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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