The Jewish Roots of The Christian Faith
Author and Scholar Dr Craig A. Evans joins Michael to discuss his book, A Handbook on The Jewish Roots of The Christian Faith.
“What Tim and I are hoping to do in this book is really lift the lid off what this really is and encourage young Christians not to deconstruct, which sounds almost shocking to some people because it’s like in a lot of people’s minds, deconstruction is the spiritually mature thing to do. But in their minds, they’re thinking of it as taking apart your beliefs and putting them back together according to truth or built on the foundation of Christ. But that is almost never what’s actually happening in the movement.
In the movement, what you have are people going with their own personal preferences and their opinions about what types of beliefs Christians hold that make them feel good or bad, oppressed or liberated, etc. If somebody says to you, ‘Hey, I’m deconstructing my faith’, first of all, don’t panic because they might be just defining it.
The question that you want to ask them is, what is deconstruction, first of all? Because they might be talking about something totally different, but what you’re likely to get somebody saying to you is, ‘Well, I’m just getting rid of cultural and American type of beliefs of Christianity.’ Well, that’s okay, that’s good. We all want to get rid of any cultural beliefs that are not biblical. But you need to ask more questions because very often what will happen when you ask, well, what are those Americanized cultural beliefs that you’re getting rid of? Very often the answer that you’re going to get are things like, ‘Well, you know how the church oppresses gay people by not being fully affirming.’ And so they’re thinking that that’s like an American cultural belief.”
As a lifelong church-goer, follower of Jesus, and former CCM recording artist with the Dove award-winning group ZOEgirl, Alisa experienced a period of profound doubt about her faith in her mid-thirties. She felt as though she had been tossed in a stormy ocean of uncertainty with no life jacket or lifeboat in sight. She didn’t know where to find answers to her questions, or if answers existed at all. Did she have to accept it all on some kind of blind faith? Alisa began to investigate her faith intellectually—she took seminary classes and read everything she could get her hands on. This began her journey from unreasoned doubt into a vibrant, rational, and informed faith.
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Author and Scholar Dr Craig A. Evans joins Michael to discuss his book, A Handbook on The Jewish Roots of The Christian Faith.
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