4 Questions Which Lead to Truth
November 13, 2025
Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer
Guest: Bryan Osborne
Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 11/13/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.
Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.
Sam Rohrer:
Hello and welcome to this Thursday edition of Stand in the Gap Today, and it’s our monthly focus on apologetics creation and biblical worldview. Now today my returning guest is Bryan Osborne. Been with me many, many times, but he’s an author, he is a conference speaker and an apologist for enters in Genesis, which is located in northern Kentucky. And together we want to engage a subject today directly related to, I’m going to say the effective communication of truth in our present age of internet and social media flooded communication, people who gain their primary input from these digital sources. And that’s most, they are of a necessity on information overload. And we’ve talked about that on other programs about how if you’re relying on your phone, if you’re relying on the digital media, you are going to it. You become overly stimulated, continually assaulted with tailor made messaging to entertain, to distract, and actually to entice into a greater and greater addiction on that methodology of receiving communication.
Augmented increasingly by artificial intelligence. The fake news label, which I’m going to say was made familiar by Donald Trump years ago to identify information that was primarily unfavorable to him. It now potentially pertains to, I’m going to say to literally everything digital, but now augmented again by artificial intelligence. Fake news has been expanded to include, as we all know, fake graphics, fake people, totally made up people saying fake things. And it also realistic that the real is undistinguishable from the unreal truth from false and genuine from the imposter. Fake is beyond fake. It’s become real, yet unreal and it’s become very dangerous. And sadly, God and truth, which is the opposite of fake, was officially thrown out decades ago. In our culture, we know that in government certainly and in the American cultural heart. So for those of us who hold to absolute truth being the authority of scripture and thus sayeth the word of the Lord, we must not only be on guard, but I’m going to say with intentionality, consider well how to communicate truth to others in this kind of a climate who have been fooled into embracing the fake thinking. It is the true and in the end, losing their own soul to a Christless eternity. And ultimately that is the ultimate price for embracing the fake. Now, today’s focus is on an approach that if pursued will lead to truth. The title I’ve chosen to frame today’s important conversation, it says Four questions, which lead to truth. And with that, Bryan Osborne. Bryan, thanks for being back with me today. I’m excited about getting into this subject with you,
Bryan Osborne:
Sam, it’s always good to be with you. Thanks for keep having me back and it’s a joy to be here,
Sam Rohrer:
Bryan, excuse me. Let me get right into that. Let’s do it this way first, this reality of deception. I’ve touched on it, we know it’s there. Information overload, yes, resultant, abandoning of truth, all those things I mentioned. Those things are all there. That brings us into the area where we here try to talk about truth. You are all about truth and apologetics. Here’s my first question you to get us going. Would you define, in simple terms the word apologetics? We use it, but I want you to define it and why every true believer in biblical authority must understand the essence of the apologetic. I’m going to say the what and the why.
Bryan Osborne:
Yeah, that’s a great place to start. The word can be confusing based on the way that it sounds. So the word apologetics comes from a Greek word apia, which when we hear apia, we think of apology. We think of saying we’re sorry to someone 180. And you say it three times in a row, but it doesn’t mean to say you’re sorry to apologize. The word apia in which you get in first period three 15 to give an answer or defense for your faith, it means to gift just that an answer it means to give a defense for the faith. And really the Greek term has all the connotations of someone like a lawyer in a courtroom who is presenting his case as to why his argument is true. And so we get one Peter three as I mentioned, that we are told by God to give an answer for our faith.
