Issue 1
Apologetics:
A few weeks ago Summit Church pastor JD Greear recounted the story of legendary football coach Vince Lombardi, who began the season by telling a locker room of professional football players “Gentlemen, this is a football.” While I will try to sprinkle some bite-sized apologetics points throughout many of my newsletters, in the spirit of Vince Lombardi I will begin by reviewing a few basics.
Apologetics is based on the Greek word relating to legal defense. Christian apologetics is thus “defending the faith.” Or as 1 Peter 3:15 puts it, “But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.”
The concept of faith is derided by some non-believers, who equate it with “believing something without evidence - or even in spite of contradictory evidence.” Famed atheist Christopher Hitchens described faith as follows: “Faith is the surrender of the mind, it’s the surrender of reason, it’s the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other animals.” This false conception of faith is not totally unreasonable, as it’s easy to cherry pick Bible verses that seem to affirm this definition:
Hebrews 11:1 - Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
John 20:29 - Because you have seen me you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.
However, faith is not about stubbornly clinging to a false belief or ignoring objective evidence. The Bible itself makes clear that our belief is based on objective observations about reality:
2 Peter 1:16, Luke 1:1-4, 1 John 1:1-3, 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 all speak to “you should believe this because we saw it with our own eyes.”
Romans 1: 18-20, Psalm 19:1-4 - The glory of creation makes clear God’s existence, to the point that nobody has an excuse not to believe.
Apologist and author Neil Shenvi notes that the word translated as faith is “trust” or “confidence.” When you board a plane, you can’t have certainty that you will get to your destination safely. Certainty is only possible in mathematical proofs. You didn’t see proof that the pilot is appropriately trained. You didn’t watch the people who built the plane, or the mechanics who maintain it. But you trust, because of evidence that supports that trust, that you will get to where you are going. Faith operates the same way.
On that note, I want to end this section by reminding you that there are no objections to the existence of God, nor the truth of Christianity, that have not been raised before, and thought about by smart believers. If you are struggling with doubts, or caught up by one or more objections to the Christian faith, there are answers available: please work with your community, or your pastor, to seek them out - I’m happy to be such a resource to the best of my ability.
Cultural Insights
One of the more interesting frameworks I’ve seen in the last couple of years is the idea that there have been three distinct “stages” of Christian relationship to society in America. According to the author Aaron Renn, prior to 1994 we lived in “Positive World” where publicly claiming Christianity increased one’s standing and most of society subscribed (publicly) to Christian morality. From 1994 to 2014 we lived in “Neutral World” where Christianity no longer had the same positive connotations, but it was viewed as a neutral choice among many lifestyle choices (vegan, Buddhist, etc.) Since 2014 we have lived in “Negative World” where Christianity is considered a net bad for society.
This is not a perfect categorization: there have obviously been pockets of “negative world” for some time, and there remain pockets of “positive world.” The author also acknowledges that “positive world” does not mean all Christians were treated well (most obviously Black Christians for most of US history) but that in these cases the negative treatment was not because they were Christian.
The primary purpose of his thesis is not to stoke fear or motivate Christians to double-down on seizing power. Rather, the point is to explain current trends in Evangelicalism, and most importantly, to grapple with how to evangelize to the culture given Christianity’s changing position relative to the broader culture. That latter point has sparked a ton of online debate, which I will visit in a future newsletter. But for now, I’ll highlight what I see as two key takeaways the author’s work (some of which is drawn from his later writing):
In the past, you could take for granted that the average American had some passing familiarity with God, Jesus, and Christianity, which you could use as a springboard for evangelism. That is typically no longer the case, which requires some “pre-evangelism” to build up to the point of sharing the gospel.
One of the key fractures in US Evangelicalism right now is between those who think we need to double-down on Neutral-World methods of cultural engagement (exemplified by Tim Keller) and those who think the church needs to be more outspoken and oppositional. In his view, this is exacerbated by the fact that church leadership tends to be in the former camp, while rank-and-file members tend to be in the latter. To be clear, this is not about how the church speaks to issues (nobody is suggesting Christians act out and picks fights) but rather about the overall strategy of engagement (for example, the Summit Church doesn’t hide their stance on LGBTQ issues, but they don’t speak to it that much from the pulpit and definitely don’t dedicate a whole sermon to explicitly speaking out against it).
If you don’t want to read the whole article, this podcast interview, which he recently gave in support of his new book-length treatment of this subject, articulates many of his key points well.