One way to defend the faith is to do the best you can to provide "evidences" for why we should believe in Christianity. Things like the empty tomb, the rapid spread of Christianity, the reliability of the bible, etc...This is called evidential apologetics, and I do believe it has a place.
But another type of apologetics (defending the faith) is called pre-suppositional apologetics. Basically what you try to do here, is to gently show how the unbeliever already believes to some agree, but simply is suppressing that belief (Romans 1). So one would seek to find ways which the unbeliever's beliefs and actions are inconsistent with what they say the believe, and are more representative of what Christians believe.
One example that I've used before is the fact that all people deem human beings more important than animals. This is because God has made us in His image. At some level, everyone does believe this, though not everyone of course profess this. In fact, folks will certainly say-and rightly so-that if there is no God, then there is no way that you can say a person has worth more than an animal, or mosquito for that matter. Human beings don't have an inherit worth because we all come from the same place.
However, no one really lives this way, because at some level, they don't really believe this. I've often said that if a pit bull and person are each fighting for their lives, guess which one will be shot first? The pit bull, because dogs have less value than people. Most likely, even a PETA member would shoot the dog before it killed the person.
Here's a story where this just happened. Unfortunately the dog wasn't shot earlier, or better yet, the dog wasn't the family pet, so the woman wouldn't be in critical condition with the prospect of losing her arm.
Now does this "prove" anything? No it doesn't necessarily "prove" anything. But it is an indication that folks can't really live out a Darwinistic world-view. Folks in some way do believe human beings are in some way created in the image of God and have inherent worth.
One of the things God has been teaching me lately-the Rays 11 game losing streak has been one of the vehicles-is to care less about the outcome of sporting events. Here's an example of some fans going a bit overboard after a loss, seeking retribution against the very player that cost "them" (as though they were on the team) the game. They've not attained to the level of soccer fans yet (they would have killed the poor lad), but certainly display for us a clear picture of hearts worshiping the wrong god.
When something blocks (in this case a fumble) us from getting what we worship (victory in football), we get angry. Sometimes we spray-paint, sometimes we bottle it up. One way to diagnose our idols is to examine what gets us really angry or depressed, regardless of how we act on it (cussing, spray-painting, harboring grudges, etc....). That anger or depression is often a sign that our life-line to the idol is being blocked.
The other day I in church I heard the word preached and found one small part of the message to be very suitable to a specific individual or two in the congregation. So I offered up a quick prayer to the Holy Spirit. I really desired for the parties to be convicted and return to the stream of living water instead of fetching water from broken and empty wells. Was this a wrong thing to do?
You may have heard it said before, "Don't think THEY need to hear this message, because YOU need to hear it."And that is true, but it is only partly true. It is true because I need to hear the gospel and its applications every week. But again, this is far too simplistic.
For instance, if a pastor is preaching on the importance of being regular in corporate worship (which we'll always preach b/c to be among God, His Word, His people is absolutely necessary-you won't grow if all three aren't in place), and someone who doesn't value coming to church hasn't heard this, then we ought to wish, pray for, and follow up with them. Or there could be someone involved in adultery, stealing, lying, and we should pray briefly for them.
Now here's the danger.
The danger in thinking that someone else needs to hear a message is that you can tend to think ONLY someone else needs to hear it, but that YOU don't need to. Even if I'm not literally unfaithful to my wife, I still commit adultery in my heart with lust, and all sin is described in general as spiritual adultery (Ezek 16:2, Matt 12:39, James 4:4). I should pray for myself when I pray for others.
One way to avoid what Jesus called "plank-eye"-at least I think he probably would have been cool with that terminology-is to see our own sin as of equal or greater value (sounds like a coupon doesn't it?). You may not be living in an adulterous relationship, but you do lust-you need prayer as well. You might be regular in worship, but that very often has nothing to do with Jesus-you need prayer as well.
So I think I was right in briefly praying for a specific conviction for a specific party while the word was being preached, because I also prayed for my own heart at the same time. If I had prayed for conviction for that party and NOT my own sin, then I would be guilty of Plank-eye.
So in summary, I believe it is OK to pray for conviction and for the Word to pierce the heart of those in the congregation, provided you also pray for conviction for yourself in that or another area.
I would love to blog about a FSU victory over Miami today, but poor time management and a last second drop precludes me from doing so. Nothing redeeming to speak of about that game, nor the Rays who have dropped 6 straight games.
But I did hear a redeeming interview from the Rays Triple A Durham Bulls (minor league) manager Charlie Montoyo on Saturday. Managing a Triple A franchise involves a special kind of touch, since everyone who is playing for you, doesn't really want to be there. Their goal is to play in the big leagues, not one step below it.
Yet you could tell that the manager really wanted these guys to succeed. Success means advancement for one party, and loss for the other. What I mean is that to success means they no longer play for him and help his team go the Triple A play-offs 3 years in a row. Success means his players getting called up to a more glorious situation than being stuck in Durham.
Still, he found joy in their successes, even though their successes would cost him. That's love. He would be losing not only their relationships, but their skills, and they would receive joy and all of the benefits of playing in the big leagues.
That's the kind of love the gospel can produce in us: instead of jealousy, we begin to rejoice with others in their successes, even when it means loss to us. If ultimately one has already showed us love by taking on great cost in order to see our paramount "success/promotion," we can rejoice with those who rejoice (Romans 12:15).
This minor league manager can teach us a lot about love.
Recently Barna did a study on small churches vs big churches in regards to how orthodox each side really is. His results revealed mega-church members had more orthodox professions of the faith. However, here's an interesting blog post responding to the Barna study (from the pastor of a healthy small town church which has had huge affects on its community). In my opinion, Barna clearly has biases (house church), and I've heard him say he's really not a huge fan of the church in general. I think they really come out to play here, and this small town Baptist church pastor Chuck Warnock definitely agrees. Of course he posted first about this study, so I guess I'm the one agreeing with him.
We just finished up a video debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox in our community group. I asked everyone to think of at least one positive thing about both the atheist and the Christian. Fortunately we were able to generate a lot of positive things about Dawkins instead of just blowing him off because ultimately we weren't "pulling" for him (though he did have better arguments). It was a helpful exercise for our group to affirm what we could, before critiquing what we couldn't. We all concluded that Lennox probably would have been more affective if he adopted this approach.
Last week Amy and Connar spent a week in Virginia with her family. Here's a little snippet of what I missed while staying in Bradenton. Watching this makes me feel, just a little bit, like I was there. Connar dares to take on his cousin Ryan in an age appropriate U.F.C., 2 minute match for the ages. Check it out.
One way to defend the faith is to do the best you can to provide "evidences" for why we should believe in Christianity. Things like the empty tomb, the rapid spread of Christianity, the reliability of the bible, etc...This is called evidential apologetics, and I do believe it has a place.
