Friday, November 9, 2012

Atonement Justice

The recent death of Oglala Sioux actor and activist Russell Means brought brief but broad attention to the chronic issues plaguing Native American communities in the United States. Means, who was quite a controversial figure, brought national attention to the poverty and discrimination suffered by many in Native communities in the 1970's and 1980's. He is credited with reviving the warrior image of the American Indian through guerrilla-tactic protests against the United States injustice against its indigenous peoples.(1)


One tragic episode of injustice was called “The Trail of Tears.” This was the name given to the forced relocation of the Cherokee Nation from their home among the mountains of North Georgia to the plains of Oklahoma.(2) In one of the saddest episodes of the fledgling democracy of the United States, men, women, and children were taken from their land, herded into makeshift forts with minimal facilities and food, and then forced to march a thousand miles. Human loss for the first groups of Cherokee removed from North Georgia was extremely high. While records reflect differing accounts of casualties, some estimate that about 4000 Cherokee died as a result of the removal.


The story of Native American relocation is now a part of the history of the developing United States, where the North Georgia story is not unique. Russell Means and many other activists for Indian causes remind us that other trails of tears were forged in the land from east to west.  While there were minority voices protesting against these federal government policies concerning relocation, including Davy Crockett (better known for his failed stand at the Texas Alamo), they were few and far between.(3) The country that had swelled on a tide of freedom also had an undertow of injustice toward its Native peoples.


In human terms, the crucifixion of Jesus demonstrates a horrible injustice committed against him. While Christians believe that God was at work even in the midst of this act of injustice, Jesus had committed no crime deserving of this death reserved for the worst criminals. He was falsely accused, tortured, and nailed to the cross. Formal theology looks at the “injustice” of the crucifixion and seeks to explain the meaning of the event. Some theologians suggest that the atonement stands as the preeminent example of a sacrificial life in the face of injustice—an example which followers of Jesus are called to model in their own lives. Others see the Cross as the ultimate symbol of divine love or a demonstration of God’s divine justice against sin as the violation of his perfect law. Still others suggest the Cross overcame the forces of sin and evil, restored God’s honor in relation to God’s holiness and righteousness, and served as a substitution for the death we all deserved because of sin.(4)


While the meaning of the atonement may include a portion of all of these theories, I wonder about how the atonement might bring meaning to events like those suffered by Native peoples. And I wonder about how the atonement speaks to the personal injustices we all suffer, or commit against one another. Does the reality of the atonement give present meaning to the many injustices experienced and felt by many in today’s world?


The word atonement itself indicates that the willing offer by Jesus to absorb the injustices of the world creates the possibility to be at one, set right with God, and with one another. The apostle Paul indicates this in his second letter to the Corinthian Christians: “Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed to us the word of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19).


Christians believe that the enactment of reconciliation by God even through the human injustice perpetrated against Jesus, enjoins them to a ministry of reconciliation and justice. And the word of reconciliation—namely, that God has not counted our trespasses against us—frees us to give   the ministry of reconciling forgiveness to one another. Forgiveness, then, paves the way for justice.


I wish Russell Means could have known about many of these reconciling ministries. While at a local church gathering, I was introduced to a ministry that works with urban-dwelling Native Americans. Most are homeless and many struggle with alcohol and drug addiction. Like me, these individuals are far removed from the Trail of Tears. But like me, this organization wonders what meaning to assign to a tragic past. Clearly, all of us carry the events of our past into our present lives. In some cases, painful hurts and histories have ongoing repercussions. Cycles of violence, addiction, and despair are shaped, in part, by the meaning assigned to these past events. Therefore, this ministry seeks to reassign new meaning to difficult pasts through reconciliation and forgiveness.


In the same way, Christians who affirm the atonement of Jesus also affirm a God who enjoins them to do justice on behalf of others. The atonement gives meaning to the past that is redemptive for the present. Recognizing both our need for forgiveness and the need to offer forgiveness, we give meaning to those who need atonement today. Not simply an act of injustice perpetrated against Jesus, the atonement brings life, as surely as it binds us to give life to others.


(1) Robert D. McFadden, “Russell Means, Who Clashed With Law as He Fought for Indians, Is Dead at 72.” The New York Times, October 22, 2012.
(2) “The Trail of Tears,” About North Georgia, http://ngeorgia.com/history/nghisttt.html, accessed February 16, 2010.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Theories of the atonement as highlighted in Millard Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1983), 781-823.

