How An Atheist Became a Christian – Mary Jo Sharp

[00:00:00] and now here’s your host Kevin Conover bring your time welcome to educate for

[00:00:07] life I’m your host Kevin Conover my website is educate for life dot o-r-g and I have a fantastic guest on the show

[00:00:13] today her name is Mary Jo sharp she’s a former atheist from the Pacific

[00:00:19] Northwest and in her word she thought religion was odd at best she now holds a

[00:00:24] master’s degree in Christian apologetics she’s an assistant professor of apologetics at houston baptist university she is a speaker throughout

[00:00:32] North America she serves on the faculty with Summit ministry student conferences and she’s also a guest lecturer with

[00:00:38] Ravi Zacharias International Ministries she’s also the author of several books including an upcoming book on hypocrisy

[00:00:44] in the church the title of the book is why I still believe Mary Jo thanks for

[00:00:50] being on the show today hey Kevin I’m so glad I could be here absolutely I’m really excited to hear your story I I

[00:00:57] don’t get to talk to a lot of people who come from an atheist background and then you know switch to Christianity and we

[00:01:05] hear a lot of stories from people like Lee Strobel and others and I’m really excited for our listeners to hear your story about you know what made you make

[00:01:13] that decision to go from thinking hey Christianity is for somebody who’s weak-minded – okay I’ve decided to

[00:01:19] become a Christian and embrace that can you give us a little background about your growing up and and maybe how you

[00:01:24] came to become an atheist first and then ultimately how you became a Christian sure thank you and yeah so I had a

[00:01:31] little bit of a different background than say like a Lee Strobel because I grew up in the Pacific Northwest I’m

[00:01:38] from Portland Oregon and so I wasn’t like a person who was hostile to

[00:01:43] Christians or necessarily to religion so I wasn’t like if people have in mind the

[00:01:48] new atheist movement you know like sort of if they’re thinking Richard Dawkins or something yeah it wasn’t that person

[00:01:54] I was just I was raised without God I was raised outside of church and then

[00:02:00] you know I I was raised in a part of the country where people were very private

[00:02:05] about religion at least at the time that I was growing up there so it’s very different I like to tell people very

[00:02:11] different form I live now I’m you know people hear my name Mary Jo it’s a very southern

[00:02:17] sounding name yeah then they find out I’m from the south and then I’m you know I’m in a Baptist Church and they all

[00:02:24] sorts of assumptions start flying around but no I mean I grew up in a place where

[00:02:29] I tell people I was like okay look here’s the cultural difference and we in Portland we didn’t have churches on

[00:02:36] every street corner it was very different and then I tell Texans nor did we have gas stations on every street

[00:02:42] corner nor Mexican restaurants on every street corner sections are like oh okay

[00:02:49] I get a whole a whole different world yeah yeah very different and it’s just

[00:02:55] so I was raised without an understanding of Christianity in general except what I was seeing on television and in the

[00:03:03] movies and so it was a very what I had was a very shallow understanding of what

[00:03:08] Christianity was but contrasting that I was what I was raised with was a father

[00:03:15] who just was a huge science nerd I grew up watching all sorts of science shows

[00:03:22] like in search of and Nova mutual of

[00:03:27] Omaha’s Wild America stuff like I said and I was raised by two parents who just

[00:03:33] loved now I did they love the outdoors and and just really gave us a sense of

[00:03:40] wonder at nature they also developed in us a sense of wonder at the arts and you

[00:03:46] know what humans could do through the Arts and the beauty that we could produce so I sort of who I was raised

[00:03:52] with a sense of awe and wonder at the natural beauty that I saw as well as a

[00:03:57] beauty from like the humanities the arts and over the years I believe these areas

[00:04:02] began to profoundly impact me so much so that as an older teenager after having

[00:04:08] my head filled with all that Carl Sagan stuff about the universes all there is was there ever will be yeah I began to

[00:04:17] wonder is that true like I started to have some questions about you know who I

[00:04:23] was my place in the world did I met and how do I know that I mattered and

[00:04:29] that was the time at which I had a person a Christian who was my high

[00:04:34] school band director who had never shared his faith before he he decided

[00:04:41] that it you know he needed he had burdens for me and he wanted to talk with me about belief in God well so so

[00:04:48] yeah he actually shared at risk of losing his job yeah he shared with me a

[00:04:54] Bible gave me a Bible my senior year of high school and all he said pretty much

[00:05:01] what I remember is that you know when you go off to college you’re gonna have hard questions I hope you’ll turn to

[00:05:07] this and he tells me that now he says you know I prayed with you and I don’t

[00:05:12] even remember that I just remember my response was something like wow thanks

[00:05:20] you weren’t that wasn’t something you were excited about it was were you were you surprised how did that catch you

[00:05:27] very surprised he had never been evangelistic with me at all so uh I

[00:05:33] wouldn’t have really known that he was a Christian I mean I I might have known

[00:05:39] that he went to church but I didn’t really know anything about Christian I didn’t know what all that meant and so I

[00:05:45] was the kind of person you know I’m sorry Mary Jo you didn’t have any Christian friends or people around you

