Date: February 20, 2017
Host: Jim Schneider
Guest: Carl Kerby
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Carl Kerby is the president and founder of Reasons for Hope. Prior to its forming, he was a founding board member of Answers in Genesis and served there for 15 years. Carl is also a former air traffic controller at Chicago-O’Hare. He is co-creator and host for the video series, ‘Weapons of Mass Instruction’ and presenter of the DVD series for teens, ‘Demolishing Strongholds’. He is the author of ‘Remote Control: The Power of Hollywood on Today’s Culture’, ‘Absotively, Posilutely: The Best Evidence for Creation’ and ‘Reasons for Hope in the Mosaic of Your Life’.
Carl began by noting that 6 years ago he was booked out a year and a half and ministry opportunities were ‘off the charts’. However, he admitted that God had put on his heart that he wanted him to go after the younger generation and fathers. Why? 50%-88% of young people raised in the church are gone by the time they reach age 18. He wanted to look young people in the eye and tell them that God’s Word is true and trustworthy. It deals with issues that they’re being confronted with, therefore they don’t have to be ashamed of their faith.
What’s the best way to do this? It’s by remembering to teach application and not simply memorization.
Are these issues the same for young people today as they were for those of yesteryear? Carl believes that ultimately the core issue is doubt and that’s the tool that Satan has been using going all the way back to Genesis. So the tool hasn’t changed but the way that the questions are being asked has changed.
What are some of the messages today’s kids are hearing? Some include: You can’t trust the Bible because it’s full of mistakes and errors. Why would God allow death and suffering? What about carbon dating? What about continental drift? What about aliens and U.F.O.’s? Why is homosexuality wrong if they love each other? All of these go back to a core issue of whether or not you can really trust in absolute truth. Is there an absolute authority that will serve as a foundation from which to deal with such issues?
Are churches tending to these critical areas of need and countering the false messages? While Carl believes there are individuals who are really ‘going after it’, he doesn’t believe it’s the majority. In fact, he noted that the majority of Christian colleges won’t address this issue. He sees the same attitude among Christian churches that won’t address such issues for fear of offending people, fear of driving someone away, they don’t feel the issue is that important or they just don’t know how to deal with it.
Jim then turned the discussion to Evolution Sunday which is celebrated by some people on the second Sunday of every February. This year we saw 13,479 clergy sign on to the Clergy Letter Project. That’s the number of clergy who committed to engaging this issue.
Jim read the ‘common letter’ of this effort that included the following: ‘…the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational, scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rest. To reject this truth or to treat it as one theory among others is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children…We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different but complimentary forms of truth.’
In response, Carl asked how you can transform hearts if the book from which we learn about the one who can transform hearts isn’t true? Science, on the other hand, changes. What gives people the right to change it? Christians have stood by and have failed to get involved and tell people they have no right to redefine terms. Science is knowledge. How do you gain that? You gain it through the scientific method. That’s where you come up with an observation, a hypothesis based upon the observation, you test it, you repeat it and you verify it. There is no test that allows you to show an amoeba coming from nothing, turning into something, to grow into a worm, grow legs, crawl onto land, become an amphibian, to turn into a rat, to turn into a wolf and then go back into the ocean to become a blue whale. There’s no evidence for this. It’s a belief.
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