The Accessibility Of Apologetics

Many people assume or feel (though neither assumptions nor feelings have ultimate epistemological value) that they could never be informed or qualified or intelligent enough to become a serious apologist.  This mindset is fairly prevalent in the church, where apologetics is almost exclusively the domain of the handful of "intellectuals" at any given church and is not assigned significant importance or great visibility by the congregation.  I have known Christians that have even ridiculed and attacked apologetics in defense of their fitheism (belief in God based entirely or mostly on blind faith), yet they must contradict themselves even in this.  They tend to give reasons why using reasons to verify Christianity amounts to a waste of time, but the untrained mind does not notice many basic inconsistencies and flaws in an idea.

Well, every Christians is explicitly commanded to be an apologist, despite their preferences on the matter [1].  I imagine that most people who believe themselves incapable of learning and articulating apologetics would be surprised at their capacity for a clear memory and intellectual understanding.  Yet people are often able to be more rational and insightful than they may think at first.  Several years ago I myself would never have thought that I would invest such a great quantity of my time into studying apologetics or that I would ever learn and retain so much, yet at this point without apologetics I wouldn't even want to be a Christian.  Its presence is dramatic, necessary, and stabilizing.

I think the aversion to apologetics isn't because it is inaccessible to most laypeople, but because people are intellectually lazy or lack curiosity or concern about the only things that reveal the objective meaning of life--knowledge, truth, and divine revelation.  Americans in general would rather check Instagram or squander time conversing about trivial matters than apply their intellects to pursuing the grand enigmas and facts about the universe and existence, and unfortunately the church would generally prefer reciting the same few verses over prioritizing any legitimate theological or philosophical exploration.  When Christians neglect apologetics, the church suffers in every regard.  And the church needs to realize this.

This post may be brief, but it covers a crucial point that I needed to emphasize.


[1].   http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-necessity-of-reason.html