My Journey to Apologetics

Asking lots of questions has been a characteristic of my personality for as long as I can remember. My reasoning starts with broad purpose and ends with narrow specifics, leaving lots of questions pertaining to details without a defined purpose. “Why?” was a question I learned annoyed most people if asked too often, especially of those in authority, but one I very often needed answered. According to Myers Briggs, I am an ENFP. One of my counseling professors described my mind as a jumbled mess of details, lacking the efficiency of the larger percentage of the population who have brains that neatly process and categorize information. In other words, I have to sort through “the mess” before I can use the details. Efficiency often eludes me since I often never make it to the details. Other stereotypes that apply to me are: “messy,” “scatterbrained,” “not detail oriented,” “visionary,” “dreamer,” etc.

I confessed faith in Christ for the first time when I was eight years old. I think my motives were more informed by wanting to be included when the Lord’s Supper was passed than by conviction. Nevertheless, that was where my journey began.

Not long after my profession of faith, I became aware of a disturbing disparity between what the Bible says and the way people live. I did not interact very well socially. My feelings were easily hurt which made me easy prey for school yard predators. There were occasions I fought back but I typically cried afterward no matter how well I did. My social environment was not very different in church. I went to school with most of the other kids, many of whom were just as mean. I asked my teachers questions but did not get relevant answers. Most of the responses I remember tried to make the Bible relevant to culture, subject to “interpretation.” One response I remember that most notably disturbs me now given its blatant contradiction to Scripture is “God did not make you to be a doormat.” (See “Doormat Theology” on my blog.) I never learned persecution is to be expected. I was never taught the blessing of suffering. I did not understand why I could only reach the “mountaintop” on youth trips. I was unable to connect meaning with rituals like “quiet time.”

Though frustrated, my hunger to find the connection between life and truth led me to believe I was called to ministry. I felt best when I was serving others and adults affirmed me to be a good candidate. School also seemed a reasonable place to find answers. I could not have been more wrong. Education only confused me. The more I learned about church history, theology, and denominationalism the more frustrated I became. I expected to learn how it all fit together but only discovered more and deeper levels of disagreement and conflict. Despite growing in knowledge, my confidence diminished due to learning how little I really knew, how many of my questions remained unanswered, and how many new unanswered questions I discovered. My identity became even less defined as I became less certain of what I believed. I lived in shame for not living up to who I thought I should be. Unable to reconcile the dichotomy of my sinful and spiritual wills, I found comfort in defining my identity by who I hoped to become, choosing to ignore my then present feelings of fear and insufficiency. Despite the many very real spiritual encounters I had with God, I could not claim I was victorious over sin because it was still there. My hope was I would one day overcome it. I tried to act right even though I did not feel right. I tried to hide my weakness under a shroud of self-righteousness, affirmed by the approval of people who could not see through it. I constantly needed approval to maintain my own self-delusion that I was who I pretended to be, confirming my real identity and feelings remained hidden under my disguise.

The resulting despair and anxiety of my addiction and lack of direction were devastating. I looked for answers in counseling but found more contradiction. I discovered counselors, doctors, professors, pastors, and elders are all fallible, categorically proven by the misdirection, misunderstanding and misdiagnosis of people in whom I naively and unrealistically trusted. Opinions were revealed to be worthless in regard to truth. In my despair, I drifted further and further from the identity I hoped to achieve.

Eventually, like the prodigal son who was eating with the pigs, I accepted God was my only hope and His truth was the only constant, reliable source I could trust. I began my search for answers again, driven even harder by my even more desperate need to find them. I learned a great deal more in seminary and found answers to most of my questions, yielding confidence unlike I ever experienced. However, I still lacked the means to connect them all together. Armed with the sword of truth, I wielded it as a weapon in defense of myself rather than God during a time of brutal warfare with the enemy. Claiming for myself the integrity of the truth, I boldly sliced my attackers with proud indifference to their pain. I used it to expose weakness in others and defend my own. Proudly undefeated, I found myself all alone. Devastated yet again, this time by pride and self-pity, I discovered apologetics, through which God took my sword and used it against me. In solitude, he cut me to the depths of my heart, inflicted excruciating pain, exposed every dark shadow in my heart with blinding light and painfully rescued me from the darkness, bringing to convergence truth I thought I had learned, experiences I thought I understood. The scales fell from my eyes, opening them to the new blindness of His glory revealed, thus finally and objectively defining my identity and purpose.

Apologetics provides the discipline my brain needs to make sense of the quandaries of daily life, starting with the broad purpose, maintaining its integrity as it is applied to all the specifics, defining the purpose of every detail. It is a powerful battle strategy against the enemy. It is a Biblical model, especially demonstrated by Paul. I have continued to devour apologetic literature since I opened the first book, unable to consume enough. Its function for me is like a key needed to break a complex code to open the door to fellowship with God and man. It brings order to confusion. It is beyond opinion. It produces unity from diversity. It is a vehicle for exploring the depths of God that can be explored. Not everyone needs it. Thankfully, not everyone thinks like me. Since I need it, I’m thankful God provided it for me and used it to change me for the purpose of using it to change others.