Peter Kreeft - Yes or No?: Straight Answers to Tough Questions about Christianity

YES OR NO?

by

Peter Kreeft

IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO

Originally published by
Servant Publications
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Cover by Kelly Connelly

Published 1991, Ignatius Press, San Francisco
1984 Peter Kreeft
All rights reserved
ISBN 0-89870-358-1
Library of Congress catalogue card number 90-85102
Printed in the United States of America

for Pat and Roger Verhulst

Introduction

YES OR NO? WHAT A TITLE! So black-or-white!

But life presents us with nothing black or white. The title seems unrealistic, irrelevant to life.

Wrong. Life does present us with some things that are black or white. Here are two of them: black and white.

More seriously, here are two more: Heaven and Hell.

Oh, but theyre not part of life , you say. Well, if they arent, then Christianity is simply false. The choice for or against God, the choice to believe or not to believe, to hope in God or not to hope, to love or not to lovethat choice makes an eternal and infinite difference. That is the stark and wonderful news Christianity brings us. If it is true, it is the most important truth we have ever been told. If it is false, it is the biggest lie we have ever been told. And it is the duty of every honest person to try to find out which it is.

This book is written to help you make the most important choice of your life. The choice is simple, but the reasons for and against it are not.

The choice is simple because it is a choice between saying yes or no to God as we meet him in Jesus. Yes is the simplest word there is.

The reasons for and against Christianity are not simple because Christianity is full of wonderful mysteries which are as far above the power of the human mind to grasp fully as Beethoven or Einstein are far above the power of a clam to grasp.

I do not claim to have proved everything in this book beyond doubt. Doubt is always possible wherever faith is free, just as hate is always possible where love is free. Faith is not the opposite of doubt; faith can include doubt. The opposite of faith is not doubt but indifference, just as the opposite of love is not hate (love can include hate) but indifference.

Pascal, who wrote brilliantly against indifference in his Penses , said that there are only three kinds of people in the world:

Jesus promised, Everyone who seeks, finds. So everyone in the second class winds up in the first class. The great divide, then, is between seekers and non-seekers (the indifferent).

This book is for seekers.

It is called Yes or No ? because there are three possible answers to every question: yes, no, and evasion. To some questions, evasion is a possible answer, but not to a marriage proposal. Christianity is Gods marriage proposal to the soul. And death makes evasion impossible.

This book is designed to be used in two different ways:

1. by Pascals three types of individuals:

a. For those of you who have already refused evasion and sought God and also have found him, this book is to strengthen your faith and help you obey the Bibles command to be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is in you;

b. For those who have not yet found him and are still seeking, this book is a road map;

c. For those who have not yet bothered to seek, this book is an alarm clock: an attempt to wake you up and inveigle you to at least ask the greatest questions in the world, questions about who you are and why you are and what your life means;

2. by classes in religious education.

I teach religion and philosophy in college. I have asked hundreds of students about their religious education in high school, and I have been shocked.

I have been shocked first at the results. It made ex-Christians out of many.

I have been shocked, second, at the textbooks. They are a disaster area. Almost all of them seem to have been written by Jobs three friends, or perhaps by some official in Hells hierarchy of demons for the express purpose of boring people away from the Faith. For they were almost always vague and dull, two things Christianity certainly is not. If anyone says Christianity is a crazy, spectacular fairy talewell, at least that person sees that it is spectacular. But if anyone says its dull, he simply hasnt looked at it. Its not usually his fault: nobody ever showed him the real thing. He was given platitudes instead, a candle instead of a volcano.

Third, I have been shocked at the attitudes of some of the teachers. Many were good, conscientious people who did their best. But others seemed to be as bored as the students. And many were afraid of questions. That shocked me most. I think a good teacher must love questions. For the only way really to learn an answer is really to ask a question. There is nothing more dead and irrelevant than an answer to a question that has never been asked.

Questions express interest, and willthe will to know. This is infinitely precious, because it is (at least unconsciously) a search for God under his attribute of truth. This is the only honest reason why anyone should ever believe Christianity, or anything else: because it is true. It may also be helpful, comforting, challenging, relevant, responsible, creative, or dozens of other things; but none of those is the first reason why an honest person believes Christianity. They are the bloom on the rose of truth, the icing on the cake of truth. Too many books are all icing.

This book (which is the first in a series) is meant to be different. For one thing, it is written in the form of dialogues, conversations between two people, to encourage the reader to enter the conversation and ask the hard questions, the great questions. They also try to guide the questioner fairly and freely to the answers God has given us in his Word; that is, his Book, and above all his Son. (Both are called the Word of God).

One of the two people in these dialogues, Sal, is not a Christian but is an honest and open-minded questioner (Sal the seeker). The other, Chris, is a Christian who tries to answer Sals hard questions. Notice that Sal can be for Sally or Salvatore and Chris can be for Christopher or Christine. You can imagine them as boys, girls, women, or men.

Another way in which this book is meant to be different is that it does not use its readers as guinea pigs to test the latest Innovation in theology or psychology. It merely serves up the basics of the Faith that has been the food of Christian souls for nearly 2,000 years. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. We need not an instant-processed, fast-food Christianity but the beef, not Christianity-and-water but mere Christianity. (The phrase comes from C. S. Lewis, and so do many of the ideas in this book.) There is plenty of Christianity-and around, especially in the religious education books: Christianity-and-legalism, Christianity-and-modern-psychology, Christianity-and-Marxism, Christianity-and-Capitalism, Christianity and the latest patronizing attempt to sell Christianity to the modern mind by chopping off its unfashionable corners or filling in its mysterious depths.

But you cant turn back the clock. Modernity and secularism are here to stay.

Thats not what God said. He promised that the gates of Hell would not prevail against his Church. Why should the world be able to do what Hell itself is unable to do?

And as for turning back the clock, you certainly can! If a clock is keeping the wrong time, the only way to make progress is by turning it back to the true time. Billy Graham was once criticized for turning back the clock 200 years. He replied that if he had done that, he had failed, for he was trying to turn it back 2,000 years.