Have you ever wondered about how to become an online Evangelical Christian apologist? Tim Sledge, a former Southern Baptist pastor, shares how anyone can become an expert apologist.
- Above all else, remember this: You are right. They are wrong. You are coming from a superior position. You have God on your side. They don’t.
- Never, never think about the possibility that you might sound arrogant and condescending when you keep asserting that God has led you to the real truth.
- Accept uncritically and parrot the answers well-known Christian apologists give about challenges to belief. Never check these things out for yourself.
- Do not listen to ex-Christians when they tell you why they left and how life feels after leaving faith. Turn off all curiosity about an ex-believer’s life experiences. Listen only to what the Bible tells you about why people leave and how it feels to them when they leave. This enables you to know more about how their lives feel than they do.
- Always assume that individuals who never believed will be immediately convinced when you quote Bible verses as proof of your beliefs.
- Ignore the feedback of ex-believers when you are quoting Bible verses to convince them, and they tell you you’re quoting verses they memorized or quoted when they were believers.
- When someone surprises you by responding with a Bible passage that disagrees with your position, tell them they are not interpreting the passage correctly.
- If you find out that an ex-believer has studied the Bible more than you, confidently assert they were never a true believer and consequently all their study was in vain.
- If all your arguments fail, attack the character of the person who disagrees with you! Tell this individual that there’s no way his/her life can have meaning, and there’s no way s/he can live any kind of moral life. Top it off with the warning: “You’ll be sorry when you burn in hell!” And be sure to convey that you see that destiny as a just reward.
- Remember that you’re not just an apologist for Christianity, you’re also an apologist for your brand of Christianity. Confront Christians whose theology is different from yours with the same intensity that characterizes your confrontations with atheists.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Yep, that sounds very accurate, although many jump to number 9 very quickly.
He got it right on the nose.
..and evade the questions. Many of the Evangelical arguments involve ignoring facts, wandering around in circular arguments, and stating contradictory things whenever necessary to win particular points. If asked about any of this, just ignore the question and repeat the same thing over again. 😉
This sounds like something from The Onion – or something I would make up sarcastically regarding the messages I received as an evangelical.
While this list is presented in a tongue-in-cheek fashion it’s not, from my experience, far off-base from how evangelism (online or face-to-face) is really taught. Most/all of these points are precisely what I was instructed to do in evangelism classes, books, or from the pulpit. The words describing rules 2-10 were dressed up in gentler language but they meant pretty much the same thing. Rules 2-10 were true because rule 1 was a given.
There was little to no consideration for how these tactics might be received by the evangelism targets. After all, why wouldn’t people want to receive the good news of the gospel? We were encouraged to :”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” (i.e.: don’t be a jerk). Adherence to the second half of 1 Peter 3:!5, as we all know, varies from person to person.
Tim Sledge reduced online evangelism to its elements. Nos. 4, 6 and 8 apply to every single person who writes to Bruce after reading one or two of his posts. I had to chuckle when I read Number 5: How many of those folks think they’re going to flip a switch in a non-believer simply by asserting the authority of the Bible?
“Remember that you’re not just an apologist for Christianity, you’re also an apologist for your brand of Christianity. Confront Christians whose theology is different from yours with the same intensity that characterizes your confrontations with atheists.”
What this means, apparently, is that if your opponent’s theology is not old-time, end-time, KJB, tribulation and rapture, treat it as if he/she never truly believed in Him in the first place (no matter how much your opponent claims to believe in Him), and act like it’s not enough to simply trust Him to the forgiveness of your sins and live accordingly.
Also, label all Catholic or mainstream Protestants as unbelievers because they honor the “traditions of men”. Tell them you attend a “Christian Church”. Tell them they are “spiritually dead” and that you conversely are “on fire for God”. Tell them their church is dying and yours is the “fastest growing in (pick a part of the world). Tell them that having respectful caring friendships with those who are gay, bisexual, atheist, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, etc without an ulterior motive of preaching to them means they are not True Christians. Tell them it is not enough to be a good, decent human being trying to make it through life.
I’m sure I missed a few things.
(Former teenage Assemblies of God member, current liberal Catholic).
Pretty good list of additions. 😢🤣