For the past few days I have been trying to think of the top ten verses that would be most helpful to apologists and evangelists. I have reflected on my own experience and also gotten feedback from many of you on Facebook and Twitter. So, here are my top ten verses to defend your faith (in no particular order):

1 Peter 3:15: “but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence;”   As an apologist you may find yourself having to defend the purpose of apologetics. This is the classic verse indicating that everyone is to be prepared to give an answer with gentleness and respect.

John 1:1-3: “¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.”  This is one of the most compelling and clear articulations of the deity of Christ. It shows that Christ is the eternal creator and is one with (although distinct from) the Father.

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You were MADE to meet your maker

If you know me then you know that my wife is way cooler than me. No question. One such area of cooler-ness is that she seems to find new and interesting music all the time. This is especially depressing for me because I have been a musician, in one form or another, for the better part of 20 years. Depressing I say - but on with the point.

One such discovered band (update - now super popular and super Grammy nominated) is Mumford and Sons and they have a song Awake my Soul that I love with the following lines:

In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die
Where you invest your love, you invest your life

Awake my soul, awake my soul
Awake my soul
You were made to meet your maker
You were made to meet your maker

Normally the phrase “meeting your maker” is used around the idea of death and the fact that we all get the chance to meet our maker - like it or not – when we close our eyes that last time. You meet your maker when life runs out – or rather into Him.

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Recently I was interviewed by Jonathan Morrow for his excellent new book Thinking Christianly (Zondervan, 2011). He asked me about Darwinism as well as reaching the next generation. Here is my brief excerpt. Enjoy!

Jonathan Morrow: It is commonplace to hear about the “overwhelming evidence” for evolution. Have you found this to be the case? Can you talk a little about the role that Darwinism plays in our culture?

Sean McDowell: There’s a well-known joke for lawyers that says when the facts are on your side, argue the facts. However, when you don’t have the facts, use emotion and state your case with absolute certainty. This is precisely what is going on with claims about the “overwhelming evidence” for evolution. We live in an information age, and materialist theories such as Darwinism are slowly going the way of the Dodo. Intelligent design (ID) is on the move. Many Darwinists know this, which is why they focus their primary attacks on ID being religiously motivated or based on ignorance and avoid engaging the actual arguments. But they can ignore the substance for only so long.

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One of the quickest ways to find out if someone is secular or Christian in their thinking is to ask how they define freedom. I often ask this to my students and the typical answer is, “Freedom means being able to do whatever you want without restrictions,” or something of that sort. In other words, freedom is having ultimate individual autonomy without being controlled by another. The great philosopher Immanuel Kant said the characteristic feature of modern man is the trust he places in his own reasoning as opposed to some external authority or tradition.

According to this definition, freedom is understood entirely as freedom from something. There is certainly something to be said for being free from tyrannical rulers or oppression. Those who have lived under communism knew the harsh reality of dictatorships. But is this all freedom entails? Ironically, it’s actually restriction of our time and talents that leads to genuine freedom.

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Jonathan is a faith and culture writer who has published over 100 articles in respected outlets such as USA Today, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Washington Post's “On Faith," BeliefNet, The Huffington Post, and Relevant magazine. He is author of Green Like God: Unlocking the Divine Plan for Our Planet (2010). As a respected Christian voice, Jonathan has been interviewed by ABC World News, NPR, PBS' Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, Fox News, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

Jonathan, you are very gifted writer. Briefly tell ConversantLife, why you wrote this book?

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Last year defenders of Darwinian evolution came out in full force to celebrate the 150^th anniversary since the release of “The Origin of Species” and the 200^th anniversary of Darwin’s birth. New books were released, lectures were sponsored, and “new” missing-link fossils were discovered (Ardi and Ida). The goal was simple: to convince the public that Darwin’s theory is overwhelmingly true and competitors such as ID and creationism are false. Were they successful?

Last Friday night Biola University sponsored an event with Stephen Meyer, leading ID proponent and author of “Signature in the Cell,” that shows ID is alive and well. About 1,500 people attended, and many more watched the event live by simulcast (some were even watching in Kenya!).

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The title of the book Should Christians Embrace Evolution? caught my attention because I’ve been thinking about this for some time. The interesting question is not whether Christians can believe in evolution. Of course they can. There are many Christian apologists and theologians who believe in evolution that I deeply respect, such as Alister McGrath and Dinesh D’Souza.

The question is whether or not Darwinian evolution can be wedded with orthodox Christianity without doing damage to either one. For the past couple years I’ve read the main works of theistic evolutionists such as Francis Collins (The Language of God), Kenneth Miller (Only A Theory), Denis Alexander (Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?), and Karl Giberson (Saving Darwin). They all seem to have a common goal: mold Christian theology to fit neo-Darwinian evolution. In other words, strip Christianity down to its bare bones so it can be consistent with evolution. After reading these works one thing become clear: theology can be molded and adapted to accommodate evolutionary theory, but not vice versa.

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The concept of Intelligent of Design (I.D.) teaches that there is a design in the universe. The design may be observed in several areas such as the intricate astronomical evidence of the universe’s origin or the detailed information discovered in DNA. Most proponents of I.D. believe that it is more probable that the universe was designed purposely by some form of Intelligence than by pure chance or luck. Although proponents of I.D. do not necessarily believe that the universe was designed by God, it is true that many of them will acknowledge that only a Being who is very powerful (like God) could design the universe. Even the famous atheist Richard Dawkins, who claims to be antagonistic towards the concept of an Intelligent Designer, in his interview with Ben Stein hinted at the possibility that aliens could have designed the world.[i]

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A comment to my post on Elmo caused me to consider the “heart” of environmentalism.  I am by no means an expert on the topic, but for me, as a follower of Christ, my heart for the environment begins with an understanding of where creation fits in God’s greater plan of redemption.   

 

A while back I was given the chance to publish an article online at Flourish responding to Wendell Berry’s great work “The Gift of Good Land.”  Looking back, I think it really sets forth my thinking in this area:

 

“The Gift of Good Land,” was published 30 years ago, and we reprinted it in the Fall 2009 issue of Flourish Magazine to celebrate Mr. Berry’s work, but also to provoke some questions: How has the natural world, and efforts to steward it, changed in these 30 years? How has Christianity changed? What is still relevant about Mr. Berry’s words today? What have been our successes and failures as creation’s stewards in these three decades? Where do we go from here?

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