Truth Really Matters

I’m 70 years old now, and have been engaged in 1-2-1 evangelism for most of my adult life.  I’ve tried a lot of approaches over the years, but eventually settled into patterns that I believe are Biblical and, therefore, in sync with the way the Lord Jesus would have me share the Gospel.  I’ve written extensively about this in the Evangelism section of this site and in the free e-books on this site.  The tracts I’ve designed (ThinkTracts.com) display my best attempts at combining different aspects of apologetics with a succinct Gospel challenge.

Yet I still experiment, as I do regularly when I take my grandsons out with me to knock doors in neighborhoods all over our area.  I don’t believe there is a ‘magic bullet’ in Gospel presentations, but I do accept my responsibility for making my best effort in reaching the fellow I’m talking to, all the while asking God for guidance and trusting Him to do the BIG work of touching the conscience and mind, convicting the heart and will.

I recently read Justin Ariel Bailey’s 2021 book, Reimagining Apologetics:  The Beauty of Faith in a Secular Age.  I recommend it with some qualifications, despite some reservations that I’ll summarize at the end of this essay.  So let’s pluck some nuggets . . .

Bailey lists some alternative approaches – truth-oriented apologetics, for example, which focuses on an “appeal to external evidences and rational proofs.”  He cites William Lane Craig who points out that a Christian may know the truth of the Gospel through the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, but demonstrating that truth to the skeptic is another matter.  And so we construct a body of evidences to convince the mind.  Clearly, though, the mind is not enough.  A Biblical model of one made in the image of God includes mind, conscience, memory, emotions, heart, and will.  Mr. Mind is just one of six members of your Board of Directors.

It seems to me there is a huge practical difficulty in executing evidential apologetics (beyond the philosophical difficulties I’ve discussed on this site).  I’ve observed that most Christians abhor the idea of http://kaminakapow.com/wp-json/wp/v2/tags/22 studying and practicing in order to develop the skills to contend for the faith.

A second approach for one who gets frustrated at building evidential cases is to simply proclaim the Gospel and depend on the “church’s communal witness” in day-to-day life.  He calls this church-oriented apologetics.  “This approach seeks to commend the Christian faith as an imaginative whole.  Apologetics is embodied in a revitalized and robust church whose distinctiveness is its most attractive element.”

My experiences in evangelical and fundamentalist churches indicate that many churches like to think of themselves as embodying, or at least striving to fulfill the Great Commission in this way.  They are wrong.  In brief, American churches are filled with members who live pretty much the way the rest of the world lives, ie., no distinctivness, and uniformly fail to train their people to actually talk to lost sinners about their need for salvation.

Bailey’s third route, clearly his preferred approach, “seeks to alert outsiders to the way that their embodied, emotional experience of the world may already bear the marks of divine presence.”  He calls this “the apologetics of authenticity.”  You don’t leave the other two approaches behind, but you weave in ideas that provoke the hearer’s intuition and imagination, connecting the Christian faith to the aesthetic dimension.

I identify with his perspective; appealing to the transcendent may be precisely the tool that resonates with some people.  Beauty in creation is an obvious example.  But in my own young life as an atheist, what really gripped me was the idea of hope, an overwhelming yearning that there must be something more!

Bailey seeks what he calls “a thicker authenticity” that extends beyond factual evidence.  “Apologetics is certainly not less than a defense of the truth of Christianity . . . throughout history apologists have endeavored not merely to show that Christianity is true but also that it is beautiful and good.”  Resonant moral values and demonstrated love may be the most direct paths for conveying truth to the lost.

He suggests that Augustine’s strategy in City of God was to offer “a larger story of the world rooted in an ontology of peace rather than violence.”  This idea – that of worldview ­­– is at the heart of presuppositional apologetics.  Explain and embrace a Biblical worldview with respect to history, science, morality, and love, etc., and this world and our lives within it are tractable.  Life makes sense if and only if we see ourselves as God’s creation, as image-bearers and yet sinners, fallen, broken, in need of redemption and, once we’re born again, with a life’s purpose centered in the Great Commission.  In such light the pervasive distractions of politics, success in business, wealth acquisition, and entertainments are seen for the trivialities they really are.

