Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be talking about how to be a thinking Christian. I still remember 1999 quite well. I was leading a small Bible study group that met on Tuesday nights. Now, the theme of these studies was what the early Christians believed on various scriptural topics. That was the theme of our studies. However, as soon as we closed our discussion with prayer, the theme of everybody's conversation was Y2K.
As it turned out, everybody in the study group, except my wife and I, had made up their minds that there was going to be this catastrophic social and technological upheaval as a result of computers not being able to handle the change from 1999 to the year 2000. One of the families in the group had actually moved from an urban area to a fairly remote rural one. In the process, the husband had given up a very good-paying job, and he was now struggling to support his family.
In fact, even though most of the families were not doing well financially, they were spending all sorts of money on obtaining generators, handmills for grinding flour, and all sorts of other equipment that would only be needed if there were an end to the country's electrical and commercial systems. Now, this study group was not unique. All over East Texas, where I lived at the time, conservative Christians were forming committees and holding special meetings on how to prepare for Y2K.
One of our local Christian radio stations regularly featured speakers who talked about how to prepare for life without electricity, without cars, and without grocery stores. Now, what particularly bothered me was that most of the hysteria about Y2K in our area was fomented by conservative Bible-believing Christians. The liberal churches weren't caught up in it, nor were the Catholic churches. And for the most part, neither was the world.
We were the ones making ridiculous predictions and making expensive, unnecessary preparations. And I grimaced at thinking, "What a laughingstock we Bible-believing Christians are going to be when Y2K comes and none of these predictions we're making come true." Well, as you know, Y2K did come, and none of the dire predictions made by conservative Christians came true. I realized at that time that the core problem was that most of us were not thinking Christians.
Remember, the great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. Now, many Bible-believing Christians love God with their hearts, but not with their minds. In fact, they don't even know what critical thinking is. And as a result of their shallow thinking, they wrongfully condemn other Christians over various theological issues, and they continually bring reproach on the name of Christ because of wrong predictions and foolish statements they make.
I remember reading an article in a science magazine about so-called perpetual motion machines. Now, none of these machines ever work. In fact, the U.S. Patent Office won't even accept a patent application for a perpetual motion machine. But anyway, in reading this article, it was describing this particular invention by someone who claimed he had invented a perpetual motion machine.
That is, you just get it started and it'll run forever, and therefore it can run machines and everything else without any outside source of energy. Of course, we'd all love to have such a thing. We wish something like that was true. But there are a number of scientific reasons why that can't be true, one of which is the problem of friction. Now, the article described one particular person and his attempt to raise money so that he could mass-produce his machine.
He would go around to fairs and other places to speak, and it noted that most of the people buying into his claims were, quote, "hippies and fundamentalists." Now, as a reader, I found that rather offensive, and yet I knew in my heart it was no doubt true. It does tend to be Bible-believing Christians who buy into perpetual motion machines, medical cures that don't really work, and conspiracy theories.
And as a result of our lack of critical thinking, we do end up bringing ridicule and reproach on the name of Christ. So how does one become a thinking Christian? Well, tonight we're going to cover three areas as starting points. One is to develop critical thinking skills. Two, learning how to read a document, particularly the Bible. And three, learning how to properly do research. So let's begin with critical thinking. What is it?
Well, it encompasses several things, such as healthy skepticism, openness, intellectual honesty, and knowing your own prejudices. I want to first talk about healthy skepticism. A thinking Christian receives new information with a measure of healthy skepticism. Now, we all automatically do this with regard to information that goes against what we believe.
For example, if there was a report in the local newspaper that archaeologists had uncovered some kind of evidence that showed that Jesus was actually married, what would your response be? Well, I'm sure if you're like me, you would assume, "Oh, this is some kind of nonsense." You would be highly skeptical of the information. Or likewise, what if you saw a report in the newspaper that scientists had created life? Again, no doubt you would receive it with a healthy dose of skepticism.
But to be a critical thinker, you also need to have a measure of skepticism when you hear something from people with whom you agree, or when you hear something that is what you want to believe. For example, let's imagine you're reading a book written by someone who is a member of your denomination or your church affiliation. In other words, he's on the same side of the fence as you are.
And in the book, he quotes a passage from Scripture, and then he says, "Now, the Greek here really means such and such." Now, a thinking Christian doesn't just take that on face value. I don't mean that we should have suspicious minds or that we contest everything we hear. I simply mean that a thinking Christian reserves final judgment until he can verify the information. In the case of the meaning of the Greek, you can usually verify from a Greek lexicon whether what the author is saying is true or not.
But you have to remember that, as in English, most Greek words have more than one meaning. So often, a verse can legitimately be translated in more than one way. In that case, we shouldn't say, "The Greek really means such and such." We should say, "The Greek could also be translated this way." Or again, you may be listening to a speaker, and he purports to give you background information on what was really happening behind the scenes in the New Testament era.
