Why?

What it Is

Apologetics is perhaps one of the most misunderstood terms within Christianity today. I would personally rank it right up there with trying to understand things like Pneumatology and Soteriology. These sound like really great churchy words, but what do they really mean? I'm not just talking about what they mean to the Christian - I mean what do they mean?!? (By the way, for those who might not know, Pneumatology is the study of the Holy Spirit and Soteriology has to do with the study of salvation.)

Apologetics is an unknown arena for most, and for many others it is simply misunderstood. People within the Church oftentimes do not know what the word means. This is evidenced when I begin to talk to people who claim to be Christians and yet when I tell them that I am an apologist, they immediately ask the question, "So, what, you go around saying you're sorry for being a Christian?" These people mean well, and to be honest, many of them are simply using humor to cover their misunderstanding or lack of understanding about the subject. Let me stop right here and go ahead and say this: it's okay. I will be the first to admit that I do not know everything about everything, so why should I expect everyone to know about apologetics? To be honest, we see these kinds of responses elsewhere in society, right? After all, how many times have you seen or heard of someone being introduced as a comedian and the very next words out of someone's mouth are, "Okay funny man, MAKE ME LAUGH!"

Maybe people think apologetics is about apologizing because Christianity has some things in our past for which we need to be sorry. Well, although the term does not apply here, I would agree that Christianity has had some darker moments and we need to understand the harm that we have inflicted in the name of the Church at points in history. The first one that comes to mind were the Crusades. We condemn Islam for their approach to conversion at the end of a sword, but what were the Crusades if not the very same thing? We also have events such as the Inquisitions where people were tortured into making whatever profession was desired at the time. What about the people who died as a result of the Salem Witch Trials? I think you get the point here: we do have things to apologize for from Christianity's past. Nevertheless, this does not translate into being sorry that we are Christians or apologizing for Jesus or the cross. If apologetics is not about apologizing or being sorry, then what exactly is apologetics?

Let us start with a relatively easy point. Apologetics at its most basic level is simply the "why" behind what you do. This should not be a difficult concept to grasp because we already "use" and "do" apologetics on a daily basis. Let me try to give a couple of real world examples to make the point clearer.

If you own or manage a business, you use apologetics. I have worked for a number of years with a major producer of petroleum lubricants. Each year budgets are written and financial goals are established. Why? Because this company was not established to be a non-profit organization. They exist to provide a service or product to the consumer and in turn to generate a profit. The reason behind the establishing of financial goals and budgets is to provide a map that shows where the money at the end of the year is going to come from. What this company does is make oil. How they do business will be driven to a large extent from the plans and goals that are established. WHY they do all of this is to make money.

Let's bring this down to a more every-day level. Do you fly? Do you drive a car? What is it that makes you believe it is safe to get into a large piece of metal that has four wheels attached and zip along the road at seventy miles per hour? Alternatively, what compels us to get inside a giant aluminum cigar tube and scream across the sky at 400 miles per hour? While we may not be able to explain the workings of the internal combustion engine or the aerodynamic properties of a wing, we know from experience that cars and airplanes are effective means of transportation and they can both get us from one location to another a whole lot faster than walking. We also know from experience that while there is a chance we will not make it safely to our destination, the statistics show that most of the time when we travel by car or plane we will arrive where we hoped to be. We use cars and planes because they work. This is the why.

We could apply this type of thinking to just about anything we do. We cook meat rather than eating it raw to prevent illness. We go to hospitals and doctors because we believe they have resources to help cure diseases and make us feel better. We go to work to make money so that we can pay for the things we need (and hopefully have a little left over in the end!). We can explain the "why" behind so many things that we do, but when it comes to Christianity we are so often unable to tell people why we believe what we believe. We so often lack the ability to clearly express what it is about Jesus that makes His story believable in the face of all competing world views.