Justin Ariel Bailey - Reimagining Apologetics

InterVarsity Press
P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426
ivpress.com

2020 by Justin Ariel Bailey

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Pressis the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges, and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, visit intervarsity.org.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

While any stories in this book are true, some names and identifying information may have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

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Cover design and image composite: Faceout Studio
Image: artskvortsova / Shutterstock

ISBN 978-0-8308-5329-8 (digital)

ISBN 978-0-8308-5328-1 (print)

This digital document has been produced by Nord Compo.

TO MELISSA LEIGH BAILEY

Two thousand miles was far enough;

We found that tragedy does not discriminate

And yet where pain pierces, there grace abounds,

Overflows, overthrows the plans we make.

The world before us, hand in hand we stride

Into a future neither one controls;

Yet hope sustains when you are by my side,

Covenant covers, creates, and consoles.

But to love is to limit our wandring

And yet to find ourselves at liberty

Blown by winds and yet rooted in one thing

That in giving we find ourselves most free.

The years they run fast, and times pace is swift.

Till the end you and I; each step a gift.

Introduction

Searching for Stronger Spells

The Apologetics of Hope

When we are in church and Im listening to the preaching, its like you are weaving a spell. I believe, and the world makes sense to me. But then I walk out the door of the church and the spell is broken.

DANIEL, AGE TWENTY-ONE

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO COMMEND the Christian faith in a secular age? This is one of the questions that sent me back to school. I was ministering to emerging adults in the Chicago suburbs and encountering a troubling fragility in their faith. They would speak of disconnection: Sunday was full of meaning, but God seemed distant outside the walls of the church. One student, whom I will call Daniel, described it to me this way: When we are in church and Im listening to the preaching, its like you are weaving a spell. I believe, and the world makes sense to me. But then I walk out the door of the church, and its like the spell is broken. As the one doing the preaching, I felt the fragility in my own faith too. Why did what felt so believable on Sunday not feel as believable on Monday? What had changed? Why did it seem as if everyday life existed in a different universe than the one we inhabited together on Sundays?

This experience is not unique in our contemporary context. Christian faith, which once enjoyed widespread cultural ascendancy in the Western world, is no longer taken for granted. Where it remains, belief is reckoned a lifestyle option. To the outside world, my faith may be an important identity marker but no more so than my preference for Kansas City Royals baseball rather than the St. Louis Cardinals. Students like Daniel may continue to believe, but they are in constant contact with others who seem to get along fine without formal religious faith. In place of a shared story we have a thousand micronarratives, which we are free to pick up or put down as we choose. There is the widespread sense that the only meaning to be had is the meaning that we ourselves must make. The existential burden is great: choose your own way of being human. How can we commend our faith within these new parameters? To continue with our analogy, where can we find stronger spells?

Answering these sorts of questions has traditionally been the province of Christian apologetics, the discipline associated with defending and commending the Christian faith. But depending on whom you ask, apologetics is either thriving or dying in the Western world. On the one hand, a perusal of bestselling Christian books reveals an ever-burgeoning market for new apologetic works, as well as the continued appeal of apologetic classics. Within conservative evangelicalism especially, apologetics enjoys popular practice and approval, whether as armor for clashes with secular culture or as a bulwark to bolster the belief of the faithful.