And it’s not a suggestion, it’s not something if you feel like God’s word says, if you’re a believer, you are told to defend the faith. Jude one, three we’re told to earnestly contend for the faith. And so it’s a commandment for all believers. And Sam, I think really a lot of Christians have not been doing this because a lot of misconceptions. One, they think it’s not that important. Two, they don’t realize it’s a command. And then I think for a lot of Christians, I think giving answer, defending the faith, getting involved in those sorts of things, it’s just for the super elite Christians, the, I don’t know, they chuck Norris of Christians like the best of the best. Those who have trained for years and years, all the answers to all the things. And they’re called to give an answer. Now actually every one of us as a believer in Christ is called to give an answer for our faith. And so we do it because God has told us to do so. And then also that’s the why. But in giving it an answer, it’s not merely to win a debate. But as we proclaim God’s words, we proclaim God’s truth. God works through that to change hearts and lives and we use his answers to get to the gospel that leads to a powerful proclamation of the good news of Christ that will change people and thus change culture. So do it on obedience. And also we realize that proclaiming God’s truth is powerful.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay? Alright, now let’s move from that. We’ve got the basis for it. We have to know what we believe so that we can communicate it, all those things you just said. Let’s go here to the concept of questions. And if we don’t get all of this developed here, we’ll carry it into the next segment. But in scripture, Jesus as the son of God, the rabbi of rabbis, the savior of the world, repeatedly used questions to teach his disciples. And he would use questions to confound the religious establishment of his day and their effort to twist the scriptures, to deceive the people about the truth and actually lead people away from God straight into hell. Something that Jesus accused them of doing the Pharisees on multiple occasions. So here’s my question, what is the power behind asking right questions instead of just making for instance, declarative statements? And what is it about learning to ask right questions that are so successful in both defending and advancing the truth as an extension of being able to give an answer to all those who ask of us the reason that’s within us?
Bryan Osborne:
Yeah, we know the questions are powerful because as you mentioned, Jesus used them all the time. And if he’s God in a flesh, he’s a good example to follow and he is or he is God who became man. And so we do need to follow that example. And they’re so helpful because questions are, they are less aggressive in a sense. They allow people to be less defensive. So if you ask them their opinion, you’re allowing them to talk, you’re allowing them to talk about what they believe and people love to talk and they feel heard. If you’ll sit there and listen, which makes them open to hearing you later on. So that’s a good question, can kind of pave the way to lead to a good gospel proclamation later on. But we want to listen well because as you ask a question, you can really learn what they actually believe. And it’s funny, Sam, when you ask people good questions, they’ll start to learn what they believe. Sometimes they don’t even know why. They believe what they believe. You start asking them why they believe something, they begin to realize, wow, this is why I believe it. And that’s not a really good reason. It’s just really about bias or preference shining through. And that’s a powerful thing about questions. It reveals assumptions, it reveals your bias and it disposes it to both you and the one answering the question.
Sam Rohrer:
Alright, so ladies and gentlemen, if you’re just tuning in, our theme today here is four questions, which lead to truth. My special guest is Bryan Osborne, he’s with Answers in Genesis. And we will come back, we’re going to move into this area where we’re going to identify these four questions, which lead to truth and the balance of the program. Then we’ll demonstrate some key and leading issues and arguments by responding to them with these questions. Well if you’re just joining us, welcome aboard our theme today. Here’s the title that frames it. Four questions, which lead to truth. Alright, so if you dismiss that first segment, my guest again today is Bryan Osborne. He’s an author and a conference speaker, Christian apologist with answers in Genesis and with me many times before. But today we’ve chosen to pursue an area of apologetics which hinges obviously on truth. We just talked about why it’s important for all individuals.
You listen to this program, you are likely a God-fearing person. Hopefully you know Jesus Christ as your personal savior. And if you embraced the truth, Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth and the life. And we talk about that on this program regularly. But when it comes to communicating biblical truth to those in a skeptic world, which is out there now a deceptive world, and we talked about how literally everything, if it doesn’t make any difference where you go, if you’re getting information through a digital form in particular, which is basically everything except if you’re finding something in print, you are being subjected to various levels of manipulation and deception and distraction and overload and a whole host more. So how do we deal with these things and particularly relate truth to people who by and large have embraced this well, this methodology of getting their information and are therefore deceived and some greatly, greatly deceived.
But with that in mind, these direction here today, four questions which can be asked to help, well, to help confront a person to help clarify for themselves where they are relative to the truth, to reveal it, to share it, all of that, all of that’s wrapped up into this. So let’s go further into this aspect of questions because asking wise questions, asking wise questions, not stupid questions, silly questions, but asking wise questions accomplishes a number of things. And Bryan mentioned a couple of those in the last segment. But in a purely human setting, it is a function, it’s a methodology of, some would refer to it as the Socratic method of teaching. It’s highly effective in prompting a focused approach to analytical thinking. But when Jesus did it, it was divine and perfect in all applications. Some would argue that, well, that questions are asked when the person asking them does not know the answer.