[00:05:51] that were through high school talking to you about God or anything like that I did have a Christian boyfriend whose

[00:05:59] parents told me that if I was gonna date their son I had to go to church so I

[00:06:04] went to church a few times but I usually slept through the services what I

[00:06:10] gleaned from it was these were nice people okay I didn’t need that yeah yeah

[00:06:15] I didn’t need that yeah you specific yeah you specifically stay on your I was

[00:06:20] looking at your bio and everything that you thought it was for weak-minded people is that how you felt at this

[00:06:25] point in time in life or was that later on yeah and what was really influencing

[00:06:31] me were the scandals of the eighties the televangelists scandals assisted a big

[00:06:37] one the Jim and Tammy Faye I remember that one specifically and I thought wow this is a sham like they’re

[00:06:43] just they’re just trying to get money from people and so I guess there are people in the world that need to follow

[00:06:49] something like that you know to feel like they have significance but that’s obviously not for me yeah I was sort of

[00:06:55] my viewpoint and and so do you think that a lot of atheists today are growing

[00:07:01] up under the same perception as you were do you think a lot of people are in those same shoes I’m in it maybe in

[00:07:09] America I think they’re they’re seeing I mean there’s so much cultural influence saying that Christianity is nothing but

[00:07:15] a myth or a fairy tale or a you know wish fulfillment things like that and that this huge influence through social

[00:07:23] media and through again through the arts you know through our television and our movies to push you know that influence

[00:07:30] on us so I think there is there is sort of a sense that believing in Christianity is committing intellectual

[00:07:37] suicide mm-hmm well that’s that is a very interesting and so when you got to

[00:07:44] college then you go off to college what happened at that point well actually in

[00:07:50] college I decided that I had been reading this Bible that the span director gave me and I had really had my

[00:07:57] eyes open in fact I used to love mythology like Greek mythology all that

[00:08:02] and and I I was wow I I did not expect the Bible to be so different from that

[00:08:09] and so it shocked me and I decided that there was probably a God so I needed to

[00:08:15] go figure out what I believed so I started going to church on my own in college for the first time and just to

[00:08:23] try to figure out like what is this whole thing about because though I’ve been reading the Bible I didn’t really understand the whole aspect of Jesus as

[00:08:31] a savior or why people needed him because I would have said if you had asked me I would have said well I’m a good person

[00:08:36] yeah I don’t know drink and I don’t do drugs and I you know I’m not I’m not

[00:08:41] committing murder or I’m not mean to people you know I would have said all these things so I had to figure out like

[00:08:48] why was Jesus necessary yeah and when you said you decided there was a God was there something specific

[00:08:54] that caused you to decide okay there must be a God as far as cuz were you

[00:08:59] reading apologetics books at this point in time where was it solely the Bible it’s only the Bible yeah I mean what was

[00:09:07] what I’m just going to try to frame this with what I think I was thinking because

[00:09:13] now I mean I’m much older sure I think what what really impressed me was when I read the Bible it just sounded so very

[00:09:21] straightforward it did not sound fantastic it did not sound mythical and in fact it matched my experiences in the

[00:09:29] world it started to make sense of things to me like why people behave wrong why people do bad things how we’re supposed

[00:09:36] to treat one another and the ethic of love that Jesus was talking about these things started to make sense to me

[00:09:41] and the other thing I think was really pressing on me was the idea of that

[00:09:46] people are made in the image of God which gives them meaning and significance because there was intention

[00:09:52] behind their creation again don’t think I would have said it that way sir I

[00:09:58] think that’s what was running around in my head and so it started to make sense to me and the idea of good and evil

[00:10:04] where does that come from why do I think there’s a way things should be yeah I think those things were what really

[00:10:10] impressed me on wow there there’s got to be something behind this universe yeah absolutely my guest today is Mary Jo

[00:10:16] sharp and she’s a former atheist who is now a Christian and teaches apologetics

[00:10:22] she is part of the apologetics program at Houston Baptist University her websites Mary Jo sharp calm or confident

[00:10:29] Christianity calm love to have you check out her stuff she has all kinds of great resources why do you believe that is a

[00:10:35] Bible study specifically about apologetics that you can check out when we come back she’s gonna talk a little

[00:10:40] bit more about this and Mary Jo you brought up the idea that some people think that Christianity was copied from

[00:10:47] pagan myths and how you when you read the Bible the Bible seems so non mythical and so I will come back and

[00:10:53] talk about that more so stay with us we have a great discussion here and hope it is a blessing to you we’ll be right back

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[00:11:32] [Applause] thanks for listening today this is

[00:11:38] educate for life I’m your host Kevin Conover if you’d like a list of the five best arguments for the existence of God

[00:11:43] you can shoot an email to me you can get get me at Kevin at educate for life org

[00:11:48] you could also leave me a message at my phone number for my ministry six one nine four three one zero zero nine six

[00:11:55] and I’d love to help you out with that I have a whole apologetics curriculum on my website and it’s all about

[00:12:01] demonstrating that the Christian faith is a rational faith it’s based on solid evidence we do have faith but it’s faith