Crucible of Lament

In today’s world, it is often difficult to summon optimism. Bad news swirls around us blowing our hopes and dreams like leaves in the fall wind. In this gale, we often find it hard to cling to hope and to a sense that the future will be a bright one. In general, I see myself as an optimistic person. I try to find the bright side of bad situations, and I work hard to walk the extra mile to give others the benefit of the doubt in personal relationships. I am not a naïve optimist like the character Pangloss in Voltaire’s biting satire Candide. When it is clear the ship is sinking, I don’t believe everything will be alright nor do I believe, as Pangloss would, that the sinking ship is the best thing that could happen to me. I do all that I can to bail out the rising water, even as I wrestle against the fear and anxiety that accompanies impending disaster!


Yet despite my generally optimistic attitude and outlook, there are times when sadness overwhelms me. It may be a growing storm of weary longing or a tide of lonely isolation that sweeps over me, drowning me with a dolor that submerges my hope. Sometimes it occurs when I think about the aging process and our hopeless fight against it. Sometimes it occurs when I am in the grocery line, looking at the baggers and clerks who wonder if this is all they will ever do for work. Oftentimes, it occurs when I cannot see the good through all the violence and evil that oppresses the world and its people. I can easily become overwhelmed by the numbers of people who are forgotten by our society—the last, the least, and the lost among us—and wonder who is there to help and to save them from drowning.


It is in these times that I befriend lament. And I take great comfort in the loud cries and mourning that have echoed throughout time and history as captured in the poems, songs, and statements of lament. Indeed, a great portion of the Hebrew Scriptures comes in the form of lament, both individual and communal lament. The Psalms, as the hymnal of Israel, record the deepest cries of agony, anger, confusion, disorientation, sorrow, grief, and protest. In so doing, they express hope that the God who delivered them in the exodus from Egypt, would once again deliver by listening and responding to their lament.(1)  The prophets of Israel, who cry out in times of exile, present some of the most heart-wrenching cries to God in times of deep sorrow and distress. One can hear the anguish in Jeremiah’s cry, “Why has my pain been perpetual and my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? Will God indeed be to me like a deceptive stream with water that is unreliable?” (Jeremiah 15:18). In addition, Jeremiah cries out on behalf of the people of Judah: “Harvest is past, summer is ended, and we are not saved. For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am broken; I mourn, dismay has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has not the health of the daughter of my people been restored?” (Jeremiah 8:20-22).


As I listen to Jeremiah’s cries, I recognize that they arise out of a deep love for the very people he often had to speak against. As Abraham Joshua Heschel notes, “[Jeremiah] was a person overwhelmed by sympathy for God and sympathy for man. Standing before the people he pleaded for God. Standing before God he pleaded for his people.”(2) In this same tradition, Jesus cried out with deep longing about the people in his own day, “If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace” (Luke 19:42). It is more than appropriate for us to weep and lament over the terrible condition of the world—a condition that all too often, we participate in and condone.


Many face realities in life that feel completely overwhelming: death, and loss, poverty, hunger, homelessness, job loss or under-employment, relational disruption. Lament seems the only appropriate response for those who find themselves on the losing end of things, or who through no fault of their own always find themselves in last place or left behind. Lament arises from looking honestly at these realities for what they are, and wishing for something else.


Yet it has been said that “the cry of pain is our deepest acknowledgment that we are not home.” The author continues, “We are divided from our own body; our own deepest desires; our dearest relationships. We are separated and long for utter restoration. It is the cry of pain that initiates the search to ask God, ‘What are you doing?’ It is this element of a lament that has the potential to change the heart.”(3) If this is true, then the overwhelming sorrow or feelings of bitterness over having to deal with what feels like more than one’s share of the harsh yet inevitable realities of life are, in fact, the crucible for real change. The same waters of despair that seek to drown and overwhelm are the waters of cleansing. Therefore, let the tears flow! The writers of Scripture give witness to the overwhelming compassion of God in the midst of grief: “For if [the LORD] causes grief, then He will have compassion according to his abundant lovingkindness.”(4) Perhaps, as we remember the one who was described as a “man of sorrows” who was “acquainted with grief,” lament offers a crucible in which we might experience a better compassion and care. Indeed, lament may yet have its own way of transformation.


(1) Barish Golan, “A Look at Lament Songs in the Bible,” www.disciplestoday.org.
(2) Abraham Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Harper Collins, 1962), 154-155.
(3) Dan Allender, “The Hidden Hope in Lament,” Mars Hill Review, Premier Issue, 1994, 25-38.
(4) Lamentations 3:32.

