Tag: Apologetics

The Top 10 Most Read Articles in 2024

This blog has picked up some steam in the last year, and COVID era articles lead the way

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I have been blogging since 2012. I began in simple obedience to what I believed God was prompting me to do. I didn’t initially set out to write for anyone in particular. I endeavored only to be obedient to use the gifts God has given me. This blog began as a journey of faith for me, not just as a way to be obedient, but as a way of listening, seeking to understand, and working out what God was working in me.

This blog still is those things, but I soon realized that I wasn’t just writing for me, that I had an audience, albeit a very small one. The audience to whom I found myself writing in those early days was the seeker, the unbeliever, the curious, and the doubter.

Over the years I find have found myself writing often for a different audience. I still have a heart for the seeker, but I find myself writing more to the American church, the people who call themselves Christians, whether their claim is predominantly political, cultural, or spiritual.

I see a large segment of the church identifying uncritically with a political and cultural form of Christianity, as I once did, and missing the ever counter-cultural nature of the kingdom of God. My heart is to urge people to be faithful to Christ alone – not to a nation, a culture, a political party, or even a denomination.

These concerns prompted the article that had the highest views in 2024. With 6241 views, Who Were the Sons of Issachar? And What Might They Mean for Us Today? was the most read article on Navigating By Faith this year. Fitting it is, given the shift in my writing.

This article was a “Covid baby”, written in 2020, as I wrestled with the way some Christians, including some of my friends, embraced a mixture of unabashed support for Donald Trump and an appetite to follow crazy conspiracy trails down rabbit holes as we neared a presidential election in the throes of a worldwide pandemic.

Our nation was greatly polarized, and voices in American church were just as polarized as the world around us. Those tensions over politics, how we should respond to COVID, and how we should faithfully reflect God to the world around us drove me to reflect on the days when nation of Israel was torn between King Saul and David, the man after God’s heart.

These tensions continue today. We all want (or should want) to be people after God’s heart. We still need to know how to understand the times and how God would have us live in them, being faithful to His purpose in harmony with the kingdom of God, which is not a kingdom of this world. These concerns have not abated, which may be why this article has been the most read article each year since I wrote it.

Another, more personal and timeless reflection was the subject of the second most read article in 2024: The Redemption of Korah: the Sons of Korah. Also written during COVID in 2020, this article was viewed 3580 times this year. It has been the second most read article on this blog each year since I wrote it in 2020.

The Redemption of the Sons of Korah speaks to the redemptive work of God despite our worst tendencies. The article followed some research I did about the sons of Korah. Korah led his tribe in rebellion against God’s man, Moses, and they were all swallowed up by the earth.

That seemed to be the end of the story, but something in the text caught me attention, and began to search the rest of Scripture to find out whether any descendants of Korah survived and what became of them. What I found is one of the most poignant, but beautiful, redemption stories in the Bible.

One other article topped 3000 views in 2024, but before I get to it, I pause to reflect on the fact that I previously measured the most read articles of each year in the hundreds. In some years, I could not find ten articles with even 100 views. By 2019, the total viewership had risen to just over 10,000.  It jumped to 20,000 in 2020, the year of COVID. The next three years topped out around 30,000, but this year viewership has jumped above 61,000!

I have no idea what accounts for the change. It isn’t that I have written more articles. I have written double the number and triple the number of articles in previous years. I don’t know what the explanation is for the increase. I don’t monetize this sight, and I only post the articles on my Facebook group, typically. Sometimes, I post to my public Facebook feed, and I post to LinkedIn even more rarely.

I don’t spend much effort to be found, but people seem to find me. In fact, 114,190 people found Navigating By Faith on search engines this year according to WordPress. This compares to 5272 people finding the blog on Facebook where I post all of the articles. Go figure.

Any way, rounding out the top 3 articles is God Meets Us Where We Are, with well over 3000 views. The three most read articles in 2024, including this one, were all written in 2020, during the “COVID era”. During that time, we were all home more, reading more, and reflecting more on the state of the world and our lives.

Continue reading “The Top 10 Most Read Articles in 2024” →

What Good Is Apologetics?

If we do apologetics only to win arguments, we are missing something.

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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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The Best and Hardest Apologetic Argument

We place too much emphasis, perhaps, on the arguments when we “do” apologetics. Not that being intimate and proficient with the arguments for God are a bad thing; but they aren’t the only thing.

kevingdrendel2 Comments

I like apologetics because I like the intellectual exercise. I enjoy loving God with my mind. Maybe the reason for that is that I became a Christian in the academic setting of college. I was a seeker then, and I have always been stimulated by the intellectual journey.

I have loved talking, writing, and reading about meaningful and significant matters since I emerged from an existential angst that I sought (unsuccessfully) to smother with alcohol and drugs in my teens. Once I stepped out of that haze to face the reality of life, I dove head first into the search for truth.

I had no patience for merely fanciful speculation. My keen interest and motivation became a quest to learn about and understand the nature of reality. If there was meaning to find there, I was dedicated to finding it.

My journey led me eventually to Jesus, and there my quest was fulfilled. I have found in Christ the truth for which I sought. In the Old Testament, which speaks of him and foreshadows him, and in the New Testament, which is a testament to Jesus, the Messiah, the savior of the world from all the existential angst that bears down on mankind, I have found explanations and nuance that make sense of reality.

I have found a home for my restless mind in learning to love God with my mind. The intellectual pursuit is part of loving God, but it’s easy to forget for someone like me that I also need to love God with my heart, soul, and strength. (See Luke 10:27)

I may get into what it means to love God in these various ways in another blog post, but first I am realizing it’s important to see that love is meant to be the primary object and focus of our hearts, souls, strength, and mind. Loving God is the ultimate goal of these things – not the other way around.

