Part One: How I Spoiled a Perfect Apologetic Opportunity!

In the late 1970s, while living in San Diego, my wife and I became good friends with neighbors across the street. We had a lot in common: We were about the same age, our kids got along well, we enjoyed playing games and going backpacking together.

The wife, I’ll call here “Cindy,” was a third-generation Christian Scientist. Her husband, “Jeff,” I can best describe as an I-couldn’t-care-less-about-religion secular humanists. At the time, I was pretty much an “Easter Sunday Christian” (that’s normally when I attended church), and, as far as I knew, Christian Science was just another Christian denomination that liked science!

Eventually, both our families moved out of town. We moved to a rural community twenty-five miles away, and Jeff and Cindy moved to Central California. A few years later, however, they returned to the San Diego area.

During the interim between our friends’ move to central California and their return to San Diego, I became a Christian and returned to college, eventually earning a Master of Arts degree Christian Apologetics. So by the time Jeff and Cindy returned to Southern California, I knew that Christian Science was a cult—and I was eager for a confrontation.

The opportunity came one evening when we invited them over for supper. After eating, we went outside to sit on our deck. I immediately unsheathed my apologetic sword and plunged into battle. The result was disastrous.

It wasn’t that I failed to give a good account of myself. With little effort, I cut to shreds Cindy’s erroneous beliefs. I deftly pared her objections to Christianity while skillfully slicing away her defenses of Christian Science. She had no answers to my challenges, no rebuttal to my facts. I did my job, all right. In my mind’s eye, she had to admit that, at best, she was simply deceived by an inane cult, and, at worse, she was a naive buffoon.

She did neither. And we never heard from Cindy and Jeff again.

Now, what went wrong? Obviously, the problem was me. It was a classic case of “winning the battle but loosing the war.” I had all the answers, but that only meant that I was half-trained. What I lacked was gentleness (I Peter 3:15b) and communication skills (2 Tim. 2:24-25). Had I used my apologetic sword properly, I would have pricked Cindy’s conscience so that she would begin to question her religious worldview. But I would have done so gently, careful not to inflect a mortal wound. Instead, I chased her away, bleeding and unconvinced.

My tactic was designed to win the argument, not the soul. I failed to create an environment in which the Holy Spirit was free to convict Cindy of the falsity of Christian Science, while at the same time convince her (and Jeff) of the truth of Christianity.

I share this story to illustrate an important principle of apologetics: Having the knowledge to intellectually combat and defeat non-Christian religions and philosophies is not enough. It’s also necessary to debate these issues and to present the Christian perspective in such a way that unbelievers will listen and understand.

Teaching this is the purpose of my new series of blog articles, titled “Engaging the Closed Minded” (based on my recently out of print book of the same name: Kregel Publications, 1999). It will be a study on how to apply apologetics effectively as a tool for evangelism. I will provide instructions on how to use apologetic data and techniques as an aid to evangelism, and provide practical training on how to shift the “burden of proof” from believers to unbelievers—where it belongs, since they are the ones entertaining untruths.©

Next week we’ll explore the reasons why apologetics is an important component of evangelism, especially in today’s world.