Maybe you'll be reading from 1 Corinthians, and you'll say, "Well, now, really, what was happening here was blah, blah, blah." Again, take that with a healthy dose of skepticism. I'll give you an example that I've heard and read many times, and I'll probably use this example several times tonight. That's in 1 Corinthians 11, where it talks about a woman covering her head when she's praying. I use this as an example because that's an extremely unpopular practice in today's church.
And so the norm is for a speaker or a commentator to invent some reason why a sister shouldn't cover her head when she's praying. And one of the ones I've heard many times is, "Well, in Corinth in the first century, the only women who went about with their head not covered were prostitutes." So Paul didn't want them to be mistaken as prostitutes to bring scandal on Christianity, so he tells them to cover their head.
Now, we're going to talk later about how to check out claims like this, but I'm saying at this point, a critical thinker simply accepts that with a degree of skepticism, even when it's coming from somebody whom you trust and like, and even if it agrees with what you want to hear. That's usually where you have to be the most careful. Another area is that of feel-good stories and modern-day miracles.
A critical Christian thinker doesn't just automatically accept all the various feel-good stories and miracle stories that float around, particularly on email chains. I spent a brief time on some kind of Christian email group, and it was just a daily dose of all of these claims of miracles happening, of feel-good stories, the vast majority of which, perhaps all of which, weren't even true. They were made up, but it was stuff people wanted to hear.
I certainly believe that God can and does do miracles today, but just because I believe that doesn't mean I'm going to accept somebody's claim of one without any kind of evidence to back it up, any source, any way to look behind the claim. Or another example would be creation evidence. Like you, I believe that God created the heavens and the earth. I believe that we are a special creation of God. I don't believe in Darwin's theory of evolution.
But just because that's my position, it doesn't mean that when I hear a fellow Christian present evidence for creation, that I'm going to just automatically believe it without doing some research to see if it's really true. And the reason I have to mention these things is because it goes against our human nature.
Our human nature is to accept anything coming from people on our side who believe like we do, or that bolsters our own point of view, and we're skeptical of what someone else says who has a different viewpoint. A critical thinker learns to have a healthy dose of skepticism towards all claims, no matter what side it's coming from. Now, I say a healthy dose. It doesn't mean you automatically reject or criticize or question everything you hear.
How I like to think of it is that I tentatively accept what someone says until I have time to research it on my own. A critical thinker reserves final judgment until he can examine the evidence. The response of a critical thinker is always, "Show me the evidence, and then I'll believe." That applies equally to a friend or to a foe. Now, let's go back to my original example of the Y2K issue and all the dire warnings that alarmists were making. The ones who bought into the Y2K hysteria failed to examine the evidence.
They accepted claims simply because they were coming from other fundamentalist Christians. And they also accepted these various dire predictions about the Y2K meltdown because in their hearts, they wanted it to happen. What I observed is that these people in my study group, for example, were for the most part struggling financially. They were somewhere near the bottom of the social pyramid, of the economic pyramid. This wasn't true of all of them, but of most of them.
And yet, because they had made all of these Y2K preparations, if things did happen in accordance with these predictions, suddenly they would move from the bottom of the ladder to the very top. They would be the ones with food when others were going hungry. They would be the ones who had a way to run their wash machines and other appliances with alternative sources of energy. They would essentially be the kings in a new world order.
And so, because they wanted it to happen, they didn't use critical thinking in examining the claims. Now, a second aspect of being a critical thinker is openness. By that, I mean being open to hear a view that's different from your own and likewise reserving judgment until you can examine the evidence. In other words, apply the same standard across the board. Apply it to people who you like, who are on your side of the fence, and apply it to others also.
Just because you hear something that's different from what you've always believed or from what you want to believe, you shouldn't just automatically reject it. You should examine the evidence first. An open person recognizes that perhaps there is the tiniest possibility that some of his viewpoints that he's grown up with or that he's acquired through his life may be wrong. But you'll never know whether or not your views are wrong unless you listen to what other people have to say with other viewpoints.
If you're never willing to critically examine your own beliefs and suppositions, then you really don't know how well they do or don't stand up in the real world. Now, I know none of us enjoy hearing arguments that are counter to what we believe. I know I don't. Oh, it makes my skin bristle. It's pure torture to read an article or a book that goes against everything I believe and against what I want to believe.
In fact, I've learned not to read material that goes against my viewpoint right before bedtime because I get so agitated that I'm going to have trouble falling asleep. Yet, I know it's the best way to test the validity of what I do believe. How do I know it really is true if I don't hear the other side? So another part of openness is recognizing that there are two sides to most issues and to most human life dramas.
