Letter to GARY

“Up till now, the majority has never been on the side of Christ, the majority has never been for God, the majority has never been with the truth.”

~ Charles Spurgeon

Gary:

Thank you so much for your email and taking a look at the ministry website. 

When we started a Bible study at Chief Oil & Gas in April 2002, I pulled the employees together and asked everyone a very thought provoking and deep question: “Hey guys, what do you want to talk about?” They looked back at me quite perplexed because they understood I wasn’t asking whether we should focus on the Old or New Testament, church history, comparative religions, or how best to engage our culture. They took the question at face value. How about sports? Who won the football game last weekend? Cooking? Finally, one of the ladies who asked me to consider leading the study said “Well, Tony, if this is a Bible study how about we talk about …. the Bible?” Most everyone laughed a somewhat abbreviated and nervous laugh. I looked at her, smiled, and said, “Why?” The lights went on! Why should we study the Bible? Why Christianity? Why not Hinduism—I love the concept of reincarnation. The answer? Because Christianity is true. As you said in your letter, because we “acknowledge the unquenchable desire in man everywhere to seek truth.” No one dies for a lie. Well, they do, but they don’t know it is a lie. People ask me, a geologist (sort of engineer), how I can believe in all this faith, Jesus, Bible nonsense. It is because I am a scientist and know something about truth, reason, critical thinking, probability vs. chance, decision tree analysis, apologetics, and my favorite, epistemology. Epistemology actually is more important than our faith! Blasphemy. Off with his head. If Christianity is a spiritual narcotic with the primary purpose to get us through the horrible crap that occurs in this life only, but ultimately is not true, I want off the bus. The apostle Paul essentially says this (without the bus reference) in 1 Cor. 15:19. So, not to launch into a Bible study tonight at almost 10pm, but when you mentioned the pursuit of truth of course I smiled. Yes! Yes! We can easily prove, from a legal-historical perspective, this stuff is true. I will bet this life on it and more importantly, the next one.

Tony Carvalho