Let me be clear: You don’t need to be a cult expert to witness to cults, you just need to be interested in their salvation. If you’re truly disinterested you are answering the door like a disinterested unbeliever ( see my previous post ) in which case perhaps it’s best you don’t go to the door. You’ll only end up giving a bad impression of a Christian apologist. As a Mormon I found some Christians all too readily played to my own confirmation bias as they struggled to answer simple points. I also found myself on the receiving end of some pretty ripe insults. People do this because they don’t know what else to do. This is because they don’t know how to read the Bible like an apologist. Perhaps they’re not shown how. The Church One of the big issues for me these days is the failure of the church to simply equip people, make disciples, build apologetics into our thinking. Consider the way a cult works, like a franchise. Everything is controlled from the centre. Like many coffee shops an...
Every Christian should be an apologist at the door. It’s not that it’s hard, it’s that you don’t understand, or maybe you’re not interested. I have heard apologetics referred to as ‘the work of professionals.’ That’s what people say. It is true that people such as John Lennox, Alister McGrath, and William Lane Craig fit that description, however, apologetics isn’t simply for professionals. Surely, we are all called upon to be ready with an answer, to make a defence ( apologia ) when asked the reason for our hope 1 Peter 3:15. We are all called to ‘contend for the faith’ Jude 3. For forty years I have gone to church with teachers, lecturers, engineers, barristers, business managers, professional and semi-professional people you might expect to be ready to defend the faith. Yet so many find that unexpected knock on the door, approach in the street, conversation struck up in work daunting. I had a Jehovah’s Witness friend who, one day, said, ‘Michael, I know Christians don’t know...