I'm always amazed at Christians who hear one side of a story and right away have their mind made up how something happened. I'm talking about perhaps disagreements between two members of the congregation or between a person and his or her employer or between a husband and wife or between children and parents. You really don't know the story until you have heard both sides. I learned this long ago from the various times that I've served in a pastoral position of one form or another.
You listen to one person's side of the story, and your tendency is to believe them. They're a friend. They're a member of the congregation, whatever, and they tell you with 100% sincerity and no overt desire to mislead you. And then you go and talk to the other person, and then their side comes out. And I can't tell you how many times I found myself in a situation wondering, "Are we even talking about the same event?" I mean, that's how different often the two sides of the story are.
I learned the same thing from law practice during the early years of my practice when I handled lawsuits and other disputes. I mean, I'd listen to my client, and boy, everything was black and white, and he or she was just the poor innocent person who had been wronged and all of that. And then in the course of things, I would talk to the attorney on the other side, maybe listen to his client in a deposition, and suddenly you're hearing a whole nother dimension to the story.
So one principle that a critical thinker never forgets is that you don't know what happened in any situation until you hear both sides of the story. But so often, we fail to do this. Back to the Y2K experience. In the spring of 1999, I had done my own checking on the various Y2K claims. I'll talk a little bit later about how I did that, but I came to the very firm conclusion that there was going to be no major upheaval come January 1st, 2000. In fact, perhaps nothing whatsoever would happen.
And I felt I really had a moral obligation to explain this to the group rather than just waiting and then telling them in the next January, "Well, I knew it wasn't going to happen, but I didn't want to hurt your feelings." And so at one of the Tuesday night studies, after we were finished with our lesson, I shared with them why I was quite certain that none of these dire predictions were going to come true. I laid out the evidence for what I was saying.
I did it gently and in a non-confrontational or put-down manner. And I thought I made a very thorough case. I spent about 45 minutes going over each piece of evidence. And when I was through, one of the persons said, "Well, thank you, David. I really appreciate your sharing that, but I know it's going to happen." And then, boom, that was it, and everybody immediately got into their conversations about Y2K again. What was the problem?
Well, these people had never learned to listen carefully to the other side of an argument. Their minds were already made up. This is what's going to happen, and they didn't want to hear evidence that might tell them something they didn't want to hear. Another aspect of being a critical thinker is to start out with a blank slate, or if you can't do that, at least to recognize your own preconceived beliefs.
Now, the best way to examine evidence for something is not having a position you have to defend, to have no preconceptions whatsoever about the subject so that you can objectively weigh the evidence. Now, in many areas, this is virtually impossible, particularly in the realm of theology, of moral beliefs, things like that. We already have preconceived beliefs once we begin to look at evidence.
Interestingly, one of the times when I truly was able to examine the evidence with a blank slate was back with the Y2K issue. I had no preconceptions on the matter whatsoever because it was something entirely new both to me and to everybody else. But like I say, in the spiritual realm, most of us have preconceptions. We weren't born with them, but we were indoctrinated with them when we were growing up. Or if that didn't happen, then we were indoctrinated once we became converted.
Very, very few of us can claim that we have no preconceptions when we look at spiritual issues. But that doesn't mean we can't still be a critical thinker. It means that we have to acknowledge upfront, "Okay, this is what I already believe on this subject, but let me temporarily set aside my views and look at the evidence for a different view and have the willingness to change if the evidence on the other side is stronger." Now, the opposite of a critical thinker is a person with a closed mind.
Their mind is made up. It doesn't matter how much evidence you show to them. It will never influence them, never persuade them because their mind has built a wall that just keeps out any information that doesn't fit what they already want to believe. A third aspect of being a critical thinker is being able to honestly assess the weaknesses in your own arguments and the strengths in your opponents. I still remember my first semester in college.
I had signed up for an ethics class that was taught by a Methodist minister and was sponsored by the Methodist church, but it was done through the college and you got college credit for it. How the ethics class worked was quite different from what I expected. We took a number of controversial subjects such as the ordination of women, war, capital punishment, and what we had to do was to draw up a paper that set forth both our arguments for our position and the arguments for the other side.
We had to present both sides, and then at the end, we could say which side we agreed with and why. But we were graded on not what our position was, but how well and how honestly we presented both sides of the argument. That was something very new to me, but it was something very worthwhile because our tendency is always to set up a straw man for the other side. Instead of really using the best arguments our opponents have, we either do a parody of them or we use the very weakest arguments that are easy to overcome.
But a critical thinker listens to his opponent's arguments and weighs what the other person has to say and looks at his own arguments critically to see where his own weaknesses are and where his strengths are. It makes me think of what Jesus said in Luke 14. Now, he wasn't arguing for critical thinking. He used this illustration for another purpose, but it applies so well. He said, "For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it?
Lest, after he has laid the foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, 'This man began to build and he was not able to finish.' Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with 10,000 to meet him who comes against him with 20,000? Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace." See, that's the reality of how we should approach every issue.
