Your Defence of the Faith

Jude had meant to write a warm letter 'about the salvation we share.' Something stopped him. Certain people had 'crept in among you unnoticed' (Jude 1:4), turning grace into a licence and denying Jesus Christ as Master and Lord, and Jude felt it necessary to write and urge his readers 'to contend earnestly for the faith entrusted once for all to the saints' (1:3). The verb, epagonizomai, comes from the world of the athletic contest and the struggle; it means to strive hard. The faith he speaks of is not a vague feeling but a body of truth that was handed over, entrusted, 'once for all,' hapax, the word Hebrews uses for Christ's single, finished sacrifice. You are not called to invent the faith or improve it. You are called to keep it and to defend it.

But read the whole letter. The same Jude who says contend also says, 'have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them from the fire' (1:22-23). The defender of the faith is fierce for the truth and gentle with people, as Peter said in the verse that opened this track: 'Always be prepared to give a defense to everyone who asks you the reason for the hope that is in you. But respond with gentleness and respect' (1 Peter 3:15). Paul says the same: the Lord's servant 'must not be quarrelsome, but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, and forbearing' (2 Timothy 2:24). The goal is not to win but to see someone come to 'a knowledge of the truth' (2:25), and that is God's work, not yours.

This lesson is the capstone of the track. It asks you to do what the whole track has been preparing you for: to prepare, in writing, answers to the three objections to the faith that are most often raised where you live. Not the objections in an American textbook, unless those are the ones you hear, but the ones your neighbours, your colleagues, your children and your own heart actually raise. Each step below names the earlier lessons it draws on, so that you can go back if a step is unclear. Beside your own objections, one objection is worked through the whole way, so that you can see each step done: Christianity is the white man's religion. Many students in Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific hear it, and some believers of colour in Europe and North America hear it too. It may not be one of your three.

Step 1: find the three objections. Do not guess; listen. For the next two weeks, keep a page in your notebook and write down every objection to the faith you hear, from whatever source: a colleague at work, a relative at a funeral, a student at the university, a Muslim neighbour, a preacher on television, a video on your phone, a young person in your own church, your own doubts at night. Write the objection, not the person's name. Ask your pastor and the youth leaders which questions they are asked most. At the end of the two weeks, group what you have written. You will usually find that a few objections come up again and again. Choose the three that come up most often, and if one that troubles you personally is close behind, consider including it. In the worked example, the objection was heard from university students, from a relative who follows a revival of traditional religion, and in a video shared in a youth group's chat.

Step 2: name what kind of objection each one is. Some objections are intellectual: God does not exist, the Bible has been changed, science has disproved the faith. Some are moral: the God of the Old Testament is cruel, Christians are hypocrites, the church supported colonialism. Some are personal and come out of pain: if God is good, why did my child die? Some are about other faiths or teachers: Jesus is a prophet but not God, our ancestors are enough, the prophet in the next town has more power. Many are a mixture. The kind of objection shapes the kind of answer. A grieving mother does not need the logical problem of evil explained; she needs what the lesson The Problem of Evil said about the bedside, and the lesson Suffering Without Easy Answers in the Pastoral Ministry and Care track. In the worked example, the objection is partly historical, partly moral and partly about identity: it carries the anger of a people who were colonised and the question whether a person can be truly African and truly Christian.

Step 3: state each objection at its strongest. The lesson A Reason for the Hope and the lesson Gentleness and Respect both taught that you must be able to state an objection in a form its best defenders would accept before you answer it. Write each objection out in a paragraph as its most thoughtful defender would put it. Then ask: if the person who raised it read this, would they say, yes, that is what I mean, and you have put it better than I did? If not, rewrite it. Proverbs 18:13 calls it folly and disgrace to answer a matter before you have heard it, and Proverbs 18:17 warns that 'The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.' In the worked example, the strongest form runs like this: Christianity came to our land with the ships, guns and flags of European empires. Missionaries often called our cultures and religions demonic, gave our children European names, and worked alongside colonial governments that took our land. Our ancestors had their own knowledge of God long before Europeans came. To become Christian is to accept the religion of the people who conquered us, and to look at our own grandparents through their eyes.

Step 4: look for the question beneath the question. At Athens, Paul did not begin by attacking the city's idols; he began with the altar to an unknown god and the longing it showed, as the lesson Paul at Athens explained. Behind many objections lies a deeper question or a wound. Behind the problem of evil there may be a particular loss. Behind the claim that the Bible has been changed there may be a fear of betraying one's family. Behind the worked example there is a question of dignity: does God see my people as they are, or only as Europeans saw them? Write one sentence under each of your three objections naming what you think the deeper question is. You may be wrong, and you will find out when you listen, but asking will make your answer more human.