[00:12:08] for a reason and so I checked that out there’s all kinds of great stuff on there my guest today is Mary Jo Sharpe

[00:12:14] and her website is confident Christianity calm and Mary Jo when we left off you had talked about how when

[00:12:22] you read the Bible you were reading the Bible for the first time as a young college student what came across to you

[00:12:27] was how non mythical or how straightforward it was can you talk a little bit more about that I know that

[00:12:33] you’ve you’ve actually I believe had debates with people on whether or not Christianity is a copycat religion yeah

[00:12:42] so let me give you a couple of things one more anecdotal which is what you

[00:12:48] know what in the Bible didn’t look you know mythological to me and specifically

[00:12:53] if people are interested in what I was looking at it’s Luke the Book of Luke he’s so matter-of-fact and even when he

[00:13:01] I mean he starts out by saying that he’s writing all these things down after

[00:13:06] investigating them so that he could tell his friend Theophilus the certainty of the things that he’s been taught so he’s

[00:13:13] trying to make sure that these things have been checked out and that I did not expect to find like hey I’m checking

[00:13:18] these things out yeah yeah right and then and then Luke goes on in that vein

[00:13:24] and to report things like when he reports miracles he’s like okay and Jesus raised this guy from the dead all

[00:13:30] right or Jews killed this guy and then he just moved on like he just reports it it’s not this big glorious flowery language

[00:13:38] and look at the great sing that this great man it’s just like moved on yeah he did this thing and then the next day

[00:13:43] they went into this town so he sound-alike biography which really

[00:13:49] really like it you know like he’s reporting something instead of that he was writing this beautiful story this

[00:13:55] beautiful tale that we’re all supposed to emotionally swoon over so that that was really what hit me so anecdotally

[00:14:01] yeah I’ve heard that I’ve heard that the Gospel of Luke actually has I’m not sure

[00:14:06] if it’s more facts than any of the but he constantly is referencing dates people historical people historical

[00:14:11] places and so it’s really an amazing book if somebody’s really wants to look

[00:14:17] at kind of an evidential historical analysis of the Gospels yeah exactly and

[00:14:24] definitely check out Luke 3 because that’s where he’s reporting all the offices and people who held those

[00:14:29] offices and in what region they held does and he’s like a 15 facts in like three verses so it’s just packed with

[00:14:37] information to check to see if it’s true yeah that’s fantastic I know a lot of

[00:14:42] them I’ve had quite a few atheists on the show and these are so it’s amazing

[00:14:47] to me how many people are not aware of the historical credibility of the Bible I’m always surprised that they haven’t

[00:14:53] taken more time to look into it and go well wait a second there’s a lot of stuff in here that is right out of the history

[00:14:58] books and that you can verify yeah yeah and I think there are various

[00:15:04] reasons for that so right you know yeah we live in a society where you never have to really check into anything

[00:15:10] because you know typically we’re not on a life and death basis constantly we’re

[00:15:16] not searching for where exactly the next meal is going to come from because there is no food to be found you know things

[00:15:22] like that so we have and I know that’s that’s a generalization but we tend to have this where we’re a wealthier nation

[00:15:29] and so we have the luxury of not having to make those decisions you know about what we believe immediately imperative

[00:15:37] ly like there you know now yeah exactly so so back to what your story here we

[00:15:42] are you’re in college you’re starting to read the Bible you’re starting to go to church you want to figure out hey what in the world is going on here so what

[00:15:49] what happened next oh yeah so I started going to church and

[00:15:55] eventually I got invited by another a fellow music major cuz that was my add to a church where I just I really

[00:16:02] heard a clear presentation of why humans need Jesus like a clear presentation

[00:16:08] that humans are sinful that we have a fallen nature and that were the problem

[00:16:14] so we’re not the solution to the problem and that made sense to me so when I was asked by the pastor of

[00:16:22] that church who came to visit me like if you were to die to nine you would go to heaven CH and God let you in those sorts

[00:16:28] of questions yeah I’m like well no no be any like well why not and I said because I haven’t trusted Jesus for my salvation

[00:16:35] because at that point I understood it I got it that made sense to me and so that was when I trusted Jesus for as my

[00:16:43] savior and it wasn’t a big emotional thing it was more like yes I get this this makes sense I want to do this so

[00:16:50] that was sort of I’ve heard all these great conversion stories over the years

[00:16:56] and mine’s more like yeah I’m ready for it yeah very thoughtful and and just

[00:17:02] matter-of-fact right yeah yeah so how did your parents respond to that did

[00:17:08] they was that a positive thing or how did they feel oh I think there was

[00:17:13] disappointment in in the fact I mean I actually the phrasing like I thought I

[00:17:20] raised you better than that kind of that was the phrasing that was used so there wasn’t a rejection it’s not like when

[00:17:27] maybe like a Muslim leaves their family or leaves their family’s beliefs it wasn’t that sort of outright well we

[00:17:33] have to reject you fully no I was more of just they’re very you know again I come from the Pacific Northwest they’re

