The Role of Self-Deception When We Challenge Christianity By Pastor Olanrewaju Ifabiyi

Every objection [that comes against Christianity] comes with a refusal to trust what God has said. That refusal to trust God is always accompanied by a trust in something or someone else. In the end, it is accompanied by an unwavering trust in ourselves.

It is not possible to know [all of the objections] or to study them all. What is possible is to know God’s Word better and better and to think about what God has said in light of the alternatives.

For example, Christians believe that Christianity is true. That belief does not cause Christianity to be true. It does not make Christianity true. Nor is it a belief whose opposite can be just as true. When we confess Christianity to be true, we are also confessing that anything that opposes Christianity is, by definition, false. What do we mean by that?

In part, what we mean is that any objection to Christianity has no way to explain who people are, what the world is really like, what love is, why certain things are evil, etc. Because any objection to Christianity has no transcendent (i.e., biblical) foundation, it is off the road and trapped in a dark and confusing ditch. It has no way to see beyond its immediate context. It cannot reach up beyond its own situation.

So whether we know the details of every objection or not, we know that any objection simply denies the obvious. In wickedness, as Paul says, there is always suppression of the truth (Rom. 1:18). Every suppression of the truth is, by definition, a deception; specifically, a self-deception. This was Adam and Eve’s problem (see 2 Cor. 11:3). Through Satan’s temptation, they convinced themselves that what they knew was false. They knew that the God who made them and had given them the Garden was himself the truth. They knew, because they had experienced it, that what God said was exactly right. But Satan convinced them to suppress that truth and believe him.

All objections to Christianity will follow this same general pattern. It will come from those who know the truth of who God is, but suppress it. That suppression will include objections to what you believe. Those objections will try to move you away from trusting God and what he has said. This will always be the way your faith will be attacked.

If you read Know Why You Believe and you have not trusted Christ, here is the challenge: Take your objections and look at them from the perspective of what God has said in his Word. In order to do that, you will have to read his Word. In reading it, you should ask, “What does this say to my objections to Christianity?”

In reading and understanding God’s Word, when the Spirit works in our hearts, we move from unbelief to faith in Christ. When we do, our faith is strengthened so that we might “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5).