The importance of apologetics cannot be overstated, in the life of the Christian, the life of the Church, and the life of the Church in the world. The famous verse that all apologists, which should really be all Christians, base their obedience to defend the faith is I Peter 3:15:
But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect . . .
The Greek word for “answer” is ἀπολογία, or 1) verbal defense, speech in defense 2) a reasoned statement or argument. These defenses or arguments can come in many forms and address many issues, like the reliability of the Bible, or the resurrection, the philosophical arguments for God’s existence, etc. The impact of Christianity on the world is another.
In “Imagine” John Lennon sings about how great the world would be if there were no religion, if there was “no hell below us, above us only sky.” This is a secularist fantasy born of historical ignorance. The affect the Christian worldview had on the history of civilization is one apologetics approach that doesn’t get a whole lot of attention and I don’t think is even often associated with apologetics. People all over the world and in every culture take for granted the liberal values that are the core of modern human rights, and just think they came out of nothing, or that human beings just made them up along the way. Without the Jewish and Christian religions the world would be a very different place.
Author Eric Metaxas writing at The Christian Post points this out:
So many of the ideas and values we take for granted today are historical innovations, brought about by the rise of Christianity. These days, of course, Christianity takes the fall for things that cramp people’s style: monogamous marriage, chastity, the sanctity of life, and the nuclear family, to name but a few. But in their rush to dismantle these irksome rules, modern secularists would do well to heed G. K. Chesterton’s warning about knocking down a fence before knowing why the fence was put there in the first place.
Exactly. Children especially benefited from the Jewish and Christian conception of the belief that all people are made in God’s image and thus have value apart from their family, and that children are a blessing of God. He mentions a piece by Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry titled: “How Christianity Invented Children.” I give the Jewish religion credit too, but without Christianity taking over the Western world, Judaism would never have had worldwide influence. He points out that the pagan world was no place for children.
These inconvenient facts for the secularists and atheists are well worth knowing as Christianity becomes increasingly persona non grata in Western culture. Human beings can no more break God’s moral laws than they can break his physical laws. Though the Bible is not a manual on morals, its moral laws are the way man was created to live and to flourish. This is worth pointing out when cultural bullies think they can make up whatever moral universe they want. Reality doesn’t work that way.
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