Some Christians do bad things.
Does that mean we shouldn’t trust the Bible?
Welcome to Critical Thinking Scan, where we
look at how you can think about ANY faith-challenging
message and arrive at a biblical, logical
conclusion yourself.
I’m Patricia Engler and today, let’s talk
about three points for answering one of the
top objections to Christianity: “people
who call themselves Christians have done wrong
things throughout history—and, they’ve
even quoted the Bible to justify themselves.”
Students I’ve talked to all around the world
encounter this objection at university, and
I’ve heard it in my classes too.
Professors would list various groups or political
figures and chalk up their misdeeds to “religion,”
implying that the Bible isn’t worth believing
because people who’ve called themselves
Christians have done wrong things.
But is that argument true?
Well, let’s think about it.
First, we need to recognize that tragically,
some people who call themselves Christians
have committed great wrongs and have even
tried using the Bible to justify their wrong actions.
We do not downplay those wrongs.
Yet we need to examine whether they provide
a logical argument against Scripture.
Remember, a simple way to spot a faulty argument
is to ask, “Is this message true or false, because…?”
Here, we’d ask, “Is the Bible false because people 
who claim to believe it have done wrong things?”
And when you think about it, you realize -- no.
The fact that professing Christians can do
wrong or misapply Scripture is irrelevant
to whether the Bible is true.
That’s the first point to remember when
responding to these types of arguments.
Truth is truth regardless of who believes
it, or what they’ve done, or how they twist
the truth to justify what they’ve done.
Claiming a message is false based only on
the type of people who espouse it is a type
of logical fallacy (flawed logic) called a
genetic fallacy.
So, the fact that some people try using the
Bible to excuse wrongdoings doesn’t itself
tell us whether the Bible is true or even
supports those wrongdoings.
To find that out, we have to examine the Bible
itself, consider the whole message it teaches,
and look at what happens when a biblical worldview
is consistently lived out.
For a Christian worldview, that means looking
at Jesus.
And when we examine the big picture of what
Scripture teaches and how Jesus lived those
teachings out, we see that Jesus’s words
do not justify wrongdoing.
That’s the second point to keep in mind.
Jesus, after all, sets the standard for what
Christianity is supposed to look like.
And Jesus defined and modeled God’s moral
standards for humans better than anyone, saying
“do to others what you would have others do to you,” and
“Love your neighbour as yourself.”
So, if people who call themselves Christians
have done things that oppose what Jesus commanded
or what the big picture of Scripture teaches,
you can be pretty sure that those ideas that
they used to justify their actions did not
come FROM the Bible; instead, people were
putting their ideas INTO the Bible, twisting
it, using eisegesis (that’s reading your
own ideas into the text), because a holistic biblical 
worldview does not justify human wrongdoings.
On the other hand, an atheistic, evolutionary
worldview CAN consistently justify many wrongdoings,
even though many atheists are moral people
themselves.
After all, if humans and their morals are
nothing but evolutionary happenstance, why
shouldn’t we wrong others to advance our
own genes’ evolutionary success?
This type of reasoning has played—and continues
to play—a role in some of recent history’s
worst atrocities, as multiple researchers
have documented, including in resources that
you can find linked to this video.
So, while Jesus’s claims do not justify
wrongdoings, Darwin’s claims can.
But besides all this, before we even talk
about whether Christians’ deeds are right
or wrong, we need a foundation for defining
and deciding what right and wrong are.
We need a Moral Lawgiver, God.
And that’s the third point to remember.
Without a Holy God who defines moral standards
and reveals right and wrong through His Word,
we have no real, consistent foundation from
which to criticize anything as ‘wrong.’
Only our Creator can set absolute moral standards,
for He alone is Truth.
Ultimately, this is an example of how by bringing
an argument back to the question of what truth
is—and where truth comes from—you can
not only filter out faulty logic but also
point people to Jesus who is “the way, the
truth, and the life”.
For more on how to think critically about
any faith-challenging message, you can access
my other CT Scan videos packed with tactics,
tips and tools that helped me as a Christian
student at secular university.
Thank you for watching!
Hey, it’s Patricia, just wanting to let
you know that if you like these videos, are
on board to share the message of biblical
authority and want to give, you can help Answers
in Genesis CA produce more content like this
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Thanks so much!
