Finally, Dr. Goddard and I will be creating a “truth pipeline” for other Christian schools so desperate for solid, updated, fresh, content and curriculum that helps other Christian schools ensure biblical worldview integration in every discipline for all ages. I am especially excited about the opportunity to directly encourage our Christian school faculty.
CL: As you look at the United States today, what type of encouragement would you give church leaders today? And what is one warning you would give them?
Jeremiah Johnston: The encouragement I would give is that we are now living in the golden age of Christian apologetics. What does that mean for leaders and pastors? It means we have more access to the great evidences of our Christian faith than any Christian generation before. It is time for the rise of the thinkers. It is perhaps the most exciting time to be a Christian because God is raising up men and women who take loving Him with their minds seriously.
A battle is raging for the hearts and minds of people all around us. There is ample confusion, yet the scales of truth tip in our favor. There is more evidence available today to prove the claim of Christianity than in any other time in our history. You have more access to information about the Christian faith than did the great Christian leaders of our past.
The great preacher Charles Spurgeon knew nothing of the Dead Sea Scrolls (they were not discovered until the mid-twentieth century), and St. Augustine did not have access to the external confirmations of biblical history which was still entombed in the ground and would not to be excavated for hundreds of years. Those men trusted and thrived in their faith.
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We are in a golden age of Christianity in which you have a treasure-trove of wisdom and knowledge at your fingertips, which you can use to develop right thinking and vibrant faith, supported by layers of evidence that prove Jesus was who He said He was and achieved all we read that He achieved.
Here’s the warning: In his wartime speech at Harvard, Winston Churchill said, “The empires of the future will be empires of the mind.” Secularism is taking the high ground and skeptics have taken the microphone. Increasingly, I see this as an opportunity because if we can give intellectually informed reasons for why we believe Christianity is true while also—and this is important—showing them that Christianity makes a positive difference in the world—that is our secret sauce to reach the next generations.
In other words, to quote Pascal, I hope we can present truth to a skeptical world in such a way that the skeptic wants it to be true and then we show them that it, indeed, is!