Well, we know that’s not true. It could be true, but when it is Jesus who is omniscient, he clearly already knew the answer. So questioning his disciples or questioning the religious establishment, the Pharisees and the others who were out to gun. For him it was not for his benefit, but it was for the benefit of the hearer. You see, the questions that God asks always serves a purpose. He never asks questions to obtain information since he already possesses all the information, his questions serve a different purpose. And that purpose varies based on the content of the question, the needs of the one to whom the question is directed. And the closer we can model the example of Jesus, the more effective we can become in pointing people to the God of heaven and his son, the savior of the world. So there’s the framework for that. Bryan, let’s go into it now I’d like to have you identify the four questions that you found to be essential questions to ask in the defense, in the advance of biblical truth and then the specific power of each one. In other words, there’s a purpose for it. So let’s start here. What is the first question and what is it intended to accomplish by asking a person perhaps even herself asking that question, what’s the purpose for it?
Bryan Osborne:
Well, first let me say Sam, that was a really, really good introduction. That was really, really good. You should have your own show, but that’s really,
Sam Rohrer:
Yeah, well thank you Bryan.
Bryan Osborne:
They’re the questions that you said, they are so powerful and they help reveal truth and that’s what these questions are meant to do. And say, I’ve been doing apologetics for the last 20 years, I have found that they asking these sorts of questions help us identify what’s really going on, what someone’s really thinking, what the real struggle is, getting down to their assumptions, their foundational authority, peeling back the layers as it were to get to the real heart of the matter in such a way we can deal with their heart ultimately with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so yeah, that’s why we care about these questions. And the first question is simply this. We ask someone as you’re engaging in an issue, they bring up a point. What do you mean by that? What do you mean by that? So as they bring up, if they’re talking about a different issue, marriage, sexuality, gender origins, evolution, define your terms, because oftentimes people, when they’re addressing a particular issue, they will talk back and forth and they will talk right past each other because they’re using the same word but different dictionaries. They don’t have the same definitions for those words. And so it’s really easy to talk right past one another if we don’t define our terms. So what do you mean by that? Define your terms. That is the first question.
Sam Rohrer:
Question. Okay Bryan, and I’ll do you a quick follow up on that. Defining the terms when I was in office, one of one, the things I learned on debate on the floor was you better define your terms because if you don’t, whoever defines the terms controls the debate. Is that the reason why you would say defining the terms to make sure everybody’s on the same page is for that purpose or build that out just a little bit further? I think it’s really critical.
Bryan Osborne:
Yeah, no, absolutely. You have to be sure that you’re talking about the same thing. And yes, to define terms does control the debate. By the way, the one asking good questions actually controls the conversation too, by the way. It’s just a powerful reason for questions. But we ask the questions to find terms and that’s really to avoid any confusion or to avoid people deceiving others on purpose. Because we see so often, I know you saw it in politics where people will use words in a slick way to get what they want, but they use those words in a defective way with a different definition. So we can avoid that by defining terms, then we can deal with the actual issue.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay. Alright, that’s second. Let’s go to the second question then. What’s the second question? And what is it intended to elicit? What kind of response?
Bryan Osborne:
Yeah, for that one it is how did you reach that conclusion? So how’d you come up with that? And really when we ask that question, how did you reach that conclusion? We’re really looking for two things. Number one, their experiences, what they’ve been through, Sam, we know as we engage people, especially nonbelievers, if they’re rejecting God and his truth in the word, there’s probably more than just a logical reason not bet. There are some experiences in their life that will help attribute to their rejection of God’s truth. And so helping us understand what those are, if they’re willing to share, can give us a bit more compassion for the person and ability to answer their objections more precisely and more wisely as we understand where they’re coming from emotionally experientially. So we’re looking for their experiences that they’re willing to share. And then secondarily, maybe even more importantly, we are wanting to point out or find their authority.