God as Psychological Crutch

God as Psychological Crutch


I remember getting into a cab outside a central London church. The cabbie took one look at my Bible and launched into his opinion of Christianity. He explained to me that belief in God is a crutch for weak, pathetic people who don’t have the strength to take responsibility for their own lives. When I answered, “Thank you very much,” with just a hint of irony, he blustered on with, “Well, I’m just saying it for your own good. A girl like you doesn’t need religion!”


This idea that Christian faith is a psychological crutch for needy people is a pervasive one, based on a number of assumptions. The first is that God is merely a psychological projection: he doesn’t actually exist in any real sense, but exists only in the minds of his followers, who have created him out of their own need—a need for a father figure or a need to give significance to their existence. The most famous proponent of this view was the Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). In arguing against the existence of God, Freud theorized that one’s view of God springs from the view one has of one’s father. When people grow up and find themselves thrust into the cruel, cold world, they look for a haven of security and protection from it. An adult can no longer look to parents for this protection, if he or she is to maintain dignity. Yet, Freud mused, we look for another “Someone” to do this job for us and this leads to the idea of a “Higher Power” or God.


From this perspective, God is merely a creation of the human mind, a projection emanating from human need and desire rather than a distinct reality. For Freud, God is made in humanity’s own image, the “ultimate wish-fulfillment,” the end product of human desire for a loving father.


Can God really be explained away so easily by one aspect of psychology? One obvious point to make is that the argument about projection cuts both ways. After all, isn’t it equally possible to say that Freud and other atheists deny the existence of God out of a need to escape from a father figure, or to argue that the non-existence of God springs from a deep-seated desire for no father figure to exist?


Clearly this doesn’t prove that God is real, but it does show that Freud’s arguments cannot prove that God does not exist while at the same time helping us tackle the question of projection. After all, dismissing God as a psychological projection while claiming neutrality in our own psyche is disingenuous at best and cannot be an adequate basis for rejecting God.


It also quickly becomes apparent that a Freudian belief in God as a human projection cannot provide us with an explanation for the Christian faith of converts such as C.S. Lewis or Alister McGrath, who would rather not believe but find themselves compelled by the evidence that Christianity is true and real.


In fact, we may go further by suggesting that a desire for a God who can fulfill our needs and provide moral order exists precisely because human beings have been created to desire him. The man floating on a raft at sea is unbearably thirsty, but he won’t get a drink of water simply by being thirsty. But the very existence of his thirst does show that a way for his desire to be satisfied actually exists: fresh water. As C.S. Lewis put it, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists.” Ultimately for the Christian the important question is not whether I have a psychological need for a father figure, or a desire for a father figure not to exist. Rather, the question is about what actually exists: Is God really there? The way to come to any conclusions about that is to investigate the evidence for his existence.


The second assumption we encounter is that because belief in God provides the faithful with a crutch, this means it is somehow suspect. The skeptic implies that since the believer finds protection from the cruelty of nature and the evil of the world, the idea of God is like a talisman, an irrational superstition. But surely, if belief in God provides a positive moral framework that helps people to live constructively, that is not a reason to disbelieve. Similarly, if relationship with God enables to believer to find healing, wholeness, and comfort in the midst of human suffering, we should not be surprised.  After all, if God is real, God’s existence will have a massive impact on life and on the experience of life. It is only if God is not real that we ought to be worried about the “crutch” God provides.


Finally, the third assumption is that people who make use of this “crutch” of relationship with God, and find it practical, meaningful, and effective, must be weak or inferior. This is a rather strange idea, since surely it makes sense to access real sources of support and relationship that are there for us. If a God of love does exist, the rational thing to do is accept that love, to come to know it. Entering into that relationship will have a positive effect, and that does not make the person weaker than or somehow inferior to anyone else. On the contrary, it is the logical, reasonable response if God himself is real.

Good Instincts

On an international flight, after waiting five long hours for takeoff, a voice announced that the flight was cancelled. It is a scene many have been privy to, so I know better than to solicit sympathy. But in the aftermath of this announcement was a scene that captured my attention.  A young girl, no older than 10, immediately cupped her face with her hands, visibly deflated by this news. In broken English, a woman nearby tried to comfort her and the story slowly unraveled. Apparently, the child had written an essay that had won an award, which promised a week at space camp in the United States. She was only halfway to her destination waiting anxiously for the second half when the flight was cancelled for the night and rescheduled for the morning. Since she was traveling alone, news of the cancelled flight meant an evening far from home, alone in a foreign city, and one less day of her much-anticipated camp.


