Useful Things | January 1, 2020
In honor of the new year, please enjoy this bonus article from the most recent edition of The Worldview Bulletin. We interview Abdu Murray, Senior Vice President and speaker with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, and author of several books on apologetics. Abdu sheds much light on some of the most important apologetics issues of our day.
Happy New Year from all of us at The Worldview Bulletin!
Christopher Reese
Managing Editor
An Interview with Abdu Murray
by Christopher Reese
Abdu Murray is a speaker and Senior Vice President with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries and the author of three books, including his latest, Saving Truth: Finding Meaning and Clarity in a Post-Truth World. He earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School, and as an attorney was named several times in Best Lawyers in America.
Worldview Bulletin: Abdu, thanks very much for taking time to answer some questions for The Worldview Bulletin. In your most recent book, Saving Truth, you contend that we live in a post-truth culture that tends to pursue what works (usually for personal gain) rather than what is true. Have Christians fallen victim to this same mindset? If so, what can we do to avoid it?
Abdu Murray: Thanks for the opportunity to contribute to The Worldview Bulletin, Chris. I do think some Christians have succumbed to the post-truth mindset where feelings and preferences are elevated above facts and truth. There’s this oft-repeated principle within Christian circles: The church should be “in but not of” the outside culture. Sadly, I think that in our increasingly polarized society, the church has become both “in and of” the culture in two principal ways. The first is the spreading of misleading (or outright untrue) stories through social media that make those who oppose Christianity look as nefarious as possible. This typically happens as a reaction to the increasing hostility to all things Christian, especially conservative Christianity. It’s been said that a lie can get around the world while the truth is still lacing up its shoes. This creates a sense of urgency in Christians to get a counter narrative published and spread as quickly as possible to expose quickly spreading error. The problem is that Christians often don’t check out whether the stories they are sharing are at all accurate. I recall seeing a story pop up warning us that LGBTQ activists were suing in federal court to get the Bible banned as hate speech. I knew that couldn’t be true and three minutes of research revealed that it wasn’t. Yet it was Christians who had perpetuated the story through social media channels. I can only assume they did it out of fear or possibly even a desire to demonize “the enemy.” C. S. Lewis warned us that such behavior would make us into devils.
But there is also a pendular swing in the opposite direction. Some Christians prefer to make the gospel so palatable to the broader culture that they compromise biblical standards and reinterpret clear biblical passages. I think of the oft-misused words, “Judge not, that you be not judged” (Matt. 7:1). Sadly, too many Christians use this passage to argue that Christians should not judge anyone’s behaviors or moral choices. Of course, they fail to cite the rest of the passage, in which Jesus clarifies that “when we judge” we are to do so without hypocrisy. The church’s two opposing preferences—to vanquish our enemies on one hand and to be liked by everyone on the other—have led the church into confusion. The Bible calls us to be uncompromising on the truth, but to express the truth to non-Christians with love, compassion, and respect because we ourselves were among those who rejected the truth (Titus 3:1-7). We can rise above the post-truth culture of confusion by living in that tension.
WB: What do you see as the major apologetics challenges of our day? How can believers best equip themselves to confront them?
Murray: As our team of speakers travels the globe, we see that the questions we are being asked are changing. Yes, people are still asking about matters of science and faith, biblical reliability and accuracy, evidence for the resurrection, and the like. But the prevailing questions we are getting are morality and meaning based. Isn’t that interesting? In a culture that tells us that morality is based on personal preferences and meaning is something each individual creates, the majority of the questions we get—especially from young people—ask about objective meaning, purpose, and morality. The sub-issues almost always deal with identity (race, gender, or otherwise) and sexuality. Believers can better prepare themselves to address these issues by reading up on not only on the great resources penned by Christians (like William Lane Craig, Ravi Zacharias, Paul Copan, Christopher Yuan, and Sam Allberry), but also by non-Christians. The reason is that apologists must know what the other side is actually arguing so as to engage it credibly and faithfully. I think Christians have been the victims of straw man arguments because skeptics don’t read what Christians are actually saying. We mustn’t respond in kind. But the best way to get equipped to confront the challenges to Christianity is to get to know those who don’t agree with us. We mustn’t compromise on truth just because we have affection for someone who doesn’t hold our worldview. But getting to know them exposes the human side of the controversies. It helps us to see the subtleties of peoples’ positions. Our responses will be all the better for it.
