Dethroning Jesus

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On today’s edition of “The Christian Life Today” on American Family Radio, we discussed the whole question of doubt and the Christian faith. The topic seemed to touch a nerve with many listeners. One woman said she was glad to know that it was okay to talk about your doubts. I’ve always thought it was okay because many of the biblical writers had doubts and questions they could not answer. At one point I said something like, “It may be that some of you never have doubts. If so, God love you and we love you, but we don’t understand you.” And I could have added, “And you probably don’t understand us either.” I have written about this in a sermon called If I Believe, Why Do I Doubt?

Near the end of the program a woman called in with questions about the “gnostic gospels,” a term referring to certain accounts of the life of Christ, all of them written long after the four gospels of the New Testament. Because we had less than a minute left, all I could do was refer to a book by New Testament scholar Darrell Bock. I couldn’t quite remember the name so I thought I would mention it here. The book is called Dethroning Jesus: Exposing Popular Culture’s Quest to Unseat the Biblical Christ. Bock co-authored the book with fellow Dallas Seminary professor Daniel Wallace. Together these two men wade into the contemporary controversy to show how the Christ of the Bible is being devalued in popular culture. The book discusses the “gnostic gospels,” showing that they are not reliable sources of information and anything true they contain can already be found in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. 

I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting solid answers to the questions raised by The Da Vinci Code and other contemporary retellings of the story of Jesus. 

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Visitor Comments:

June 3, 2009, 5:39 PM judyshub says:
	Great broadcast today, Ray. It seemed to touch where people were hurting . . . you offered timely consolation.
June 23, 2009, 10:14 PM Ray Pritchard says:
	Thanks, Peter. The issue of doubt always seems to draw a large response, probably because most of us struggle with it more than we want to admit.