We should be able to honestly look at our own viewpoint, what are its strengths, what are its weaknesses, and be able to do the same thing with our opponents. I mean, this is part of the reality of law practice. Now, in court, lawyers are the prime example of people who twist the truth or who do their best to present only one side and not the other.
Yet before they get into court, lawyers are the best at honestly assessing their case, its strengths and its weaknesses, and the opponent's case with its strengths and with its weaknesses. And if you don't learn to do this honestly as an attorney, you're going to be in bad, bad trouble. Did you know that at least 90% of all lawsuits are settled out of court? And that's because the lawyers on both sides have done this assessment and both know, "Okay, I've got some weaknesses in my case.
Things could go either way in court." So how about, like the king who sues for peace, how about we come together and find a reasonable compromise? Now, again, I haven't practiced trial law for 20 years. I'm using this just as an illustration. But being able to make these kinds of assessments is an essential part of being intellectually and spiritually honest. An intellectually honest Christian doesn't try to hide evidence that weakens his position, and he doesn't misrepresent his opponent's position.
Another part of intellectual honesty is that we keep our convictions in proportion to our valid evidence. We don't make dogmatic claims all out of proportion to the evidence that we have at hand. An intellectually honest person continues to question his own assumptions. He doesn't merely keep applying them relentlessly. Now, I don't mean that we continue to question whether there is a God or the basic tenets of the Christian faith that all Christians have historically believed.
I'm talking about all of the other baggage that's been added over 2,000 years to the fairly simple statement of faith that existed in the early church. Now, I realize that faith is the essential element of Christianity, or at least one of the essentials, but faith is ultimately based on evidence. We're not just asked to believe without any evidence there. There is enough evidence to present a very good case for the truthfulness of Christianity.
But often, there is very little evidence for various beliefs that Christians hold to that are not part of the historic faith that have crept in over the many centuries since the days of the apostles, that people dogmatically hold to and condemn others who don't when they have very scant evidence, very few scriptures to support their viewpoint. Now, how does all of this fit the Y2K situation? Well, the Y2K alarmists failed totally in this area of being intellectually honest, of assessing their own position honestly.
Their convictions were all out of proportion with the evidence that was there. They failed to ever question their own assumptions. For example, they were predicting this enormous social upheaval because all of the computers were going to suddenly fail on January 1st, 2000. Now, let's assume that their technological prediction was correct, which, as it turned out, it wasn't. Yet how reasonable were their predictions? I mean, they were saying all of the grocery stores will shut down. Well, now, why will that happen?
Agriculture is a fairly low-tech enterprise. I mean, I realize today that there are a lot of machines involved and all of that, but normally, farming is done without computers. Now, let's say all of the computers suddenly went out, and so the warehouse doesn't have its inventory, it's lost it, and this and that. Would normal human nature just say, "Okay, we throw up our hands, we're going to just shut down, and I guess we'll just all starve"? Is that how people normally respond to catastrophes?
I guess there's a few people who do, but even fallen human nature has a little bit more spunk than that. When plan one fails, humans normally turn to plan two, and they pick up and go from there. And I can assure you, even if these worst predictions had come true about all of the electricity going off and all of that, farmers, if nothing else, would be setting up road stands and selling their produce from road stands.
They wouldn't just throw up their hands and say, "Well, I guess the food's going to have to just rot in the fields because my computer won't work." Okay, now I want to move on to part two of tonight's message about how to be a thinking Christian. And part two is learning how to read a document. Now, back when I was a young man, I studied law at Baylor University School of Law.
Now, I didn't go to law school in order to learn how to read the Bible, but as it has turned out, law school has been an enormous help to me in my own personal Bible study. Why is that? It's because one of the essentials you learn in law school is how to read a document for exactly what it says without reading anything into it beyond what it actually says. Second, you learn to analyze what things are left unsaid that might cause issues to arise later on.
Now, applying those two principles are essentially what I did for a living for 20-plus years in examining land titles as an attorney. Now, those two principles might seem like something we all already know, but unfortunately, it's not. It seems to be part of our human nature to read things into documents, particularly when we have preconceptions about those things. And as I said, in the spiritual realm, we nearly always do have preconceptions. Let me illustrate what I mean.
I was raised to believe that all humans inherit the guilt of Adam's original sin. Now, maybe that's correct theology. Maybe it's not. That's not the issue right now. As a child, I was shown Romans 5:12 as proof of this teaching.
That verse says, "Through one man, sin entered into the world, death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned." Now, as a result of what I had been taught, every time I used to read Romans 5:12, my mind was hearing the verse say this: "Through one man, sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men inherited the sin and guilt of Adam." You see, what happened is my mind always heard the words of my indoctrination, not the actual words of
scripture.
