I’ve always admired C.S. Lewis, not just as a writer, but as an apologist. Like lawyers of the faith, apologists argue with impassioned reason for the reliability and rationality of faith. Lewis, the apologist with his commonplace metaphors, lies between figures like Ambrose before him and Ravi Zacharias after him. Each of these men engaged their culture by arguing with passion and reason.
Our culture seems to be changing, though, and there are fewer who would ever be willing to listen to arguments like Lewis’ Mere Christianity on a nightly radio program. It’s not the only one who speaks most clearly and accurately that’s heard, but the one who screams the loudest that gains the largest audience today. Rational arguments seem to be regarded less and less.
Maybe it’s due to the ability to skew facts and figures, numbers and graphs, verses and translations until they all say exactly what you want. Today’s evidence submitting to yesterday’s conclusions. So, what can we offer to engage another’s mind in today’s postmodern world?
If faith can’t be argued as reasonable, can it be proven as necessary, important, or even valuable at all?
Since the scientific revolution, Christians have attempted to fight fire with fire, applying empirical methods to the study of the Bible and philosophical arguments to help us understand God and his universe. Religion fought science and we grasped for proofs, trading mystery for meticulousness.
Did we make the right choice?
When I look around, I don’t see a world desperate for better arguments. I see a world desperate for beauty. The downtrodden and depressed, activists and the apathetic don’t desire defendable ideas, but a new reality that captivates, enthralls, and consumes them. Beliefs so big that they arrest their thoughts and insecurities, their fears and aspirations, and transform them into more; more than just moments and day jobs, laundry and loan payments.
It’s the difference between understanding the interconnectedness of the ecosystem of a pond—the food web, water cycle, and pH levels that sustain it—and standing before the massive tryptic of Monet’s Water Lilies. Or, knowing the facts that led up to the Spanish Civil War, reading about them in your history book, and then seeing Picasso’s Guernica in front of you, stretching nearly floor to ceiling with its abstract terrors.
The facts remain outside of you. The art makes its way inside.
I’ve spent a lot of time and energy and brain space—as well as the large financial investment of one and a half degrees—to the arguments for Christianity and I don’t regret that.
I became a Christian because Christianity made logical sense of this world, but I remain a Christian because it offers the most heartbreakingly beautiful reality to live in.
More and more, I find myself agreeing with A.W. Tozer, a self-taught theologian, when he wrote, “You see, if your faith stands in human argument, someone who is a better arguer can argue you out of it…If you know God through Jesus Christ the Lord, nobody can argue you out if it.” (A.W. Tozer, The Attributes of God)
“Why do you believe?” is all that the text message from a friend in high school read, with no prompting and no prior conversation. Before I was taught different theories of atonement, what transubstantiation was, what the imago dei wasn’t, and that tulips weren’t just flowers, I knew exactly what to tell him.
“Because it’s beautiful.”
