I firmly hold that apologetics has a threefold purpose, namely, to defend, affirm and proclaim the gospel message and Christian worldview. As apologists we are about the ministry of shielding the faith from those who attack and attempt to destroy it and we do this by taking arguments against God, the Bible, Jesus, etc., and dismantling them and showing them to pose no credible threat to the truth of the Christian worldview (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). A byproduct of that defense is that it comforts and affirms the faith of believers who see that there are no sustainable objections against their faith which bolsters their confidence. Furthermore in equipping believers with apologetics, even prior to the need to defend their faith, we encourage Christians because they can see that they have really good reasons to believe that Christianity is true. Finally, apologetics actually is not all defensive but also has an offensive side as well. Apologetics is a powerful tool in the hands of an evangelist who presents the gospel and effectively answers questions and objections to the credibility of the Christian faith which leaves the person alone with Jesus and no more smoke screens (1 Peter 3:15).
Yes, I believe apologetics is powerful and vital to a healthy Christianity in this present day. But there is a form of pseudo-apologetics out there today that is, I believe, more dangerous than any objection from a skeptic I’ve ever heard. This pseudo-apologetic methodology is that of making Christianity more palatable to the secular mind. Rather than defending the faith, defending the truth of the word of God, it instead twists and shapes Christianity into something that is more acceptable to the culture. It is the kind of approach that takes away the stumbling block and inserts a comfy pillow. Homosexuality a sin? No, that was just Paul speaking to the culture of his day and out of the bias’ he himself had, that doesn’t apply to you. Or, perhaps, when Paul said “natural” in Romans 1 he meant they gave up what was natural for them personally, not that all homosexuality is wrong but that you have to be true to yourself. Women can’t be pastors? Oh, don’t you worry about that because it was just cultural but today we are more progressive and Paul would never have said that today. The Bible is the inerrant word of God? Well it is a light that leads us towards God’s truth but it was indeed written by fallible men who sometime made mistakes, so you can’t take everything too serious. Adam and Eve were literal people created by God? Well, you know, somewhere along the evolutionary process there evolved the first two true human male and female so they were kind of like Adam and Eve. Jesus rose from the dead? Sure, it was a spiritual resurrection that we too can experience.
Hopefully as you read this you abhor what you are seeing, but the truth is I’ve seen these all before and more like them. An apologetic approach that takes away any part of Christianity that might be offensive to someone’s personal likes and dislikes so as to make Christianity an option for them. However to do this is devoid Christianity of all of its meaning. One of the central tenets of Christianity is that we (you and I) are fundamentally flawed to our core and that what we do and think and believe is out of step with the reality of how God has intended things to be. By necessity the gospel message is offensive to the ears of secular man. What good is it to strip Christianity down to bare bones in order to get people to come under the title “Christian” if in doing so we remove all of that which will lead them to repentance and salvation? (1 Corinthians 1:23-24)
I am deeply burdened by the trend I see within the apologetics community to make Christianity more palatable rather than to be absolutely counter cultural and show the lost why Christianity is true and that they need to change. Some of this drift towards palatability is not as blatant as the things mentioned above, some of it seems more harmless but, as a popular Christian song says, “It’s a slow fade.” If you are an apologist and are reading this, let me just encourage you to fidelity to God’s inerrant word as the sole rule for faith and practice. Please look at your own methodology and approach and scrutinize it yourself and make sure that what you are doing is in step with the authoritative, unchanging, word of God. At no point do we have the right to stop taking what the Bible says seriously so as to make Christianity a more comfortable option for the secular mind. It’s not supposed to be comfortable for them. Jesus is asking them to die and become someone completely different than they now are (Matthew 16:24).