And so I was absolutely convinced that scripture taught that we inherit both the sin and the guilt of Adam. If anybody denied that principle, I considered them to be ignoring the plain language of scripture. Now, it took me nearly 30 years to ever realize that I was hearing preconceived interpretations, not the plain language of scripture. Now, to be sure, the view that we inherit the guilt of Adam's sin is a very plausible explanation of Romans 5:12.
Perhaps it is the correct explanation, but there are also other plausible interpretations of that verse. And none of us will ever be able to actually listen to scripture until we learn to separate our doctrinal beliefs, our "plausible explanations," from the actual language of scripture. Let me give you another example, but I'm going to tell you upfront, I'm a little hesitant to bring up this next one because I know that so many Christians have very strong preconceptions about it.
But I'm trusting that you who are listening to this message want to be thinking Christians, that you want to apply what I've been saying about looking at both sides of an issue. So I want to take you to Genesis 1:1. It reads in all of these passages I'm reading from the New King James. It says, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Now, let me ask you, when does it say that God created the heavens and the earth? Well, the answer is, in the beginning. When was that? Does that verse say?
No, it doesn't say. Now, let me read to you the next sentence. It says, "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." Now, does that give us any clue as to when God created the heavens and the earth? Well, the answer is no. We still have been told nothing. All right, let's go to the next passage. I'm going to read to you verses 3 through 5. It says, "Then God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light.
And God saw the light that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. So the evening and the morning were the first day." Okay, now, when did God say, "Let there be light"? Well, it was the first day, wasn't it? Now, I'm going to ask you to put aside all of your preconceptions and your prejudices about this subject and just look at what the passage actually says, reading nothing into it.
Does it say that on the first day, God created the heavens and the earth? No, it does not, does it? It only says, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." And then it goes on to describe the first day when He divided light from darkness. Now, is it possible that verses 1 through 5 are all describing the first day of creation? Yes, it's possible, but the passage does not expressly state that.
Now, this passage would make a classic law school examination question because so often in our exams, we were given a paragraph of facts. It wasn't about creation, but it almost just as easily could have been. I remember one exam where we were given a whole page of information, and then the only question at the bottom, it said, "Discuss." What did He want us to discuss? Well, He wanted us to be able to take that passage apart and look at what it exactly did say and what it didn't say. And so what issues were there?
What questions would we have to ask our client before we could ever advise the client? Well, see, that's how we should also read scripture. Don't put words in God's mouth. Look at what He actually said and then be able to sit back and say, "Okay, what does it not say? What questions do we have here that are unanswered?" Now, back to our passage in Genesis 1.
We've said that it's possible that verses 1 through 5 are all describing day one of creation, but it's also possible that day one begins in verse 3, which says, "Then God said, 'Let there be light.'" Now, as an attorney, if I were examining this, I would have to say that there's an extremely high degree of probability that day one began with God saying, "Let there be light." That's because when we read the rest of the chapter, we notice that the description of the other days of creation also all begin with, "Then
God said." So it would seem most likely that day one began with God saying, "Let there be light." If so, how much time elapsed between His creating heaven and earth and His saying, "Let there be light"?
The passage simply does not say. Perhaps only 24 hours elapsed. On the other hand, it could have been a billion years later. The point is, the passage simply does not say. It just says, "In the beginning, He created these." And then after the earth was already created, then it describes these six days. Yet it amazes me and also greatly discourages me when I see Bible-believing Christians make all kinds of dogmatic claims about this passage.
"Oh, if you think there was any gap there in time between Him creating the heavens and the earth and the beginning of the first day, well, you're a heretic. You're not believing the scriptures on and on." And others might be dogmatic that there was a gap there when the scripture doesn't say that there was. The point is, the scripture simply does not say. We don't know. Why is it so hard to simply limit what we say to what God has revealed and to accept as unanswered the things that He hasn't revealed?
I can tell you this: if I interpreted legal documents the way Christians interpret the scriptures, I mean, reading things into it, becoming dogmatic that it has to mean this or that regardless of the actual language, I would have been out of a job decades ago. But you know, you don't have to pay thousands of dollars and invest three years of your life in law school to learn to read a document this way. I encourage you right now to start to practice reading your Bible the way a lawyer reads a document.
Look at each sentence. What does it actually say? What does it not say? What questions are left unanswered? And then we should ask ourselves, what have I been told that this sentence means? And does it actually say what I have been taught all my life? Now, if it doesn't, it doesn't mean that what you've been taught is necessarily wrong. It just means that it's an interpretation of that passage. It's got something added beyond what the passage actually says.
Another part of learning to read a document as a thinker is to look for the evidence to support what the writer is saying. Now, here, I'm not particularly speaking about the Bible since its authority comes from God. I'm talking more about human writings, whether they're ancient or modern. With only very few exceptions, something doesn't become fact simply because someone states it to be so.