We engage our hearts, souls, strength and minds in order to know God. Knowing God in a Hebrew sense means much more than intellectual ascent and understanding. It means relationship. This makes sense because love is relational.

Knowing is also the primary focus of apologetics, but the emphasis on knowing in apologetics, especially for western-minded Christians, is often simply intellectual. In apologetics, we talk about learning various arguments for God, like the cosmological argument, the argument from fine-tuning, and the ontological argument, and so on.

We debate which arguments are the best arguments, which arguments are most effective, and which arguments are most difficult for a nonbeliever to counter. We talk as if we do apologetics like gladiators in an arena where knowledge is the ultimate weapon.

I have suspected for awhile now that we are missing the boat when we “view “do” apologetics this way. Maybe I am slow to this realization, and most other people are way ahead of me, but I suspect I may be more typical than I fear.

Continue reading “The Best and Hardest Apologetic Argument” →

The Beginning of an “Unapologetic” Argument for God

Faith is the inevitable position of a finite being who does not know all there is to know.

kevingdrendel5 Comments

I really like apologetics. I find it interesting to think about, but apologetics has limited power as a tool to convince people to believe in God. It is not a magic bullet. There is no magic argument to prove the existence of God.

When I see article titles or social media posts that make claims of proving the existence of God, I cringe a little bit. It’s a promise we can’t deliver. We really shouldn’t “go there”. I feel that we should be more honest than that.

Of course, the “promise” depends on the definition of “prove”. The Oxford online dictionary defines the word, “prove”, as follows:

  1. demonstrate the truth or existence of (something) by evidence or argument. (“The concept is difficult to prove.”)
  2. demonstrate to be the specified thing by evidence or argument. (“Innocent until proven guilty.”)

If everyone accepted and applied these definitions, perhaps, we could find more common ground. A “proof” in the first sense is just evidence or argument that demonstrates the truth of the existence of something. Whether that proof actually, definitively and absolutely provides the truth or existence of that something, is another matter. A proof in this sense is still open to judgment whether it accomplished the goal.

A proof in the second sense is similar, and the example includes a standard of proof (one that we use in criminal proceedings). This example raises a key point: Without agreement on the standard of proof, the determination whether a proof is successful in proving that point is a moving target.

The success of any evidence or argument in proving a point depends on what standard of proof is applied. Two people may apply two very different standards of proof and, therefore, arrive at two very different conclusions on the determination whether the proof was successful.

Most of the arguments between theists and atheists gloss over and fail to recognize this fundamental issue. Not only do they apply different standards of proof, they make all kinds of different assumptions, and worse: they define their terms differently. It’s no wonder the debates and discussions produce so much disagreement. They are basically talking in foreign languages to each other.

Wikipedia defines “proof” as “sufficient evidence or a sufficient argument for the truth of a proposition.” What is “sufficient” evidence, though, depends on the standard of proof that is applied. Different standards of proof will yield different results.

For instance, we generally apply different standards of proof in the American legal system in different contexts. In civil cases, the applicable standard of proof is “more likely than not”, and in criminal proceedings, the applicable standard of proof is “beyond a reasonable doubt”.

Proving a case under the “more likely than not” standard is much easier than proving a case “beyond a reasonable doubt”. The higher standard (“beyond a reasonable doubt”) is designed for criminal cases with the purpose of causing “the system” to err on the side of finding a guilty person innocent (rather than erring on the side of convicting innocent people).

At least, that is the theory. People still disagree on the outcomes of criminal cases, and innocent people are sometimes found guilty, even when applying the much higher standard of proof. I am reminded of the axiom: to err is human.

These problems of proof are inevitable for finite beings. We don’t know what we don’t know, and we are always prone to “getting it wrong”. If we don’t take that limitation seriously, we become arrogant and prideful.

Therefore, I am reminded of the propriety of maintaining humility. Even if we are certain in our own minds of the truth of a matter, we should be mindful of the human tendency to get things wrong.

This is where faith comes in. Faith, in part, is an exercise in humility. Faith is the inevitable condition of being human, and that goes for faith in the truth that science reveals and faith in the truth that the Bible reveals. Let me explain.

Continue reading “The Beginning of an “Unapologetic” Argument for God” →

Apologetics: What It Means for Our Speech to Be Seasoned with Salt

The phrase, “seasoned with salt”, alludes to the words of Jesus that we should be salt and light to the world.

kevingdrendel8 Comments

I have been impressed over the last few years about the need for Christians to be gracious, always, when addressing people, especially people who do not believe in Christ. Maybe I have been so impressed because of the many examples on social media in which people “defending” Christ or Christian values are anything but gracious.

The direction from Scripture is clear. The following two passages are instructions on how Christ followers should relate to outsiders:

“Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.” Col. 4:5-6 (ESV)

“[A]lways being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.” 1 Pet. 3:15-16 (ESV)

I believe God wants us to take these instructions to heart!

I have seen so many examples of ungracious responses from people purporting to defend the Christian faith and values that it seems to me we are failing generally on this point. We seem to be failing to put on Christ and to display his character to the world, and our failure is having an impact. It’s just not a good one!

When people display godly character in their conversations they really shine. When we aren’t gracious, “seasoned with salt”, gentle and respectful, we risk eclipsing the message of the Gospel by our demeanor. The world needs to see Jesus lifted up, but we may be blocking their view.

Assuming that God is serious about the way we should act in the world toward “outsiders” who don’t know Christ, what does it mean to be gracious? What does it mean to season our speech with salt? What does it mean to provide a defense with gentleness and respect?

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