(don’t) stop making sense
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
In case anyone is tempted to mis-interpret my recent posts (1, 2, 3), here is a helpful quote from Dan Kimball (from They Like Jesus, but not the Church):
Some people think that apologetics isn’t useful today; but I think it still is, though only after trust has been built and we have been asked questions … people want to know there’s validity to what I believe, and apologetics has been helpful to me in showing that to them. I believe we need apologetics more than ever today, but we need to know what the current questons are. Sometimes in apologetics we develop detailed answers to questions people in emerging generations aren’t asking.
There seems to be a tendency to interpret post-modernism as a flight from reason. But people still want to know that their beliefs are reasonable; we can’t really live irrationally. But the first barrier is trust, not logical consistency. Going back to the response Curtis Chang received:
“Yeah, well, so what? … Who’s to say that your logic isn’t all made up?”
The fear seems to be that of being conned through logic; once the distrust is overcome there is still a need to show that what we believe makes sense.
It seems to me that this is where Peter is coming from when he says, ‘always be prepared to give an answer for the hope that is within you’ — not trying to argue people to God, but showing that what we believe is well-founded.
Tags: apologetics, Engaging Unbelief (Chang), postmodernism
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