So when you ask how did you reach that conclusion, who did you hear that from? Who says, what is your authority? Did you get that from the word of God? Well, if it’s not biblical, then no. If it’s not from God’s word, where’s it from? It’s from man’s ideas, son, man, we don’t know which man. We could find that out too. But really what it boils down to Sam is we often say the battle ultimately is God’s word versus man. And you put your faith in one or the other. We point out to them that if they’re not trusting God’s word, they’re trustee, which is arbitrary because how do you know that man is a trustworthy source? He’s just a man. He’s finite, he’s limited, but God’s word is always trustworthy. So finding the authority, point out how they’re being arbitrary ultimately by trusting man’s word if they’re not trusting god’s.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay, let’s move right into the question number three then, Bryan.
Bryan Osborne:
Question number three is why do you care? Why do you care about this issue? And this is a bit more presuppositional, but we are wanting to show them that if they’re caring about a particular issue, like whether it’s the sexual revolution or abortion or evolution, they’re borrowing biblical values to try to argue against the Bible. So for those who are pushing for the L-G-B-T-Q ideology, they’re typically saying, well, I think people are to be valued and they have dignity, therefore I think they should have rights. Well, where do you get the idea that people have value from? And of course their views on sexuality are wrong. We’ll deal with that. But why do you care about people? Well, because they’re made in God’s image. Where’s that come from? And it comes from the Bible. You’re borrowing a biblical principle and you’re trying to reject the Bible in the process. So we’re showing them they’re being inconsistent. And if we’re talking to a believer who’s got unbiblical views, we want to show them that if they’re caring about a particular issue, they need to care about what all of God’s work says, not just parts of it. And they should not be twisting scripture that fit their ideas, that fit the secular ideas of our age. So that’s the third question.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay. Alright. And that gives us just enough time to take question number four. What is the question and what response is it in design to elicit
Bryan Osborne:
For that one? It’s a big question in the end, and that is what if you’re wrong? What if you’re wrong? And you can pose these questions in multiple different ways. It can be rearranged in different orders, but this one is bringing it home to, there are consequences to ideas. Ideas have consequences, bad ideas have victims. And so what if you’re wrong? How does that affect you? How does that affect the people around you? Are you deceived? Are you deceiving others because you’re buying into bad ideas? And of course ultimately for the non-believer, if they’re wrong about God, Christ and eternity and they are, if they’re rejecting him, then we’re talking about hell, eternal separation from God. And that all leads them to a powerful direction to get to the gospel of Jesus Christ to get to that issue because that’s where we’re going. We’re asking questions to get to good answers, to get to the answer. Jesus Christ. That is the point ultimately.
Sam Rohrer:
Alright, don’t have much time here, but let do a quick follow up on that. These are, I guess you could say questions of this type, help to elicit information, further knowledge to ascertain the condition, the thinking, the presuppositions, those that the individual would have because everybody has them. And knowing these things just provides when praying for God’s wisdom, Bryan doesn’t it? That helps us then to allow the Holy Spirit to help a person who knows the truth and then to respond in that. So all of that is it’s all going that direction. You say to point people to Christ the best way, isn’t it?
Bryan Osborne:
It absolutely is. And it helps them to see that they have faith, they’re putting their trust in some source of authority, some man’s ideas, and it actually requires them to give a defense for their faith. And oftentimes when they ask your questions they’ll realize, wow, I’ve got faith. And it’s not of rational faith. It’s actually pretty inconsistent.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay ladies and gentlemen, stay with us here. We’re going to be, we’re at our middle of the program now. We’re going to break away again like normal and then come back and then we will go as far as we can on actually trying to provide some demonstration of some key issues. And we’re going to start with this first one about somebody who says, well I don’t believe that God created the world. I think it just happened. Alright, well how do we apply these four questions to help unravel that? Okay Bryan, let’s go further. Now in the application of this, in the last segment you identified the four questions and I want to ask you one follow up before we go into some demonstrations here of the application of that. The first one you say, you ask the question of what do you mean by that?
