Below is an excerpt from Douglas Groothius’ article on apologetics (the art of explaining to others why we are Christians and why we believe the Christian faith is true). I know a lot of faithful Christians who are reluctant to share their faith and hope with others. I used to be reluctant to do so myself and that always puzzled and bothered me because it brought into question my love for and commitment to Jesus.
Groothius is spot-on in his analysis about why many Christians are reluctant to give an account of their faith and I can’t help thinking that the root for all of his reasons is that the church for the most part has stopped believing in (and therefore teaching about) the resurrection of Jesus and the breathtaking hope and promise of new creation that it signals. The first Christians and early church certainly didn’t diminish the importance of Jesus’ bodily resurrection and it set them on fire because they understood that God’s promised future had broken in on them now. Consequently, they went out and changed their world despite massive resistance and active persecution. The same power is available to us today (so is the resistance and persecution) and we should always be ready to tell folks why we do what we do.
See what you think. Hat tip: Daniel S.
The evangelical world today suffers from apologetic anemia. Despite the fact that Holy Scripture calls believers to give a reason (Greek, apologia) for the hope we have in Christ (1 Pet. 3:15; see also Jude 3), we sadly lack a public voice for truth and reason in the marketplace of ideas. We do not have a strong intellectual presence in popular or academic culture — although some evangelicals influence some areas, such as philosophy and politics, more than others.
The reasons for this anemia are multidimensional and complex. Three recent books explore the lack of a “Christian mind” in contemporary evangelicalism, and I highly recommend them. Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Eerdmans, 1994) explores the historical roots of evangelical anti-intellectualism. Os Guinness’s Fit Bodies, Fat Minds (Baker Books, 1994) discusses some of the historical problems and also outlines what a Christian mind should look like. J. P. Moreland’s Love Your God with All of Your Mind(Navpress, 1997) explains why Christians don’t think theologically, develops a biblical theology of the mind, and offers helpful apologetic arguments and strategies to empower the church intellectually.
My purpose here is briefly to lay out six factors that inhibit apologetic engagement. If these barriers were removed, our apologetic witness could grow into what it should be in Christ.
1. Indifference. Too many Christians don’t seem to care that our culture routinely ridicules Christianity as outdated, irrational, and narrow-minded. They may complain that this “offends’’ them — just as everyone else is complaining that one thing or another “offends” them — but they do little to counteract the charges by offering a defense of the Christian worldview in a variety of settings.