“Christianity is beautiful because it is good, and good because it is true.”  The seeker can enter in at any door and discover all the riches of the house.  “We want non-believers to understand that Christianity is not narrow but a vision that includes everything, restoring the lost beauty of the world.”  This last thought can be expressed by telling the lost fellow that although the world is grossly messed up now, by us, when Jesus comes back He is going to set things right.  If we’re on the right team, we get to be part  of that.

Bailey begins the arguments in his book by emphasizing the value of imagination in belief.  Provoke desire, create a vision in the mind of the hearer.  To do this effectively we must have empathy.  When I’m engaged in a 1-2-1 I’m watching body language, asking questions, listening.  I may or may not do it well, but I’m trying to connect, to suggest an idea that grabs hold, that the Holy Spirit will use in the days following to bring conviction.

Above all, OF COURSE, we must convey the essential truths of sin, judgment, repentance, faith, the cross and the resurrection, the new birth, etc.  It’s not hard to give witness to the fundamentals.  (See my ‘how-to’ essays in the Evangelism section of this site.)  Three minutes is enough to share the essentials.  But you’ve got to try to earn a few extra minutes to provoke curiosity and hope and imagination to leave with the hearer a desire to know more.  Oh my! – Our part is both simple and impossible.  We must pray for wisdom and trust the Lord to walk before us, with us, and after us, staying ‘on the trail’ of the hearer.

Bailey uses the term Uppercase Apologetics for the “evidence-that-demands-a-verdict” approach.  It’s designed to provoke an intellectual obligation to believe.  Lowercase Apologetics, then, is the messy and varied work we must do as we address the real stumbling blocks of the hearer, that he might not even admit to.   “Lowercase apologetics seeks to give outsiders a maximally hospitable space to consider the invitation of faith.”  The hope is to frame the good news “with a force that can be felt.”

We’re working to convey truths that open up a life that makes sense.  Now, I think Bailey goes too far in his description  here, suggesting that a lost sinner feels “the internal call to compose an original life . . .”, while warning that phrases like “follow my heart” and “choose my own adventure” may tempt toward narcissism.

What he should emphasize is that conversion requires a humbling, a repentance that seeks God’s will in the future for all aspects of life, recognizing that we are too sinfully stupid to design our own lives.  The new Christian properly recognizes that God is smarter than he is and that’s a good thing.

On the transcendent aspects of conveying Gospel truth, Bailey cites Marilynne Robinson who notes that we, as humans, “participate in eternal things – justice, truth, compassion, love.  We have a vision of these things we have not arrived at by reason, have rarely learned from experience, have not found in history.  We feel the lack.  Hope leads us toward them.”

Indeed.  So why not find ways to convey these thoughts in even a briefly extended 1-2-1?  Everyone wants hope and meaning.  The idea that God loves us individually even though He knows everything about us should be startling, when considered.  Given the possibility of where to buy prednisone steroid hope, in utter opposition to the hopelessness of an atheistic worldview, or the debilitating uncertainties of false religious systems, shouldn’t the lost fellow take the Christian’s message seriously enough to investigate?  Most people do more research on the internet before they buy a car or a refrigerator than they ever do regarding their eternity.

In C.S. Lewis’ The Weight of Glory, he famously challenges,

“Do you think I am trying to weave a spell?  Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales.  Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them.  And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years.  Almost our whole education has been directed to silencing this shy, persistent inner voice; almost all our modern philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth.”

Bailey suggests an intriguing view of religious history.  Ancient paganism was rife with magic.  The medieval ‘church’ (Roman Catholic Church) offered protection from evil magic through good magic mediated by saints and relics and the Mass.  “By contrast, the Reformers emphasized the need to ‘leap out of the field of magic altogether, and throw yourself on the power of God alone.’”  (I would just modify the thought by pointing out that true Biblical Christianity in the West – The Trail of Blood – was always there.  The Reformers’ principal service was to break the hegemony of the RCC.)

