When I first began my master’s degree program, I remember telling my father that I was in a Christian apologetics degree. He chuckled and said, “Well, it’s about time you Christians start apologizing.” I retorted, with a playful smile, “Now, Dad, you know that’s not what I mean.” I explained to him what I’m about to share with you, that apologetics entails offering a case for Christian beliefs and answering objections against Christian beliefs (see 2 Corinthians 10:5 and 1 Peter 3:15)…doing so with gentleness and respect.
What is Christian Apologetics? A Sports Analogy
My dad was a huge sports fan, and just like him, any coach of a sports team knows that to be well prepared for their games, they need to have both a good offense and a good defense. Dad frequently complained about a lack of one or the other with whatever team he was watching at the time. If a team goes into their game without any understanding of how to defend their goal, they are going to lose the match. If a team only knows how to defend their goal, but not how to win points through offensive strategy, they will also lose the match. While Christianity is not about “winning” or “losing” in this way, we can encounter difficulties in our own game of life for which we feel unprepared if we are not intentionally building our analogous offense and defense.
On the Defensive Line
Christian apologetics can help an individual understand the doubts, questions, and objections that are: 1) part of growing up and maturing as a person, and 2) part of living in an increasingly post-Christian society.
When we are young, we tend to trust, for the most part, the authority figures in our lives. We believe what they say and try to live like those teachings are true. As we age, and begin to encounter more experiences in life, we naturally begin to question what we’ve learned so far. Ideas, such as the goodness of God, which were simpler concepts when we had less experience with pain, suffering, and death, now become much more complicated. This questioning isn’t a bad thing, rather it’s a part of maturing as a human thinker.
As our society’s culture becomes increasingly relativistic, post-Christian, and social media/entertainer influenced, the profound philosophical Christian concepts begin to lose their comprehended complexity, becoming more caricatured and reduced even to absurdities. Thoughtful questioning and understanding of beliefs are often traded for quick, inflammatory sound bytes and slogans. As these short, uncritical ideas become popularized through various streams of social media, they become harder to engage well. Apologetics helps believers answer these popularized caricatures of Christianity, as well as engage in the deeper questions of life.
On the Offensive Line
When professing Christians do not know what they believe or why they believe it, their trust and faith in God can be affected. For example, at times, when I’ve conversed with someone who left Christianity and the church, and I’ve asked them what they used to believe, I’ve ended up saying, “Well, I don’t believe that about God, either.” While I’m sure there are many reasons why this happens, in my own church education, I rarely came across any depth of teaching on basic Christian theology, church history, or aspects of philosophy such as basic logic (thinking well) and the difficult questions of life. I’ve noticed that believers are left to piece together Christianity between their own experiences, intermittent bible study(ies), topical sermons and/or sermon series, church cultural interests, and overall cultural influencers. Too often, this leaves them with an emaciated Christianity, stripped of its deeper explanatory power for the human experience.
Through building a positive case for belief in God, Christians can begin to discover why it is they believe that God is the answer to the fundamental questions of meaning, purpose, and value to human life. People can learn that God is not only worthy of our trust, but also of our worship and love (1 John 4).
What is apologetics? A game plan
In creating robust offensive and defensive apologetic lines, Christians develop a game plan for understanding and communicating their faith. Learning how to make a case for what we believe is not a “10-step-program to winning in life,” but, rather, an important piece of the holistic development of a maturing believer in Christ. As the Apostle Peter admonished us, we are to “always be ready to give a defense (apologia) of the reason of your hope.” That reason is the hope that Jesus provided for us through the resurrection and redemption of humankind. And although we’re not apologizing for our beliefs, in a way, we are saying, “Sorry, not sorry,” for holding onto that redeeming hope within a society that needs to see genuine Christians living out, and putting into action, the truths they profess to believe.
*Author’s note: In a future post, I’ll discuss the important aspect of apologetics, which entails communicating our beliefs with “gentleness and respect.”