{"id":383,"date":"2015-10-25T22:19:01","date_gmt":"2015-10-25T21:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/?p=383"},"modified":"2015-10-25T22:19:01","modified_gmt":"2015-10-25T21:19:01","slug":"red-herrings-and-excuses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/?p=383","title":{"rendered":"Red herrings and excuses"},"content":{"rendered":"<span itemprop=\"description\"><p>In John 4 Jesus is talking to the woman at the well about the Living Water. He confronted her about the number of husbands she has had and this is the woman\u2019s reply.<br \/>\n19 \u201cSir,\u201d the woman said, \u201cI can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.\u201d<br \/>\nThis is surely a classic \u201cred herring,\u201d designed to dodge the important questions and distract Jesus from the challenge He was bringing. Sometimes a friend will raise an issue which genuinely concerns them but sometimes the same question is just a red herring or an excuse. Note that Jesus did gently answer the woman\u2019s question, but then quickly returned to what really mattered again<br \/>\nQuestions about forms of worship are a common red herring but here are a number of others. How can we answer excuses and red herrings?<br \/>\n \u201cI\u2019m not the religious sort.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cYou can\u2019t believe in God these days.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter what you believe as long as you are sincere.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cI do my best \u2013 nobody can do any more.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cYou can\u2019t change human nature.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cAll truth is relative.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cThrough history the church has done terrible things.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cThere are hypocrites in the church.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cAll the church cares about is money and buildings.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cReligion is just a crutch for the feeble.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cA loving God would not send people to hell?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Below are a few common objections which we are dealing with (or have talked about before) in sermons:<br \/>\n\u201cWe can\u2019t trust the Bible.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cAll religions lead to God\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cJesus was just an ordinary man.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cScience has disproved the Bible\/religion.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cHow can you believe in God with all the suffering in the world?\u201d<\/p>\n<span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\"><span itemprop=\"description\">In John 4 Jesus is talking to the woman at the well about the Living Water. He confronted her about the number of husbands&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p btn-align-left\"><a class=\"blue zoom-btn\" href=\"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/?p=383\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}