[00:17:38] very accepting of people of different beliefs and so they were more like yeah I don’t really agree with us but you

[00:17:47] know you kid you got to do what you got to do yeah now now of course you didn’t have to

[00:17:53] become an apologist after that many people accept Christ and they move on what what led you towards apologetics oh

[00:18:00] yeah that’s a good one thank you so that’s actually what is

[00:18:05] going to be in my upcoming book why I still believe that stories in there so so I accepted Jesus as my savior and

[00:18:12] then and then you know you get involved with a church usually that’s the next step and what happened to me was that

[00:18:20] nobody warned me that when getting involved with a church would entail so

[00:18:26] many human failings and problems like I actually naively went into church

[00:18:32] thinking wow I found all the people who are going to worship this God who is

[00:18:37] behind all the goodness and truth and beauty in this world this will be seeking after those things these are the worshipers of that guy yeah I know when

[00:18:51] I was when I first got involved in ministry I the youth pastor had a sign

[00:18:56] on the ceiling that said always look up and I said why do you have that and he

[00:19:02] said well there’s so many people around you that mess up that you just gotta always keep looking up so that’s great

[00:19:09] yeah and that’s what you found to be the case too huh yeah I just even from the

[00:19:14] very first day like my very first church service as a Christian I’m walking into

[00:19:20] the the church sanctuary and the pastor’s wife is standing outside and greeting people and she takes a look at

[00:19:27] me I’m extremely poor at this point I’m a college student put myself through college and it’s like I have two dresses

[00:19:33] and I chose the one that was I thought was appropriate and she gives me a smile and then immediately gives me a

[00:19:39] once-over and the first thing she said to me was we gotta find you better clothes oh my god ouch that’s awful area

[00:19:47] yeah I mean I know that it’s it’s not like what some of our Christians are

[00:19:53] dealing with across the world but for your first encounter in the Christian Church to be that they’re worried more

[00:19:59] about what you look like than who you are I think that really started being a path towards okay well I kind of that

[00:20:06] that shouldn’t be like I started not trusting people in the church and not trusting that they were

[00:20:12] since your worshipers of God so over time with many instances of problems

[00:20:19] like that I ended up questioning whether or not people actually believed in God

[00:20:25] or if maybe I had it right when I was an atheist and so then I started

[00:20:31] questioning well they don’t seem to act like they believe it’s true and that pointed the question back at me well why

[00:20:36] do you say it’s true and that launched me into looking for the answers that got

[00:20:42] me into apologetics well that’s very interesting I I’ve had like I was saying before I’ve had quite

[00:20:48] a few atheists on the show and there’s definitely a common theme of attacking Christianity for hypocrisy and just I

[00:20:56] was wrong this way I was wrong that way and I’ve my understanding is that a

[00:21:03] large number of atheists were either grew up in Christianity Christian families or claimed to have been

[00:21:08] Christians and then say you know the hypocrisy just killed it for me

[00:21:13] and so you could have easily gone down that path but instead you decided to go towards apologetics so you’re you’re

[00:21:22] evaluating now okay is this true in spite of these people who are not representing Christ well yeah and that

[00:21:29] was what was difficult was to get to that point because I mean so add this

[00:21:35] I’ve left a little piece in my story I actually by the time I become a Christian I’ve found my husband and

[00:21:40] gotten married yeah so I’ve I have a girl I have a baby and there was this

[00:21:46] this plays into you know figuring out the hypocrisy issue was when my daughter

[00:21:51] was born I had this instance where I was coming out of the hospital and so you

[00:21:57] know you bringing your newborn your first baby out of the hospital it’s a great glorious experience and I walked

[00:22:03] right into this cloud of smoke cigarette smoke and it was disgusting and I thought wow where’s this coming from and

[00:22:09] I look over and it’s a group of nurses and doctors oh my goodness how critical

[00:22:15] like you are the guys and girls the you know smoking is absolutely

[00:22:21] detrimental to human health and yet here you are just living like that’s not true and I went oh yeah just like Christians

[00:22:29] Wow what a metaphor that’s incredible huh yeah so I kind of thought like oh

[00:22:35] yeah so people can profess something to be true and actually believe that but

[00:22:41] then still live in rebellion to that truth that’s possible no matter what like so yeah I had a.m. we’re coming up

[00:22:48] on a break here sorry to cut you off Mary Jo but this is a really fascinating story my guest today is Mary Jo Sharpe

[00:22:55] her website is confident Christianity calm if you’re looking for a Bible study an apologetics Bible study where you

[00:23:01] want to you want to examine the facts she has a great resource Bible study called why do you believe that check it

[00:23:08] out you can pick that up I believe through her website or in other venues also and she has a book coming out why I

[00:23:15] still believe which deals with the fact that hey there’s a lot of people in the church that aren’t living what Christ

[00:23:20] teaches but in spite of that why should I continue to follow Christ

[00:23:25] why should I continue to keep my eyes on Christ and follow him stay with us we’re going to be right back and finish this

[00:23:31] conversation [Music]

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[00:24:16] thanks for being with us today this is educate for life I’m your host Kevin Conover my website is educate for life

