In my last article, I developed an argument to show why we still need apologetics. Believing involves both one aspect of the mind and one aspect of the heart, so while some non-Christians will need help more in one aspect than in another, we can’t ignore it either.
So what can we say when we are asked to present the reasons why we believe?
- First.
- I try to show that faith is necessary to doubt Christianity.
- Since any worldview (including secularism and skepticism) is based on assumptions.
- For example.
- The individual who says.
- “I can only believe in something that can be rationally tested.
- “or empirically?you must understand that this.
- In itself.
- Is a statement of faith.
- This? Principle of verification cannot in fact be rationally or empirically proven.
- Making it an assertion or statement.
- Not an argument.
- Besides.
- There are all things you can’t prove rationally or empirically.
- You can’t prove to me that you’re not.
- In fact.
- A butterfly dreaming of being a person.
- (Didn’t you see the Matrix?).
- Of the things you believe in.
- So at least recognize that you have faith.
I usually point out this point from an objection to Christianity, to show that there is already a kind of assumption of faith in his heart. Let us take the example of suffering. Someone will say, “I cannot believe in God, for how could a good God allow so much suffering?”
In other words, they say, “I’m sure there can’t be a good reason for a good God to allow this to happen. ” Seriously? There can be all kinds of good reasons why God allowed something to happen that would cause suffering, despite our inability to understand it. If you have an infinite God big enough to be angry at the suffering of the world, then you also have an infinite God big enough to have reasons beyond your understanding. You have to show people that it takes faith to doubt Christianity. Before his conversion, the argument of C. S. Lewis against God was that the universe seemed too cruel and unfair. But then he wondered: “But how can I get this idea of right and wrong? What did I compare this universe to when I called it unfair? [?] Does atheism turn out to be too simplistic? (Pure and Simple Christianity, Book 2 , Part 1). In the natural world, the strong feed on the weak, and there is nothing wrong with violence. Where does the model come from to say that the human world should not work like this? That the natural world is wrong ? You can only judge suffering as bad if you use a higher standard than this world, a supernatural standard. If there is no God, you have no reason to be upset about this world’s suffering. It just takes faith to be angry with this. world.
You see, gospel-shaped apologetics begin by not telling people what to believe, but by showing them their real problem. In this case, we show secular people that they have fewer guarantees for their assumptions of faith than we do for ours. We must show that faith is needed even to doubt.
British critic A. N. Wilson once an atheist wrote about the loss of his faith when he was young, influenced by British intellectual society, who almost unanimously accepted that only idiots could truly believe in Christianity. In reality, however, he argues, “it is materialistic atheism that is not only a dull creed, but totally irrational. Materialistic atheism affirms that we are just a set of chemical elements; Don’t you have an answer to the question of how you can be able to love, heroism or poetry, if we only walk pieces of meat?
A university evangelist I once heard during the demonstrations against the Vietnam War pressured atheist students to recognize the conflict between their moral sexual relativism and their moral absolutism regarding the international genocide, but they had no answers. If there is no God, everything is permissible, without God we are left without foundation for all that is most important in our lives: human dignity, compassion, justice, is a problem.
Which brings us to the last point, the solution to our problem. At some point, you have to tell the Christian story in a way that addresses the things people love most in their own lives, the things they try to find outside Christianity, and show how Christianity can give them those things. Aladair MacIntyre said this about the apologetic narrative: “The narrative that is able to encompass your rivals will prevail over your rivals, not only to tell your stories as episodes of your own story, but to tell the story of the act of telling your stories as such episodes?Read that sentence again.
There’s a way to tell the gospel that makes people say, “I don’t think that’s true, but I wish it were. “You have to show her beauty and then go back to the reasons. Only then, when you show them that it takes more faith to doubt than to believe in it; when the things you observe in the world are better explained by the Christian narrative of things than by secular narrative; and when they experience a community in which they truly see Christianity embodied in a healthy Christian life and a strong Christian community, many people will believe.
By Tim Keller. © 2012, Redemptive City in the City. Website: www. redeemercitytocity. com. Original: How the Gospel Changes Our Apologetics, Part 2
Translation: VoltemosAoEvangelho. com Original: Tim Keller? How the Gospel Changes Our Apologetics (Part 2)
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