That’s where we seek the definition of terms to make sure that we’re on same page so we’re not talking past each other, which happens all the time. So very key. Second one, how do you reach that conclusion? And you talked about there, one of the things to ascertain is their process of thinking, give ’em an idea of how they are thinking and then ultimately identifying their authority. They get this idea. Third one, you talk about why do you care? That opens up a whole wide range of motivation for people. I mean that’s a great one. In the fourth one is to simply ask the question, well what if you’re wrong in what you are thinking? Because that brings up the idea that we’ve talked about so much before is that ideas have consequences. Choices have consequences, and therefore that allows everything to come around. You talk about biblical worldview, do we here, Bryan, when you were going through these four, I thought on number two, how do you reach that conclusion when you talked about that’s where we find out who is their authority. Everybody has an authority. To me that’s almost like where we find out about their basic worldview assumption. Is that how you look at that as well?
Bryan Osborne:
Yeah, that’s exactly right. And as we often say that there is no neutral. And so when you’re asking where’d you get there from, what is your authoritative source? They’re either putting their faith in man’s ideas or they’re putting their faith in God’s word. And so we’re exposing their worldview and showing them that they do have faith.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay, alright. And that brings us up perfectly to this. You and I had talked ahead of time for the program and what kind of issues can we select? And you said, well why don’t we start with one that right, you deal with all the time there in your Kentucky location there with Anders and Genesis. And I said, yeah, let’s do that. So here’s how I’m going to phrase it to you. Suppose you are, because all of our people listening here have had this conversation at some point. But suppose you are approached Bryan by a person who says, well, what we see around us is simply nature and it’s not the result of a divine act of creation by God. They may say, I don’t believe in fact that any supernatural being was involved in creating the earth and the universe. I think that evolution in it or however some other alternative other than creation. Alright, alright, now they got a position. So Bryan, how would you engage that person utilizing these four questions?
Bryan Osborne:
Yeah, the first place to start I think that’s really helpful is defining terms again, so I might clarify. So are you saying that you believe in evolution and that they say yes, I’m going to say, okay, well what do you mean by evolution to find that for me and give them a chance to flesh that out? And you’ll get various answers, but by and large, most likely if they’re coming from a secular perspective, they’re going to come down to the conclusion that, well, we got here by natural processes. They’ll probably most likely embrace the big bang. And then that you get the universe over long periods of time. The earth formed about 5 billion years ago, life came from non-life all through accidental random change processes which evolved onward and upward. That eventually became us a couple hundred thousand years ago, give or take. And that’s probably what you’re going to get.
And so let them kind of flesh that out in defining evolution. And then at that point you can use knowledge you have, tell me how deep technology is Sam. I’ve been doing this for a long time. So there are all sorts of questions that pop into my head about evolution as far as, okay, well you believe in the big bang. Well, have you ever seen something come from nothing? Have you ever seen life come from non-life? Because that’s what evolution teaches, right? And Sam, if you can ask these questions in such a way where you put the onus back on down to give a response, you are requiring them to give a defense for their worldview and it keeps you in the driver’s seat. Not that we’re trying to be controlling, but we do have a destination we want to get to. And that is, I’m not trying to embarrass anyone, I’m not trying to win an argument.
I’m trying to reveal truth, reveal the faulty foundation they’re standing on to get to the good news of Christ. Ultimately they might get saved or if they’re Christian to make them be consistent or occurs them be consistent in the worldview. So defining terms define evolution. If by evolution they say, well, I mean that life evolved for long periods of time and then we see evolution in action because we see dogs changing the variations of dogs, but then we can bring clarification. Okay, I agree with you that dogs make variations of dogs speciation, adaptation stood out about that, but we don’t ever see a dog changing into a cat or a cat into a cow or cow into a bird. We don’t see anything transitioning. So what you might call microevolution, I don’t like that term, but okay, we see variation, but we don’t see a bacteria evolving into a person over long periods of time.