[00:24:22] org and on it I have a full curriculum for people that are interested in learning about apologetics all the

[00:24:29] different kinds of issues that you can imagine creation and evolution world religions you know what about the issue

[00:24:34] of abortion what about the issue of homosexuality all the different the different things how do I know the Bible

[00:24:40] is actually God’s Word could it have been changed over time a bunch of the different issues that come up that

[00:24:46] people have questions for and my guest today is Mary Jo sharp she’s a a professor at houston baptist university

[00:24:52] they have an apologetics program and before we get too far into or continue

[00:24:57] the story mary jo you want to tell us a little bit about the apologetic program at your houston baptist university

[00:25:03] oh sure thank you it’s yeah we have a fully online apologetics degree so you

[00:25:09] don’t have to leave the beauty of your hometown to come and study it’s a 36

[00:25:15] hour degree program and we have some great professors like nancy pearcy William Lane Craig Michael Kona I’m one

[00:25:22] of the professors and we have two separate tracks one is a cultural

[00:25:28] apologetics track which is quite unique in that not only will you get the apologetics arguments and wrestle with

[00:25:33] those but you also get to wrestle with them in their cultural homes such as in film and literature and music and art so

[00:25:41] we really like that track because it does attract people who want to communicate great truths of Jesus

[00:25:47] through those mediums and then we have the philosophical track where you go deep into those philosophical arguments

[00:25:54] that have been historically present in Christianity throughout time so all its

[00:26:00] fully online you can check it out at WWH bu edu /ma that’s fantastic and you know

[00:26:09] I feel like apologetics has become more and more necessary in our current culture in our present day simply

[00:26:17] because I don’t think skepticism has ever been at such a you know high rate

[00:26:23] people are very skeptical and there’s so much information out there on the internet that it’s hard to sift through

[00:26:28] sometimes I think some people Oh up their hands and go geez how am I ever going to figure out what’s true here right yeah that’s and that’s why

[00:26:36] that that’s why I believe that copycats here he caught some ground and why I got

[00:26:41] your rolling is because of the fact that there’s so much information and there’s so much false information yeah on the

[00:26:49] internet and things that aren’t very you know even like the copycat theory itself is not really widely accepted by any

[00:26:55] scholar like an academic but yet it’s still extremely popular and so that that

[00:27:00] tells you sort of the problem the joy of the Internet access to so much and then the problem of the Internet is that what are you having

[00:27:07] what’s the access to yeah exactly yeah can you speak a little bit to that for our listeners exactly what the copycat

[00:27:13] theory is and maybe a brief response to that sure yeah the copycat theory is that

[00:27:19] Jesus’s story is based on or loosely based on or fully based on depending on

[00:27:25] what they’re arguing earlier pagan myths that existed such as Osiris and Horus and Mira’s so that what typically a

[00:27:32] person will do that’s arguing the copycat theory is they’ll make a list of things they’ll say like you know Jesus

[00:27:38] died he was crucified he raised from the dead he was born of a virgin he a 12th

[00:27:44] disciple maker list and then they’ll say look this is exactly the same thing as Horus and so they’ll make this list from

[00:27:50] Horus or they say even Osiris you know they’ll show the list so that’s the

[00:27:55] copycat theory it’s just basically the stories been going around the ancient Near East for a long time and Bill Maher

[00:28:01] the political comedian he loves to say this like Jesus the story is an exact copy of Horus that’s how he worded it so

[00:28:08] a brief response to that you can go a lot deeper into this if you want I tell

[00:28:14] people to take three actions when this is the problem they’re dealing with and one is to actually get the whole story

[00:28:19] you actually need to read the sources that these stories come from to see if Jesus’s story is an actual copy of

[00:28:26] Horace’s you know or Osiris’s so take a look at the Egyptian Book of the Dead just this is available online I mean the

[00:28:32] Egyptian Book of the Dead is free there’s no copyright on it so like you can actually look at these

[00:28:38] translations of these Egyptian hieroglyphics to see if you can find these same stories so get the whole

[00:28:44] story and I think what you’ll see is that there’s a major problem that arises when you look at the sources of these

[00:28:50] stories and that is that there they aren’t the same and they’re not even close so you’re doing a lot of

[00:28:56] stretching in order to get close and I’ll give one example and that is like

[00:29:02] virgin births so people will say that Jesus’s story is the same as me therus he’s one of my favorite comparisons and

[00:29:08] so Mitra says virgin birth is he’s jumping out of a rock next to a river

[00:29:13] that’s a serious that’s a serious virgin birth right there yeah right and then

[00:29:20] nothing you know like that he has the same story as you this is actually something that Stephen Fry’s said and

[00:29:26] quite interesting that the story of Jesus is the same as meteors oh my god it’s like no it’s not because jumping

[00:29:31] for out of a rock from the underworld with a dagger in one hand and a torch in the other is not the same thing as being

[00:29:38] born of a female who’s never had sex yeah kind of dishonest kind of

[00:29:45] disingenuous yeah and you know I try to give him the benefit of the doubt but I

