Okay… so about 5 months have ticked away very quickly and I wasn’t able to do near as much as I’d have liked.  But as I said I would, and thus far have not followed through with, I’ll be writing here as we go through our series.  Due in part to the small number of responses I got, and even more so due to the fact that I found a good course, I decided to use a christian apologetic course as the outline for this series.  To that, I’ll add content that I find relevant.

This post is mostly for people who consider themselves Christian.  If that is not you, it will at best be irrelevant to you, and at worst only mildly resembling English.  If you are an English speaking Christian and this post still barely appears to be a language you’re familiar with… sorry… I’m just a dumb ex-jock. :-)   Feel free to use the comments to ask for clarity.

Before I get to any arguments or evidence, it seems important to cover why we should even bother studying this stuff.  Why is it important to be able to answer the “difficult” yet valid questions that people ask, or more likely challenge, us about our faith?  Unfortunately, many Christians think that “the bible says so” is a sufficient answer to a nonbeliever’s questions.  So my hope is to encourage you guys(who are followers of Jesus) to dig a little deeper and care enough about your friends and family, who have not put their trust in Jesus, to be ready and willing to answer at least some of the most common objections to our faith.  Also, if you don’t know something, don’t fudge some lame answer! “I don’t know but I can find out and get back to you,” is fine.  Nobody knows everything, as the saying(badly paraphrased) goes, we all just differ in our areas of ignorance.  Just make sure you do get back to them.

Apologetic: The third definition is what we’re talking about.

3. Serving as or containing a formal justification or defense: an apologetic treatise on church doctrine.

A solid Biblical reason for why we should put forth the effort to study apologetics, can be taken from the response Jesus gave to the pharisees, when one of them asked, which was the great commandment(Matt 22:34-40).

1)  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.

Although the amount of ridiculous nonsense that many Christians buy into may seem to suggest it, there is no need for a brainectomy to be a follower of Jesus.  I would suggest that you cannot love the Lord with all your mind, until you’ve personally wrestled with the difficult questions that are raised in regards to Jesus.  It is when we really start digging into the facts of science, archeology, history and other areas of study and how they relate to the Bible that we begin to see what an amazing Creator and Redeemer we have.  With this sense of wonder, we can then appreciate the unbelievable thing He did for us on the cross.

2) …and love your neighbor as yourself.

Honestly, this is still something I struggle with myself, but we should be busy sharing the Gospel with people we come in contact with.  If you care enough about them to do that, then it only makes sense to want to be able to remove as many intellectual stumbling blocks as possible, that might be keeping them from putting their trust in Jesus.  Having spent the time to think/study through difficult issues yourself, and then thinking through how to explain what you’ve learned to others, gives you a (in a sense) tangible (meta-physically tangible, if that is possible) way to love your neighbor.

And most importantly, we are commanded to in scripture.

1 Peter 3:15
But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give an answer(apologia) to anyone who asks a reason for the hope that is in you, in meekness and fear.

“Why do you believe Jesus is God?”
Umm because the bible says so…
“Why do you believe what the bible says?”
Umm cause my mommy told me to…

Not gonna cut it…

God commands us to be ready because He loves people.  And because we love Him, we need to do all we can to help people become reconciled with Him(2 Cor 5).

End of the day, Jesus can reach whoever, whenever and however He wants to, but normally He chooses to use us as the instrument.  So…be a well tuned instrument.

Next post will be covering 4 common misconceptions people have about Christianity.  The “church” has caused a lot of confusion about what Christianity is.  So, by the grace of God, I’ll be able to provide a little clarity.

God, please forgive me of my complacency and give me the desire, that You have, for all people to be reconciled to You.  You tell us that You will ‘that none would be lost.’  Lord please put a burning fire in my heart that makes me willing to love my neighbors, friends, coworkers and family enough to reach out past my insecurities to share Your good news with them, and to ‘be ready’ to answer questions they have about You.

Lord Bless you guys!

jf

RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!


This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 at 4:34 am and is filed under General Discussion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.