Sorting through Worldviews

How to Give Reasonable Responses in Defense of Christianity

Rick Kline

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781666795356
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Why do people adopt an overarching view of life that is mentally perilous? Does the Christian faith provide answers to the dilemmas of life by giving coherent answers to objections against the faith? Discussing the Christian faith with our family and friends can be quite challenging because of the various non-religious and religious perspectives, except if you know what questions to ask. This book takes you on a journey through objections to Christianity with insights on how to listen, ask questions, and provides commonsense explanations of the Christian faith without reliance on intellectual and academic arguments. Sorting through Worldviews is uniquely relevant for Christians who want to calmly and reasonably share their faith with anyone in a casual conversation. This book is distinctly timed for anyone curious about Christianity and wants it explained in a way that actually makes sense without a religious judgmental attitude.

1

The Role of Questions and Answers

My Story behind the Method of Asking Questions

Loss of Hope Countered by Truth

In the spring of 1974, I was a twenty-three-year-old sailor stationed on a navy base in California and living in a base dorm room. I was planning to be discharged in August and then move to Pennsylvania to attend a Bible college. But I knew nothing about making this transition. I had no place to live, no job waiting, and little money. This produced a sense of uncertainty and fear that degenerated into despondency. These conflicts overwhelmed my feelings of spiritual passion.

During the previous three years, I had been enthusiastically involved in Christian service and teaching Bible studies. I read books by Christian authors on defending Christianity against objections to it (a discipline known as apologetics). The authors taught me to ask people questions when an objection to Christianity was proposed and, based on their answers, to ask more questions and then to provide a reasonable response. This process of questions and answers became my way of guiding someone to think about their non-Christian worldview (how one interprets life; a philosophy of life), and to consider Christianity as truth regarding spiritual matters. In spite of having read these faith-affirming books, I sensed fear and despondency over my uncertain future. I lost hope that God would solve this dilemma before August. I believed Christianity to be true but had no corresponding feelings. This was an entirely new predicament for me.

While sitting one evening in my dorm room feeling hopeless, a thought came to me: “Now I know why people commit suicide.” This thought was not from an arousal to suicide. Instead, it was awareness that the loss of hope can drive someone to suicide. I had adopted a perspective of pessimism—a termination of the imagination.

I concealed my depression and absence of spiritual enthusiasm by continuing in Christian service until one night in June. I was talking with an older friend while we stood outside of a church in Camarillo, California, waiting for the church service to begin. I expressed my conflicts and told him that it made no sense to me that Christianity could be true without having the feelings to go along with it.

He asked me if something could be true without stirring any emotion, like, it’s true that the earth is round, but not feel enthusiasm about it.

“Of course,” I said.

“So Christianity can be true whether you feel it or not, right?” he asked.

I agreed.

He asked me, “Do you doubt that Christianity is true?”

I told him that I had considered opposing worldviews, although none cancelled my faith. But I had no spiritual passion and felt fearful. “What do you fear?” he asked.

I said that I feared “not knowing what’s next.”

He asked, “Would your circumstances be different if you felt different?”

“Probably not,” I replied.

While he asked more questions, and I gave answers, I had the thought: “I feel like I’m talking to myself.” He was using my own technique of asking questions to lead me to see things differently. No one had ever done this with me before. As we talked, he helped me see that pessimism is mistaking today as a permanent state of affairs.

No matter how depressed I felt, I did not come upon any argument against Christianity that destroyed my faith. The principles of apologetics enabled me to see the biblical narratives as true regardless of my lack of enthusiastic feelings. My faith was reasonable, even though I was still uncertain about my future.

In July, my own pastor told me to contact a friend of his who pastored another local church and who was looking for someone to fill a youth pastor position. My pastor said that he had recommended me to his friend. I met with this other pastor who offered me the position with a salary. I accepted the offer, and upon completion of my naval enlistment, I began my new role in a new church. God solved my dilemma about what to do with my future in a way I never expected.

I stayed in California, was ordained as a minister, continued in various ministries, worked in the title insurance industry, and then became a police officer for twenty years, retiring as a detective. During all this, I went to college and completed seminary courses. My wife and I now live in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, area.

Questions and Answers Help Sort Out the Truth

My friend confirmed to me that the process of asking questions is a valuable way to engage someone in a peaceful conversation in order to guide them to rethink their perspective before I begin dispensing information to them. This method worked for me and was pivotal for a renewal of hope. The question-and-answer method is a nonconfrontational way to talk with someone holding a counter-Christian worldview. We can give an argument for the Christian faith without being argumentative.

Author Gregory Koukl says that to argue is to state a viewpoint, and “arguments are good things . . . because [argument] helps us determine what is true and discard what is false.”1 To argue in favor of Christianity is to calmly present a view.

This book contains conversations I have had with people who hold various non-Christian worldviews. I listened to their views during these conversations, then asked questions to draw out the underlying worldview position they held, and finally proposed the Christian alternative. This is a calm way to share our faith based on three simple concepts about Christianity. First, it is reasonable. Second, it is free of mutually exclusive concepts (contradictions). And third, it is consistent with how humans live.

Christian reasoning serves faith; it is not a substitute for faith. The Spirit does the converting while using us as tools. These conversations do not need to be emotional episodes, as we shall see in the following chapters.

Enjoy the journey.

1. Koukl, Tactics, 23, 33. Koukl is the founder of Stand to Reason (www.str.org), a website dedicated to helping Christians think clearly on various social and spiritual issues.

2

Truth Requires Investigation

Discerning Contradictions, Paradoxes, and Personal Feelings

A Good Question Leads to Self-Examination

I told my wife that I enjoyed spending a lot of time with the grandchildren when they visit. She asked, “Really? Then why do you go into your study shortly after they arrive?” She nailed me. A simple question made me reexamine myself and rethink my statement. I realized that my practice and my statement were inconsistent; my statement was false.

We must realize that what is contradictory must be false. This principle applies to examining our personal life and examining a worldview (a philosophy of life). We ...