In New Testament Christianity, all people have access to grace, and all places are sacred when communing with God, since all born again believers are priests with direct access.  Bailey observes that medieval worship was centripetal, drawing worshipers toward the Mass, whereas Christian worship is centrifugal, directing energy outward into the lives of believers and those they work to reach.

I’ll note that within evangelicalism and fundamentalism, the program is still largely centripetal, as evidenced by mega-facilities, worship teams, winsome speakers, and activities to fascinate everyone.  Just follow the program and you’re a fine Christian!

Christian practice and experience in the West is oh-so-superficial, oh-so-weak.  There is no resonance!  Bailey defines resonance as “a sense of existential ‘fit’ with a particular vision of the world.”  For the unbeliever it is hard to break the resonance his life has with woke politics or career ambitions or substance abuse or sports fanaticism or partying (alcohol & fornication).  In fact, it is impossible without the work of the Holy Spirit and a cogent and punchy Gospel witness.  Even then, it’s rare.  God has granted each of His image-bearers with spectacularly-free will.  What is the Christian witness to do?  Well, we can’t quit.  We’ve got to try.  Sadly, the churches wherein the Christians reside, do little to create resonance connecting believers to the passion the Lord Jesus has for reaching the lost.

Bailey considers some of the work of the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834).  Schleiermacher was raised by Moravians, ordained in a Reformed church, and influenced by the German Romantic movement.  He argued that the essence of Christianity was not rooted in metaphysics or morality, but in a consciousness of the eternal.  He rebuked the Romantic “cultured despisers of religion” who rejected the Gospel as irrational and irrelevant.  Friedrich worked to show that man’s love of natural beauty and artistic creation were strong evidences of gifts from God, “an irrefutable sense or hunger for the infinite.”  The transcendent has no place in a materialistic worldview.

He goes on to argue that prophetic ministry is to make others feel this intuition that the universe is more than can be seen.  And so we ought to minister not just from pulpits and street corners, (Bailey) “but from the pens and brushes of writers and artists, who excel at giving us images and stories that resonate with our intuitive sense of our place in the world.”  I’m surprised that Bailey does not mention the powerful books and essays penned by Francis A. Schaeffer on this very point.

I’ll comment that my own skills in artistic imagery are woeful, and so I eagerly enlist the help of a professional graphic artist, and occasionally one of my grandsons, in developing the imagery for the tracts I design.  The historic success of Chick Publications’ comic book tracts are wonderful examples, and continue to be used prolifically in poor countries where fewer people are spoiled by the imagery Americans enjoy on laptops and smartphones.

Bailey:  “Perhaps truth-oriented apologists have it backwards.  Perhaps it is truth that provides the final ‘push’ into belief once the imagination is already captivated by the goodness and beauty of the Christ.”  Additionally, Bailey asserts that one’s search for meaning is primarily about imagination in the aesthetic realm, and only secondarily for the intellect.  Could be.

Novelist George MacDonald is cited regarding the temptation to win arguments using apologetics.  “When a man reasons for victory and not for the truth in the other soul, he has just one ally – the devil.  The defeat of the intellect is not the object of fighting with the sword of the Spirit, but rather the acceptance of the heart.”

Bailey gives us an excellent discussion of exploring apologetics through MacDonald’s fictional characters.  For example, surgeon Paul Faber is an atheist whose dedicated service to humanity should put him in contact with the transcendent – with God – in his strong desire to love his neighbor, but pride deludes him into self-satisfaction as he congratulates himself on his benevolence.

MacDonald makes clear that Faber is not as good as he thinks and that God is far better than Faber believes.  Faber’s Christian friend, Thomas Wingfold, decides not to answer Faber’s skeptical criticisms directly, but rather probes the roots of his objections.  Faber’s humane version of atheism “veiled the pride behind it all, the pride namely of an unhealthy conscious individuality, the pride of self as self, which makes a man the center of his universe.”

