I am doing something a little different for a couple of weeks. I love reading God’s word and studying God’s word in the morning, and while that it true, it is also true that I am in a season of life where I have 30-45 minutes for devotional time in the morning. At the same time, I love reading as well, and I would like to read some books about our great faith. So, for the next few weeks, I am going to be reading a chapter a morning in this book that was recommended to me, “God’s Not Dead: Evidence for God in an Age of Uncertainty”, but Rice Brooks. Apologetics is a favorite topic of mine, so this will be a fun journey. I will journal and comment along the way as I normally do, and I will try to pull takeaways from the reading, as always. I am sure there will be references to scriptures and all of that as well, so we’ll chase things down the rabbit hole and have a good time with it.
Here is the bed rock passage for this book:
15 but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, 16 having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.
We just studied this passage within the last few weeks. We know that Peter was addressing suffering to a group of Christians spread out across what is now Turkey, and that he was urging them to be prepared to account for their faith. Now, I want to be fair - there are people who are gifted apologists and who can stand toe-to-toe with amazingly skilled debaters and skeptics (Tim Keller and Andy Stanley come to mind), but we aren’t called to that. We are called to be reasonably accountable, at least that’s my belief...Peter doesn’t qualify his statement here in 1 Peter 3:15. But, based on everything I have ready, a reasonable level of accountability certainly seems fitting. In fact, we talked a couple of weeks ago, when reading this passage, about a method of discussing what we believe that I think does exactly that.
In this opening section of the book, the introduction and chapter 1, we see a few topical issues discussed and I think that most important one, to me, is this idea that one of the primary tools that atheists have is this ability to set up a false dichotomy between science and faith. Now, before I go into that more, let me be clear about what I am saying and what I am NOT saying about atheists here - MOST atheists are not actively assaulting the Christian faith and Christians, and they aren’t running around trying to oppress our beliefs. When we talk about pushing back against them, we need to remember that most non-believers are just like most believers...they just walk around with a set of beliefs that they haven’t really ever tested. So we shouldn’t villainize atheists in our minds...sometimes these apologetics books will feel a little like that, and that’s not the intent. The intent is to attack ideas, not people.