Step 5: gather what the track has given you. Go back through the lessons and note, for each of your three objections, which lessons bear on it. The first module, What Apologetics Is, gave you the purpose and character of apologetics: A Reason for the Hope, Five Ways to Make the Case, Faith and Reason, Paul at Athens, and Gentleness and Respect. The second module, Does God Exist?, gave you the arguments from the existence of the universe, its order, the moral law and human experience, and the relation of science and faith: Why Is There Something?, Design and Fine-Tuning, The Moral Argument, Experience, Beauty and Reason, and Science and Faith. The third module, Jesus and the Resurrection, gave you the historical case: Did Jesus Exist?, Can the Gospels Be Trusted?, Has the Text Been Changed?, The Resurrection, Other Explanations, and Who Did Jesus Claim to Be? The fourth module, The Hardest Objections, gave you the problem of evil, hell, violence in the Old Testament, the uniqueness of Christ and the hiddenness of God. And this module gave you Islam, the spirit world, secular unbelief and false teaching. Most real objections draw on more than one lesson.

Step 6: decide how you will make the case. The lesson Five Ways to Make the Case set out the classical, evidential, presuppositional, Reformed epistemology and cumulative case approaches, each at full strength, and Christian apologists continue to disagree about which is best and how they relate. You do not have to resolve that debate to answer your three objections, but you should know which approach you are using and why. Some objections call for evidence: was Jesus crucified, was the tomb empty. Some call for showing that the objector's own position cannot account for what he believes: if cruelty is truly wrong, what makes it so? Some call for bearing witness to what God has done in your own life and church, which is not an argument but is often what people need to hear. Many Christians find that a cumulative case, several lines of evidence and reasoning that together point the same way, fits real conversations best, but those who prefer other approaches have strong reasons too. Whatever approach you use, the lesson Faith and Reason reminds you that reasons are a servant of faith and that it is the Spirit who opens hearts.

In the worked example, the material comes from several places. From the Missions track, the lessons Missions and Empire, The Church of the East and The Centre Has Moved give the history. From this track, the lesson Is Jesus the Only Way? deals with the question of other religions and the ancestors who never heard, and the lesson Spirits, Ancestors and the Powers deals with the ancestors and the spirit world. The lesson The Resurrection gives the reason the question finally matters, because if Jesus rose from the dead, the colour of the missionary who brought the news does not change whether it is true.

Step 7: write each answer in a shape you can use. For each of your three objections, write an answer of about one page in your notebook, following these seven parts. First, say what is true in the objection. Almost every serious objection contains something true, and if you begin by admitting it you will be heard. Second, clarify the terms: what exactly is being claimed, and what do the words mean? Third, give your main reply, one or two arguments at most, drawn from the material you gathered. Fourth, bring in scripture, quoted accurately. Fifth, say honestly what your answer shows and what it does not; never claim more than the argument proves. Sixth, bring the conversation to Jesus, because every objection is finally an objection to him or a question about him. Seventh, end with a question you can ask in return, which keeps the conversation going and shows that you are listening. Then reduce the page to a version you could say aloud in two minutes, because most conversations will not give you more.

Here is the worked example in that shape. What is true: much of the objection is true, and you should say so. Many missionaries did arrive with colonial powers, many did despise African cultures and religions, some supported or profited from injustice, and the lesson Missions and Empire set this out without excuse. A Christian who denies this has not been listening. Clarify the terms: the objection is that Christianity is by origin and nature a European religion. The main reply: that claim is historically false. Christianity began in Asia, in Jerusalem, among Jews. Africa was present at its birth: at Pentecost there were visitors from 'Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene' (Acts 2:10); Simon of Cyrene carried Jesus' cross (Mark 15:21); an Ethiopian court official was baptised on the road to Gaza (Acts 8:27-38) long before the gospel reached most of Europe; and the church at Antioch was led by men including 'Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene' (Acts 13:1). North Africa gave the church some of its greatest early teachers, among them Tertullian and Cyprian of Carthage, Athanasius of Alexandria, and Augustine of Hippo, born in what is now Algeria. The kingdom of Aksum in Ethiopia became Christian in the fourth century under King Ezana, and the Ethiopian church has existed ever since, more than a thousand years before most European missionaries arrived in Africa. The Church of the East carried the gospel across Asia to China by the seventh century. Today most of the world's Christians live in Africa, Latin America and Asia, as the lesson The Centre Has Moved showed. And the Gambian scholar Lamin Sanneh, in Translating the Message (1989) and Whose Religion Is Christianity? (2003), argued that because Christianity insists on translating its scripture into every language, it has repeatedly strengthened local languages and cultures rather than replacing them, and that African Christians made the faith their own, often in spite of the missionaries.

