Why We Believe

Our age is a secular age. Secular Man can best be described as a train that lays its own tracks. However, modern secular man cannot lay the tracks fast enough, so eventually; the train derails with a very inglorious crash and burn. Secular man knows that secularism does not give to him what he thought it would, but still insists on operating apart from a truly functional fixed and separate (from himself) track (God). Of course, this only leads to existential despair. People everywhere know they are lost. This is reflected in suicide rates among the young and statistics on violent crime.

People today are more efficient sinners. Today substitute answers appear everywhere as communications technology becomes more sophisticated. People seem to have good reasons for rejecting the "good news." So then, what is the Church doing in response?

Well, if you are a liberal church-going person then your motto is something like: "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." After the publication in the 19th Century of Origin of the Species, liberals said that Christianity was evolutionary. Today they claim Christianity is existential: that is, you have your "truth" and I have my "truth" so let's just g-g-et along (apologies to Rodney King). The chameleon of liberalism just sits upon culture. There is no eternal message. Jesus changes as the social problems change. As a result, the secular world becomes indifferent to Christianity and Christ. In John Updike's Rabbit Run secular man does not get anywhere. Rev. Mr. Eccles the clergyman has no answers for him.

Now, if you are a Fundamentalist, you pride yourself in "believing the Bible." Your motto is something like: "If you can't beat 'em, separate from 'em." There is an attempt to protect the believer from the environment. Fundamentalists like rules for their people such as no card playing, no movie going, and just no fun. The non-Christian is made to feel that being a Christian is being someone who does something or gives up things. There is even a linguistic barrier, a special language to distinguish "us" from "them." For example, only English-speaking fundamentalists use the word "fellowship" as a verb. There is a ghetto kind of operation: the fundamentalist is scared of being eaten by the culture.

Well I say BEAT 'EM. The emperor of secularism is stark naked! The secular world may try to put Christianity on trial, but the evidence lies on the side of the Christian faith. Liberals and fundamentalists are both motivated by fear. The way to "beat 'em" is to have a clear apologetic. That doesn't mean that we apologize for being a Christian, but that we arm ourselves with a proper defense of the faith. "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have (1 Peter 3:15 NIV)." How then should we approach apologetics and make use of it in our evangelism? First, we have to answer objections to using apologetics in evangelism because there are some modern Christians who would not have us use apologetics in evangelism at all. These objections to apologetic use in evangelism fall into two camps: the Presuppositionalists (which represent the intellectual objection) and the Pietists (which represent the emotional objection).

Presuppositionalism

Presupposionalists believe that the Fall of mankind eliminates a common ground of positive argument against the unbeliever. Sin makes it impossible for unbelievers to understand arguments in favor of Christianity. The presuppositional approach to apologetics is to undermine the unbelievers’ assumptions about God and the universe and get him to replace these assumptions with a different set of assumptions that support Christianity. But people need to alter their position in the face of evidence. The problem with presuppositionalism is that it doesn't understand what sin really did.

Man is depraved and unable to bridge the gap between God and Man. But Man didn't lose his reasoning power after the Fall. Reason consists of at least induction and deduction. Induction is the gathering of evidence. After the Fall, God said to Adam, "Where are you?" Yet Adam was able to comprehend what God was saying. Sin does not destroy our faculties. Unbelievers CAN discern if the evidence warrants a change in worldview.

Pietism

Pietists generally believe that the Holy Spirit doesn't work through argument. Instead, He works through the Christian's testimony. Pietists do not seem to see that Scripture does not just go the route of testimony, but also brings up evidence (miracles and prophecy). Inner testimony is of limited value. Testimony can be used to testify of the person rather than of Christ! Paul on Mars Hill quoted to the Stoics a poem by Cleanthes (a Stoic). He did not study Stoicism in Rabbinic school, but he took to heart the scripture to "become all things to all people" (1 Corinthians 9:22) and did some conscientious study.

Apologetics as a defense of the "good news" is a species of evangelism. It is the intellectual side of evangelism. To use our "head" as well as our "heart", we must remove objections to the cross. Apologetics and foreign missions are a lot alike: (1) both learn the language; (2) both learn the cultural situation, (3) and finally both zero in on the gospel accordingly. The fundamental objective of apologetics is to bring unbelievers to the offense of the cross. People must make a choice: going their own way or admitting that they cannot save themselves.

Where does the Holy Spirit come in? The Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin, righteousness and judgment. When we seek to remove obstacles, the Holy Spirit is involved and God gets the glory! There is a House of Salvation, larger on the inside than on the outside and its boundaries go to eternity.¹ There is a road of obstructions going up to that house. The Apologist removes obstacles, giving glory to God.

The Bible looks at salvation differently from the inside than from the outside of the House. The prospective believer sees at the door: "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and Be Saved" (A command to act!). He enters into the House but finds on the inside on the wall - Ephesians 2:8, 9 "Salvation is a Gift of God." (God did all the work!) Hyper-Calvinists, who would disallow man's responsibility by believing that God predestines men and women to salvation or damnation, take the sign from inside and put it on the outside. There is no need for evangelism. On the other hand, hyper-Arminians, who see man as entirely responsible for his own salvation, take the sign from outside and put it inside. The believer must get saved and re-saved. The doctrine of predestination is not to be substituted for proclamation. Neither does proclamation take place outside of God's sovereignty. Facts are always more important than systems. Preaching and Apologetics take place outside the House.

Herein lays a fundamental evangelistic technique. We must get the unbeliever to understand that using the kind of reasoning he or she must use in ordinary experience, when applied to the Christian faith, vindicates the Christian faith over against other positions. Bishop Whately did this with the atheist David Hume in the eighteenth century. Hume reasoned that prejudiced people gave the evidence for Jesus and this led him to believe that the Jesus of faith did not exist. Using this same reasoning, Whatley was able to demonstrate that Napoleon didn't exist!² Von Clausewitz (nineteenth century military historian) said this: "We must put the enemy in a position where what you want him to do will be less ghastly than what he wants to do."³ The unbeliever must accept the truth of the Christian faith or have the bottom drop out of his world.