So we talk about what we observe versus what we are assuming there. So the finding terms is also helpful with evolution. And then we’ll ask them, okay, well how’d reach that conclusion? Where’d you get that from? And of course they’re going to tell you maybe books, zoos, museums, maybe some experiences where evil happen and there can’t be a gods. You need another explanation for the universe that has to be something materialistic like evolution that gives you some background on them. But then you’re going to realize their authority about the origin of everything is not God’s word. It’s man’s ideas. I know we can ask questions. Well, was any man there when the big bang happened in your worldview? Anybody see this? Does anyone observed life from non-life order from chaos? And the answer is no. They’re believe all that by faith. So you make them answer and sometimes it leads to awkward silences and that’s good.
Let them wrestle with that in a loving way. And then asking them, why do you care about this issue? If they’re passionate about proclaiming evolution is the answer where we came from. Why do you care? I mean, if we’re just rearrange ponds coming, no, God, why do you care if I’m wrong? And you’re right. Why do you care if I’m deceiving people with creation if there’s no absolute morality because there is no God, because hereby just random chance processes. And then of course, what if you’re wrong? If there is a God and there is and he made everything and he did and you’re accountable to him, then that means you have to give an account to God. So I know it’s kind of long, but it gives you an idea of how you can navigate that in a succinct way
Sam Rohrer:
And in reality when it’s done lovingly, Bryan, have you not found that that kind of an interaction actually is more disarming than it is antagonistic and it actually does encourage a person to lead further to a discussion of the truth. I mean, that’s been my experience. Is that what you’ve experienced as well?
Bryan Osborne:
Yeah, absolutely. And full disclosure, I’m trying to get better at this over the years, but it absolutely does because Sam, I mean honestly, nobody for the most part is going to change their mind on the spot. Unless God does something supernatural in their heart and their mind right now, God can do that. But from our human perspective, if we believe something in our pride, we’re not going to let that go, especially in front of you. If you convince me otherwise at best I may be quiet. But if we’re asking questions in a loving way, it allows them to engage more, to get them to deeper questions. And then it allows them to realize, okay, yeah, I do have a faith, it’s in a faulty foundation, and they can ask those questions later on and dive deeper. So yeah, I believe it really is a great tool to get down the guard of the person to get to the truth and help them see what they need to see.
Sam Rohrer:
And Bryan, we could go to another area and we may, but in your experience when addressing people of this fashion, if you have this kind of an encounter and you ask these kinds of clarifying questions that unless the person is just so angry to the core or whatever, that he will not even interface with you, they will lead to other opportunities to share with them in such cases like that. When you have made an engagement, are you satisfied in walking away with, well not necessarily one side, winning in the other side, losing, but having walked away at least planting some seeds. I mean, how do you enter into that? Do you have to leave a winner in the conversation or can you leave knowing that you’ve planted proper seeds of truth?
Bryan Osborne:
Yeah, I think so. Oftentimes Sam, we are indeed seed planters or maybe God may be using us to water seeds our planted there before us in different conversations. I think it’s fairly rare that you actually get to see the fruit, but if you do, oftentimes it’s because the seed was planted long ago, God’s water it. He brought you along to reap the harvest from those different things and they put the faith in Christ from there in front of you. And so absolutely, and Sam, what we are called to do, we’re called to give an answer. We’re called to lovingly engage. We’re called to expose truth, we’re called to be faithful, we’re called to be obedient. And then as we are obedient to that call by God, leave the results and consequences in his hands. Now of course, I like, I’m sure you, I will love every conversation with a nonbeliever to end up with them accepting Christ.
That would be phenomenal, but that’s not how God typically seems to want to work. So we are faithful to lovingly proclaim answers. We want to be ready to give an answer to defend the faith, ask good questions. We pray in our minds for that person we do what God’s told us to do and we trust him with the results. And Sam, we know God’s word does not return void. And so he can have that word, that truth you spoke, ringing in their hearts, ringing in their minds for years to come. Who knows when he might turn that to bring them to himself.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay, Bryan, so we’ve got about a minute left. We don’t have enough time to get going into another subject, but I’ll throw one out there to at least to get it established some years ago, Bryan, in this one area, it’s not evolution in creation we’re talking about here, but it’s one that you’ve addressed before. It’s one that when I was an elected office, I came into contact with this concept. It’s that concept of justice. There was a pastor of large church outside Philadelphia. He and I met for many lunches over a period of for months. And that ultimately going down to the concept of authority from Romans 13, yet after much deliberation, Bryan, it became clear to me that his definition of justice was government, Romans 13, using the sort of justice to take from those who have and to redistribute to those who have less.