When a young, bereaved husband expresses his submission to God’s will in front of Faber, the surgeon scoffs at the existence of such a God, whereupon the young man “turned white as death.”  Hearing about this, Wingfold rebukes Faber:  “You were taking from him his only hope of seeing her again.”

Remember, hope is one of the ‘big three’:  faith, hope, & charity.  For me, as a young atheist, hope was the biggest of the big three.  Hope is what I craved, but hope had to be grounded in reality.  And so I searched out God’s reality and found an assured hope, grounded in God’s word.  Hope for the future infuses our soul.  The hope to live again with our loved ones is sourced in God.

Knowing that the soul we witness to is kin to our soul, we should use this in 1-2-1 evangelism.  I often tell someone who is a husband and father that his family’s salvation depends on him repenting and coming to Christ.  Only then can he work to save his family, and save them for eternity.  Let this thought work in his heart.

Bailey reminds us that if there is no one to turn to in the midst of suffering, then there is no one to thank for the joys of life.  Also, “Materialism suffers from a profound inability to account for beauty and . . . meaningless beauty also entails meaningless barbarity.”

MacDonald writes his novels to stir readers “to find a God worthy of belief, one whose presence accounts not just for truth and goodness but also for beauty.”

How is this possible?  How can this work?  This is what it means for us to be made in the image of God.  God has wired our characters to recognize truth and beauty, to desire justice, to honestly confess our need for mercy, and to recognize the light of Gospel truth . . . if we choose to.  God gives us spectacularly-free will.  God’s family adopts and embraces only volunteers.

It is central that we remember and remind those we witness to, that the Lord Jesus Christ, a person, is the source and embodiment of truth, love, and beauty.  See John 17:3.  This is how to know God.  Once you know Him, you cannot be dissuaded.  How could someone convince me that my wife does not exist?  How much less could someone convince me to return to atheism or the false religion in which I was raised?

Bailey’s theme is that our job, as evangelist, is to awaken what is already there inside each lost image-bearer.  We certainly must use the law, the commandments to convict the conscience of sin – everyone knows he is guilty of offending God and harming others.  I’ve never met a dispassionate atheist who came to his worldview on analytical grounds, and attempts to practice his materialism consistently.  Atheists, rather, are quite visceral in clinging to their religion.  But so also are lost religious people who hold to their works-based systems without confessing how utterly un-righteous their lives are.  We are all but sinners in need of the one and only Saviour.

Marilynne Robinson argues that a Christian vision of the world earns its authority by winning aesthetic assent. “It is discerned by a spirit of recognition just like great poetry.”

I’ve experienced this and I’m sure you have, too.  When confronted with a new and important idea, the realization that it is true and I should act accordingly manifests as something like an inner light / warmth / peace / resonance . . . it suddenly just makes sense, an aesthetic sense.  It doesn’t  come from spreadsheets and probability calculations.  You suddenly just realize that it’s right.  I experienced this even within my physics education.  I didn’t understand or get comfortable with a new idea until it suddenly just made sense.  When it felt right,  it was mine and it was true.

Bailey contrasts the two authors that he analyzes in some depth:  George MacDonald and Marilynne Robinson.  Unlike MacDonald, Robinson is not interested in converting unbelievers.  She writes, “While my thinking is Christian, it has led me to a kind of universalism that precludes any notion of proselytizing.”

Well, then, her thinking is not Christian after all, is it?  Despising the Great Commission and affirming universalism are anti-Christian positions.

Instead, Bailey explains, Robinson targets contemporary ideologies like Darwinism, Marxism, and Freudianism.  She sees them as narrow visions of the world, whose adherents “exclude experiences that do not fit their explanatory filters.”  That’s certainly true.  So why not try to convert them?  Don’t you care?

Apparently, Robinson’s harshest criticisms are reserved for dogmatic atheists and dogmatic Christians.  She despises certainty, assuming that it shuts down dialogue.  In my own experience as a completely committed Christian, I’ve had wonderful dialogues with completely committed atheists, Mormons, Catholics, Muslims, etc.  Consider that the apostle Paul was a completely committed anti-Christian when the Lord Jesus engaged him in dialogue on the road to Damascus.