Even if that person is a recognized authority in his or her field, even authorities have to produce evidence to verify that their claims are true. However, often they don't because so many people will simply accept what they say because they said it. Now, I said there were a few exceptions to this principle. There are actually two major ones I can think of. One, of course, is if God said it. If He said it, it's true because of who He is.
The second exception is where someone is stating something about which they have personal knowledge and they have no reason to lie or to mislead. For example, if a friend tells me he spent Saturday afternoon doing yard work, I think I can safely accept that as being true. Who knows better than himself what he did, and he has no reason to falsify the information.
On the other hand, if someone bearing his description robbed a bank Saturday afternoon, his personal testimony that he was at home doing yard work isn't going to be sufficient for the police, I can tell you that. They're going to demand corroborating evidence. And it's because of this problem of evidence that I rarely consult commentaries. Bible commentators make all sorts of claims, but they almost never produce any evidence to verify their claims.
They say this meant this or that, or the background to this was blah, blah, blah. They usually have no footnotes, nothing to verify that what they say is true or even to show what they're basing their claim on. I mentioned earlier the example of 1 Corinthians 11 about the head covering and the argument that, well, the only women who went around without head coverings in Corinth were prostitutes. And you will find that written in various commentaries. But there are two problems I have with that.
Number one, Paul doesn't state that as being his reason. Read 1 Corinthians 11. He never says anything about that. If that was his reason, I think I can expect him to give that as his reason. Secondly, no commentator has ever produced any evidence to support their claim that the issue was that the Christian women would not be mistaken for prostitutes. The early Christian writers certainly know nothing about such a claim. None of them say that.
And nobody in the first century wrote a guidebook about daily life in Corinth in the year AD 50. So the statement that the problem was not being mistaken as prostitutes is a completely made-up claim. Yet it is widely accepted. Why is that? Because it fits what people want to hear today. This leads right into the final part of tonight's discussion: how to do research.
From what I've observed over my lifetime, I can honestly say that the average Christian has no idea of how to properly research a subject, whether it be historical, theological, or anything else. For the average Christian, researching a theological or historical subject means going to a favorite commentary or Bible encyclopedia and then uncritically accepting whatever it has to say, or maybe reading several books on the subject. Well, what's wrong with that, you might be asking?
What's wrong with this approach is that you usually will not be getting the evidence that validates what the commentator, author, or editor is saying. Quite often, you're merely getting an unsubstantiated opinion, and that opinion is going to reflect all of the presuppositions, all of the biases, and theological beliefs of the writer. Now, for most Christians, so long as it supports their belief system or at least fits into it nicely, well, that's all they want.
And so then they pass that information on to others, even though it might be misinformation. So what's the alternative, you might wonder? The alternative is to use primary sources for your research whenever possible. Now, what's a primary source? A primary source is the original piece of evidence. For example, let's say someone wants to write a book on what did Tertullian believe about baptism. Well, what's going to be the primary source?
It's going to be the writings of Tertullian to go to his actual writings, and then you've got it from the horse's mouth. That's the primary source. A book that someone wrote about him is not a primary source. Let's say the question is, how did the early Christians dress? Again, the primary source is going to be the writings of the early Christians. And in this case, there would be a second primary source, and that would be the pictures we have of early Christians in the catacombs.
Now, as a writer, I would never settle for anything less than information that I've gleaned from primary sources. I mean, I can't imagine passing on information to others that I haven't acquired from the original source. Okay, let me ask you a question now. What are our primary sources for what the New Testament Christians believed and practiced? Well, generally speaking, there is only one primary source, and that's the New Testament.
However, from reading commentaries and popular books, you'd get the idea that there are dozens of primary sources. There's always a commentator or author ready to tell you that this or that was happening behind the scenes. And I can tell you right now, in nearly every instance, they're simply making something up. It might be an educated guess, but that's all it is. Sometimes it's far worse. Let me give you an example of something I've heard. This is from Luke 10, verses 38 through 42.
It's a familiar passage to most of us. It says, "Now it happened as they went that he entered a certain village, and a certain woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word. But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached him and said, 'Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?
Therefore, tell her to help me.' And Jesus answered and said to her, 'Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.'" Well, that seemed straightforward enough. But I had someone tell me, well, what was really happening here was that this was a synagogue that met in the house of Mary and Martha. And the women weren't supposed to be there where the teaching was going on.
They were supposed to be working in the kitchen. And so what Jesus did here was something revolutionary. It's fine for a woman to sit here and listen to the teaching instead of being back in the kitchen working. Well, that's just one of many new feminist interpretations that I've heard of scripture. The problem is, as we talked about earlier, how to read a document, the passage says nothing about any of that. It says when they went to the village that a certain woman welcomed him into her house.