As the story was slowly drawn out, listeners around the cabin responded instinctively. A man immediately provided a cell phone for her to call home, a young mother offered to help her get to the hotel, and a flight attendant sat down beside her and offered to stay with her for the night and bring them both back in the morning for the next day’s flight.


Perhaps you have been active in a similar scene—bringing help for the stranded motorist in the rain, responding with care for the family on the news whose house burned down, guiding a lost child in the grocery store back to his mom. What is it that pulls us toward goodness in such a scene? What is it that moves us with the desire to help, particularly if we are merely creatures operating with instincts to survive? When perfect strangers reach out as if intuitively shouldn’t we pause to ask about the intuition? When we sense our need to move toward something or someone in care and concern, could it not follow that we have been made to know this need?


A national radio program recently ran a segment discussing one company’s efforts with what they are calling “ethics rehabilitation” classes—classes meant to re-instill the ethics essential for effective business. I was fascinated by this call to morality even across a medium that daily chips away the idea of the good, the true, and the beautiful.


What is it within us that instinctively recognizes our need for some sort of moral framework? What is it that sees a need to distinguish right and wrong, good and evil? Why do we have this longing for goodness or beauty? Can it be truly explained if we are merely creatures surviving for our own right?


In a letter to an ancient community, the apostle Paul hinted at a deeper reality moving us toward what we long to find but often do not, what we long to see corrected in ourselves, in our communities, in our broken world. “Who hopes for what they already see?” he asks (Romans 8:24).   Perhaps this inward groaning for good, a longing for beauty, our need for what is true—it is the hope for what we were made to see. It is the instinct that recognizes that something stains our fallen world yet hopes for what God intended. We help the stranded child far away from her parents because the desire to see children cared for is set within us, because we hope for what is good and we hope to see goodness fully.


Paul suggests that our recognition of the good points us to the God who first saw things and called them good. We were made to know the beautiful and the true because we were made by creative and cultivating God of the garden. We were created to taste and see all of it. The Spirit who has given the hope and longing to know and see goodness is goodness and love and beauty and truth. Knowing this Spirit, Son, and Father, we know not only the why and who behind the instinct, but the one who makes it whole again.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

In Remembrance

It is startling to consider the amount of information we carry about in our heads. Think simply of all of the numbers you have by memory: phone numbers, birthdays, ID numbers, zip codes, appointment times and dates.  Among these many numbers are some so inscribed in your mind with permanent marker that you could not forget the number anymore than you could forget the person or thing they represent. The significance moves well beyond the boldfaced digits themselves—the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, the street number of the house you grew up in, the number of times you failed before you finally passed the test.


In the days of Mordecai and Queen Esther the people set themselves to remember the days when they received relief from their enemies, the month that had been turned “from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday.”(1) And so it was determined: “These days of Purim should never cease to be celebrated by the Jews, nor should the memory of them die out among their descendants.” The days were weighted with enough hope to press upon them the need to remember them forever. More importantly, they saw the very certain possibility that they might forget.


I suppose there are moments in our lives when we realize that we are beholding the carving of a day into the great tree of history. On my way to the hospital on the day my son was born I thought about the date and how it was about to be something more. Like any bride or groom or parent I knew from that day forward it would be difficult (and detrimental) to forget this day on the calendar; it would carry the force of forgetting so much more. Like the number itself, my remembering is more than a recollection of detail; it is the recollection of a person.


With a similar sense of anticipation, God told the Israelites that they would remember the night of Passover before the night even happened. “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast” (Exodus 12:14). Moses and Aaron were given instructions to tell the whole community of Israel to choose a lamb without defect, slaughtering it at twilight. Then they were to take some of the blood and put it on the doorposts of the houses. “The blood will be a sign,” the LORD declared. “And when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike the firstborns of Egypt.”


The significance of remembering is a theme carried throughout all of Scripture. It is not about static facts or rules or figures, but the mystery of a place, the significance of a person, the marking of lives. Celebrating the Passover was nonnegotiable. The command to remember was passed down from generation to generation. But they were remembering more than the mere events of Israel’s exodus from Egypt; they were remembering God as God showed up and changed them—the faithful hand that moved among them, the mighty acts which exclaim a Father’s untiring remembering of his people.


