Apologetics

I wrote this post sometime last week, but I didn’t post it because I wanted to wait until I had written out my thoughts on each of these topics. However I started to write the first follow up and realized that they would be way too long to post. Maybe I will just write them and give links to my opinions on each topic some time in the future. Either way I figured I would still post this one since it is only an intro to something that’s been on my mind for the past couple years. I warn you that this post doesn’t have much to do with my life, but is only some thoughts that I’ve wanted to get down on paper.

So over the past several years I have enjoyed studying Christian apologetics as well as plenty of reading on Christianity in general. My top recommended authors are C.S. Lewis (general), John Eldredge (man’s heart), Lee Strobel (intro to Christian apologetics), Paul Brand (pain and beauty of God’s creation), Philip Yancey (Grace and suffering), and Michael Behe (intelligent design). I was fortunate enough to be raised in a church where your faith was something that you were expected to think about. I’ll never forget when my pastor told me that he was human and could be wrong so when he teaches us something it was our job to make sure that it was consistent with the teachings of the Bible. To a 10 year old boy an adult telling you that it is your responsibility to correct errors by them is pretty exciting. I took this challenge serious and whenever he said something that I wasn’t absolutely sure was consistent I would look into it and try to challenge his statements. This had three major effects on my life: (1) it resulted in me obtaining an intimate knowledge of what the Bible says, (2) it brought to light doubts that I had inside and forced me to take an honest look at them, and (3) it made my faith my own at a young age…I was not spoon feed knowledge that was suppose to be taken at face value. I saw the reality (of coarse I didn’t and still don’t understand it fully) of Christianity.

Now as I’ve grown and matured in my faith I have been more honest with myself and perhaps “critical” of Christianity. Don’t misunderstand “critical” here…what I mean is that I’m so sure of the reality of Christianity that I try to find tough questions that may disprove Christianity. This way I can dig out potential stumbling blocks for others as well as strengthen my own faith as I search of understanding. With my attempts to disprove Christianity I have settled on four levels at which it can be argued against. They are as follows…

1) Why have a god at all? (Atheism vs. Theism)
2) Why can’t there be multiple gods? (Monotheism vs. Polytheism)
3) Is Christianity consistent with the world around us? (Christianity vs. Science)
4) Is Christianity consistent with itself? (Christianity vs. Christianity)

Each of these questions are formed from some basic claim that Christianity makes. (1) Well His name is “I AM”…so we have to back that up. (2) Our claim is not only that a living god exists, but that he is the one and only God that can grant us eternal life in heaven. (3) According to Christianity we are intimately linked with God’s creation. Thus we would expect both our beliefs and our perception of reality to be linked, and that is what we call science (man’s perception of reality from his/her senses). (4) Well this is somewhat obvious…if Christianity made mutually exclusive claims about itself then we would have to conclude that it is non-rational and should be ignored.

As stated above, I won’t be writing a hundred pages explaining my views on each of these questions, but in the future I hope to at least give you links to my thoughts. For now I simply want to point out that if someone wants to argue against Christianity they have to attack at one of these points. Quite often when I’ve gotten into a discussion with someone that wants to refute Christianity the lack of focus in the discussion typically prevents any real explanation to be made of any topic. So my one suggestion here is to try not to answer too many questions if you are in this situation and if you are the one challenging then try to really focus your question (if you have a solid case then limiting the conversation will only make your point clearer to the Christian).

So now that I’ve written this I wonder why anyone would want to read it…not to mention that this seems more like advice then a blog. People don’t read blogs to be given advice. They read to find out weird/interesting details about their friends lives that won’t normally come up in conversation. Then I decided that the only solution to this dilemma is to point out one simply fact…it’s my blog and I’ll post what I want.

The Heart

The heart is a funny thing…I don’t get it. Personally I believe my confusion about it or at least my willingness to ignore it has really done some damage to it. I believe my real problem (or the root of the problem) isn’t from it being hurt by others (although that has happened a few times), but that I’ve been conditioning myself to ignore it. Over the past few years I’ve start to see that I am an extremely emotional person or at least more so than I thought. I always assume that since my reactions to certain things whether good or bad never resulted in an outburst of emotion that I in fact wasn't emotional. However if I'm being honest with myself when things go wrong while little is outwardly shown, inside even small things really rip me apart and major things can cause heartache that will last for a long time.

I believe that some of this (certainly not all) is founded in my youth. I was the youngest and the only boy, which put me in a unique situation. I would worry constantly whether or not when I would copy my sisters if that was something that guys would do. As a result I decided at a rather young age to try to always do the complete opposite of my sisters. One thing that I still remember is the use of lotion…they used it all the time, but I never saw my dad use it. Thus I concluded that it must not be a guy thing, and I should avoid it all costs. My sisters would try to put it on me, and I would fight them to keep it away from me (my resistance only encouraged them to do it more often). After some time they began to ask why I was so afraid of lotion…not wanting to say that I didn’t know if guys could use it, I responded with it gives you cancer.

Anyway so from this time period I also started to think that it was important to not show any emotion because that is what girls do. When I was young I really had to try not to cry or show others that what they did truly hurt my feelings, but now there truly isn’t any effort. I’m almost shocked if my true feelings are shown…it no longer is a desire for me to hide them it just simply is the way I am. This obviously has a rather negative effect on basically every relationship in my life. Friends and family it doesn’t help, but for the most part they have gotten to know me and realize that I’m a good guy with a kind heart. However when it comes to dating I believe this is truly a crippling problem.

You see when your natural instincts are to hide all feelings it tends to prevent the girl from opening up and putting her heart into the relationship. This would be bad if that just kept me from falling for someone, but the real dilemma is that I will fall for her while keeping her at a distance. Then either the potential relationship will simply die and I won’t do anything to prevent it (since I’m emotionally closed off from it) or if I'm really interested I will open up in an attempt to fix things. In the first case that simply has me ruin plenty of potential relationships by draught, while with the second I kill it with a flood. A good relationship will have a gradual progression with a balance of give and take...my two options don't work like that and both result in the killing of the relationship.

Now I look for a resolution to this problem. I do believe that I have come along way towards understanding my heart and being able to be more open and honest with those in my life. Actually two books by John Eldredge (Wild at Heart and Waking the Dead) have really helped me with understanding my own heart and I recommend them to anyone (especially guys). In Wild at Heart he states that …”in the heart of every man is a desperate desire for a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue.” Honestly I think that really does sum up the desires of my heart. Unfortunately he also manages to make a good case for the need to battle for man’s heart before these desires can be realized, which I haven't done since I don't even know my own heart. Right now in my life I don’t see even a focus for any of those three desires in spite of my knowledge that I have them, but I do believe that one day that will change.