[00:29:50] mean this really seems like you’re stretching definitionally the term virgin birth until it doesn’t have any meaning anymore right yeah so that’s one

[00:29:59] I have two more steps if you want them yeah go go for it that’s great okay so the second step or action would

[00:30:06] be then to take the parallels head-to-head so read the sources then take the parallels head-to-head like we

[00:30:11] just did look at virgin birth between Horus and and Jesus so you know like Horus was the child of two got it gods

[00:30:20] in their mother’s womb they were fetuses fetus gods in some others womb having

[00:30:26] sexual intercourse yeah that is being said is the same thing as Jesus being

[00:30:31] born of a virgin so look at the actual parallels and see if they are the same that’s an important thing to do right to

[00:30:40] see if what they’re saying those those facts are actually indeed the same thing and then a third action would be and this I think

[00:30:47] is the most important for me personally is set everything in context so you get

[00:30:53] a look at who this was being written to and what the words used meant to them rather than just saying like everybody

[00:31:01] had a resurrection and using a 21st century understanding of the term resurrection because that term varied

[00:31:08] like if you were a Greek you’re not hoping to be like your physical body is

[00:31:14] going to come back in the new heavens and new earth and everything is going to be redeemed and restored at the end of times like the Christian truth it’s very

[00:31:20] different they want to be released from their physical bodies they think their physical body is sort of a jail of the

[00:31:26] soul and they want to be released to go be in the land of the gods and I mean

[00:31:31] this is if you look at acts 17 you find in that passage that what Paul is

[00:31:37] preaching about the resurrection to the men of Athens they don’t understand they’re like this is new they actually

[00:31:43] say you’re bringing new teaching to us but they know all the myths about resurrection or about you know their

[00:31:49] their myths about their gods and so you got to actually look into what is the

[00:31:55] context and then how did how did the teaching play out into the lives of the people because a lot of the people Paul

[00:32:01] spoke to that weren’t Christian had an eat drink and be merry philosophy yeah tomorrow you die yeah right but

[00:32:08] Christians did not have that Christians thought that God had brought the kingdom into the world like it’s now Redemption

[00:32:14] is now and so there’s a way where to act and that’s different from the world yeah that’s that makes a lot of sense and

[00:32:20] I’ve also heard that a lot of the the myths were actually copying from

[00:32:26] Christianity potentially not the other way around because of the timing of those myths stories is that true yeah

[00:32:34] you’re gonna get that with guys like me trous I mean you can’t with Horace and Osiris because they predate Jesus yeah

[00:32:39] quite a bit yeah but when you get into like the second century Roman gods then

[00:32:45] you start getting copying yeah because Christianity if you remember it’s taken off like wildfire at this time it’s

[00:32:50] going all the way across the Roman Empire and it’s spanning out it’s moving even you know Paul wants to go to as far

[00:32:56] as Spain and you just come it’s going everywhere so something that’s not

[00:33:01] successful you know you would probably as a pagan who’s polytheistic who picks up the beliefs of other people and just

[00:33:10] they sort of absorbed them into their own distinct fortis yeah you’re gonna pick up some of this language that’s so

[00:33:15] successful for the Christians yeah absolutely that makes a lot of sense so so you know that’s a really

[00:33:22] really cool looking at that and that’s one of the popular attacks on

[00:33:28] Christianity that comes up so that’s a great way to answer that in your in your apologetics Bible study why do you

[00:33:33] believe that is that one of the things you cover what do you cover in that study for our listeners who might be

[00:33:39] interested in getting a copy of that yeah that one is so the why do you

[00:33:45] believe that was meant to be more of an entry point for people into apologetics so that they didn’t get like put off

[00:33:50] because apologetics and sound intimidating yeah so it was more focused

[00:33:55] on having effective conversation and you know some of these topics come up along

[00:34:01] the way in that study but it really centers on four elements of a good conversation so knowing what you believe

[00:34:08] listening well to others questioning others really putting emphasis on questioning other people’s beliefs and

[00:34:15] how they know them and then it helps them respond the fourth element is being

[00:34:20] ready to respond to you ask people about what they believe eventually they’re

[00:34:25] going to ask you so it’s more introductory to help people get to a point where conversation on God is more

[00:34:32] natural yeah and not awkward and I think that’s what holds a lot of people back is do they just feel so awkward having

[00:34:38] those discussions and I know for me that as I began to understand more and more about the Word of God and also just got

[00:34:45] more comfortable being able to have a conversation it allowed me to be able to share my faith and invite people to

[00:34:51] church and without being so afraid of that yeah and without it being weird

[00:34:57] exactly without it being weird nobody wants to be weird right so absolutely

[00:35:03] true so my guest today is Mary Jo sharp we have one more segment left and when we come back we’re gonna talk a

[00:35:09] little bit more about how she got involved in apologetics and how she began to explore that in light of the

[00:35:15] fact that so many people that she was running into weren’t actually living a Christian life or they were doing things that seemed blatantly unchristian and

[00:35:22] ultimately this has caused her to decide that this was an important enough issue

[00:35:27] to write a book on it why I still believe stay with us we’re gonna be right back

