Apologizing for Apologetics

Date Published: 05/04/2009

John Cunyus’ exploration of the question, “why don’t people believe in the God of the Bible?” in his Living Large blog, prompted me to do just a bit more than comment on his observations. I suspect John’s insights are most correct where they are most pointedly uncomfortable. But reading John’s blog took me back to evangelism methods from The Four Spiritual Laws to Evangelism Explosion, to apologists such as Josh McDowell’s Evidence that Demands a Verdict, to scare-em out of hell apocalyptic movies. Not to paint with too broad a brush, but the common thread is to lead (or push) people to an inevitable conclusion, to force a for-or-against Jesus decision. A decision against Jesus (or God) was set up in such as way as to suggest a moral flaw or deficient mind. Maintaining mutual respect in an ongoing dialogue was not the goal.

I am inclined to think that any form of coerced faith is probably not authentic and unlikely to endure, whether the coercion comes in the form of overwhelming intellectual arguments or fear (or even family and cultural norms). In the Gospels Jesus calls people to follow him. He won’t dilute the cost of discipleship, but he never disrespects the one who doesn’t follow. He certainly doesn’t offer people intellectual arguments for why following him is rational.

My own conclusion is that people are loved into faith, not as a method or path to faith but as the experience of having faith. John’s image of the gun-to-the-head-prayers strike me as having less to do with believing in God than in the desperation of the moment. Certainly people have crossed into faith in the midst of traumatic experiences. But given the dangers of daily living, everyone who has survived to adulthood has had plenty of traumatic experience, but that doesn’t lead inexorably to faith.

The Apostle Paul’s discussion of the foolishness of the Gospel and the reverse wisdom of God in 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:16 exposes the ineffectiveness of arguing people into faith. So if people don’t believe because of the rational arguments, they also do not persist in unbelief because the arguments are unconvincing. Apologetics as evangelism is both misguided and ineffective. The value of Christian apologetics is for the confidence and understanding of the believer. This divine wisdom is understood from the inside out, not to get the outside in.

Classic Reformed theology says that only the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit causes someone to believe. Yet, we all experience personal choice and responsibility. Classic Wesleyan theology emphasizes the importance of human will and choice. Yet, John Wesley himself was not convinced by either his theological training or his frightening shipboard storm experience but by his heart “strangely warmed” in a Moravian meeting. This is not a resolution but only an acknowledgement of the conundrum.

I am increasingly wary of the question: “Do you believe in God?” In our post-Enlightenment, now post-modern world, that seems a lot like saying “I am or am not convinced that something (someone) is or is not there, regardless of the evidence either way.” It seems to be to rather abstractly divide people into us and them but make little difference in the way people on either side of the divide actually live, except to point out how foolish the people on the other side are.

While I know that theology matters and matters deeply, and while as a Christian I subscribe to “humble orthodoxy” (to borrow from G. K. Chesterton), my starting point is knowing that I have been encountered by a God who believes in me, which makes a lot more difference than what I believe about God.