Answering the questions….

In a recent post in which I placed a video from the west wing where the President (played quite brilliantly by Martin Sheen) asks a series of really good questions of a theological nature.

Here’s the thing for most of theologically conservative America…they would be stuck for an answer…and to be honest the questions asked are honest and actually pretty relevant questions that cannot be anwered by the cute quips that many people lob like holy hand-grenades in order fend off the hordes of the theologically inept along with those who are looking for answers but have yet to find them.

In some ways I think there needs to be a revision in the way we do apologetics. For the most part I see 2 schools of thought in how apologetics is to be done:

• We have the pit-bulls who see it as their God-called duty to go after every perceived threat to the faith of the millions and millions of people who name the name of Christ like the ancient knights of old. They are determined to annihilate those enemies of the faith and set them straight on what, and how, they should believe.
• We have the flower children. They are the ones who tell us that we must dialogue with all people and be their friends and try and friend some commonness in order to somehow magically have them to come to Jesus.

I would propose that neither method is Biblical nor are they Christ like.

In my study, and my reading and observation that a lot of apologetics is coming from a Greek secular mindset and presupposes that apologetics is needed in order to win people to Christ. Here is where the supposition becomes faulty….we don’t win people to Christ…the Holy Spirit working through us draws people to himself…all we are is instruments.

Am I saying that apologetics is not needed? No…actually it is needed….the challenge I think we need to begin to deal with is not content…nor method…but finding a middle ground that we may begin to answer and address the questions that are being asked. Questions that are not born out of an academic mind set but out of deep need and hurt. What we fail to comprehend as Christians is that we are no longer living in an age of simplicity. The issues people face are answerable but they cannot be answered with the trite sayings of "if you come to Jesus it will be okay"…yes that statement is true but it fails to answer the questions…like…..

• How can a Holy and Loving God allow my Dad to rape me?
• How can I trust a God who allowed my mommy to beaten up by my daddy?
• If Christianity is true and it works…then why is the divorce rate equal to the non-Christian world?
• If the Bible works…then why are their Christians who are depressed…addicted…angry?

I mean those questions are endless and they cannot be explained by the trite idea that they are avoiding coming to Christ. I think we are ready to make a defense from an intellectual standpoint…but where we are dropping the ball is that we can’t, or don’t want to answer the questions that are coming, not out of intellectual inquiry, but out of a searching and hurting heart.

Are we ready to begin to answer these questions?