Misdirected Apologetics

I was listening to some Christian radio the other day and the topic was apologetics. The radio host was talking about how Christianity at its core is making a claim about objective truth. It states that there is a God and says that God is described in the Bible. Since when we debate or even just share about God with a non-believer we are trying to tell them about truth, we have to remember that for most people, spiritual experience isn’t good enough. In fact, spiritual experience isn’t good enough even for ourselves because that experience could technically be anything: mass hallucination, heightened adrenaline, swamp gas, even Satan himself. While we have faith in something we can’t see, God has given us evidence to base that faith on.

It was funny though, because after the host talked about that for a while he took some callers, and the first few completely missed the point. They began sharing their spiritual experiences an insisted that they knew it was God just because they knew.

This made me think about apologetics and Christian worldview from another angle. When we talk to people about God, even if we give them a nice logical argument for His existence, many of them will write it off as bigotry or close mindedness. Our apologetics enter their minds and somehow get misdirected. It reminds me of this scene from the movie Thank You for Smoking, which is about a big tobacco PR guy’s time spent teaching his son the ways of the world. (I should warn you that some of the related videos that pop up at the end might be a little unsavory)

Did you get that? When I came upon that scene I thought it was brilliant, not because I wanted to go use that technique on other people, but because it’s such a clear illustration of the way people think about debate, apologetics, and truth. Our culture has gotten the line between opinion and fact all mixed up. If we Christians are going to talk to people about faith and truth, we have to understand the mindset of the people we’re talking to. We have to understand misdirection and get the mind back on track.

I’m not suggesting that good apologetics and redirection of the public mindset will win everyone to Christ. The Gospel message coupled with the internal work of the Holy Spirit is what gets people to believe, but when we speak as fools for Christ it doesn’t mean we have to look like the poor sap in this other clip:

-dwang

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