Scripture: the vision of the end is of a multitude 'from every nation and tribe and people and tongue, standing before the throne and before the Lamb' (Revelation 7:9), not of one culture absorbing all the others, and God promised Abraham that 'all the families of the earth will be blessed through you' (Genesis 12:3). What it shows and does not show: this answer shows that Christianity is not the white man's religion by origin or by present membership, and that Africans were Christians long before Europeans arrived in most of the continent. It does not show that Christianity is true; a religion could be ancient and widespread and still false. Bring it to Jesus: the real question is not who brought the message but whether it is true that Jesus died and rose again. The lesson The Resurrection gave the evidence. A question in return: if it turned out that Jesus really rose from the dead, would it matter to you what colour the missionary was who first told your people? The two-minute version keeps three points: yes, much harm was done; no, the faith began in Asia and was in Africa from the start; and the real question is Jesus.

Step 8: check every fact and every quotation. Before you use any answer, check every verse against your Bible, word for word, and do not put quotation marks around a paraphrase. Check every name, date and claim you have taken from this course or elsewhere. Do not quote a scholar unless you are sure of the words; describe his view instead. If you do not know whether something is true, leave it out. One error discovered by a sceptic can make him doubt everything else you said, and it should, because you have told him something that is not so. The standard of this course applies to you as well: say only what you can show.

Step 9: test your answers before you need them. Read each answer aloud to a mature Christian friend, and then, if you can, to someone who holds the objection or is sympathetic to it, telling them honestly what you are doing and asking for their criticism. Ask three questions: did I state the objection fairly? Is there anything in my answer that is wrong or unclear? What would you say back? Write down what they say, and revise. An answer that has never met resistance is not yet ready. Then practise the two-minute version until you can say it naturally, without notes, in your own words.

Step 10: remember the person. The lesson Gentleness and Respect warned against winning arguments and losing people. In real conversations you will rarely give your prepared answer in full. You will listen, ask questions, give part of the answer, and come back another day. You will sometimes need to say, I do not know, but I will find out. You will sometimes need to stop arguing and simply pray with someone, or help them, or sit with them in grief. The prepared answer is not a speech to deliver at the first opportunity. It is a store of truth in your head and heart that will be there when it is needed. 'Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone' (Colossians 4:6).

Step 11: remember safety. Where your answer concerns Islam, a traditional religion or any setting where a change of faith can bring danger, remember what the lesson Talking With Muslim Friends said. Never press anyone to a public decision that could put them or their family in danger, never share a convert's story or photograph, and let a local church that knows the situation guide any new believer. Where you yourself could face legal or physical danger for speaking, count the cost, take advice from your church, and do not take risks with other people's lives that they have not chosen. The lesson The Persecuted Church in the Missions track describes how believers in such places bear witness wisely.

Step 12: keep the faith yourself. Jude's instruction to contend for the faith comes with the instruction to build yourselves up 'in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit' (Jude 1:20) and to 'keep yourselves in the love of God' (1:21). An apologist who argues for a faith he does not pray in will not last. And Jude ends not with the apologist's strength but with God's: 'Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you unblemished in His glorious presence, with great joy' (1:24). You defend the faith; God keeps you in it.

Copy what follows into the front of your notebook, or keep it on your phone, and use it whenever you prepare an answer to a hard question, whether for a conversation, a Bible study, a sermon or a youth meeting. It is the whole track in twelve lines.

1. Listen. I have heard this objection from real people where I live, and I have written it down without anyone's name.

2. Kind. I know whether this objection is mainly intellectual, moral, personal, about another faith, or a mixture, and my answer fits its kind.

3. Strongest form. I have written the objection as its most thoughtful defender would put it, and I believe they would accept my statement of it.

4. Beneath. I have asked what deeper question or wound may lie beneath the objection.

5. Material. I have gathered what this track and others in this course teach on the question, and I know which lessons I am drawing on.

6. Method. I know what kind of case I am making, whether evidence, argument, the inadequacy of the alternative, testimony or a cumulative case, and why it fits this objection.

7. Truth first. My answer begins by saying honestly what is true in the objection.

8. Scripture. Every verse I use is quoted word for word from my Bible, read in its context, and I have not put quotation marks around a paraphrase.

9. Honest limits. I have said what my answer shows and what it does not, and I have not claimed more than it proves.

10. Jesus. My answer brings the conversation to Jesus Christ, and it ends with a question I can ask in return.

11. Tested. I have checked every fact, read the answer to someone else, revised it, and can say a two-minute version in my own words.

12. Gentleness, respect and safety. I will give this answer with gentleness and respect, I will not press anyone into danger, and I will keep praying for the person and for myself.

Your practical step now. Over the next two weeks, carry out step 1 and find your three objections. Then work through steps 2 to 9 for each of them, writing a one-page answer and a two-minute version in your notebook. Use the checklist to see what is missing. Test each answer with a Christian friend and, if you can, with someone who holds the objection. Then offer what you have prepared to your church: ask your pastor or youth leader whether you may lead a session for young people or a home group on one of the three questions. Those three answers are the fruit of this whole track. They will not be the last word on any question. They are the beginning of a lifetime of being ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you.