And I’m thinking, wait a minute, that’s not what this means. That’s not, so we engaged in a biblical piece back and forth, but Bryan, it wasn’t until after much engagement. I’m saying I can’t cross this hump here with this fellow, this pastor that I understood that he was defining justice in terms of social justice. And that’s where I want to go next, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s something we’ve all dealt with. I’m going to ask Bryan to take these four questions and just lay it out and say, how do you engage someone who interprets justice in light of social justice? Well, as we go into our final segment, thanks for being here with us today. And this again, the theme has been this. Four questions, which lead to truth. It’s been an attempt by Bryan Osborne, author, conference speaker, and Christian apologist for answers in Genesis with a website that they have@answersingenesis.org.
You can find a lot of information there, articles that he’s written and other things as well. I’d encourage you to visit that. But we’ve engaged this theme here today of, well, it’s a build out out of apologetics. And again, we talked about if you didn’t catch the beginning of the program, encourage you to go back and listen to it from its beginning as one step kind of builds on top of another and ultimately ends up in these questions where we identified of what do you mean by that? In other words, engaging a person who may hold to a contrarian or a confused view, a view not in alignment with biblical truth and a way of pursuing a dialogue, a conversation by which you can both demonstrate your faith in God and your commitment to biblical truth, but also to help them in their minds come to a point of perhaps, which is often the case, perhaps a position that they’ve never considered.
And that would be that there is God, there is truth, it is in written form the Bible and it is in a person and a relationship, and that’s Jesus Christ who is the way and the truth in the life. So that’s only where it should go for a person who’s a believer. But sometimes we get confused and think we don’t have a way to actually talk to someone, but we can and we should and we must. And Bryan, you answered that question at the beginning when I asked you to define apologetics, the why and the wherefore. So you did that. Now in this segment here right now, I brought up a theme that of justice is something that’s out in the culture. It’s in various different forms. I encountered it in the technical aspect when I was in Office of Justice as coming off the pages of scripture, and that’s what the government should be about. But we’ve heard an awful lot about social justice. And I gave an example of that pastor who was actually preaching not biblical justice, but social justice, and it really was quite an engagement with him, that individual. But it’s being preached, so it’s out there all around. So deal with that because you’ve dealt with it as well. Take these four questions and go at it. For somebody who says, well, I embrace social justice thinking that they are in fact embracing justice.
Bryan Osborne:
Yeah, definitely. And Sam, I think it’s worth noting before I do so that you can use, you will, and you should use these same sort of four questions with both the non-believer and the believer. So with the pastor you’re speaking to, you can use these same four questions to get to the real heart of the matter and encourage ’em back to scripture if they’re a believer. So still effective in both cases. So in this case for justice again, what do you mean by that? Define your terms. What do you mean by justice? Now it sounds like you and that pastor did eventually hash that out, but as you do so, you can start to see where your definitions lie. So the biblical definition is all about right attitudes and right actions and responses towards people and towards God that are in line with God’s word and his nature.
And it points to our need, our common need of all humanity to the gospel. That’s a biblical understanding of justice in a concise form. But the secular social justice version of justice is what you said already, that it’s about taking it from one group who’s deemed the victim and the oppressed and taking stuff from the oppressors, the ones who are the bad guys in the culture based on this ideology taken from the oppressors, those who are in power and given to the oppressed, the victims. And you define categories based on things like skin shade and stuff like that. And so that’s a secular version of justice. And so define your terms. What do you mean by justice? Is it wealth redistribution or is it obeying God’s word? And are we in line with God’s word and his heart and what he desires us for us to do?
