Real faith isn’t blind—that’s both the mission statement of the God’s Not Dead movement and Rice Broocks’ testimony. Broocks became a Christian in his third year of college.
But Broocks’ brother, Ben, an atheist and a third-year law student at the time, was not thrilled to hear about the conversion. Ben started studying the Bible, looking for contradictions and holes he could point out to Rice. But the weekend Ben went home to talk his younger brother out of his faith became the same weekend Ben accepted Christ and was baptized.
Ever since that time, Broocks has been an ardent supporter of apologetics training. He describes getting the evidence for God into the hands of everyday believers as his “heartbeat.” And he’s especially disturbed by the notion among some Christians that faith should be blind.
Broocks’ newest book, Man, Myth, Messiah, grapples with common arguments that get raised about the existence, death and resurrection of Christ. Here are a few common myths the book debunks:
Jesus never really existed. Almost every serious historian agrees that Jesus was a real person who lived 2,000 years ago. Those who assert Jesus was not a real man are flaunting an ignorance of history.
The Gospels aren’t reliable. Shortly after Jesus’ death, early church fathers were already accepting the Gospel accounts as, well, gospel. The nuances or “inconsistencies” mirror actual inconsistencies seen in many court cases, furthering the conclusion that the four Gospels are four honest eyewitness testimonies of Jesus.
Jesus’ story is just stolen from other, older myths. Scholars point out that just because two accounts have parallels does not mean that one account writer copied the other. Correlation does not equal causation.
Jesus never claimed He was God. Jesus’ behavior and sayings certainly suggested He was God in a way that would have been explicit to His Jewish audience. He offered forgiveness rather than saying God would forgive someone (Mark 2:1-12). He called himself “I Am” (John 8:56-59), the title God gave Himself in talking to Moses. And the introduction to the Gospel of John says that Jesus was God (John 1:1-3, 14-18). {eoa}
