As Christians we are called, in St. Peter’s words, to “always be prepared to make a defense for the hope that is within us.” This is especially true in this hyper-secularized, post-modern age we live in.
But to make a strong defense for our hope and the truth of the Gospel, we must be able to communicate winsomely, and in a way that people will understand.
If I tell someone, for instance, that I’ve accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and that I now see the world in a whole new way, well, most non-believers won’t understand what I mean.
What we have to do is like missionaries. We have to use the native language of the culture, so to speak. And the key is using one of the great gifts that God has given to us, and that is reason.
Take, for instance, the mindset so prevalent today in the culture that we can only know what can be proven empirically by science. God’s existence can’t be proved by science, so He must not be. We can prove by science, so the argument goes, that all life developed spontaneously, by chance, and that it has evolved over hundreds of millions of years into what we see today.
This, of course, is the heart of the secular, naturalistic worldview. But I can prove, and so can you, that it is false. All we have to do is follow that worldview to its logical conclusion.
And we can also prove that only the Christian worldview is rationally sustainable. It is the only way to make sense of the world as it is.
Today on my “Two-Minute Warning” video commentary, which I want you to go and watch at ColsonCenter.org, I will walk you through how you can do this. And the great apologetic tool I use, and want you to learn, is a simple grid that examines different worldviews in terms of how they answer the great questions that all humans in all times have always asked: Where did I come from? Why is there suffering? Is there a solution? And what’s my purpose in life?
When I walk people through these questions and show how, say, secular naturalism answers them, the lights go on. If we humans evolved by chance from the primordial soup, if we’re ultimately not responsible for the mess the world is in, if the only solution is to rely on science to build an earthly utopia, and our only purpose in life is self-fulfillment, well, imagine the consequences of such a worldview.
Actually, you don’t have to imagine it. We see it every day: the breakdown of morality, the devaluing of human life, and tyranny (atheistic communism was a utopian political theory, remember). In sum, the logical conclusion of secular naturalism is human misery.
It seems whenever I talk about this at churches or conferences, someone will come up to me and say, “Wow, now I get it. That was great. Please come and explain this to my church.”
And my response is almost always, “No, you do it! Learn how to make a defense of the faith and then go out and make it.”
That’s why BreakPoint and the Colson Center exist: to help Christians understand that facts and reason are on our side; to prepare them to get out of the pews and into the clash of ideas and worldviews in our rapidly declining culture.
So please, come to ColsonCenter.org today. Watch my “Two-Minute Warning.” And while you’re there, check out the great worldview teaching materials we have available.
This article published on April 6, 2011.
Chuck Colson's daily BreakPoint commentary airs each weekday on more than one thousand outlets with an estimated listening audience of one million people. BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends via radio, interactive media, and print.