So define your definitions and then you can ask that second question. Okay, well, how did you reach that conclusion? Where did you get that definition from? And as you really, as we talked about in the past, Sam, as you flesh out the origin of the social justice definition for justice today, their definition comes straight out of Marxism. It’s a neo-Marxist ideology and it’s thus a pagan ideology that actually hates Christianity and views Christianity and Christians part of the oppressive apparatus in the society. It wants Christianity and Christians to be really since done away with or put to the side, taking power away from and giving it all to those who are oppressed in the society. So as we’re talking to a believer in particular on this, we say, Hey, your definition comes from a pagan anti-biblical worldview. Do you think it’s a good idea to bring pagan ideas into your Christianity?
It’s a terrible idea, just as bad as it was in the Old Testament for Israel to bring in ideas from the pagan cultures around them. Same thing today. But you can point that out by first defining your terms and then where did you get that from? What’s your authority? It’s either God’s word or mans. And then we get to that third question, why do you care about this issue so much? Now, for the nonbeliever, they’re passionate about justice. You can ask them why do they care about justice at all If they don’t think there’s a God? There are no moral absolutes. Mike does make right. Why shouldn’t people oppress other people if there is no God? It’s just totally arbitrary and preference. They’ve got no real foundation to be passionate about justice and equal treatment for people. The biblical worldview tells us that we’re made in God’s image, thus equal in value.
And God tells us to be just so we should strive for justice. So within the biblical worldview, I’ve got a reason to care about justice, biblical justice, right? Justice. The nonbeliever cares about justice and they define it wrongly and they have no foundation for caring about justice. So asking why do you care? Help flesh that out. And then lastly, of course, what if you’re wrong? What if you’re wrong about your definition of justice, even to this pastor friend of yours who’s borrowing from a pagan ideology to redefine justice? Well, if you’re wrong, pastor, you’re bringing in secular ideas into the church that calls the vision, that calls hardship. And these ideas lead to a collapse of society and they are intended to do so. And you’re not trusting God’s words, the authority. We’re undermining the sufficiency of scripture. There are consequences to that and to the nonbeliever, as you say, as we talk about what if you’re wrong?
Well, if you’re wrong about justice, well see. The Bible says justice is accountability before God. If you don’t understand it that way, and if you’re wrong about that and it is indeed accountability before God, then you’ll be accountable for God. One day you’ll give an account to him and say, that can lead to some really great gospel conversations. Because from there, people may ask or they may say, well, God will let me in. I mean, I’m not that bad. Surely he will let me into heaven. And that leads to other questions. Well, do you think you’re a good person? And of course, I’m sure we’re all familiar with great comfort, we can go down and show them. Well, biblically, no one’s good. No, not one. All of sin all fall short of the glory of God. We all need a savior. We can use those questions to get to their need for a savior. And of course then we understand that ultimately every objection to God’s word and his truth, it comes from a spiritual reality that their hearts are darkened. And so once they get S saved by God’s grace, he’ll turn the lights on and they’ll change our thinking and their worldview. And so as I often say, in this case, we’re going to use questions to get to right good biblical answers in order to share the answer, Jesus Christ, which changes his hearts and minds and the heart is the ultimate issue.
Sam Rohrer:
Bryan, that is excellent. I bring this pretty much up to the end here and we could go much further on it, but you referenced that I have as well. Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to think of this as we conclude this. It’s ultimately everything that we think comes back to this concept of authority. So in the clarifying questions, we want to know what’s that person think, who really is telling them what to do. Ultimately, we know if it’s not God’s word and God himself, that it’s some other authority, which is obviously of the devil in our country. People are confused into thinking that well, they themselves are God, and that you can pick and choose what the Bible says and take what you like and leave what you. No, you can’t. No, you can’t. And that is something that in these four questions, what do you mean by that?
Define the terms. How’d you come to that conclusion? We’re your authority. Why do you even care? But what if you’re wrong? The consequences of it are excellent, excellent in helping to understand and lead people to the truth, that truth being a person, Jesus Christ. And the written word, the Word of God. Bryan Osborne, from Answers in Genesis, thank you so much for being with me again. Excellent. Very, very practical in so many ways, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being with me and us, us today, and hopefully this was helpful to you and maybe nothing new and maybe a lot new, but submit to the truth, embrace the truth, and stand for the truth.
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