Andy Stanley speaking at Dallas Theological Seminary on February 19th, 2019 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMi9pOiBwCw
Transcript, Andy Stanley: My purpose today is to inspire you and to try to convince you in your preaching and your teaching and your writing, to tether the faith of the next generation, and maybe some of this generation, to tether the faith. And that’s the phrase I want you to hang on to — to tether the faith of this generation and the next to the event of the Resurrection, rather than the inspiration, infallibility, or the authority of the Bible. [Andy briefly looks up at the ceiling] Oh good, no lightning. So let me say that one more time…and you can talk bad about me after I leave, you have permission to do that…From now on, for the rest of our lives in our preaching, and our teaching, and our writing, to tether the faith of this next generation to the event of the resurrection rather than the authority and the inspiration, infallibility, or even the inerrancy of the Bible where it should have been tethered all along, and where the Apostle Peter and the Apostle John tethered theirs.
Now let me tell you why I think this is a big deal. About nine years ago…I was sitting at home, and I’m watching a YouTube video of Sam Harris…[a] famous atheist neuroscientist. And I’m listening to this and watching this video…and he’s at a university setting, and he is just completely dismantling the Bible. And the crowd is cheering, I mean every time he…takes a shot at the Bible, they just cheer. And he’s doing all the normal stuff that Skeptics have done forever. And as I was watching, something dawned on me that I never thought about before that has rocked my world and changed the way I preach and teach. I made the change almost immediately.
It dawned on me that Sam Harris shared an assumption with everybody in the room that was a skeptic or an atheist or agnostic…And the assumption that he shared with them he also shared with most Christians, although most Christians haven’t thought about it, and the Christians in the room listening to him, and Christians everywhere, and the assumption that I was raised on, and it’s an assumption that most of you were raised on. In fact, when I state this assumption, part of your brain will go, “well, that can’t be true” and part of you will feel nervous that what I’m saying it’s not true. And the assumption is simply this: that the Bible is the foundation of the Christian faith, and as the Bible goes, so goes Christianity.
That was the assumption he leveraged all of his skepticism off of, and it’s an assumption that most of the people in most of our churches hold to even though they’ve never thought about it because no one’s ever said it like that, the Assumption being that as the Bible goes so it goes to the Christian faith. So as Sam Harris dismantles the Bible, and all confidence in the Bible, he’s dismantling Christianity in his mind, and in the minds of the people in the audience, and in the minds and the hearts of people, and students, and high school students, and college students everywhere. And when I say the Bible, I’m talking about, what if you went to a bookstore and said, “I want to see a Bible,” what they would bring you. You know, Old Testament New Testament chapter, verse, mapped and wrapped. Okay, like, “the Bible,” the whole thing, just to be clear.
So after I watched this, I thought, “this is terrible and someone needs to do something.” I looked around and it was just me, so I thought this is a big deal because I was raised, most Christians were raised [on this] assumption [which] is a dangerous thing. Especially when it goes underneath the surface, many of you make decisions, we all do, based on assumptions that we don’t even know about. And as soon as somebody surfaces the assumption you think, “oh that’s not true,” and suddenly you make different kinds of decisions.
So I read his book, “End of Faith,” and as hopefully you know Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett and late Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris. Mainly those four guys, they responded to 9-11 by publishing books against religion. All religion, not just Christianity. And so Christians came back at Sam Harris so strong after he published “End of Faith,” [so] he published another little book called “Letter to a Christian Nation.”…You should all read that book, and if your faith survives, it may not. You may become an atheist after you read it, just warning you. It’s a little tiny book written to Christians. If your faith survives, then I want you to ask yourself this question: would the faith of the high school students in my church survive this book, with the faith of the college freshmen that are leaving my church?…[W]ould the average faith of the average person in our church survive this book? Because he does what skeptics have done forever, he goes after the Bible because as the Bible goes so goes our faith and that just isn’t true…
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Dear Andy Stanley,
I’m so thankful that I stumbled upon this video because it has brought me so much clarity around the reason for my suffering. You are afraid of the Bible and you taught my church, the people I love, to be afraid of the Bible.
You separated the people of God from the Words of God and when I tried to join them back to the Word of God, they separated themselves from me. They shunned me. They shunned my family. They judged me harshly for my love of God’s Word while clinging tightly to your instructions and their chauvinistic beliefs that a woman ought to be quiet and submissive to all of the male authorities in her life. You allowed this to happen at your “Irresistible” church.
I get it though. Your faith was shaken when you watched a video in 2010 and read a book by Sam Harris. (However, I looked at his book and my faith is not shaken in the slightest.) All of a sudden you became afraid that people wouldn’t believe in Jesus because of the Bible. I get it. I worry about the same thing. That’s why I read the Bible, over and over and over and I read it with skeptics and people who have never read it before and I deliberately address every difficult thing in Scripture. You went one way to “solve” the problem, and I went the other way. I am confident that I went the right way.
You say that the next generation will lose their faith if they read something by Sam Harris. And you’re right. Your kids will lose their faith because you have not shored up their faith in God’s Word. Not that my family is the example of examples, but my kids are adults and the lives that they are living do speak volumes about their spiritual upbringing. My oldest daughter’s faith is so strong she’s been in full-time ministry for two years and will be pursuing ordination along with her master’s in Bible. My youngest daughter has been witnessing to Muslims on the streets of Youngstown and sharing her faith with her secular college friends. My son has just rededicated his life to Christ and leads a Bible study on his secular college campus. Unfortunately, my middle daughter was so turned off by the man-centered faith you created at our church during her formative years that she is now Catholic. So, thank you for that.
You may not realize it, but you do have a bible. But your bible is not God’s Word. It’s your words. That has become your bible and you’ve had people put their faith in you and your words. That should scare you.
But it’s not too late. Read with me, please. There’s nothing to be afraid of. God’s Word is perfectly capable of standing on its own. You don’t need to apologize for it or make excuses for it or down-play its authority. The written Words of God are just as much who God is as these words that I type are just as much who I am. Don’t underestimate the power of what His Word can do. There’s no argument, no apologetic, no historical proof that is more convincing than what has already been written down for us.
Encounter God with me, please. Let’s read together in 2024. www.resolved2read.org
Jennifer Jolene 
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