WB: What advice would you give to those who are engaged in the ministry of apologetics?
Murray: Never answer a question. I’m completely serious about that. In Colossians 4:5-6, Paul gives us a blueprint for engaging those outside the faith. He tells us to employ wisdom and to use our time with non-Christians wisely. In other words, address the issues non-Christians are really raising, not the ones we want them to raise or the ones we’ve studied up on. Apologetics is the art and science of Christian persuasion. But if we’re eager to spew out encyclopedic volumes of information about a topic the other person isn’t really asking about, then we transform apologetics in the art of making someone sorry they asked. This is why Paul tells us to keep our speech gracious, seasoned with salt, so we may know how to answer “each person.” He doesn’t tell us to answer questions, because questions don’t need answers. People need answers and they use questions to get them. As apologists, we are in the people-answering business.
A quick second bit of advice: Be accurate. This is an age in which fact-checking can happen instantaneously. If we aren’t sure about a subject, we ought to say so. When we do provide answers, let’s strive for accuracy. Credibility is the currency of truth.
WB: What are some areas of outreach, or approaches to it, that RZIM is having success with these days?
Murray: Evangelistically, our university open forums are still the hallmark of what RZIM does and we’re seeing great responses both in terms of attendance and in terms of commitments to Christ. We’ve also begun a new initative called “Skeptics Night” in which we duplicate our university open forums but at churches. The church is still the place where people can find answers to life’s toughest questions and we want to encourage non-Christians to think of the church as a place that welcomes their challenges. It’s usually a 20-minute talk followed by extensive Q&A where skeptics can ask anything. Our youth initiative is very successful as well. We have three programs: Reboot, meant for students ages 12-18; ReMind, meant for 17-30; and ReFresh, which is geared toward those heading off to college. Our online RZIM Academy has trained thousands around the world to know their faith and share it well.
WB: What have you read recently that has been helpful to you professionally or personally?
Murray: What a great question! Personally, I have been blessed by reading short essays. I just went through reading F. W. Boreham’s The Luggage of Life. His keen insights and turns of phrases stimulate my mind and stir my heart. Dorothy Sayers’ The Mind of the Maker has really been feeding me as well these days. I just got done reading through Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. This has been very impactful for me considering the issues we face and as I dive into research on my next book.
WB: All of us tend to be blind to our own culture’s weaknesses. Drawing on your background from an Eastern culture, what can those of us influenced primarily by Western culture learn from it?
Murray: Another great question, and quite timely as Ravi Zacharias and I have a book to be released in April entitled Seeing Jesus from the East. We tend to think of the East as an “honor-shame” culture in which it’s more important to uphold family and communal honor than it is to seek truth. What I’m seeing today, especially as I travel all over the world, is that the East-West distinctions are fading. The West is quickly becoming an honor-shame culture. We don’t debate the merits of ideas anymore. Rather, we are increasingly silencing opponents by shaming them publicly, doxing, and the like. The East has been dealing with this kind of thing for millennia, and through the New Testament we see just how Jesus both operated within and flouted the honor-shame mindset. Many Easterners, Jesus chief among them, have navigated that kind of a culture to successfully bring truth back to the fore. I think Westerners would do well to pay attention to that if we’re to understand and navigate the changing cultural landscape.
WB: What projects or ministry initiatives are you most excited about right now?
Murray: Well, Ravi and my book Seeing Jesus from the East is being released in April and I’m excited to see how it resonates with Westerners. The Skeptics Night initiative has seen success in several locations and we’re being asked to return. What’s been consuming my thoughts lately, however, is the book I’m currently researching for, provisionally entitled Not a White Man’s Religion – How Christianity Isn’t White, Isn’t Male-Centered, and More than Religion. I’m trying to respond to the cultural narrative that Christianity is a Western, imperialist religion used to dominate darker skinned people and women. The cultural wounds we’re seeing need to be addressed and I think no one addresses them better than Jesus, yet his voice is being dismissed as fueling the very cultural fires we’re trying to put out.
— Christopher Reese is a freelance writer and managing editor of The Worldview Bulletin. He co-founded the Christian Apologetics Alliance and is a general editor of The Dictionary of Christianity and Science (Zondervan, 2017) and Three Views on Christianity and Science (forthcoming from Zondervan, 2021).
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