Father, teach us with your Spirit. Amen.
Apologetics is often defined as the defense of the faith. And that is a worthy definition. But that is not the only definition, in its entirety. It is the defense not only of what we believe, but why we believe it... because it is true, indicated and authenticated by the Bible (the revelation of Jesus Christ to mankind).
There are apologists and apologetics of every brand name under the sun. There are Mormon apologists, for example. So contrary to popular impressions, apologetics is not unique to Christianity. However, truth is. And that is what makes Christian apologetics true. Christianity is true.
There are gray areas of the Christian religion / belief system that are hard to defend. These are areas where man has gone ahead of the Holy Spirit with dogma or doctrine (principal reasons for division and denominations), among them are speaking in tongues, water baptism, Eucharist, Sunday worship, and so on. When one tries to defend these kinds of gray areas as truth (akin to the core truth Jesus saves) then they will eventually find that the dozens of centuries "we've done it this way" has no other reason than "we've done it this way" for dozens of centuries.
The traditions of men have no basis in scripture which God established as the supreme court of truth.
John 17:17
17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.
Psalm 138:2
2 I will worship toward thy holy temple, and praise thy name for thy lovingkindness and for thy truth: for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name.
So don't suppose everything in your denominational platform or your Church creeds are all in scripture and as apologetically defensible. Because a 90 day wonder from the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society will exploit that ***umption to make you doubt the core doctrines of faith which can be defended by scripture when you are stumped on denominational dogma.
Mormons missionaries will appeal to your sense of fair play to consider their non-scriptural dogma the same way you did the traditions of your Church which cannot be defended in scripture.
I never understood this sense of allowing the wolf equal time in the hen house. Common sense discarded in the name fair play. It is part and parcel what ruined this nation (America) with politics, idealism, greed, and religion.
The U.S. Cons***ution does not stipulate Christianity as the "official" religion of State because it is true and needs no such ranking of State. In fact to do so would diminish the thrust that it is the truth. But that does not mean Christianity is to be handcuffed and shackled to level the debate field so other religions and cults can have equal time and access to the public square (including secular humanism and atheism).
I thought it was interesting earlier this month that at the public funeral of Michael Jackson the closing prayer was quite deliberately said in Jesus' name. That the family wanted to make a point by even asking the pastor who did so to make this prayer.
This was a man whose music and antics ran the gambit of all persuasions (including perversions, apparently)... but his family was not hesitant to name the name of Jesus Christ no matter how it would be received or by whom.
We in America cringe at the name Jesus. Or we cringe when others use it. Did you at least think, uh oh... when he prayed in Jesus name at the funeral? It's because we have been taught to shut up about Jesus in public unless it is to blaspheme his name... then it's come one come all!
If you think about it, the first thing untruth has to do to conquer truth is to chip away at the distinctions between the two. And truth must become less ***ertive in the name of can we all just get along?
Apologetics answers an emphatic no!
