Dear Professor Theophilus,

I attend a Christian college and plan to be a missionary. During the break I'm taking a cultural anthropology class at the local community college so that I can transfer the credit to my own school later. The problem is that although the professor is kind toward other religions, he is harsh and vulgar towards Christianity, and I'm not sure how to respond. He says things like "There are no true religions", "Did God create us or did we create God?", and "Missionaries force their religious beliefs down the throats of others at all costs."

To defend his hostility to missionaries, he offers the relativistic proposition that "Every culture has value and should be judged by its own standards." Of course I don't think that missionaries should go into other lands to undermine their cultures! If my cross-cultural classes in my missions studies have taught me anything, it's that the gospel must be contextualized so that each cultural group can clearly understand Christ's sacrifice.

I also need a Christian perspective on dinosaurs and fossil records. My professor has claimed that the first signs of human life appeared about four million years ago. Does the Bible really claim that humans have only been in existence for about 6,000 years, as the professor claims? If so, then how am I to deal with physical evidence, like carbon dating, that seems to undermine the historical record of scripture?

As you can see, I am frustrated and confused. Thank you very much!

Reply:

Your professor is all too typical, and I'm glad you've written. I gather that you have five main questions for me: (1) How can you respond to his strange declarations about subjects like religious truth and cultural relativity? (2) How can you respond to his ignorant and bigoted remarks about Christian missionaries? (3) Does the Bible really claim that the first human beings appeared only about 6,000 years ago? (4) Whatever the answer to the previous question, how can you respond when the professor begins spouting off about Genesis? (5) What is the right approach to take to his question, "Did God create us or did we create God?" Let's take these questions in turn.

As to the first question: I think you should "play back the tape" to your professor. In other words, turn his own claims back on him, but in the form of questions. When he says "There are no true religions," you might speak something like this -- in your own words, of course:

I'm interested in your statement that no one possesses religious truth -- I guess you mean that no one can justify any theological claim. It puzzles me, though, because it is a theological claim. If no one knows the truth about religion, then how can you say that your claim about religion is true?

Later in the discussion, you might add,

You see, it's like the famous Liar's Paradox. A man says "The statement I am making is a lie." The paradox is that if the statement is true, then it can't be true, because everything he says is a lie; but if the statement is false, then he's lying, but that makes it true after all. Your statement is the same. You say "No beliefs about religion are true," but that is a belief about religion.

The same strategy will be helpful when he says that "Every culture has value and should be judged by its own standards." Turn the claim back on him in the form of a question. For example, you might ask this question and watch him squirm:

Professor, I'm having a little trouble with the idea that every culture has value and should be judged by its own standards. Do you think that the Nazi culture had value and should be judged by its own standards -- so that the better it was at genocide, the more we should approve it?

Or you might ask the following question, which is a little more abstract:

Isn't there a certain paradox in judging every culture by its own standards? Suppose that culture X believes itself to be superior to the other cultures and believes that other cultures should be judged by its own standards. What would it mean to judge that culture by its own standards?

Here's a variation on the last one:

Professor, whose culture says that we ought to judge every culture by its own standards? Isn't it just your culture -- the culture of university anthropology teachers? The reason I'm asking is that if that's true, then it seems inconsistent for you to teach that other people accept your standard. Doing that seems like judging the surrounding culture, not by its own standards, but by the standards of your culture.

As to your second question: How can you respond to your professor's ignorant and bigoted remarks about Christian missionaries? There are two different ways. One way, of course, is to use the same strategy of "playing back the tape" that I recommended in answering your first question. On a day when he has been venting his opinions about how nasty Christians are, you might ask him a question like this:

I'm trying to understand the idea that every culture has value and we should judge it by its own standards. If that's true, then doesn't the culture of Christianity also have value, and shouldn't we judge it by its own standards? In that case I don't understand why you are so harsh on Christian missionaries.

