions, but I promise that going forward I will explain these ideas from logic and reasoning. As I do so, I want to note that every good idea I will present is anchored in the teachings of Jesus Christ, but I want to point out that the reason good ideas point back to Jesus is because He is good. I am not saying that you should do what the Bible says just because the Bible says it. I am saying that the fact that the ideas in the Bible are good, which I hope to prove as I go along, makes the Bible self-evidently a good source of teaching, which would certainly be the case if the Bible is indeed what it purports to be: the inspired Word of a perfect, all-powerful God. The fact that the Bible is full of good ideas, a fact I will discuss at length, implies that the Bible is a wonderful tool for instruction on how to live a happy, meaningful, effective, hopeful life, and that is my goal here.

 I want to help people learn how to enjoy this wonderful life we get to live, and I want to do so honestly and with sincere motives because I love all of you. This world can be a cold, bitter place, but it does not have to be. I am not rich or successful as the world determines success. I have plenty of worldly reasons to be miserable, but I have learned some truths that bring me so much joy that I have no choice but to share them with whomever cares to read them. That is what I intend to do here, and I hope you will stick around. I may not post regularly, but I will post when I can.