As the disciples sat around the table celebrating their third Passover meal with Jesus, an observance they kept before they could walk, everything probably looked ceremoniously familiar. The smell of lamb filled the upper room; the unleavened bread was prepared and waiting to be broken. Remembering again the acts of God in Egypt, the blood on the doorposts, the lives spared and brought out of slavery, they looked at their teacher as he lifted the bread from the table and gave thanks to God. Then Jesus broke the bread, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”


I have always wished that Luke would have described a little more of the scene that followed. Were the disciples hushed and confused? Did their years of envisioning the blood-marked doorposts cry out at the Lamb of God before them? They had spent their entire lives remembering the sovereignty of God in the events of the Passover, and then Jesus tells them that there is yet more to see in this day on the calendar: In this broken bread is the reflection of me. On this day, God is engraving across history the promise of Passover: I still remember you. I still seek you. 


I imagine from that day forward the disciples knew it would be difficult to forget that day on the calendar. It is not that different for us today either. Forgetting what was witnessed in the upper room on that Passover carries the force of forgetting so much more.

The Stuff of Memory

The word “souvenir” comes from the French word meaning “to remember.” Browsing through crowded airport souvenir shops or overstuffed booths of t-shirts in tourist-likely places, it is hard to remember the almost romantic origins of the word. A fuzzy magnet bearing the words of my latest destination may serve to remind me of a another land, but I still feel like I’ve sold myself out as the prototypical, easily-targeted, junk-buying tourist any time I leave a souvenir shop receipt in hand.


Creators of a souvenir shop in Buchenwald, Germany, claim, though controversially, to be bearing the less-materialistic origins of the word. The shop opened in time for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp where an estimated 56,000 people were murdered at the hands of the Nazis. Their souvenirs range from plaques embedded with stones from the camp to sprigs taken from the surrounding forest to be planted elsewhere. Moneymaking was never the point, the founders maintain; the project has always been about building bridges of memory, actively confronting history, and hoping to extend the somber lessons of the Holocaust to future generations.(1) From outrage to appreciation, reactions have been understandably varied. My own are admittedly mixed. Can materialism be set aside in a souvenir shop? Can history only be “actively confronted” with an object in hand? More notably, how do we best go about the vital act of remembering?


I remember looking at the gold cross around my neck differently after spending some time in the tourist-ready sites of Jerusalem. Amid the constant sounds of bartering beside some of the holiest places of history, the image of Jesus turning over the moneychangers’ tables was easy to bear in mind. But it was my own tables that were being overturned. Remembering had become for me an action I had taken as lightly as the delicate cross I put on each day.


A great amount of Christian Scripture calls the world to the act of remembering: remembering the story we are a part of, the moments God has acted mightily, the times humanity has learned in tears. “Remember this,” God uttered in history, “Fix it in mind, take it to heart, you rebels.  Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come.”(2) The story of faith is one that requires memory. God has moved; God is moving. Remember.


But how?


“Actively,” the answer seems to come, and with great weight, for it is possible to forget. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  These words that I command you today shall be on your heart.Teach them diligently to your children, talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise.  Bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.  Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”(3) Memory plays a vital role in the story God continues to tell.


On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it. “Remember me,” he asked, “as often as you do this.” Whether we are holding again the bread that tells of his broken body, clasping again the chained cross that remembers the death of God, or reconsidering this story of God coming near, as often as we do this, let us remember.


(1) Andreas Tzortzis, “At the Gift Shop: Souvenirs of Buchenwald,” The New York Times (September 15, 2004).
(2) Isaiah 46:8-10a.
(3) Deuteronomy 6:4-9.

Tipping the Scales

There are several places in Scripture that speak of God’s abhorrence of “dishonest scales.” Having recently read an editorial that sought to expose what the writer deemed “the unfair scales” of our justice system, the phrase catches my attention. There is something within us that cries out at the sight of injustice; we long to find the place where life is fair. But what does it mean to measure our own lives with an honest scale?


As the Israelites emerged from their slavery in Egypt and the perils of the desert through mighty acts of deliverance, they were asked to remember the almighty hand of God. The great plagues that came upon Egypt, the triumphant parting of the Red Sea, the manna from heaven—all were arguably unforgettable—and yet God specifically asked them to remember. Remember the great movement of God among you; remember the God who saw your misery and acted out in justice. Indeed, remember. For how easy it is to forget. How easy it is to forget that God not only sees the injustice of our situation, our yearning for help and crying for deliverance, but also the injustice we impose on others, our unwillingness to forgive, and our eagerness to tip the scales in our favor.


