Advent Apologetics Day #11 – Is It Suppose To Hurt?
Modern apologetics spends more time defending the historic Christian faith than demonstrating hope in the present or expressing a future confidence.
An advent apologetic sometimes needs to ask “Where does it hurt?”
A well reasoned logic, an attempt to rationalize the pain of others, or defense of the tenets of one’s faith, does little to acknowledge or alleviate the hurt. In fact, much of modern-day apologetics causes unnecessary and untimely hurt. It’s often glossed over by the kurt and insensitive philosophy “The Truth Hurts.” It can be devastatingly deceptive to tell a truth at the wrong time. The truth, spoken at the wrong time or in the wrong context becomes like a manipulative lie.
C.S. Lewis once said, “We accept the claims of Christ because they make sense and then abandon them when a painful or confusing situation causes us to be overcome by feelings of fear or guilt.”
Struggle in apologetics is often thought of as the frustration or inability to convince the other party of their error. These thoughts and others like it are shameful. An Advent Apologetic, is one that is familiar with real struggle and is willing to join others in it.
Most of us, if we’ll admit it, do not trust God in times of struggle because we really don’t trust God when things are going well. We develop our faith arguments to cover up our own frailty and then foist them on others to make ourselves feel better.
Apologetics is about hope, and not hoping you’ll be able to win arguments. Advent Apologetics is benevolent. But again, as C.S. Lewis has said, ““Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment.”
An Advent Apologetic based in love is not rude, does not irritate, and does not portray resentfulness. 1 Corinthians 13:5
Our Advent Apologetics, in part, is about feeding the poor, a demonstrable hope.
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