Sarah Flashing challenged us to consider our approach to apologetics. But I’m just a little more pessimistic. Well, actually, I’m optimistically pessimistic. I think the current state of our society is worse than we imagine. But I think that the situation is the one we actually want — one where there is a challenge to be faced. So I wonder …
Are people asking questions? Certainly. But my observation is that inquiry today seems to be little more than individual curiosity. What is missing is the societal inquiry. Why isn’t the nation asking questions about right and wrong, about morality, ethics, and justice? The reason is that question has changed meanings. Modern critical thinking seems to be more about tearing down the old edifices rathern than reaching into them and repairing them. One example of that is here, as DB challenges the sexual morality/marriage relationship by drawing upon the anticipated and frequent charge of racism (at minimum its equivalence). The greater part of Western society today is not asking the church for answers. There is no inquiry. The move today is to question the very existence of the church and its morality, even if the charge may be dubious.
The evidential approach to apologetics tends to be defensive. When hard questions come to us, like evolution, the greater number of apologists jump on the “error” bandwagon and think they can deal with the challenge by pointing out the challengers’ errors. Yet the challenge remains and we continue on the defensive. Much like a “prevent” football defense, a defensive posture will only certify defeat. It is not possible to win on defense.
With the Christian world view always dropping in popularity, it is time that we make world view, theological, and evangelistic apologetics offensive. Going into the secular classroom, as Sarah has done, is imperative. She need not preach to the class. Her presence is enough. The pre-evangelism of working with the Spirit in preparing hearts is a valuable first step. Staying in our seminaries and colleges, exclusively, can prove dangerous. Speaking to our churches and imagining that a sermon’s radio broadcast might change the world, that’s naive. Acts 16:6 makes a useful guidepost — we step out until the Spirit says otherwise.
The hostility level is high.
I have been told, on the job by a Stonewall-supporting activist, who was also my team leader, that I did not deserve to have a job in the public square. Because of my faith, he said specifically, that I ought to be off in a seminary somewhere. The question was not an interrogative. He did not ask. His question goes to one’s right to participate in public life.
Likewise, Chris Rodda, and MRFF are going after a soldier who proclaimed a Christian faith. It seems that some are embarassed to have Christians speak out loud. They think being a Christian in public life is unconstitutional. There may be some applicable UCMJ rules in this instance, but that’s not the Constitution. Even so, the term ”Christian” is not prohibited speech for officers in uniform.
The evangel is always on the offensive. The evangelist, also, must always be on the offensive.
December 31st, 2009 | 8:54 am | #1
Excellent challenge for the New Year, Collin. I wonder if the problem is that we have no offense because we do not want to offend …
December 31st, 2009 | 8:59 am | #2
No, Frank. I think we’re naive and irresponsible. We follow the passive approach of Bill Bright and sit around waiting for the HS to do something when that’s not what the Apostles did.
I think there is a parallel between some national attitudes and some church attitudes. The nation is war-weary, being placed by the Left, intentionally, into no-win situations. The church is evangel-weary. We’ve burned out on altar calls and crooked televangelists in $20K suits. We like our way of doing things and are unwilling to change. We are rich, passive, and lazy. (So what’s new?)
December 31st, 2009 | 9:32 am | #3
Peter tells us to “Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense [answer, Gr. apologia] to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear” (1 Peter 3:15).
If nobody is asking about the expectation that is in us, it may be because we have given them no reason to. That may point back to how well we have sanctified the Lord God in our hearts, how the life of Jesus the Messiah and the fruit of the Holy Spirit is revealed in our lives.
December 31st, 2009 | 12:32 pm | #4
We follow the passive approach of Bill Bright and sit around waiting for the HS to do something ….
I was never a Bill Bright fan, but I really don’t understand this criticism of him. When he was at the helm of Campus Crusade, the Crusaders were the most offensive (in whatever way you want to interpret that word) proclaimers of the gospel on any campus. I don’t know what they are like now, having been out of school for a number of years.
December 31st, 2009 | 1:19 pm | #5
There is a difference between a mere logistic offense and a content offense. (Obviously I am using the term differently, looking at the content instead of the activities.) CCC has the former but lacks the latter. The closest they’ve come to taking the offensive is some like Josh McDowell who go onto campus. But the evidential approach remains a defensive strategy. It therefore lacks the necessary persuasive power.
December 31st, 2009 | 3:04 pm | #6
I like this post. It reminds me of when I hear people ask for prayer that God open a way for them to share the gospel. The attitude is not one of being proactive.
Instead of asking for boldness to share the gospel it is more of almost waiting for the other person to ask about the gospel. I’ve seen it numerous times.
Don’t just hope there is a way, make a way!
December 31st, 2009 | 4:07 pm | #7
I agree that we need to take the gospel outside the church walls; though it would be nice to stay up on the mountain with Christ, He did not allow the apostles to do that–they eventually had to come down off the mountain.