Through the prophet Micah, the LORD inquired of Israel, “Am I still to forget, O wicked house, your ill-gotten treasures and the short ephah, which is accursed? Shall I acquit a man with dishonest scales, with a bag of false weights?”(1)


Used in ancient Israel, the ephah was a large vessel with which merchants measured out goods for a buyer. Likewise, the shekel was used to weigh out the silver with which the buyer paid for it. By shortening the ephah and increasing the weight of the shekel, the merchant found a way to sell less than he promised for more than he agreed. The practice of utilizing measures to get ahead in business was quite prevalent amongst merchants in the ancient world—perhaps as prevalent as it is today. In a poem titled “Song of the Devil” W.H. Auden voices a chorus familiar to the ages:  “Values are relative/Dough is dough.”


Yet as God declared through Micah and again through Hosea and Amos, dishonest dealings make a mockery of the one who set the values. The cry of the prophet for economic justice is the cry of the God who is just. And God who is just demands a careful commitment to all that God values: “You shall not have in your bag differing weights, a large and a small. You shall not have in your house differing measures, a large and a small. You shall have a full and just weight; you shall have a full and just measure, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the LORD your God gives you.”(2)


Moreover, God who is just not only calls for justice in our dealings with others, but in our dealings with God. Here, the Christian story reports that we ourselves have been weighed on scales and found wanting. This is a difficult truth to accept, particularly where we want to measure the world with a sliding scale of tolerance. All the more difficult to comprehend, Christ’s death is said somehow to level the scales. Where we are lacking, where we are unjust, where we have tipped the scales dishonestly in our favor, where sin throws off the balance, and we carry our bag of false weights, Christ comes to restore our own value inasmuch as those we have slighted.  As the apostle Peter writes, “Christ died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that he might bring us to God.” In Christ the scales are balanced; what is wanting is restored in him by the Spirit. Setting on both sides of the scale, he is our full and just weight.


(1) Micah 6:10-11.
(2) Deuteronomy 25:13-15.

The Apologetic of the Apologist

A starting point for taking on the responsibility of the work of Christian apologetics is recognizing the role that living out a disciplined Christian life plays. Even a brief examination of the Scriptures reveals this striking imperative: one may not divorce the content of apologetics from the character of the apologist. Apologetics derives from the Greek word apologia, “to give an answer.” 1 Peter 3:15 gives us the defining statement: “But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer (apologia) to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”


I have always found this to be such a fascinating verse because the apostle Peter, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, knew the hazards and the risks of being an answer-bearer to the sincere questions that people would pose of the gospel. Indeed, when one contrasts the answers of Jesus to any of his detractors, it is not hard to see that their resistance is not of the mind but rather of the heart. Furthermore, I have little doubt that the single greatest obstacle to the impact of the gospel has not been its inability to provide answers, but the failure on our part to live it out. The Irish evangelist Gypsy Smith once said, “There are five Gospels: Matthew Mark, Luke, John, and the Christian, and some people will never read the first four.” In other words, apologetics is often first seen before it is heard.


For that very reason the Scriptures give us a clear picture of the apologetic Christian: one who has first set apart Christ in his or her heart as Lord, and then responds with answers to the questioner with gentleness and respect.  Therefore, one must not overlook the stark reality that the way one’s life is lived out will determine the impact.  There are few obstacles to faith as serious as expounding the unlived life. Too many simply see the quality of one’s life and firmly believe that it is all theory, bearing no supernatural component.


I remember well in the early days of my Christian faith talking to a Hindu. He was questioning the strident claims of the followers of Christ as being something supernatural. He absolutely insisted “conversion was nothing more than a decision to lead a more ethical life and that in most cases it was not any different to those claims of other ‘ethical’ religions.” So far, his argument was not anything new. But then he said something that I have never forgotten, and often reflect upon: “If this conversion is truly supernatural, why is it not more evident in the lives of so many Christians that I know?” His question is a troublesome one. After all, no Buddhist claims a supernatural life but frequently lives a more consistent one. The same pertains to many of other faiths. Yet, how often the so-called Christian, even while proclaiming some of the loftiest truths one could ever express, lives a life bereft of that beauty and character.


This call to a life reflecting the person of Christ is the ultimate calling upon the apologist. The skeptic is not slow to notice when there is a disparity, and because of that, may question the whole gospel in its supernatural claim. Yet when they are met with gentleness and respect, we will help meet the deepest longings of the heart and mind, and they will find where true discovery lies. Let us live so accordingly.