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Evangelism and Apologetics
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Evangelism and Apologetics
Copyright © December 13, 2015 Douglas W Jerving.
All Rights Reserved.
"When I began, Christianity came before the great mass of my unbelieving
fellow-countrymen either in the highly emotional form
offered by revivalists or in the unintelligible language of highly
cultured clergymen. Most men were reached by neither."
-- CS Lewis, God in the Dock.
I have found this to be true. Emotional religion dies when the drudgery of every day life is
returned to. (The day after the revival meeting when you go back to work.) Theology, for all
my years of studying it and loving it, has always proven to bore to tears anyone I subjected
to it.
The unbeliever first sees the reality, the truth of Christianity when he sees the miracle of
everyday life, and finally realizes there is something unique about it. Suddenly, his mundane
existence becomes a thing of beauty in itself, and harbors within it, as a touchstone, a
connection to the eternal within himself that he cannot escape. From there, if he has any
desire beyond going back to sleep, he may pursue that spark, and come to know the God to whom
it points.
In season 2 of the History Channel's Tudors, (which dramatizes the life of Henry VIII),
Katherine of Aragon has been divorced and deposed by the king, and England's clergy. In a
candid moment, she shares with a sympathizer that, given the choice, she accepts the pain of
her present condition as better than the happiness of her former status as the recognized
queen of England. The injustices served upon her have caused her to seek after God in a way
that her former glory allowed for her no time.
Whether pleasure or pain, beauty or horror, illustriousness or mundanity, all human experience
is meant to awaken us to our place in eternity; to remind us that we are but men, and there is
something outside ourselves with which we have to attend. Our finitude ought to awaken in us
the awareness of eternity.
My own cat will bang on the basement door until I open it for her, and then she will jump into
my lap to pester me while I write. She insists that her life is more than the food and shelter
we give her, and that her relationship to me is vital. How much more should we be banging on
the door of eternity for the presence of God?
I think that is why, as concerns my own writings, I am more an apologist than an evangelist.
Besides loving the argument, the reasoning, I also love the awakening that comes when I get a
chance to say things about things that others may not have yet considered. It makes me and
they want to search a little deeper, ever after the satisfaction of truth that cannot be
contradicted.
This is not to denigrate the Billy Grahams God has given us. We need their calling and their
call. Some unbelievers respond one way, and others other ways. God will see to it that all
men hear the truth one way or another, and have the opportunity to receive it to their
benefit or reject it to their own hurt.
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Doug Jerving is the publisher of the NewEdisonGazette.com. You may contact him at
dje@newedisongazette.com.
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