Those who hate certainty, who can never settle on simple answers to basic questions, are willfully stupid.  There are questions to which you can find answers!  True answers.  Certainly Bailey would agree to this, which makes me wonder why he features Robinson’s work so extensively in the book.

As Bailey begins to conclude his arguments he offers that “imaginative apologetics seeks to arouse confidence that the object of our hope is attainable . . . the best apologists tell stories that are able to baptize the imagination . . . arousing us to seek God’s kingdom.”

But Bailey fails to get specific.  What does this look like in a face-to-face encounter?  When do you include the elements that enable the lost sinner to see what his problem is and how to find the solution?  You’ve got to do far more than stimulate his imagination!

Journalist Mark O’Connell reviewed Robinson’s book Gilead, writing, “She makes an atheist reader like myself capable of identifying with the sense of a fallen world that is filled with pain and sadness but also suffused with divine grace.”  Not good enough!  O’Connell hasn’t moved a millimeter toward salvation.  Rather, he’s found some comfort, perhaps, in what he sees as a spiritual metaphor for a miserable existence on a hopeless Earth.  He’s still a rebel, but may find delusional solace in Robinson’s universalism, just in case God might actually exist.

Bailey finishes weaker than he started, as if executing a brilliant Olympic vault, but failing to stick the landing.  “The answer in our polarizing climate is not armed resistance but cultural renewal:  telling better stories, painting more beautiful pictures, making connections that were previously unimagined.”

No.  Don’t stop there.  Yes, get creative and stir the imagination, but do stick the landing.  Don’t just play sweet and nice with the culture.  Rather, play offense by preaching sin and judgment, rationality, hope, meaning, beauty, forgiveness, peace, joy, and patience . . . and that everything about Biblical Christianity is rooted in history and in reality.  Paint pictures of Biblical families, virtuous businesses, and celebrate the beauty and design in God’s creation while explaining why we live in a fallen world and that redemption must be sought individually.

When witnessing to an unbelieving scientist, for example, find out why he loves science.  Is it symmetry in crystals, or complexity in DNA?  Is it the mathematical beauty of Maxwell’s equations and their solutions or the mystical implications of quantum theory?  Appeal to his desire to know truth and that the only hope he has to find all of truth is to get to know the Author of truth.  Then finish the landing by explaining sin, judgment, etc.  A Christian need not be a scientist himself to make these points.  Whoever the fellow is, find out what resonates and offer hope.

More likely, the lost lady you’re trying to reach has burdens in her marriage, or her job, or her children are in trouble, or life is simple drudgery.  Whatever the problems are, we can empathize and point out that God has solutions or the grace to persevere, but that the real problem is her sins which must be repented from.  Years ago I talked regularly to people outside an urban courthouse.  They all had big problems.  What I worked to convey was that their real problems were bigger than they thought and yet the solution – Jesus – is right here for you, today.  Once you’re part of His family, He will help you with these other small problems.

Finally . . . I would recommend this book only if you’re already thoroughly grounded in presuppositional apologetics and 1-2-1 evangelism along the lines I have described thoroughly in the Evangelism section of this site.  Otherwise, Bailey’s book may simply confuse and distract from the simplicity that is the Great Commission.  I’m concerned that the author, a former pastor and a current professor of theology at Dordt University, seems too little worried about the eternal Hell-bound consequences facing lost sinners if they reject the Gospel.  Employing re-imagined apologetics without ‘sticking the landing’ may prevent a lost fellow from even understanding what the Gospel is, and what his sin problems entail.

The fundamental thesis, though, is sound.  We work to reach mind, heart, and will.  It is not hard to have a basic approach to do just that, and then to add a few tools for use in extended conversations.  But while you’re working to add to the toolbox, don’t forget to just get out there and talk to people.  Anybody that’s too busy to talk, say hi and smile and give them a Gospel tract, just like we did today and every day we leave the house.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com