Dé Céadaoin, Márta 30, 2005

What do I say?

As I sit here igoring the intellectual banter going back and forth, I've been wishing that I was outside. I can almost see it through the blue-grayish, semi-transperent, this first glorious day of spring. We sit here supposedly discussing the question of whether or not to use apologetics to further Christianity. I say supposedly because we have yet to broach that question, we've discussed what it is to both a greater and lesser degree, we've talked about it's history citing both C.S. Lewis (who I'll write later about) and Francise Shaeffer, and how Christianity must come back into the for ground now. But we've yet to say out rightly whether or not apologetics are necessary to our faith. To a point, by not speaking of why apologetics should not be used we are inadvertently supporting the idea with out outrightly stating it.

Personally I don't think that this is a bad thing. I support apologetics and believe that they have a prominent place in intellectual circles, and in working out the flaws of both Christainity and opposing religions through out the world. There is a point at which we must stand up and say, "You are wrong." While this is necessary it must be done with a great deal of understanding and tacte, with sensitivity to both the good in the religion being rebuffed and the to the culture in which it resides. I think this is where many well meaning christians fall short. We go out with our signs, believing we will "win the world for Christ," but instead of turning people to the idea of christianity we beat them with the idea that they are wrong, worthless scum, that we really shouldn't be taking our time to talk to. People in a world of hoplessness need no help believing that they are powerless, hopless, and worth nothing. We take Calvin's idea of total depravity to far, and try to convince people that they are worth nothing. We forget whose image we are in, we forget that when God created us he looked down and He smiled and said that it was good, a term only ever used to decribe God in the Bible.

So now what? Are apologetics good? Are they bad? Are we as the church simply afraid of reason as a basis for and arument for God? I don't see why we should be. God, the creator of human thought, the creator of reason, is both bound by it, understood with it and completly beyond it. God himself is not necessarily a reaonable being. I have trouble using reason solely to describe and understand God. There is always an aspect of faith, truth be that faith is the more important of the two. That is not to say that we should have a blind faith that is unfounded and unsupported. To the contrary, our faith should be supported by our reason. It's not one or the other it is a combination of both. As we are told by Paul in 1 Corinthians, the three greatest attributes of Christianity are faith, hope, and love. But again as Paul says, the greatest of these is love. We must LIVE our faith out in love for those around us.
A.T.H.

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