I am all for sharing my faith with others in terms of openly telling people I am a Christian (everyone I work with knows I am one, and some people have told me they could never be Orthodox, blah, blah, blah because they are feminist and whatnot). I am open about the holidays I celebrate, and I will explain my faith and my holidays to anyone who asks. In addition, when talking to Christian friends on the phone, I do not hesitate to say that I will pray for them if that is what the situation calls for–and I do not worry whether my colleagues hear me.
But I do not actively preach the gospel and talk about church all the time. That does not work in my experience. I know before I became a Christian having people tell me my life would be so much better if I were saved or believed in Christ was not really attractive to me. So while I am open that I am a Christian, I do not harp on it with others if I know they are hostile. Their minds are closed, and they don’t want me to continue talking with them about this subject.
December 31st, 2009 | 8:20 pm | #8
“Modern critical thinking seems to be more about tearing down the old edifices rathern than reaching into them and repairing them.”
That’s a great point. One of the differences we have in China and SE Asia is that people are asking, because the old edifices failed and they need something to replace them.
Let me clarify that I’m of a Reformed bent in my apologetic understand and thus see everything as falling under the purview of the Christian faith, yet I have to admit that the work done by CCC on college campuses throughout China is one of the major reasons why the vast majority of Christians in China are college educated, and why just about every campus has a good percentage of the professors who are professing Christians. They have been passionate and rigorous in their evangelism (much more so than it seems they are in the US).
It also seems that the lack of a comfortable church building helps. You go to people in China, you can invite to church, but it means you are inviting them to a home church or to a factory church. Of course, there are very large three-self churches in the big cities, but even then many of the people that attend are also house-church members. The American strategy of “come and see” (which means come to our church and see if we can impress you), wouldn’t work here because churches simply don’t have the resources (nor would they probably want) to spend time on programs and gimmicks and have to instead focus on the gospel.
December 31st, 2009 | 8:38 pm | #9
By the way, that link to Rodda is insane…could someone really be so up in arms over his declaration that he’s a Christian? Apparently they find this dangerous, but would they prefer him be as passionate but keep his beliefs private? Would they not have preferred for Nidal Hassan to have been more open about his beliefs? Or is the true problem that they really just want their own kind (secularists) in positions of leadership (military and otherwise)?
January 1st, 2010 | 11:56 am | #10
On my flight home yesterday, I was seated next to a fellow reading Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God. I asked him to explain the gist of the book, and he said she was questioning all our modern assumptions about how the Bible is supposed to be interpreted, but not endorsing a particular view of her own. Maybe this is a part of the “tearing down old edifices.” We are so much better at destroying than building.
January 1st, 2010 | 10:27 pm | #11
I agree that when apologetics is focused on pointing out error, it can be defensive and thus not particularly helpful. Apologetics doesn’t have to be that way, though. Just a few years ago I was an atheist, and I was convinced by philosophical argument that God existed, and by evidential argument that the Resurrection really happened and thus Jesus is the Son of God and my Lord and Savior. All of this was grounded in a really profound witness of Christian character in people I knew, which allowed me to feel able to ask questions about faith… but once the topic was broached, the discussion was definitely a “positive” one. That is to say, that the theistic and Christian point of view was presented as being a better explanation for the way the world is, than the alternative (my naturalistic, atheistic view).
I think that’s where we need more writers, thinkers, teachers, speakers along the lines of C.S. Lewis, articulating the fact that the Christian worldview is true. It explains the world better than any other worldview.
There are too many Christian writers who try to push Christianity as “good for you” (you will be happier, have a better marriage, etc.) but then that’s just conceding that people can shop around for a faith that helps them live better. I know that I didn’t want anything to do with feel-good faith; I wanted to know what was true, regardless of whether I liked it or not. Unfortunately, we’re in a culture that encourages everyone to go for what makes them feel good, so apologists have an uphill battle: first help people understand that they need the truth, not a comforting fiction, and then offer Christian truth.
I teach college English, so my main daily witness is to be a Christian professor in a secular school (one in which many faculty members are outspoken in their hostility to Christianity). I have noticed that my students are starved for reality, for truth. They have lived all their lives in a weird fog of fabricated self-esteem and incessant media stimulation, with no solid teaching about truth or any real moral witness. They need truth and they respond to it, but they don’t know to ask for it.
January 2nd, 2010 | 10:03 am | #12
“I have noticed that my students are starved for reality, for truth. They have lived all their lives in a weird fog of fabricated self-esteem and incessant media stimulation, with no solid teaching about truth or any real moral witness. They need truth and they respond to it, but they don’t know to ask for it.”
Nicely put.
I tell my students rather often that they are intelligent–as smart as any group I’ve had in the past–but they don’t know, really, much of anything. They don’t even know enough to ask interesting questions yet. Just a generation ago, ninth-graders in general knew more than college students in general know today.
But this doesn’t turn off the students. They really are hungry, but from the desire for self-protection have encased themselves in what Stephen Satris calls the “student armor of relativism”–i.e., I won’t criticize you in class if you don’t criticize me.
And one more point, as a teacher: When they struggle in class discussions, I am respectful–as we would be respectful of any new life.
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