Can You Answer?

How do we know God exists? Why should we trust the Bible?

These are the two biggest Christians ask. If left unanswered, they leave the church. The first one is foundational. If there is no God, then Christianity and religion in general is silly. The second one is no less important. If we can’t trust the Bible, we can either pick and choose what parts we believe, or we can discard it entirely and believe something else.

How would you answer these questions? Could you answer these questions?

Why It Matters

Some Christians don’t care for apologetics. And that’s a shame. The first reason we need to know the “why?” behind our faith is because we are called to answer people’s questions (1 Peter 3:15).

Imagine this scenario. Someone walks up to you and tells you that you should go to a particular store to shop. You are curious, so you ask questions. The conversations goes like this:

You ask, “Hmm, I’ll think about it. What does it sell?”

He replies, “I don’t really know.”

“Umm, is it cheaper than other stores?”

He smiles and pauses. “I’m not sure.”

You are confused. “Well then, why should I shop there?”

He says, “I just like it.”

“Okay…”

Would you care to shop at that store? Probably not. The sad thing is that many Christians are no better when it comes to talking about their faith. They don’t care to learn about it, and they can’t answer questions when asked.

You see, we are called to be lights to the world. We have the cure for humanity’s greatest disease: sin. As boring and churchy as it sounds, the answer is “Jesus”. But what's the use knowing the answer if we can't share it?

That’s Only Half the Equation

When it comes to learning how to defend what we believe (apologetics) and sharing our faith (evangelizing), talking to people is only one side of the equation. What’s the other?

You.

There will come a time when you doubt what you believe. While some will disagree with me, I believe that this is a good thing. Maybe you are a Christian because you grew up in the church. It’s the only thing you’ve ever known. It’s just what your family does.

While okay at first, this eventually won’t be good enough. You’ll have to own your faith and make it yours. To do this, Christianity has to make sense. You won’t become a Christian if you don’t believe in God, or you don’t believe the Bible is the Word of God.

When you go to look deeper, you may experience doubts. I think of these as growing pains. For the first time, you’ll start to question everything you once just accepted. This is good… if you have the resources and people to answer your doubts and your questions. If not, you’ll just join the exodus of Americans leaving the church.

Answering your own personal doubts is the other half of the equation.

Find People and Resources

If you are a Christian, you need to evangelize. We are called to go and make disciples (Matthew 28:19). To do this, you’ll need to answer questions and defend what you believe. You’ll run into the two questions at the beginning of this post. Could you answer these?

Also, doubts may creep in. Maybe someone will ask you a difficult question. Maybe you’ll find a tough Bible verse to swallow. Maybe it’ll be something else. But however it happens, it’ll happen. Prepare yourself now so that when doubts come around, they won’t last long because you’ll have answers.

Do you have knowledgeable people you can talk to? Do you know good websites to look at and books to read? We live in what at least one apologist (someone who defends Christianity as at least part of his main job) has dubbed “the Golden Age of Apologetics”. There are answers to everything. Are you willing to put in the work to find them?

You’ll discover that the time you put in is well worth it. Your confidence in your faith will increase. The doubts won’t come as often or stay as long (though they still will be there occasionally). Your relationship with God will grow.

This is the power of being able to defend what you believe.

#AQCFaith