Something to look forward to this week

I’m in a good mood today. The national and international news certainly isn’t what has made me happy. This week we start an apologetics class at our church.

For the last three years we have been meeting to tackle ways to defend the Christian faith. We watched a DVD series, we critiqued a debate between an atheist and a Christian, and we’ve read books that challenged us in many ways.

This time we are doing a couple of things. Steve Bruecker is going to discuss various tactics we can employ in discussions with those who don’t agree with us. We want to be good ambassadors, so there are effective and ineffective ways to interact with others. We want to avoid bitter arguments and raised voices. We also want the person who has raised objections to share the burden of proof.

Steve will be using tactics suggested by Greg Koukl, a popular Christian apologist and radio show host. Greg has written a book called Tactics, which was of the ten top best-selling apologetics books last year, so it obviously has useful things to say.

I will be leading discussions that are based on another of Greg’s books—Faith Is Not Wishing. This is a collection of essays he has written that cover a wide range of issues. Some of these include the idea that Jesus is just another in a long line of mythological figures who shared the same story line, the complaint that God is just a crutch, the idea that evil in this world shows that God doesn’t exist, and the new tolerance that’s so big in our society. Each essay has much to discuss, so I’m looking forward to this part of our classes.

The real fun of the classes will be the people in attendance. We have a lot of people from previous classes, so that will be great catching up with them. They are sharp and able to engage in good discussions. About a third of the class will be made up of new people. It’s always nice to hear how they got interested in apologetics and how they are able to incorporate our class information into their daily lives into practice.

The real key to the class is whether we make it work in the real world. So many people today are critical of Christianity and don’t hesitate to express their views. It’s a good thing that there are solid answers that we as confident Christians can give them.