9/11/25

This week, Nick and I had the joy of having Thayne Thompson join us out at CSUF! Below is a picture with Thayne and me having a conversation with a CSUF student. In this conversation, we talked with a young man who, though claiming to be a Christian, seemed to lack a substantial understanding of Christian teaching. He seemed to float somewhere in the ideology that Christianity is tolerance. It seemed that he improperly equated love to tolerance, so Thayne and I sought to demonstrate how real love necessitates disagreement and confrontation at times through a few examples. We shared the example of a person suffering from a deadly disease to which there is only one cure. It can be seen in this example that the most loving thing to do for this diseased person is to tell them about the only cure that can help them. This might involve telling them that the medicine they are currently taking is not helping the actual issue. Therefore, the most loving thing to do in this situation is to outright disagree and engage with the sick person so that they might become well. Love is about seeking the true benefit of others - not just doing what they want you to do.

This illustration seemed to be a bit confusing for the young man, so we gave a very similar example, but this one with canoes and a waterfall. If someone were canoeing down a river that led to a deadly waterfall, the most loving thing to do would be to engage with that person and tell them about the danger they unknowingly face. The person being warned might easily dismiss the person engaging them, but it is clear that the loving thing is to earnestly seek to warn people of the consequences of their current trajectory. I think that these are very good examples of love being distinct from tolerance, and I pray that we will be granted further opportunities to continue the conversation with this young man. 

This week I was blessed to talk with a young man named *Andrew who is a Muslim student at CSUF! I appreciate the higher degree of firmness that Muslims have in their beliefs as it gives us something concrete to work with! It can be a large challenge to make conversational progress when people refuse to take a true stance on anything - or when they take a stance and then instantly retreat when you begin to press on it. However, *Andrew gratefully took a stance, and it gave me some great things to work with! I really appreciated the seemingly genuine concern for truth that *Andrew came into the conversation with, and I look forward to our next conversation as I feel that he is open to where the evidence points.

While he isn't the most astute Muslim that we've encountered on campus, he knew enough Islamic doctrine to understand the basic premises of the Islamic Dilemma. It was moderately comical how our conversation started as he didn't really answer the question on the board and simply wrote "Allah" instead. The question of that day was, "What is the difference between a believer in Jesus and a disciple?", so I jokingly asked him which category he was placing Allah under, but I don't think he understood the board initially. Either way, we got into a conversation as I inquired about why he wrote "Allah", and he told me it was because he is a Muslim. I think that he probably was just looking to debate Christianity, but he was having trouble identifying and walking through the natural archway in the conversation to get there :) (shameless plug to check out the video of Archways training in conversational evangelism :)

Either way, I'm stoked that he brought it up, and I'm totally down to "debate" it! I liked that *Andrew came knowing what he wanted to talk about - with specific concerns and objections to inquire about. That really makes my job easier as I knew what he wanted to know right off the bat! He came with the classic assertion that Jesus never claimed to be God, to which we discussed John 8:58 where Jesus makes a clear allusion to Exodus 3:14 with Moses and the burning bush, John 10:32-33 and the Jews' accusations, and John 20:28-29 with Jesus' affirmation of Thomas calling Him Lord and God. *Andrew gave some good push-back here and there, but as we further explored the passages it became very clear to him that Jesus was in fact claiming divinity. This is, of course, if we are looking for a relatively simple and straightforward claim of divinity directly from Jesus. If we are merely looking for that teaching among the apostle's teachings and general Gospel records, then it becomes extremely easy to confirm this. I do think that you can make a very compelling case that the title "Son of Man" is a clear claim to divinity as Jesus explicitly tells us that He is the Son of Man described in Daniel 7; however, this can be a hard point to explain with someone in a short amount of time on the campus. So, I just went with the others for now. (A side note: I've heard this claim also made by JWs - that Jesus never claimed to be God, but specifically for them, I would respond by asking where Jesus explicitly claimed to be Michael the Arc Angel. A case can certainly be made for Jesus claiming divinity, but I think that you can probably make unique progress with JWs by responding with that question and then addressing the extremely unequal standard that they have for calling Jesus Michael the Arc Angel based on some obscure passages and logic.)

I also found it very interesting in our conversation that *Andrew asked whether I thought that Judaism or Islam is closer in connection to Christianity. I very easily answered this fascinating question along with a few reasons for my answer, but I was shocked at how strongly *Andrew thought that Islam was closer. His primary, and possibly sole, argument was that Jews don't accept Jesus while Muslims say that Jesus was a prophet. I'm not certain of the direction he was trying to take this, but he definitely picked a losing battle given that Jesus Himself was Jewish, that Christians are grafted into the same olive tree as the believing Jews, and that Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism. Additionally, it doesn't really help to say that modern Judaism rejects Jesus for His true identity as Islam also rejects Jesus for His true identity. Again, there is this issue of different versions of Jesus that people believe. For the Muslim, I would agree that Jesus was a prophet. He certainly was, but Jesus was far more than JUST a prophet - and that's where the issue arises. To recognize some qualities and reject other qualities of Jesus is to reject the self-disclosed identity of Jesus. We are most certainly not speaking of the same person. 

It would not be unheard of to meet someone who knows another person named Ivan - in fact, I've met a few in the past few months. If you and this stranger were to talk about this "Ivan" that you know - thinking that you are speaking of the same one - you might make it a great distance in conversation before realizing that you are talking about two distinctly different people. You might agree that Ivan is involved in ministry - often with college students; you might agree that Ivan is a male born in America; you might agree that Ivan grew up in a Christian household; and you also might agree that Ivan has great facial hair :); however, you will absolutely be certain that you are speaking of two distinctly different people the instant that you ask whether or not Ivan is married. The Ivan that you know and have been describing is not married, but the Ivan that they are describing got married two months ago. It doesn't take a genius to recognize that these absolutely cannot be the same person - even despite all of the similarities. If you were to argue that you're speaking of the same person because both of the descriptions are a young, white, American, male, named Ivan, the other person would easily refute you by pointing out that your rejection of Ivan's marital status creates such a distinction of identity that you are no longer talking about the same person at all. The same thing goes with Muslims, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and more.

In my conversation with *Andrew, he brought up how ChatGPT told him that Islam was the most logically consistent religion out there. I appreciate the humor of this reasoning, but I thought that I would entertain it because I know, from experience, that ChatGPT gives you very biased information based on the beliefs that it concludes that you have. I told *Andrew that ChatGPT has also told me that Christianity is the most logical religion out there, so he asked me to prove it - so I did. I typed in exactly what *Andrew asked me to, and just as predicted, it told me that Christianity wins. The reasoning was extremely flawed to begin with, but beating the reasoning using the system was handy. After that fun little experiment, I told *Andrew that I think that Islam is extremely illogical as it self-refutes. He was of course interested, so I shared with him a very concise version of the Islamic Dilemma. We began breaking it down and addressing his claims of scriptural preservation (or lack thereof), but the Islamic Dilemma works even if we grant them that incorrect point (that the Bible has been corrupted). I think that he was starting to understand the dilemma, but he had to get to class and said that he would come back to continue the conversation. I really look forward to our next talk as I think that his heart is open to honestly considering this dilemma. Please join me in praying for *Andrew - that we would talk with him again and that God would move his heart to openness!