Apologetic

Despite what your mom told you when you tripped that kid in the third grade and thought it was funny, an apology is not saying, “I’m sorry.” I should say more appropriately that it didn’t mean that. A dictionary is not an authoritative rule book on how to use words – it is simply a record of how words are used.

It previously was a word used to describe an explanation. If you accused me of making a mistake by parking where I did, and I answered by giving you the reason I parked there, believing that it was OK, I have apologized.

“Apologetics” is a system of reasoning or of categorizing ideas. In religious circles, it is what we believe and why.

The church has had a bad habit at a local level of answering young believers’ questions with “Because the Bible says so,” or “Don’t question God!” Neither of these answers holds up well when the young believer finds herself / himself in the real world being challenged or insulted.

Over 70% of young people who consider themselves to be Christians, in less than two years in most of the public colleges and universities in this country no longer consider themselves to be Christians because of the schools’ influences. It is not because the professors have intelligent, well reasoned challenges against Jesus and His followers’ beliefs, because they don’t. It is because we have not prepared our young believers to answer with truth.

Study – study to show that you are part of what God is doing in the earth (2 Timothy 2:15). Teach those for whom you have responsibility reasons for what we believe.

On the other hand, however, have the courage and pass on the courage not to pretend to understand things that are still mysteries. Yahweh and His ways are higher than ours. We cannot understand some things. Theologians who pretend to will be proven foolish.