Questions from Teenagers
Q: "How can Jesus be both God and man?" Junior, Hillside High School
Q: "I thought Jesus was the Son of God, but some people also say He is God. What?" 8th Grader Kestrel Heights
Q: "Who is Jesus?" Junior, Hillside High School
A: Jesus is "fully God and fully man". It's a really hard question that people have had trouble
with for 2,000 years - But here's the basic idea:
He's like a bridge. A bridge is a bridge because it connects to both sides of some gap.
Jesus is the bridge between God and man, and so He has to exist on both sides of the gap.
We need to cross from the man side to the God side. Since Jesus is the only one who is both
man and God, He's the only way to get from here to there.
The technical theological term for His nature is that it's a hypostatic union. That just means that
in Jesus, the divine nature and the human nature are connected in the deepest way possible.
In Genesis, the Bible says that God created man "in His own image". That just means that in the
deepest way, the thing about us that makes us human is that we look like God.
So saying that Jesus is fully God and fully human is as simple as saying that He is God, and He also
looks like God.
Q: "Is Jesus the only way to go to heaven?" Junior, Hillside High School
A: Yes. Nobody else can bridge the gap (created by human sin) between man and God.
God is Universal, which means that everything He does is important everywhere, at all time, no matter
what. Mankind is Particular, which means that each of us has only one body, and no matter what we
use that body for, it's only important for a short time, in a small area, and probably for only
a few people.
The Savior had to be both Particular and Universal so that through a relationship with Him we could
connect our short-lived Particular-ness to God's perfect, eternal, immortal Universal-ness.
Because of this, the only way we can go to heaven is if there is one Particular person Who is our
Savior. If there were two Saviors, then the Savior wouldn't be one Particular human being.
It has to be one person, and that one person is Jesus.
Q: "Would you please explain the Trinity for me? I am confused." Junior, Hillside High School
A: It's confusing because it seems like something can't be one thing and three things at once. But
there are ways to make sense of it:
- A triangle is one thing, but it has three sides.
- A cube is one shape, but it extends in three directions (height, depth, and width)
- A word is one thing, and yet there are three ways that it exists:
- It exists as something that somebody said.
- It exists as an idea, with a meaning.
- It exists as a series of sound waves traveling through the air.
Q: "What does it mean to be a Christian?" 8th Grader, Kestrel Heights
A: It means to trust, love, and follow Jesus Christ in everything that you do.
Q: "How do I know if I am Christian or not?" Sophomore, Hillside High School
A: If you want to follow Christ, and you're trying to follow Christ, you're a Christian. Here's a good test: If you care a lot about questions like "How do I know if I am a Christian or not?", you're probably a Christian.
If you pray and read the Bible and follow God even when nobody is looking, you're probably a Christian.
Q: "Temptation is a mother. How do I stop sinning?" Senior, Hillside High School
Q: "Why I do and continue to do things that I know are wrong?" Senior, Hillside High School
Q: "I have prayed to make Jesus the Lord and Savior of my life many times, people pray for me at the altar every Sunday, but two hours later I find myself in my boy friend's bed. How do I make sense of this?" Senior, Hillside High School
A: Every human being is born with what's called original sin. This is because all of us are descended from Adam, the first sinner. When he sinned, he irrevocably damaged his body - And all of us have inherited our bodies from him. Sin is sort of like a hereditary disease. You've probably noticed that many of your sins have a lot to do with things that your body wants, like pleasure or comfort.
The only thing in the universe that can fix our sinful bodies is Jesus Christ. When He died on the cross, He made it possible for us to become sinless like Him. We can do a little bit of work to make ourselves less sinful, but we can never finish. Only Jesus Christ can make us completely sinless, and He's not going to do it yet. When He returns to Earth, He will give all Christians new bodies, and those new bodies will be sinless.
Until then, we just have to fight temptation as hard as we can. Fortunately, Jesus sent His spirit, which is called the Holy Spirit, to help us with this - So if we pray to Him whenever we're tempted, we will definitely receive help.
Q: "How do I not go to hell?" Freshman, Hillside High School
A: Only the mercy of God can save you from Hell, and God's mercy is only available because of the death of Jesus Christ for your sins.
The only way to avoid Hell is to accept Jesus Christ as your LORD and Savior, and follow Him with all your heart.
