apologetics Resolving Doubts. Renewing Purpose. Reasons for God

How To Answer Your Friends’ Questions

In this post I am going to teach you a process that will let you answer your friends’ questions. Seriously. You can do this.

Before we begin, though, we need to recognize a more general point. Whenever we decide to learn something new, there’s a three-step process:

Decide that the new skill is worth learning.
Overcome our initial fears of not being good at the new skill.
Become competent at the new skill.

When it comes to apologetics, I have talked to hundreds of people who buy into #1. “Yes, apologetics is a skill worth learning. It would be amazing to be able to answer my friends’ questions. I would really like to be able to do that.”

Lessons from the Alex Rosenberg – William Lane Craig Debate

On February 1, Purdue University, in partnership with Biola University, hosted a debate between Dr. Alex Rosenberg and Dr. William Lane Craig, on the topic “Is Faith in God Reasonable?” You can already find audio of the debate and a summary of the debate online. The video can be watched at the bottom of this post.

I think there are a few valuable lessons from the debate:

Apologetics Is Important

Throughout the debate, Dr. Rosenberg presented a wide variety of terrible arguments.

What the Apostle Paul Can Teach Us About Evangelism

The Apostle Paul led an amazing life. It seems that everything he did somehow advanced the gospel. Even when he persecuted the church, dragging men and women into prison, and oversaw the martyrdom of Stephen, we learn that “those who were scattered went about preaching the word” (Acts 8:4)!

Today, however, I want to look at how the Apostle Paul intentionally spread the good news about Jesus. In particular, I want to give specific attention to the time he was on trial before Festus the Governor of Judea, King Herod Agrippa II, and Bernice the sister of King Agrippa. Also present for this speech were the military tribunes and the prominent city leaders.

Pastors: Six Easy Ways To Add Apologetics To Your Sermons

Many pastors would like to include apologetics in their preaching and teaching. Why?

Because they know that people in the pew are starving for reasons to believe in Christianity, struggling with doubts, and hopeful for answers.

They know that nonChristians are listening in, questioning everything, and wondering why they should change their minds about Jesus.

But pastors don’t want to bore people, be overly rationalistic, or lose focus on their main point. And they are busy. So how can pastors add apologetics into their sermons?

Here are six simple, easy-to-implement suggestions for time-crunched pastors.

Reason, Science and Progress: Who Wants it More?

In recent years, many atheists have prominently championed their allegiance to intelligent thought. For instance, there is “The Richard Dawkins Foundation For Reason and Science” and Sam Harris’ book “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason.” Atheists sometimes refer to themselves as “freethinkers” and “brights.”

The public perception that these atheists are working hard to strengthen is the idea that there is a cavernous divide between “faith” and “reason” or between “faith” and “progress.” The strategy is obvious: atheists are to champion their love for reason and progress while highlighting stories of religious people who evidently hate reason and fight for culturally regressive values. Over time, this strategy is intended to further displace religion and develop a far more secular perspective around the world.

Arguments that Hurt

Our experiences, perhaps more than anything else, powerfully shape our lives and our beliefs. There’s a reason “love at first sight” is a cliché, but “love after multiple, rational deductive tests” is not.

If you’ve been hurt by a church or by Christians, you know what I’m talking about.

Early Christian Thinking: Confident Doubt

Let’s go back 1,800 years to one of the earliest Christian apologetic writings. There is a very interesting writing, The Octavius of Minucius Felix, which can be dated to 160-250A.D. In this document, the opponent to Christianity is a man named Caecilius. He is said to speak these words, which are surprisingly similar to what is often said today: