This is not how it has to be though.
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A bit along that same vein of thought that Mark already raises above, here is yet another unflattering form or spectre that apologetics took for me as I listened to another chapter of an audio book autobiography last night.
In the account, the author describes (in almost detached and casual terms) being raped. It was a shocking account (to me) almost as much for the obvious fact that the story-teller had obviously come to terms with the experience (at least enough so) that she could speak almost sympathetically about her attacker/rapist, noting how she could sense the fear and doubt and hurt in that young man’s life. People don’t normally speak of their attackers in such humanizing terms. So while the reader (who, through their protagonist feels enraged and freshly attacked - and is quite ready to mentally bash in the head of the demonic assailant) while the reader feels all that anger fresh and hot, the writer has apparently moved far enough past that experience to not be so driven by all that pain any more.
What does this have to do with apologetics? It set me thinking how cheap all our argumentation and discussions above would be if a well-intentioned apologist started in on somebody who had lived through such abuse. If somebody like me (the worst thing I can think of that’s ever been done to me is maybe having a bicycle stolen - or apart from that maybe my feelings have been hurt by rude people here or there) - if somebody like me ever started preaching “the need to forgive” to somebody like her, who has been a rape victim, it would be like the guy who forgave someone a $10 debt telling someone else of their need to forgive a million dollar debt. It would ring hollow in the extreme. Yes - we can point to Christ who knows all about what it feels like to be tortured and murdered. And, yes, he could pray for his enemies even while they were still doing it to him! But that’s not our own experience - most of us. At least not yet in my case, and nor do I look for it ever to be or to wish such treatment for myself or anyone else. If I had endured such things, I can imagine that all the pious words and intentions we discuss here - even if arranged into some allegedly logical and unassailable glory, - all that would just fade into inconsequential tripe when brought before the hot fires of such horrific experience. I shouldn’t wonder if veterans of intense combat situations or families trying to stay alive in war-torn areas also would have a similar view. Those of us ‘softies’ who’ve never faced that kind of evil - what do we know about what such a wounded person needs?
In the case of the rape victim, I can only speculate that the only thing to offer is a listening ear backed by unconditional love, no matter where they are in their ability to live with or forgive (or not) what’s been done to them. I was prepared in my ignorance to think of the above mentioned author as being a non-religious person - just because that had been my impression of her earlier (I haven’t yet finished her book). From wikipedia I see that she has been (still is for all I would know) a practicing Catholic. So she presumably does embrace or even draw at least some strength from her life of faith, I should hope.
But regardless of what we (or she herself) may say about the nominality of the part that formal religion has played in her life, her experience with the worst of what our humanity has to throw at her is where the rubber truly meets the road. Can something simultaneously be hell and yet also a sacred ground? A ground far beyond and above where our mere words and doctrinal squabbles can reach?
My hope - and here is the positive possibility of all apologitics for me (from the likes of C.S. Lewis and similar authors) is that some future glory becomes so overwhelmingly real for all of us, that even all our most horrific evil experiences, in their own turn, are finally shown to be insiginificant in comparison, that we face ahead to the joy set before us, with nary a thought of the evil that for some would have loomed so dominatingly large against everything else of life. To live into that hope, and its downpayments that we are called to share and enjoy now … now that is an apologetic that inspires my enthusiasm.
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Like theology, I think apologetics is a mixed bag. I used to be (long ago) of the type that we can prove the gospels. Test everything, always be prepared to give a reason (meaning evidence why the Bible is true) etc. I don’t quite think faith works like that and I reverted back at once point to thinking apologetics was useless (swung too far in the opposite direction). It has its value and purpose. The problem is most apologetics (historical) is just very bad.
I know some benefit from Bible defending apologetics but I think some are also put off by it the way thousands of errors are harmonized really just doesn’t look good at all. It just sets off BS meters as it should.
I do think Christians need to be scientists, philosophers, historians, etc…we can’t just let all these institutions be dominated by pure secularism. This would hinder the gospel the world over.
I think the prime mover argument of Aristotle is spot on. Edward Feser’s treatment of this in his book convinced me. I think the apparent fine-tuning of physical constants in our universe is also very much worth discussing. I think morality, meaning and purpose are also worth discussing. On a historical level we can show that Jesus was crucified and that some of his earliest followers, shortly after his death, believed He rose from the dead. Beyond that there is no real proof. Just our personal experiences with God. The Gospel serves to mediate the sacred.
I can’t prove to you the deep feeling of forgiveness and joy I have because of Jesus. Just like I can’t prove to you I love my wife and how she is the most important thing in the world to me. I can only hope my actions illustrate both of those and others see them.
You don’t prove God to someone in this fashion when God is the light by which you view all things in life.
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But that would not be apologetics.
I do not see apologetics as enforcing specific view points. I see it as explaining them and that is the difference between dogmatism and apologetics. I can explain what forgiveness is without making it some sort of burden of obligation.
Richard
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The blog’s author where those bullet points came from also agrees with that point.
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So noted. Yeah - I wasn’t trying to weigh in on what all is or isn’t included in ‘apologetics’. Other than that I do think that an apologetic (broadly defined) should include how we are with others in addition to what sorts of things we may purport to try to teach them about God or theology. And perhaps that wouldn’t be included in some technical definition of ‘apologetics’ - in which case I would say, so much the worse for apologetics. If it must be defined in such a way as to lose some of its best parts (to my mind) then what’s left is indeed a lesser thing than what I imagine it could or should be.
[and of course, nor am I putting some teaching about forgiveness forward as being “the apologetic” of the Christian (although one could do a lot worse - If anything or any commandment or ‘work’, seemingly apart from Christ himself was put forward as some sort of ‘work’ necessary for salvation, then forgiveness would probably be it.) But I’m not putting that forward as such here. I was just using it as an example of a way in which some may be deeply repelled by a very core Christian teaching for very understandable reasons.
‘What!? Not only are you telling someone they need to forgive their abuser, but you’re also asking them to imagine Jesus forgiving their abuser and welcoming him into the very paradise that - till now - they had thought might be a paradise for the victims who so need it!?’
It’s a miracle that the Kingdom of God would have any citizens at all! But yeah - forgiveness is just one challenging teaching among many. If some were finding belief hard, it may be child’s play compared to what forgiveness entails.]
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I think that the point I am trying to make is that faith comes from within rather than imposed from without.
If you tell someone they are a sinner it puts their backs up. The automatic reaction is either “no I am not” or to just dismiss the whole idea, but if you can teach what sin is and how it fits into life then they are more likely to “convict” themselves. IOW you give them the information to reach the conclusion you want without telling them what the conclusion should be.
Does that make any sense?
Richard
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I think this is probably true. How would you see this happening?
Oh ok, nice. I agree though, apologetics isn’t the “final blow” or “converter” of people when coming to Christianity (depending on the person of course), It can very much help strengthen faith (It does for me at least).
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It would depend on the definition of “hell” and the definition of “sacred” I guess. They seem to be inherently contradictory though. I don’t know that “sacred hell” would be anything more than a “square circle”
I used to be big into apologetics. Then it felt like either:
- Talking in circles to my “opponent” who had no intention of changing his/her mind.
- Saying things that Christians might not understand, but it would make them feel more confident about their faith.
The best justification I heard for apologetics comes from Victor Shepherd…something like, at its best, it removes barriers to faith. Still worth doing, but doesn’t always do what some people expect it to do.
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Very well put.
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- There had better be: I tell my atheist kin and acquaintances: After death in this world, there’s only life in Heaven, unless of course you don’t want to be there. Then it’s going to be your Hell.
That;s something I got from C.S. Lewis’ in the last book of Narnia.:
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- As others have noticed, the distinction between William Lane Craig’s and Malcolm X’s versions of “Intellectual price tags” is pretty big. WLC’s is worth coins of copper; Malcolm X’s coins of silver. But the price tag of Christ and the faithful were their flesh and blood lives.
- That, in my opinion, is why their price tags were the most valuable. Words and talk are cheap compared to flesh and blood.
- Inspired by the words of WLC? Great! The lives of the Martyrs are even more inspiring to me. It’s also why The Shroud is so valuable to me: It sums up the life, crucifixion, and death of those faithful in this world, and their reward in the world to come.
- Jerzy Popiełuszko
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My background “thought” on this (to the extent that I was thinking about it at all) was that wherever the most important moments of your life are including moments of most horrific suffering, God must be especially there. Even if in that moment our cry is “My God, My God, why …”
Maybe more later. Am trying to do this on my phone at the moment.
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Sounds all too familiar! Interestingly perhaps the toughest task for me was on one of the occasions when I was asked to preach and thus had to write a sermon. Sermons by their nature tend to be a mix of objective and subjective; I’d rather do objective, I can manage subjective, but the mix . . . .
I’ve long had that problem. I’ve decided that if I ever get the chance to send a message back to my much younger self one item it would include would be “Get a dog, talk to him!” because both Bammer and now Knox have pulled me out of my shell a lot! (Another item would be, “Go on in grad school and get those degrees you thought about!”)
“Papa, I like your chair. I keep it.”
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So intuition is equivalent to knowing? And faith is more rational than rational thought?
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Do you think it’s possible to find sacred ground while we’re here on Earth as human beings? Or do we have to die before we can start healing our experiences of hell?
If our sacred ground doesn’t exist here and now in God’s material creation, then the concept entirely loses its meaning I think. As I understand ‘sacredness’ or the whole concept of ‘temple’ or ‘tabernacle’ - these holy places are where heaven and earth intersect (drawing on N.T. Wright). As we pray to God “may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven…”, we are supposed to be agents of that kingdom’s advance, or holy temples now ourselves. Places where people could flee to, to hear of and find God. Now that all sounds pretty high and pious to most of us most of the time, I suppose - maybe echoes of George MacDonald as he sits at Christ’s feet and invites others to do the same.
But my thought there was also influenced by another writer - a contemporary psychologist I believe, whose name I can’t remember and can’t find at the moment. And he had a list of observations about the spiritual life (was it ten of them?) … an early one of which was to this effect: Wherever you are most engaged with life - those sorts of things that excite and enthuse you, animate you - that really get you out of bed in the morning - God is in the midst of that with you! I remember receiving that thought as a breath of fresh air against our sometimes prevailing dread that “If I like it, then God must want me to go in the opposite direction - whatever I don’t want to do, those must surely be all the things God would want for me then. Whatever is hardest and most hateful to me.” This latter attitude may be understandable when one has marinated long in the challenge of: “you must pick up your cross and follow me.” And yet to see only that in a message of faith is wrong, and it makes it sound as if God is only there to rob my life of any joy. But this reassurrance affirms that whatever it is you’re in to (short of just being evil I’m sure), God is right there in your passion for that thing - maybe your passion even being a gift straight from God! A place where God meets you.
Of course, there are also the points where our lives seem to intersect with hell itself too. And while that may seem to be exactly the opposite of ‘temple’ or ‘sacred’, I’m suggesting otherwise. If we are prone to forget God during high points of our lives, then it is at our lowest and most desperate points where all that distraction is finally stripped away from us and we are left with “nothing but …”. So in that sense, (that it’s not at the top of my ladder of ambition where I’ll finally find God, but rather at the bottom of it where I eventually tumble to instead) - this suggests to me that sacred ground for me may be there. What for me in the moment probably seems more like hell. We don’t see it that way at the time of course. We are much too busy feeling entirely foresaken. But my hope that I live into cannot ignore that part either. It may be my best point of contact - my best hope of relationship with my fellow humans and therefore with God too. Think about it - who would you most want to spend time around at a social occassion; someone who’s at the top of their game right now and full of themselves with their personal success? Or someone who can personally identify with all the failure or points of despair that you struggle with? Okay - yeah - the latter person may not be a barrel of laughs to be around either if it’s entertainment you’re looking for. But the point is, if it’s deeper relationship you crave, then pride (on your part or theirs) is a barrier to anything like that and humility is the fertile soil that will nourish it.
That’s what I had in mind in thinking of hell as sacred or holy ground.
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Very nice. Thank you.
Since this is a thread about apologetics, how do you think the rapid bleeding of the church might be affected if the church shifted its focus towards this kind of message? Do you see any fertile soil for the continuation – even growth – of the church in a shared journey of finding sacred ground?
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