That screening is this Thursday, December 10th, 7:30 pm at the Bellmore Theater (222 Petit Avenue, Bellmore NY).  Check out http://www.opcli.org/collision for more details.

Audio of last night’s program can be downloaded here.

The world has a right to look upon us and make a judgment.  We are told by Jesus that as we love one another the world will judge, not only whether we are his disciples, but whether the Father sent the Son.  The final apologetic, along with the rational, logical presentation, is what the world sees in the individual Christian and in our corporate relationships together.  The command that we should love one another surely means something much richer than merely organizational relationship.  Not that we should minimize proper organizational relationship. But one may look at those bound together in an organized group called a church and see nothing of a substantial healing of the division between people in the present life.

It is all too easy to read a passage like this and think of how it applies to that favorite of Reformed straw-men: the one who reads theology all day, can quote Scripture at length, and can wax poetic on the finer points of systematic theology, yet shows little of the fruits of the Spirit, especially love.  But don’t do that.  Instead take a look at yourself.  Have you become so wrapped up in the academic side of learning and defending the faith that you have neglected Christ’s command that we love one another?

I believe Schaeffer is spot on here: the most powerful testimony we can have to a watching world is that we love one another, and put on display in our own lives and relationships the outworking of the healing that Christ made possible in our relationship with the Father.

To borrow a phrase from Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ, given to us in the Scriptures, is truth unchanged, unchanging.  Yet while this truth is unchanging, the cultural and philosophical climate each Christian finds himself in changes, sometimes dramatically, from generation to generation.  Each of us has to wrestle with how best to approach the apologetical task, given the philosophical mindset of our age.

I have read apologetics books that provide the best answers to common objections to Christianity, and proofs of God’s existence.  While I do not deny the importance of material like this, there must be a better way to expose the unbeliever to the root problems of his worldview.  Francis Schaeffer, in The God Who Is There, provides some helpful instruction toward that end:

Let us think of it in a slightly different way.  Every man has built a roof over his head to shield himself at the point of tension.

At the point of tension the person is not in a place of consistency in his system, and the roof is built as a protection against the blows of the real world, both internal and external.  It is like the great shelters built upon some mountain passes to protect vehicles from the avalanches of rock and stone which periodically tumble down the mountain.  The avalanche, in the case of the non-Christian, is the real but abnormal, fallen world which surrounds him.  The Christian, lovingly, must remove the shelter and allow the truth of the external world and of what man is to beat upon him.  When the roof is off, each man must stand naked and wounded before the truth of what is.

The truth that we let in first is not a dogmatic statement of the truth of the Scriptures, but the truth of the external world and and the truth of what man himself is. This is what shows him his need.  The Scriptures then show him the real nature of his lostness and the answer to it.  This, I am convinced, is the true order for our apologetics in the second half of the twentieth century for people living under the line of despair.

This is certainly a more nuanced and technical approach to apologetics than perhaps we are used to.  But that should not deter us from educating ourselves and going forth with boldness.  If God is for us, who can be against us?

The point of my stance may be evident already. The true skeptic doubts all. He must therefore doubt an objective world around him, his own assessing abilities, and his own sense perception. He thinks he thinks, therefore he may be, but even this is a stretch. All may be a projection of his own thoughts. For the skeptic, it is entirely likely that I am a projection of his own thoughts. Therefore, I cannot do him the disservice of showing his skepticism any sympathy or respect as I am merely a projection of him. If I agree with anything he says, I am an aspect of his imagination agreeing with him. I am him unnecessarily agreeing with himself. If I disagree with him at any point, I have made him into a terrible schizophrenic.

Of course, the skeptic may reject the idea that all is a projection of himself, but then he is no longer a skeptic. At that point he becomes arbitrarily skeptical instead of a true skeptic.

I write out of burden for those bound in skepticism. Either cast off your skepticism and let us reason together, or be consistent with your skepticism and remain anonymous to the world.