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I recently heard someone say that apologetics is not good for anything because it is just about proving to other people that you are right. The statement was made by a Christian who is vocal about sharing his faith. So, this was not an excuse from someone who is ashamed to defend the reasons for his hope in Jesus Christ.

Indeed, some people approach apologetics as a kind of intellectual game of one-upmanship. Some people seem to think that apologetics is a kind of silver bullet or kryptonite to combat skepticism and atheism.

I have been drawn to apologetics over the last 12 to 15 years as I have gone through a renewal of my faith. I became a Christian in the academic setting of college, so apologetics was attractive to me. The intellectual exercise is invigorating and stimulating.

Along the way, I developed expectations similar to the ones criticized by my friend on social media – that apologetics has all the answers and engaging in apologetics will turn skeptics and atheists into believers, but it doesn’t necessarily work that way.

Just watch a debate and listen to the responses of the people who observed it. Most skeptics are going to walk away skeptical, thinking that the atheist won, and most believers are going to walk away believing, thinking that the Christian won.

We might call this confirmation bias. It’s human nature. We are naturally inclined to identify with the things we already believe in and to find the arguments that align with our beliefs to be compelling.

Debates tend to promote the kind of one-upmanship that my friend criticized. After all, that is traditionally the point of debate. For me, this seemed to be the wrong format for sharing the Gospel.

Therefore, I dismissed debating as an effective apologetics “tool”. It seemed to me that debates were not an effective way of delivering truth. Therefore, I gravitated toward platforms like the Unbelievable? Podcast hosted by Premiere Christian Radio in Great Britain where dialogues between theists and atheists are carried on civilly (usually) in a dialogue format.

But, I am not sure how much more effective dialogue is than debate in convincing people of the truth of Christianity. Most people remain convinced of their own views most of the time. Human beings are stubborn that way.

Many modern people see themselves primarily as rational beings, so we think apologetics reaches them where (they think) they live. I am skeptical that so many people are such rational beings. I have to question my own rationality sometimes. We are motivated by many things other than reason, and we use reason to cover up ulterior motives.

This is the thesis (more or less) of Jonathan Haidt in his book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. He argues that we reach our fundamental moral judgments about right and wrong at a gut level – not at a rational level. We turn to reason to defend our positions, but our positions are formed at an intuitive level.

I have not read the whole book, and I don’t recall his data and evidential support for the conclusions he reaches, but the general proposition rings true to my own experience and observation, limited as it is. What good is apologetics, then?

If Jonathan Haidt is right, then apologetics is not going to reach people where they actually live – in their gut. If we are aiming at the head, we are missing the mark, perhaps.

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Other people have been convinced, intellectually, first, before they took any “steps of faith”. People like Hugh Ross, Francis Collins, Sarah Irving-Stonebraker, and Sy Garte come to mind.

If only a few people are influenced intellectually by apologetics to consider Christianity, then there is value in it. Clearly, there are people who found the reasons for believing Christianity to be compelling.

If you consider the stories of these people who have been influenced by reason and intellect to consider Christianity, though, it wasn’t “apologetics” that influenced most of them. No one convinced them of the rationality of Christianity. They followed their own reason and exploration of the evidence to faith.

Some of these people came to faith not through apologetics, but through the hollowness and thinness of a worldview driven by atheism. In fact, a book was recently published on this theme titled, Coming to Faith Through Dawkins: 12 Essays on the Pathway from New Atheism to Christianity.

Some people, like Nabeel Qureshi, say that apologetics didn’t convince them of the truth of Christianity, but but it it tore down the walls that prevented them from considering Christianity. Qureshi was a strong and devout Muslim. He credits dreams with the reason for his conversion, as do many Muslims who convert to Christianity, but apologetics eliminated the barriers of his resistance.

Given these stories, I don’t think we can say that apologetics has no value, but we need to understand the limitations of apologetics. It isn’t a silver bullet. If I can talk you into believing in Jesus, someone else can talk you out if it!

We all have our own journeys to travel through the intellectual, cultural, emotional, and personal landscapes of our lives. We are not all “wired” the same. We have different perspectives as finite beings, and (perhaps) the best we can do is resonate with another person who has had similar experiences, thoughts, difficulties, etc.

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He did not become a believer through apologetics, though. He candidly says that God changed his heart of stone into a heart of flesh, and he found himself believing. The believing didn’t come through some intellectual exercise. He was intellectually resistant to Christianity.

His conversion came at the “gut level”. Or maybe he would say at the heart level. He didn’t discover apologetics until he began to try to understand his newfound faith. As an engineer and man of science, he was immediately concerned about reconciling science with his faith – if it even could be reconciled. He didn’t know!

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I like the fact that Ben is candid about his own story, that he did not come to faith through reason. Apologetics was key in finding strong support for his faith, though, through reason and evidence.

I think, the intellectual path to Christianity is not as well traveled as other paths may be. Yet, Christianity stands up well to reason, I believe, better than atheism does.

Let’s be honest about this. It is no knock on Christianity. I often think of Jonathan Haidt’s thesis that people develop there fundamental beliefs intuitively, at a gut level, and they turn to the intellect more in support of their beliefs than in the formation of their beliefs.

Indeed, I have heard many stories of former atheists who simply adopted a naturalistic worldview they picked up from the world around them without any critical analysis of it. The same thing can be said of people who have picked up a Christian worldview from the family and community they grew up in.

If apologetics does one thing, it challenges us to think through what we believe. Even if Christians only shared apologetics with Christians, it would be a good thing!

If we do apologetics only to win arguments, we are missing something. You can’t do apologetics for very long with any degree of integrity without discovering that it isn’t a silver bullet; we don’t have all the answers; and there are still black holes, dark matter, and dark energy in our understanding.

This can be unsettling, but we need to remember that we are all finite. We shouldn’t expect to know all there is to know and to understand it completely well. We can take solace in the fact that Christianity has robust, intellectual capital with great explanatory scope in light of all knowledge that we have, scientific and otherwise, cohering with reality as we can study it in nature and in our own experience.

Since I have been studying these things, I have found no competing worldview that compares.

Apologetics has taught me that there is no killer argument. Every argument has a counter argument, but apologetics taught me that the Christian worldview stands up well to those counter arguments. When I don’t feel confident in my faith, the knowledge that I have gained through apologetics holds me up. It also helps me to value humility and to love God with my mind, and that is a good thing.