Loving Apologists

Love disarms us. It allows the gospel of Christ to be “the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes” (Romans 1:16). Its effect is not limited to cultural barriers.

It saves both Jew and Greek. This can’t be missed. The gospel’s transforming effect demands a truth encounter. On our embrace of truth, by faith, through grace we experience liberating power. This is more than mental assent. It is more than value realignment. It is more than a sentimental sense of God’s love. Here, love opens the door to truth – to true truth, truth that straightens our thinking and alters our behavior. And it does so, as we believe, as we surrender to God by faith, by the power of the gospel, the power of the Holy Spirit working in us.

Apologetics is the art or science, perhaps a bit of both, of defending and articulating faith in a winning, rational manner. At times, we need to become an apologist to lay the groundwork for evangelism. The apologist clears the way, dealing with objections to the faith, attempting, as Schaeffer said, “to give honest answers to honest questions.” But apologists can lose their way and get lost in argumentation and disputing. Healthy apologists keep the goal of evangelism in view. They use apologetics to pave the way for hearing the good news by the unbeliever or the skeptic with major objections satisfied.

Os Guiness declares, “The Scriptures know nothing of an apologetics that has no interest in evangelism.” Remember too, that the terms apologetics and apology – which seem worlds apart – actually share the same etymological root. Apologists can posture in a very dogmatic, bull-dog manner that lacks Christian grace. On the other hand, a simple Christian can offer a sincere apology because they feel that some insensitivity has been done, or that they acted in a less than gracious manner. In doing so they touch some line of truth, lighting it up, so that it glows not only in their heart but in the heart the other. Such demonstrations of love and humility are sometimes more effective at enforcing truth than five-dollar words. The “message of Jesus is both simple enough for a child to paddle in and deep enough for an elephant to swim in.”

Start where the person is, on their ground. Hear their story. It is a mistake to begin with the good news before the potential convert is ready. They need to see that the good news is good – and that is seen in our goodness, our kindness, our listening demeanor, our love. Too much evangelism is an attempt to persuade the unbeliever, hard heart and all. To preach to them, or at them, which usually results in a deaf ear and their turning away. The insensitive evangelist then concludes that they are beyond redemption, not that his approach is faulty.

When hearts and minds are closed, patience and an apologetic approach can answer objections that peak interest and open the heart. First, there are people who are spiritually closed because they are satisfied with a non-Christian faith and a set of non-Christian values. They are contented atheists, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Wiccans and they are not looking elsewhere. They are not hostile to the faith, not typically, just satisfied with their life and closed to the gospel. There is little you can do with this group except pray that God would open a door for the gospel. At times, sometimes miraculously, he does so with quite dramatic results.

Second, another group is closed due to their objections to Christianity. Those objections have inoculated them against believing. For them, faith is unthinkable, untenable. These people often hold a philosophy or world view opposed to authentic Christianity. They are Marxists and Freudians who see faith as an illusion, as wish fulfillment. Or they are logical positivists who simple dismiss Christianity as foolishness. They may be steeped in science, believing that faith is not verifiable and therefore not worth considering. Others, due to a moral commitment to relativism and hedonism simply do not want to believe.

These philosophies always, at some point, overplay their hand. Marxism was caught up short recently in its politically correct theory of intersectionality. The class warfare that was loosed on the nation and ran amuck through schools and government agencies, even corporations, hit a wall with a public backlash. DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) has been put on hold for the moment, but don’t count it dead and out.

Scientism has also suffered a bit of a setback as a handful of first-class scientists have stepped out of the shadows to boldly declare their faith and articulate it in a rational, defensible manner, showing science and faith to be compatible. Others have boldly exited science’s cave declaring that the senses, the testable, cannot be the only means for grasping reality in our world.

Those who live on the continuum of relativism, though they deny absolutes, are careful not to go to the extreme. They relativize the views of others, not their own; the past, not the present; this culture, not that one. Relativism is an escape, “I was born that way… We’re just wired differently… It’s a generational thing… You wouldn’t understand.” On and on. Relativists argue against moral and spiritual absolutes and then retreat to absolutes. Sooner or later, we all have to go home. We all need some fixed, immoveable furniture on which we rest.

Enter the Holy Spirit. God is the great unmasker of lies. He tears down idols. He debunks myths. He presses us into the bare knuckles of truth. When we are determined to resist truth, as in Romans 1, he releases us to the consequences of our own sin. He gives men over, first, to moral depravity. That escalates to emotional illnesses, and finally to mental illness (Rom. 1:24, 26, 28). Here, God allows sin to run its course, to collapse on itself, until there is there is social chaos (Rom. 1:29-31).

Here, men reap the consequences of their behavior. This is the greater judgment, when God stands back and “gives us over to sin,” removing the roadblocks, the signs, “Beware. Cliff ahead. Bridge is out!” Impurity, violating the conscience repeatedly, leads to emotional instability and finally to mental illness. Sin will drive us out of our minds. When the Holy Spirit stands back, we must stand back with him, hoping, praying that a handful will stagger back from the brink of disaster ready to repent and change their way of life. The passage in Romans 1 has its roots in Psalm 81:11-12, “Israel did not obey me. So, I gave them over to the stubbornness of their heart to walk in their own devises.” e He The ten northern tribes were scattered to never return. The two southern tribes were also scattered, and only a remnant returned. What will happen to America if we do not turn back?