Beyond Opinion: Living the Faith We Defend by Ravi Zacharias

A few clips from the book...

What I did not anticipate was having to give a defense of why I was defending the faith. “You can’t argue anybody into the kingdom.” “Apologetics only caters to pride, you know.” “Conversion is not about the intellect; it is all about the heart.” As the litany of questions runs for why we should study apologetics, so the reasons run as to why we should stay out of it.

Apologetics is a subject that ends up defending itself. The one who argues against apologetics ends up using argument to denounce argument. The one who says apologetics is a matter of pride ends up proudly defending one’s own impoverishment. The one who says conversion is a matter of the heart and not the intellect ends up presenting intellectual arguments to convince others of this position. So goes the process of self-contradiction.

The ultimate calling upon the follower of Christ is to live a life reflecting who he is, and in this book we will highlight three components of discipleship. In part 1, we will look at skeptics’—and believers’—difficult questions. We will suggest that we cannot begin to understand these questions until we ourselves have also wrestled with them intellectually and personally. In part 2, we see that our answers must then be internalized—the essential, lifelong process of spiritual transformation—such that, as seen in part 3, these answers may be lived out with compassion for the lost and a passion for the gospel. These are critical issues, for as I have said many times, I have little doubt that the single greatest obstacle to the impact of the gospel has not been its inability to provide answers, but the failure on our part to live it out.

Sometime in the 1980s, Christians in the West began to label evangelistic techniques and reconfigure church services to reduce the message to the lowest level of cognition in the audience. As nobly intentioned as that was, the end result was the lowest level of writing and gospel preaching one could imagine. Mass media was brought to aid this purpose, and before long evangelicals were seen to be masters in entertainment and minimalists in thought. As this was happening, the intellectual arenas were being plundered and young minds gradually driven away from their “faith” in the gospel message. Christians are paying our dues today and likely will pay for an entire generation.

Read more HERE

A word on recent outcomes

Want a better understanding?

A helpful outline that sheds some light on part of the Old Testament can be found HERE

We need to understand the Old Testament simply because we
don’t. There is a system of theology teaching that certain portions of
the Bible are relevant only for a particular time and, therefore, we
don’t have to be concerned with that portion of Scripture. That is
simply not true. The Bible is a reflection of the God of the universe
and, as such, should be studied as a whole.

What is your group like?

An interesting interview with a college student about what prepared her (and did not) for college...

CPYU: As you reflect on your church youth group experience, what are some things you wish your youth group would have done more of to prepare you for college?

Gabrielle: I was in several youth groups in high school and unfortunately found that youth group was too “soft”—we played a lot of games and had a lot of fun retreats, but rarely learned about the fundamentals of faith, why we believe what we believe, and what it is that we do believe. Now that I am in college, my faith is under constant scrutiny and always being tested by scientific concepts and the secular slant of most universities. I wish I had been equipped with a more solid justification for my faith: knowing how to answer the tough questions, how to respond to arguments, and how to stand firm in what feels like a storm against my spirituality.

CPYU: Understanding the challenges that college life brings, what are some things you wish your youth group would have done less of?

Gabrielle: While I loved the friendships I made in youth group, there were far too many social events and not enough deep studying of God’s word. I felt this left me ill-prepared for the questions I would be faced with in college. Also, instead of so much group time, I wish we would’ve had more time one-on-one with a pastor, youth leader, or mentor.

Read it all HERE