Revive hosted special guest speaker Cathryne Buse on Feb, 20. Buse is the author of Teaching Others to Defend Christianity, a book that details her experiences defending the Christian faith with apologetics. As Buse explained, apologetics is defending and proving the validity of the Christian faith through logical reasoning and scientific evidence. “I wrote my book,” Buse explained, “to create a resource that believers like you can be leaders of small groups, Bible studies, etc.”
Buse grew up in a Christian home in Birmingham. Her church, parents and Sunday school teachers were all people who were critical in helping Buse develop her faith from a young age. However, one life-changing event occurred when Buse was in fifth grade. She was tasked with drawing the big bang and her parents were livid; they insisted that she draw earth and write Genesis 1:1 next to her drawing. Buse explained what a great teachable moment that was. If her parents had reacted differently, Buse perhaps would have learned that it was ok not to stand up for her faith.
Eventually Buse graduated college suma cum laude, with highest honors, from the University of Alabama with a degree in engineering. Buse got a job working at NASA, a place where she was surrounded by critical, analytical coworkers. Her coworkers defended their skepticism by asking her how the Bible could be true if it was just written by men over a period of about a thousand years.
These questions made Buse wonder why she became a Christian in the first place. She realized that, while she was a good Christian, she was a not a good witness – two totally different aspects of the Christian faith. “If Christians can tell unbelievers all these verses and ideas presented in the Bible,” Buse asked, “who will actually care if they don’t believe in God to begin with?”
Why do people become Christians? Why do they believe Christianity is the ultimate truth? Do these beliefs come from the environment they are raised in? Do these beliefs come from the people they are around? These types of questions imply that, if shown enough scientific data, Christians could be convinced to turn their backs on their faith.
According to Buse, “the Gospel isn’t presented in a vacuum.” People already possess worldviews that have been set in stone. Buse explained that a person’s worldview is made up of 4 parts:
1. Where the person came from.
2. How the person determines morality.
3. What the person thinks the meaning of life is.
4. What the person thinks happens to people after they die.
Buse defines witnessing as explaining, as well as showing, to people why the Gospel is different from every single other religion and worldview that exists and why Christianity is the truth. As a result of her encounters, Buse wanted to study Christianity through logic and science. The more she studied science, Christianity and philosophy, the more Busey realized how true Christianity is. “Who made chemistry,” she asked. “Who made the rocks? Who made science? All these questions have the same answer – God.”
She wanted to use the information and facts she discovered through her research and present them in a usable, understandable way for others. Buse broke down the essential information needed to help people logically conclude that God exists into three parts:
- Thermodynamics
Thermodynamics is the study of the relationship between heat and other forms of energy. There is conclusive, hard scientific evidence that there was a time where the universe did not exist and that the universe is decaying in the present. Buse argues that, if the universe hasn’t always existed, then something or someone must have created it.
- Intelligent Design
All physical laws – laws like gravity, for example – are so precise that there is no statistical way that all the governing laws of the universe could have formed by chance in the specific way needed to sustain life on earth.
There are systems so complex in cells that they can’t be broken down. Breaking down such components of cells destroys them; they can’t be created by adding one component to the system at a time. DNA, for example, can’t be broken down to its base components and be put back together one piece at a time. If it’s broken down, DNA ceases to be DNA. Another stunning example of this phenomenon is how proteins are made. It takes 100 proteins to make 1 protein. But, where did the original 100 proteins come from? This is similar to the chicken and the egg puzzle and is, perhaps, one of the strongest pieces of evidence that proves that God exists. Someone must have made the first proteins, and someone must have made the first DNA.
Morality is a Universal Concept
No matter where we come from, everyone has a sense of morality, even people we don’t think have morality. Despite how twisted their moral codes were, Stalin and Hitler both seemed to care about honesty; they would execute anyone who lied to them without any questions asked. Even now, ISIS executes people they think have stepped outside the boundaries of morality. But how ae these people moral? Buse explained that people like Hitler, Stalin and ISIS possessed morality, but that it was a twisted morality. These types of people changed the focus of obeying and being loyal to God to obeying and being loyal to them and their desires.
Basically, a code of morality is a set of rules to live but, no matter what the rules are. Perhaps one of the most important things to understand about Buse’s argument is that the arguments regarding religions, atheism, etc., all boil down to codes or morality and patterns of thinking. Buse explains that, if Christianity isn’t true and moral relativism – the belief that all beliefs are equally valid even though every system of belief doesn’t work for every person – is the correct way to look at the world, then no one should be able to judge anyone else based on their beliefs.
She continued to explain that there are two possibilities for where universal morality comes from: man and nature.
Much like people can only judge a straight line because they know what a crooked line looks like, people can only know what morality looks like by watching the actions of someone who is moral. However, if morality comes from man, then every person on earth would have a different code of morality. Essentially, this would mean that someone who would never abuse a child would say that that choice is perfectly fine for another person to make. But this isn’t how the world works, is it? No way! Every person on earth would judge child abuse as morally wrong. This type of social thought experiment proves that morality doesn’t come from man.
The other place morality could come from is nature. There is a theory based on Darwinistic evolution that suggests that humans evolved the concept of morality to make social interactions and expectations to make societies run smoothly. However, this isn’t true. Morality and altruistic behavior goes against the very core of Darwinistic theory – survival of the fittest. If a starving ancient human gave their last piece of meat to a small ancient human child, that starving human would die. To evolve this behavior in an entire population is counterproductive to its evolution, scientifically speaking.
So, then, if morality doesn’t come from man or from nature, where does it come from? Where does that leave us?A being outside man and nature had to create and instill it in mankind. The only answer left for where morality came from is God.
Bethany Williams, a double major in biology and psychology who frequently attends Revive, was extremely moved by Buse’s talk. She stated, “it was extremely important to me to see a whole different way Jesus Christ is proven to be real. Buse’s sermon brought up new questions about how to prove to others that Jesus is real while simultaneously helping me understand, on a whole new level, just how real He is and what He can do for us. This was so important. for me to hear.”
As Buse explained, “If we have morals, then God must be good, just, loving, etc.; because we are made in His image. How do you think He feels about what we, as His children, do?” He cares a lot. He is sad when we don’t follow the moral code He set out for us. Buse stated that witnesses can use this point to transition into how Christianity is different than all the other world religions – the other world religions state that it is what humans do that determines if they get into heaven while Christianity states that humans must be utterly perfect to enter heaven.
Then, the witness can explain that, “humans are broken and we can never, ever fix what we broke by sinning.”
“‘Then what can we do?,’ the person being ministered to will ask. ‘Nothing,’” Buse explained. “We do nothing, because we can’t do anything about it. The only thing that can fix what we broke is by believing in Jesus as the Savior. The only thing we can do is give our sin to Jesus so he can heal our brokenness.”
Buse continued, stating that, “we can only fully understand the human condition by understanding what Jesus did for us. Everything hinges on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Everything.”
If we believe Genesis 1:1 – In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth – then, we can believe the rest of the Bible. It is our job as Christians to be the light and salt of the world.
Will you be equipped when God gives you the opportunity to witness?