someone. The real issue though is not evolution, but coming to grips with Christ Himself. Ask:
"What conclusion are you drawing from your evolutionary position—that the universe happened by chance? Or are you saying that God created the universe and did so by using certain evolutionary processes? I am not convinced about that particular position, but let us assume for the moment that it is correct. What conclusion are you drawing?"
From there, direct attention to what Jesus Christ has said and done. How God brought the universe into being is not so important as that He did it. One's presupposition, and not the actual evidence, often determines his or her conclusion. An apparently strong case for a naturalistic position can be made by ignoring the evidence for Jesus Christ. But if a person is going to be intellectually honest, he or she must come to grips with Him. An amazing number of thinking non-Christians have never really thought about the evidence for Jesus Christ.
6. Isn't Christian Experience Only Psychological? Some suggest that we have faith only because we have been conditioned since early childhood. We have been raised like Pavlov's dogs. But this is an oversimplification; Christians have been converted from every imaginable background. Thousands have had no childhood contact with Christianity. Yet each will testify to a personal encounter with Christ that transformed his or her life. The Lord, Himself, is the only constant factor.
Others assert that spiritual ideals are essentially wish fulfillments. They can be traced to a person's feeling a need for God, creating an image in his or her mind, and then worshiping the mental projection. Objective reality is totally lacking. Religion is called a crutch for people who cannot get along in life. Religious people are self-hypnotized.
What is our objective evidence for our subjective experiences? Christianity differs from autohypnosis, wish fulfillments, and all the other psychological phenomena in that the Christian's subjective experience is securely bound to an objective, historical fact, namely the resurrection from the dead of Jesus Christ.
If the Resurrection is true, it makes all the difference in the world. It is confirmation of God's revelation in Christ, an absolute truth, a historical fact outside of ourselves, an objective fact to which our subjective experience is tied. We need to hold the objective and the subjective in proper perspective. I need to recognize that my experience is based on the solid foundation of an objective fact in history.
Evidence for the Resurrection, by J. N. D. Anderson, is a brief and helpful