It said nothing about a synagogue. There's nothing in the passage about other people except Martha and Mary. And there's nothing in the New Testament at all that says that women weren't allowed to be present when there was teaching. Simply a made-up story. And yet it was told to me by someone who heard it from somebody else who no doubt heard it from somebody else. And it gets passed along as truth because of Christians who aren't thinking.
As I said, our only primary source for what the New Testament Christians believed and practiced is the New Testament. But there are some primary sources that help to shed a little bit of light on the New Testament, not a lot. One would be archaeology. They've uncovered, for example, cities that are mentioned in the New Testament. And so they can tell us a little bit about the size of a certain city such as Ephesus and perhaps what was going on there in the city, what type of commerce, that sort of thing.
But overall, it's fairly limited. We have the works of Josephus. And at least as to what was going on in the first century, it would be a primary source of what was happening in Jewish circles and particularly the Jewish War of Independence. But again, that sheds very little light on New Testament happenings. Then we have Roman writings, for example, of the historian Tacitus. And he has a very brief reference about the persecution in Rome of Christians under Nero.
But again, these other primary sources really only give us just a little tiny bit of light, nothing, nothing like the recreated things that you read in a lot of books and commentaries. And beyond those things, the most helpful thing that we have are the writings of the early Christians. But they lived in the next century after the New Testament.
Without a doubt, they are our most helpful tool in interpreting the New Testament because we get to read how people in that era who spoke the same language, lived in the same cities, and sometimes were only one link removed from the apostle, how they understood the New Testament. What did these Greek passages mean to them? How did they understand the Greek? How did they live these things out? They are an incredible aid to us.
And that's why I've devoted most of my adult life into getting this information out to other Christians so that they can see that for themselves. But even with the early Christian writings, they don't give us very much background information as, for example, what was happening in Corinth in the year 50 or what was the church in Rome like in the year AD 55 or something like that. They didn't know themselves.
Now, I realize that most of my readers don't have the time or the resources to dig out and read the primary sources on a lot of issues. In fact, on many subjects, I don't have the time either. And that's why I don't write about those subjects. So what's the answer? Well, in those situations, you do the very next best thing, and that is to turn to secondary sources. Now, the term secondary source can have two meanings.
One meaning would be anything that's not a primary source, such as a commentary, a Bible dictionary, a book somebody has written on the subject. But there's another definition. Let me read to you what one dictionary says on this other meaning. It says a work that interprets and analyzes primary sources. Secondary sources are one step removed from the event being described. And when I use the term secondary source, that's what I'm meaning.
I'm meaning a book someone has written who himself has read the primary sources. Now, he doesn't necessarily have to analyze and interpret them. He can simply objectively report what they have to say. But you're not reading the actual writings yourself or examining the actual artifacts. You're hearing somebody else's description. Now, how can you tell if a book is a true secondary source or if it's something further down the line? Well, the easiest method is to check the footnotes.
In the footnotes is the author referring you to primary sources. For example, if he's talking about the early Christians, does he refer you in his footnotes to actual writings of the early Christians? Or is he referring you to other books that people have written about the early Christians? If he's referring you to other sources, then his book isn't a true secondary source. Now, is a secondary source nearly as good as a primary source?
Well, theoretically, it should be because the author has read the originals and he's giving you a summary of his findings. However, I can tell you that that isn't how it normally works. Instead, it's like that one definition said, somebody is analyzing and interpreting. For example, in the field of patristics, which is the study of the early Christians, a work isn't even considered scholarly if you just simply stick to the facts.
That is, if the only thing you do is to summarize and repeat what the early Christians say, which should make it an invaluable work, the academic community is just going to dismiss it as being something not scholarly because you're supposed to analyze, you're supposed to theorize, you're supposed to read between the lines and come up with a politically correct rationale of why the early Christians say what they do.
Now, the early Christians themselves say that what they are teaching is what the apostles handed down to them. But if you believe that, well, you're considered naive and stupid by the academic community. As a result, secondary sources fall far short of reading primary sources yourself. When you do read a secondary source, if at all possible, you should go and check out the sources that the author quotes. Look up his footnotes.
If he refers you to a writing of Justin Martyr, then go read that page and see if that's really what Justin Martyr is saying. Now, when you pick up a book, don't be fooled that this book contains a lot of truth just because every other sentence is footnoted. In fact, my experience is that it's just the opposite.
When a book has a footnote for just about every sentence, it means the author has taken a bunch of books and is quoting from a bunch of people and doesn't have any personal knowledge of the subject that he or she is writing about. A lot of footnotes doesn't mean a thing. The question is, what are the footnotes to? Are they to a primary source or are they just a note to somebody else's book? Which brings us to our next point. When most Christians research a subject, they don't even go to secondary sources.
Instead, they go to tertiary sources or even worse. Now, a tertiary source is a book whose author has never even read the primary sources. He or she has never actually even seen the real evidence. I mean, I personally cannot imagine writing a book, say, about Tertullian and what he believed unless I had actually read his writings myself. But people do that all the time.