Q: "I understand why bad things happen because of human decisions, but why do bad things happen like natural disasters that are beyond human control?" Sophomore, Kestrel Heights
A: When God made the planet Earth, He put Adam in charge of it. When Adam sinned, God cursed the serpent, and He cursed Eve, and He cursed Adam, and part of Adam's curse was this: "Cursed is the ground because of you" Because of this, (which is a totally fair punishment from God), the planet itself is cursed - And that's why it has earthquakes and poisonous animals and diseases.
Also, it's important to remember that we are living on a planet that has already been destroyed. As you can read in Genesis 6, because of how evil human beings were at that time, God decided to destroy them, and the Earth, and most of the animals.
And He did, except for Noah and his family and a few of each animal, who He saved. He did not save the planet Earth. It was destroyed, and we live now among the shattered pieces.
The planet we live on now is nothing like the one God created - And it's our ancestor's faults. A healthy planet wouldn't have earthquakes and hurricanes and stuff.
Q: "We have empirical evidence that the earth is millions of years old, why do a lot of Christians say it is only a couple of thousand years old?" Junior, Pace Academy
A: Pascal's Pensees, #625: Shem, who saw Lamech, who saw Adam, saw also Jacob, who saw those who saw Moses; therefore the deluge and the creation are true. This is conclusive among certain people who understand it rightly.
What this means is that Shem was alive for long enough to have told Jacob, "I met Lamech, who met Adam, the first man ever created. Take my word for it..." Jacob told the Israelites, who told Moses. Moses wrote Genesis, where he recorded what Adam told Lamech who told Shem who told the Israelites.
Generations of Israelite priests dedicated their lives to preserving the words of Genesis exactly as they were written by Moses. The point is, the book of Genesis is not based on folk tales passed down for dozens of generations, with tribal elders making up new embellishments every year. It's based on oral accounts of historical events passed down as few as six times, and it's full of specific details such as names, ages, and places.
Q: "Why does it matter if people worship Jesus, doesn't just matter if you have faith in God? People of faith all believe in the same God, right?
A: At the end of the world, when every human being will be judged and sent either to Heaven or to Hell, Jesus will be there. If He doesn't recognize you as part of His Church, then no matter what else you've done, or what you've believed in, you'll go to Hell.
Q: "How do I deal with being a teenager?" Freshman, Kestrel Heights
A: Wait it out. Also, trust your parents.
Think of this: Your parents are probably something like twenty years older than you, right? Now think of the kids that are only three or four years younger than you. You're wiser than them, right? They probably don't think you are, but you actually are. If they knew, at their age, what you know now, how much better off would they be?
And if three or four years makes that much difference, think how much difference the twenty years your parents have makes.
Trust your parents.
Q: "How do I know truth from what is false?"
A: This is a deep philosophical question with lots of difficult ins and outs, but here's the short answer:
The human mind can't know the truth on it's own - Think about it: Hasn't there been some time in the past when you were absolutely certain of something, but it turned out to be wrong? Then what assurance do you have now, for any of the other things you believe, that's better than what you had then?
The only assurance you could possibly have - The only possible truth - Could only ever come from God, Who is omniscient (that means He knows everything), omnipotent (that means He can do anything), and good. He knows the truth because of His omniscience, He can communicate the truth to you because of His omnipotence, and He won't lie to you because of His goodness.
Q: "How do I know that the New Testament is actually an eye-witness account of Jesus and His miracles like it says it is?" Junior, Pace Academy
A: The books of the New Testament are the most reliable ancient documents known to humanity. In the case of most documents from that time period, we've found only a handful of manuscript copies - Usually less than 10. The New Testament, on the other hand, has over 5,000 manuscripts.
But the most powerful evidence is the testimony of the martyrs: 'Martyr' is the Greek word for 'witness', and it's the word that's used to describe the early Christians who died rather than say that what the New Testament says is false. 11 out of 12 of Jesus original disciples (including Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the guys who we think wrote those parts of the New Testament) were martyred. Paul, whose letters make up so much of the New Testament, was beheaded in Rome after refusing to deny the truth about Jesus.
If you had told a lie, and one day you found that the only way to keep yourself from being killed was to take it back and tell the truth, wouldn't you?
Nobody would die for a lie, and I'm sure very few people would die for the truth. But what's written in the New Testament is so true, and so important, that every single one of the guys who wrote it was willing to die rather than say it wasn't true.
That's why they're called 'witnesses'.
by Matt, the C3 Apologist