[00:35:33] [Music]

[00:35:39] Luke Gibson of LG equipment supports educate for life with Kevin Conover Luke

[00:35:44] grew up in the construction industry and now serves LG’s commercial and residential customers throughout

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[00:36:07] eight zero nine two four thanks for

[00:36:18] listening today this is educate for life I’m your host Kevin Conover and we are locally we air this show on FM 106.1 in

[00:36:26] North County down here in Southern California as well as a.m. twelve ten K praise you can check us out on Cape

[00:36:32] raise.com KPRC comm as well as I’ve also got it all on YouTube it’s on podcast

[00:36:38] it’s on periscope Facebook all these different venues to get the word out there I hope it’s an

[00:36:43] encouragement to you we’re constantly trying to bring on guests who have are able to share insight and wisdom based

[00:36:50] on their experience and what they’ve studied and what they know and so we’ve got all kinds of interviews up over a hundred different interviews with

[00:36:56] experts from all over the world talking about everything you can possibly imagine from cosmology to archeology to

[00:37:02] paleontology to philosophy to cultural issues we’re just really trying to

[00:37:08] embrace a biblical worldview through getting to know the Word of God better and how to apply it to our lives and

[00:37:15] live it out my guest today is Mary Jo Sharpe and she has a fantastic testimony as somebody who came from an atheist

[00:37:20] background not a hostile atheist not somebody like maybe Richard Dawkins or sam Harris or somebody else but somebody

[00:37:27] who was just not brought up in a Christian home and ultimately she was led to the conclusion that you know what

[00:37:33] it makes most sense that God exists and I want to figure this out and so ultimately she decided that Christianity

[00:37:41] did make sense and it made the most sense so I was gonna ask you Mary Jo

[00:37:46] what what for you is one of the most compelling evidences for the truth

[00:37:51] of the existence of God and the truth of Jesus Christ’s resurrection and and so

[00:37:58] forth yeah that’s that’s an important question that’s one of those like hey

[00:38:03] here’s how to you got to respond to people who ask and so for me and it’s

[00:38:09] very first Peter 3:15 of you write always be ready to give a reason a

[00:38:16] defense of the reason of your hope so for me and there’s sort of I wish I

[00:38:21] could like nail it down to one but I think there’s three there’s three that sort of equally impressed me and one is

[00:38:28] the nature of good and evil and where those ideas come from and how to ground good and evil because I think when we

[00:38:36] look at evil there’s nobody that’s going to away there are people that deny that evil is the real thing but we all

[00:38:42] experience pain and suffering so imperial as far as empirical verification we can pretty much

[00:38:49] empirically verify that pain and suffering what we call evil exists and so I wanted you know to figure out well

[00:38:56] how do I know that’s true and where am I getting that from and so that was a big

[00:39:01] part of how how did this get into the world and why is it here so that was a

[00:39:07] big play a big role am i coming to believe that God was real the second one

[00:39:13] was the arguments for the resurrection evidence for the resurrection looking

[00:39:18] back at what happened in AD 30 and all of the early testimony to Jesus’s

[00:39:25] resurrection the things that his disciples were willing to go through in order to proclaim that he rose from the

[00:39:32] dead and you know I’m looking at that and I’m thinking I would not I would not hold a

[00:39:37] lie for that long with those results they had horrible deaths oh yeah and they were persecuted heavily and so I

[00:39:45] know people will die for a lie but you know generally speaking unless there’s a mental problem going on they’re not

[00:39:51] going to die for something they absolutely know is true and suffer immensely like they did

[00:39:57] so they were very the early disciples are very impressive to me as to the

[00:40:03] evidence of the resurrection and their testimonies and then the third one is the the fact of trying to ground human

[00:40:11] significance and meaning like human value outside of being created in the

[00:40:16] image of God I think it’s very difficult from a an atheist perspective to really

[00:40:21] ground human meaning and value and so that I think when you loose yourself of

[00:40:28] a grounding such as all human beings are made in the image of God and worthy therefore of respect due to the kind of

[00:40:36] thing there are I think once you loose yourself from that human nature type standard you can commit horrible

[00:40:41] atrocities on mankind yeah absolutely 3 okay that yeah that makes a lot of sense

[00:40:48] and so so as you are exploring along the way and ultimately you you now was your

[00:40:54] you said you became a Christian after you’re married is that right yes yeah

[00:40:59] now was your husband already a committed believer or what happened there sure

[00:41:05] yeah I left that part of the story alright okay I went when I went off to college I was sort of like I’m gonna go

[00:41:12] to school get my degree explore you know whole Christian thing and then that’s it that’s all I want and you know along the

[00:41:20] way God had a little like bump in the road he sent me my husband Rodger my freshman year of college I wasn’t

[00:41:26] looking for a husband I wasn’t looking to date even I just wanted my degree and

[00:41:32] here along he sends me this backslidden Christian who is from a small town in

[00:41:37] Oklahoma remember I’m from Portland Oregon oh wow that’s worlds apart right we are worlds

[00:41:44] we are hilarious together and I I don’t know II just you know I met him in that

