Transcription
What people get attention for is more of the edgy and controversial, you know, the videos of people dunking on other people. And we can fall into the trap of thinking that that is how our Christian evangelism needs to be. I think most of the time people think that they need to hit a home run and really all they need to do is step up to first base.
Hi, my name is Wes Huff. I am an aspiring biblical scholar, a historian, a Christian apologist, and I am going to be talking to you about how to give a reason for your faith.
I first got introduced to apologetics almost by accident in that I was having a lot of evangelistic and apologetic type conversations, but at the time probably couldn't tell you that what I was doing was under the umbrella of Christian apologetics. I was being introduced to the field of apologetics via simple conversational evangelism. I often thought that I needed to be the Bible answer man or the Christian encyclopedia. And when I heard objections to the Christian faith, like it's irrational to believe in God, I would jump into kind of defense mode, thinking that I needed to be the one to clarify when really what I should have been doing was asking clarifying questions and getting into what they actually meant by terms like God or Christianity or even irrelevant. And so what I ended up doing was I ended up kind of talking at the person rather than engaging practically with the person.
In 1 Peter 3:15-16, we're told that when Peter writes to the dispersed church in the ancient world, he says, "But in your hearts, rever Christ as Lord, always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have." And in that there's a challenge to be prepared. But the challenge comes along with revering Christ as Lord in your heart and doing so with gentleness and respect. So in one sense there's a biblical precedent to engage with others to communicate effectively but it starts and stops with doing so with a Christ centered mind frame and then also doing so in a way that is gentle and respectful. And Peter goes on to say, "Keeping a clear conscience so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ will be ashamed of their slander."
There's definitely been a change in the trends of the questions that people are asking. I think when I was in high school, when the new atheism was kind of at its peak, people were pushing into whether God was real questions. Nowadays, I find people ask a lot less is God real and ask questions like is God good?
No two conversations are going to be alike. And so one of the dangers I think of Christian apologetics is to make it sound like there's a script and if you just stick to the script that everything's going to work out. People are complicated and in that people can often feel threatened and get heated in those conversations. A friend of mine, Tim Barnett, who works with Stan Terres, often says that if he feels like he's getting too heated, he has lost the conversation. Um, and also if the other person is getting too heated, then he also has similarly lost the conversation.
I think there are two aspects of this to keep in mind. One is that we are not actually personally responsible for turning that individual that we're talking to heart of stone into a heart of flesh. That that is the work of the spirit and God alone who's going to be able to do that.
I also sometimes if I feel the conversation is kind of getting to a point where maybe the hostility is a little bit too high, I try to slow down the conversation and simply ask a question like if Christianity were hypothetically true, would you believe it? If that person says, "Well, no. Even if Christianity were true, I wouldn't believe it." At that point, it's clear that they're not truly interested in what is true with a capital T. But if they say yes, you know, in a hypothetical situation, if Christianity were true, I want to follow what's true. So therefore, I would have to follow it whether I liked it or not. Well, that gives me kind of an opening to then move forward and maybe find out the areas where they're struggling with or they're not quite clear on.
There are situations where I sometimes say that the right answer to the wrong question is still the wrong answer. So an example of something like this is in terminology that frames the conversation where they're using one definition and you're using another. If someone says it's irrational to believe in God and you proceed in trying to defend the rationality of God, you might actually be missing each other in what you both or who you both believe God is. And so I found that asking a question like, "What do you mean by God?" can help clarify what they actually think you believe. Cuz I don't want to defend a god say that someone like Richard Dawkins describes in his works where God is a dictator who is just trying to keep us subjugated and let us not have any fun. That's not the God I believe in. And so if I start defending a God that is that person and unbeknownst to me, that's what the other individual I'm interacting with thinks God is, then I'm not actually going to be doing a good job in helping them understand who the God I believe in is.
When we look at the patterns in scripture of how Jesus interacts, it's it's really interesting to see that Jesus kind of gets behind questions where he is often presented with traps. And we see this a lot in the gospel biographies that are written about him because the Pharisees and the Sadducees are constantly trying to trap him. And the way that we see Jesus subvert this is by asking clarifying questions. So in the account of Jesus in the temple in both Matthew and Luke's gospels, we see that the Pharisees send their disciples to ask a very politically charged question to Jesus about taxation. Should we pay a pole tax to Caesar or not? Which is not actually a question about taxes as much as it is about moral compromise and whether the people of God who are subjugated under the Roman Empire should actually be funding the subjugation of God's people or not. And if you don't pay taxes, you're committing a crime and therefore it's kind of a lose-lose situation. But what Jesus does and what we see him throughout the gospels is doing very effectively is asking questions to get behind the question. And so when he asks for a coin and a and asks them whose face is on this and says give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, give to God what belongs to God. He actually works around the trap of the question knowing that the question is not about paying taxes, but it's about what we give to God. And so with his audience standing in front of him, now they're put on the hook of being confronted with just as you give the coin with Caesar's image back to Caesar by an being an image bearer of God, what does that mean you're required of? Well, it means you're required to give back of yourself to the one who you bear the image of. And so time and time again when we look at how Jesus is interacting with questions that are really trap questions, it's a good example to look at that and see how Jesus is using clarifying questions to help navigate the situation effectively.
And I think deep down we're all scared of rejection and we're all scared of embarrassment. And maybe I'm just being reflective on on my own self. Maybe that's not everybody, but I find that a lot of people, they want to be liked, particularly people that they know personally, friends and family and co-workers, but strangers as well. And so when it comes time to maybe have conversations that matter in terms of worldview questions, it can be hard. Uh we're scared of a fear of rejection because we can often think that they're rejecting us if they reject what we believe. And in a polarizing world where people are so often siloed into one perspective or the other, it can feel tricky when we know that we are holding a position that we we think another person who we're interacting with might not have the same perspective on. But I think what we see in scripture is that we have the promise of the Holy Spirit and we can be confident in that it's okay to not agree with other people.
I think Christians are probably selling themselves short in what they're able to know and understand. Your average Christian is potentially more able to competently give answers than they may even realize that they may feel the insecurity of not being able to articulate everything. And also they don't necessarily have to. I think most of the time people think that they need to hit a home run and really all they need to do is step up to first base and need to be willing to actually engage in the conversation. And often what you'll find in my experience is that the conversations uh though you might feel like you're being put in the hot seat actually you're more able than you realize to stay in the driver's seat. And not because like I said before you have to be the Christian encyclopedia but because people want to engage and talk thoughtfully. And I think Christians feel like they need to know all the answers when really admitting when we don't have the answers also can go a long way in just creating rapport and transparency.
We find ourselves in a unique time and place where what people get attention for is more of the edgy and controversial, you know, the videos of people dunking on other people. And we can fall into the trap of thinking that that is how our Christian evangelism needs to be, that we need to shame people and make them look foolish in order to prove that they're wrong. Whereas when you look at something like Jesus's own example or you look at how Peter and Paul interact with people graciously and humbly and effectively, you know, Paul says that if we if we have the the ability to speak in the tongues of angels, but we don't have love, then our words are just going to sound like a noisy gong. We're not out here to shame someone into the kingdom of God. We want to show them the kingdom of God is actually something worth being part of.
Uh there was a philosopher and a mathematician named Blaise Pascal who once said that people are scared that Christianity might be true because it has implications on their life. And he goes on to say that the remedy to that is to show them that Christianity is beautiful. He says make good people wish it were true and then show them that it is. And I think if we go along those lines and make people want Christianity to be true by the way that we live our lives that is outwardly reflecting who Christ is and then communicate that it's not just true because it works but it works because it's true then that can go a long way.