The other way is different. Point out to your teacher that your own missionary training has strongly emphasized the importance of respecting the culture of the host country. Not only that, but the insight that the Gospel must be presented in such a way that each cultural group can clearly understand Christ's sacrifice isn’t new -- it's even biblical! That is precisely how the Bible itself teaches missionaries to present the Gospel. Consider how Paul spoke to the pagans in Athens. He began by quoting from their poets, and he called attention to their altar inscribed "To An Unknown God." If you read the seventeenth chapter of the book of Acts, you'll see clearly what I mean.

As to your third question: Does the Bible really claim that the first human beings appeared only about 6,000 years ago? The question is whether the inspired authors of the genealogies in the first 11 chapters of Genesis intended them to be taken literally or figuratively. Like the question of whether the six "days" of creation are literal days (24-hour periods) or figurative days (phases of creation), this is one of the few points that serious biblical Christians disagree about, and serious arguments have been offered on both sides. (By the way, serious arguments have also been offered both for and against Carbon dating.) All serious biblical Christians agree, however, that some language in the Bible is figurative. Most readers of this column are familiar with my favorite example: When the Bible calls Jesus the Lamb of God, it doesn't mean that He has horns, hooves, and a wooly coat, but that He is our sacrifice for sin. Apparently your professor doesn't know much about biblical interpretation.

As to your fourth question: No matter which way the early biblical genealogies are intended, how can you respond when the professor begins spouting off about Genesis? You need to do two things. The first is simply to explain to him what I explained to you in the previous paragraph -- that the correct interpretation of the Genesis genealogies is a matter of debate among Christians, so he can't simply say "The Bible says." The second and more important is to emphasize what both sides of the debate do agree about -- that no matter how the Genesis genealogies are to be interpreted and no matter how long human beings have been upon the earth, they are here by God's design and plan, and nothing in human history can be fully understood apart from His purposes. To put this another way: Get your professor off the points like how God brought it about that human beings are on this planet, when He brought it about, and whether He brought it about by a gradual process, or all at once. Redirect his focus to the more important point of who is responsible for the fact that human beings are on this planet. Genesis says that God is responsible.

After you redirect his focus, he may try to beat you over the head with Darwin. I'm sure you know the drill: "As the evidence shows, man is the result of a meaningless and purposeless process that did not have us in mind," and so on and so forth. Actually, the evidence shows nothing of the kind; what it actually suggests is Intelligent Design. To see how Darwinists have distorted the evidence, take a look at the new book Icons of Evolution, by Jonathan Wells (Regnery Publishing, 2000). To see how the evidence points to Intelligent Design, see any of the books on the subject by Michael Behe, William Dembski or Phillip Johnson, or visit the website of the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture. . I think you'll be surprised.

Finally, what's wrong with your professor asking, "Did God create us or did we create God?" Considering the variety of completely incompatible religions in the world, I think it's a pretty good question. The only problem is that he left out one of the possible answers! Considering what's written in passages like Romans 1:18-25, you could say something like this:

It's interesting that you ask that question, because my own faith tradition recognizes the fact of religious diversity just like you do. But our teacher Paul gives a different explanation. His is that God created us and we "created" gods -- false gods -- because we don't want to acknowledge the true one. In fact, the Christian idea is that the manufacture of false gods is still going on today. The only difference is that instead of having names like Zeus and Athena, today they have names like Sex, Getting Rich, My Inner Self and Having My Way.

The way this answer works is that it affirms the element of truth in what the other person has said, but uses it as a springboard for another truth the other person hasn't recognized. Paul did that all the time. You see what I’m suggesting to you, don’t you? Think of your missionary training again. You’re "contextualizing" biblical truth so that this pagan can understand it -- a pagan who happens to be your teacher.

I think that you’re going to have to be the kind of missionary your professor doesn’t expect. As you pursue your studies, may God illuminate your intellect and show you how to hold your own with courtesy, courage, and persistence.

Grace and peace,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

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