So You Wanna be an Apologist
Sep. 30 2006
My apologetics should have started with an apology. Sometimes you get revelations like this sitting in a coffeeshop arguing with your friends.
I love apologetics, mostly because I love arguing, so when I heard that an apologist of another faith was coming to town, I couldn’t pass it up. Two of my apologetics loving friends, Bobby and Tim, came along too.
For the past two hours we heard this apologist explain with a kind smile how he is right and Christians are wrong. Especially those that believe in evangelical theology, poor misinformed people. Well, as a poor misinformed person, I was pretty mad.
Bobby could barely sit through the presentation without groaning and shifting his football player frame in the wooden pews. Tim kept wishing there would be a time for questions while he tapped his pencil furiously on his leg. I sat there picking apart the arguments in my mind and trying to get my computer to boot up so I could rip the arguments apart on my blog. It was a long two hours.
Afterwards, we barely made it into the coffeeshop before we started arguing over each other. We all wanted to give our top 500 reasons why almost everything the apologist said was wrong. We all want desperately to be right. I, more than anyone.
I’m sitting sipping a latte and steaming inside and that’s when it hits me. I stop talking and sit quietly, hoping the thought goes away. It doesn’t.
After a few minutes everyone at the table runs out of breath and sinks back into their chairs. I say, kind of softly, “So here’s what I’ve been thinking...”
“While we’ve been talking about this, and even during the presentation, I kept having this thought: ‘Why am I getting so mad?’ I thought it was because I felt like the guy was attacking the truth or something. But I’m not so sure.”
The words are anything but easy to say. Even while I’m saying them I’m still arguing with myself.
“I think I was mad because this guy had wounded my pride. He told me I wasn’t right, and I love being right. I seriously didn’t care about any of the people in the room. There was no love in my response, no concern for their salvation. I didn’t care about God’s glory or the integrity of his word. I just desperately wanted to be right, and wanted everyone else to know it.”
“Eeeeeee"… Bobby says as he sinks back into his chair, “Why’d you have to bring love and compassion into this?”, he says half-joking. “Really man, what you described is totally what I was thinking.”
I’m glad I’m not the only one. But still, I realize that I’d rather hide my sin under the guise that I’m “contending for the truth” and justify my sinful anger that way. It’s so much simpler and less painful.
Before I walked in the room to check the apologist’s theology, I should have checked my own heart. Several people in my family believe exactly what the apologist was explaining, but as I listened I wasn’t concerned for them at all. Sadly, my sinful tendency is to want to be proven right more than I want my family to know Jesus.
My apologetics should have started with repenting of my own sinful arrogance. It really is crucial for us to defend our faith. But our defense should never be given in arrogance and should be motivated by love.
“I’m realizing that I have to go back to what we learned at Na”, Tim says. “I need a humble orthodoxy, not an arrogant orthodoxy, not an orthodoxy that lacks compassion for those lost around us.”
A Humble Orthodoxy…