[00:41:50] time of like searching and here God sent me this Christian it was just backslidden who I’m he wasn’t real like

[00:41:58] influential on my life as far as a Christian but once we determined that we

[00:42:05] wanted to be married and all that he come to me and say hey you know I want to raise my kids in church and I you

[00:42:11] know I want my family to go to church so he was influential in that way I think that’s originally why I was receptive to

[00:42:18] going to this church where I heard the good news of Jesus yes because of his influence in that moment yeah God gives

[00:42:25] us lots of grace he works through our failures and and foibles right yes yeah

[00:42:32] definitely yeah well helped yeah that’s awesome

[00:42:38] so I wanted to just to kind of wrap up the show because we’re almost out of time here with your explanation because

[00:42:45] your book that you’re that’s coming out when does it come out the why I still believe November 5th November 5th okay

[00:42:52] fantastic congratulations on that thank you so that book why I still believe

[00:42:58] there’s a lot of people that say I see the hypocrisy in the church I’ve seen these failures you know the pastoral

[00:43:05] infidelity is all over the place there’s all kinds of problems like this and so if if there was somebody in front of you

[00:43:10] saying there’s no way I should I would follow Christianity look at all the the hypocrisy look at all those failures

[00:43:16] look at all the scams and the people that are just taking people’s money what would you say to a person who who said

[00:43:23] that why do you still believe yeah well I would first tell them that I

[00:43:28] understand where they’re coming from so I would want to like generally

[00:43:34] speaking I would say hey we’ve got common ground here because yeah I get it and because I’ve been hurt many times in

[00:43:40] the church but I would tell them the problem is that hypocrisy is a human problem and it’s it’s a problem you know

[00:43:47] I can find a group of atheists who gather together to have Donuts and we’re still going to have huge problems

[00:43:53] because they’re humans right like there’s going to be problems in that group there’s going to be marginalization there’s gonna be people

[00:43:58] who are insecure there going to be people who are doing power plays or people who have to have too much control

[00:44:04] you know they have to have control of everything so that’s a human qualities are human failings and I’m going to find

[00:44:10] them in a church and I’m going to find them outside the church what I need to do is to determine

[00:44:16] whether or not Christianity is true if there’s a reason to believe that because

[00:44:21] you know the old adage is if Jesus rose from the dead it’s the most important

[00:44:26] thing but if you didn’t rise from the dead then it’s of no consequence on our lives so I really need to figure out if

[00:44:34] that’s true and if it is then I have to deal with now what do I do with the church right

[00:44:41] what do I do with these people who have all the same failings as every other human being right how do i how do I hold

[00:44:50] that intention in my life and still be part of community with them as the Bible actually says to not forsake their

[00:44:56] coming together right yeah I’m so that that’s what I would tell them I would say you got it and I understand some

[00:45:04] people have been horrific ly damaged by the church right like so this is not an I’m not brushing over this as an easy

[00:45:11] thing I want to come across trite but in the end is there something that’s true and are you willing to discover that

[00:45:18] truth and I think for some people they are not they’re not willing yes they

[00:45:24] just desire has an emotion and other things are playing into it where they

[00:45:29] even if it was truth they wouldn’t want it and you see that in some of the there’s some atheist writings like

[00:45:36] Thomas Nagel who will admit to that like even if it’s true I don’t I don’t want it so I would ask them where they’re at

[00:45:43] with that you know and be willing to walk alongside them if they want to

[00:45:49] discover truth in this matter and to walk alongside them and investigate those truths of Christianity that’s

[00:45:55] fantastic well a Mary Jo Sharpe thank you so much for being on the program today thank you for having me Kevin I

[00:46:03] really appreciate it absolutely if you want to look more into what Mary Jo has to offer as far as resources and these

[00:46:09] sorts of things her website is confident Christianity calm she’s also available as a speaker also fantastic testimony as

[00:46:16] you’ve heard her book coming out in November is why I still believe I encourage you to pick that up also a

[00:46:22] fantastic Bible study apologetics Bible study why do you believe that if you’re looking for something to use through the

[00:46:28] summer months with a small group it’s it’s a brief study that you can get through very quickly and gain comfort

[00:46:35] and being able to talk to people about the difficult issues that often pop up in a culture that’s become very increasingly skeptical and lastly do

[00:46:43] check out the apologetics program at houston baptist university i whether you’re a layperson whether you’re making

[00:46:48] a profession out of it whatever the case as christians we want to be able to be intellectually astute when we’re talking

[00:46:55] about these sorts of issues so that we can draw people both through our love for people but also through intellectual

[00:47:03] truth we want to be able to articulate that and communicate that my web sites educate for life org check it out all

[00:47:08] kinds of shows on there for you to check out and I hope you have a fantastic weekend and I pray for you that God

[00:47:14] would bless you if you have any questions or comments please reach out I love to hear from our listeners so god

[00:47:20] bless you have a great weekend did you miss part of today’s program don’t worry work hon mitad to helping

[00:47:26] you get the info you need okay that was dumb but for real visit educate for life con for podcast and video recording to

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