I don't mean that they write about Tertullian, but they write about a whole host of subjects even though they've never even looked at the actual evidence. All they've read are other people's books. And typically, the author of tertiary sources has been very selective in the sources that he does use. He's only read books that fit his theory or frame of mind. And so what happens is that fabricated information is passed around and around until you can find it in book after book and commentary after commentary.
I've mentioned several times this example of 1 Corinthians 11 and the interpretation that Paul didn't want the Corinthian sisters to be mistaken for prostitutes and that's why they should veil their heads. I can't even tell you how many times I have read that in various books and commentaries. And yet, as I've said, it's a totally fabricated thing. What has happened is that this person has copied that person and then somebody else copies this person.
And pretty soon, like I say, it's all over and everyone assumes it's true because a lot of books say it. But none of the books can give you a footnote that takes you to the actual primary source, to the evidence, to the source of this. Nevertheless, some Christians think that they have thoroughly researched an issue when all they have done is to read a bunch of books on the subject, all of which are tertiary sources and all of which were written from a very biased viewpoint.
So don't just gullibly swallow something because some book or commentator has said something. Examine the evidence thoroughly. Make certain that there's hard evidence behind what the person is saying. And a quotation from some other person isn't hard evidence. Now, to bring all of this back to the real world, let me return to my example of the Y2K embarrassment. Now, in 1999, I heard from these various alarmists that Congress was acknowledging that there was going to be a major breakdown.
Now, let me ask you, how do you examine a claim like that? Well, it's quite easy. You go to the primary source. And with the presence of the internet today, that's something quite easy. I just got on the internet and I went to the website of Congress and I found where they had something on Y2K and I read what they had to say. And they were not saying that there was going to be a major breakdown. They were saying just the opposite. But these other Christians had never bothered to go to the primary source.
They heard someone saying, "Congress is all worried about this." And it was absolutely true that Congress had taken steps to make certain that there wouldn't be a major meltdown. But by spring of 1999, they were not worried about it. They saw that things were under control. Another claim, I heard that the electrical producers, the utility companies were acknowledging that they couldn't predict what was going to happen on January 1st, 2000, and they were concerned about everything totally shutting down.
How do you verify that? Well, again, I went to their websites to see what they were saying, and none of them were saying that at all. They were all assuring their customers that there would be a steady supply of electricity on January 1st, 2000. But I didn't just stop there. I mean, a person could say, "Well, they were just lying. They were putting up a front." So I talked to insiders. My primary law client at that time was the largest utility company in Texas.
So I talked to the people there that I knew and asked them. And they were able to verify that nobody in the company was worried about this, that everything was under control. They had taken the steps necessary. Okay, another rumor that was going about that I heard from the alarmists was that the airplanes weren't going to be able to fly on January 1st, 2000, or if they did, there was a major concern that they would crash and that the air controller towers would be shut down.
Well, again, I went to the FAA website to see what they had to say, and they were saying just the opposite. And again, not stopping there, I went to an insider, a brother in our church, who was a computer technician who worked for the FAA. He was working on equipment to make certain that it was Y2K ready. And so I asked him, and he verified the very thing the website said, that there was no problem, that they had things fixed, and that they weren't concerned about January 1st, 2000.
But instead of going to these primary sources that would have been so easy, the Christian alarmists were reading books that would paint pictures of utter chaos because this is what these people wanted to believe. And because of not using critical thinking skills, these people paid a heavy price. For one of the families, it caused a permanent breakup in their marriage. They ended up getting a divorce after January 1st, 2000.
It was a tragic situation which could have so easily been avoided just by using critical thinking skills and researching the matter properly. In conclusion, tonight we've been talking about being a thinking Christian, and we've looked at three areas in particular. First, we talked about developing critical thinking skills. We discussed the need for healthy skepticism, openness, and intellectual honesty. We talked about starting off with a blank slate.
And if that's not possible, at least knowing your own prejudices. Next, we talked about learning how to properly read a document, particularly the Bible. To do that, you must learn to read a document for exactly what it says without adding in your own interpretations or preconceptions. You also need to be able to identify what a Bible passage or other document does not say, what questions are left unanswered. Finally, we discussed how to properly research a topic.
I emphasized why it's important that you go to primary sources when at all possible. It's also important to avoid tertiary sources if you possibly can. Now, I'd like to encourage you to really put these principles into action. The next time you read a Christian book or have a discussion with someone over a theological topic, practice the skill of critical thinking. And be sure to require the author or speaker to establish his case with hard evidence.
Also, be open to listening to views that are different than your own. Practice reading your Bible like a lawyer reads a document. And the next time you research a topic, try to seek out primary sources. Yes, let's all love the Lord our God with our minds, not just with our hearts.