A New Kind of Apologist by Sean McDowell

Author:Sean McDowell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780736966061
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers

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Why More Women Should Study Apologetics

MARY JO SHARP

I had just finished a talk on conversational apologetics when I noticed four women off to the side of the platform, apparently wanting to discuss the topic further. As soon as I gave them the word, the anxious questioning unfolded.

“What do I say to my son?” one woman began. “He was an active church member in junior high and high school. After a year in college, he’s now proclaiming himself an atheist.”

“My spouse is doubting that God exists,” the second woman said. “He thinks the church may be a cult. How should I respond?”

“Well, my teenager won’t even pull her earphones out to listen to me, let alone have any kind of reasonable conversation,” the third said. “What do I do? I’m worried about the influence of culture on her mind.”

The fourth spoke mournfully. “My son died of leukemia at three years old. How can I still believe there is a God?”

While these questions, on their own, present a considerable challenge, the questions are never presented within a cultural vacuum. The current culture creates more confusion in our questions, not to mention answers, because of society’s predominantly negative and pervasive caricature of Christianity. Current sound bites we grapple with include:

• Christianity is harmful to people.

• Christians are ignorant and intolerant, or at least on the fringe of society.

• God is dead, an outdated ideology of superstitious cultures.

• Science is the torchbearer of truth.

On top of all these obfuscations, a woman must also grapple with conflicting messages about her identity: an object reducible to sexual pleasure, a homemaker, a nurturer, a breadwinner, an intellectual, a nonintellectual, a person of power, a person who is weak, a person whose worth is found in the beauty of her youth, a person of intrinsic worth, someone to target with the fashion market, and so on. It is a difficult task, at best, to pull away from all this confusion to focus on basic things like the foundations of Christian belief.

I find that the women I speak with are excited about answering difficult questions, but they are intellectually bogged down by the confusion of our society. The digital age inundates us with so much information that it can stifle our motivation to even try to sift the wheat from the chaff. To encourage more women to get involved in apologetics study, we should first establish that there is a need to answer these hard questions. As a lighthouse warns incoming ships of dangerous obstacles, those of us who are equipped can shine through a foggy existence. Women will either begin to follow a path toward answers or risk a bitter shipwreck against the culture’s untruths.

Answer Doubt

A friend once caught me off guard by asking, “Why would a woman want to attend a session on apologetics?” Actually, it had never occurred to me that my gender would be a factor in whether or not I should seek and discover answers to foundational questions about belief in God.

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