Let your steadfast love come to me…then I shall have an answer…
For many years I was a teacher of Apologetics. I helped the student grow in their knowledge of the world around them. I taught world religions, cults, logic, epistemology, scripture, truth, and error. I pushed the student to know what it is they believe and why. I told them the battle they were about to join was a battle for their minds and they should be prepared to demolish every argument and pretension that sets itself up against the truth. I encouraged them to study not only scripture but as many other things as they could so they would be prepared to know both truth and error, thus becoming equipped to withstand the attacks.
For the most part, I think the class was a good one. From what I’ve been told, students often rearranged their schedules to get into one of my classes, though I’m sure not every student had the same desire. I still receive positive comments from former students and their parents regarding the classes and the impact they had on people’s lives. But sometimes I wonder if it was really a good thing to teach. I don’t mean Apologetics isn’t important to know, but I wonder if I spent 17 years putting the cart before the horse.
A few years ago I read the following quote in David A. DeSilva’s book, An Introduction to the New Testament:
“The purpose of apologetics is often assumed to be to convince outsiders of the value of the beliefs and practices of a religion or way of life. This may be an occasional side effect, but it cannot be the primary function. Rather, words of apologetics are really written for insiders. The argument in such books may find their way into discussions between adherents and outsiders, but the primary audience is the believing audience. Apologetic writings sustain the insider’s commitment in the face of critique, ridicule or contradiction from outside (and from questions and doubts inside).”
At first reading, I was fully engaged with his words having spent the previous 17 years telling the students the only questions they will be able to answer are the ones they themselves have struggled through. But as I thought about DeSilva’s quote a bit longer (a quote I am still thinking about four years later) I think I may have missed the most important point of his words. When he wrote “the primary audience is the believing audience,” I think I may have underestimated the power of the word “believing.”
I believe Giordano’s pizza is the best pizza I’ve ever tasted. I believe the Golden State Warriors are dirtbags. I believe we have had way too many Marvel movies. I believe a great many things, but nearly none of them are beliefs for which I will die. Beliefs provoking a willingness to die are very powerful beliefs and such beliefs cannot be had merely through intellectual pursuits. I know the mind is powerful and able to do many wondrous things, but it is an infantile tool when it comes to belief. Don’t get me wrong, believing things that don’t make any sense are not reasonable beliefs. I’m not talking about believing in fairies, trolls, or pink bunkadoos. I’m not saying we should hold onto those things which are inherently contradictory or those things that don’t help explain our experiences in the world in which we live. But those rational criteria are not sufficient to produce a belief in the first place, they are only useful in supporting any beliefs we already have.
This is, I believe, why the psalmist begins this section of Psalm 119 with the words, “Let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord, your salvation according to your promise; then shall I have an answer for him who taunts me.” The starting point for belief is God himself, in particular, it is his intense and unrelenting love as he goes about the task of redeeming humanity from this fallen world and offering us his gift of salvation. His love is the sole driving force for belief, nothing else. Belief does not originate in the mind, it doesn’t even flow from the heart. Its point of origin is God himself and our experience with him.
Job, after all the questions he could muster, finally saw God. He did not demand an answer at that point in time and he did not seek to respond to any of God’s questions. Rather, Job said, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the year, but not my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” Job’s experience with God silenced his questions and produced belief.
I wish a great many things. I wish the Browns would win just one game (maybe the Super Bowl, but let’s be reasonable here!) I wish the winters in Ohio weren’t so cold and the summers weren’t so hot. I wish death was not a reality. I wish brokenness could be contained. And I wish I could go back to my classes of those 17 years and tell them something different. I wish I could tell them that all the knowledge they seek to gain will not do a single thing for them unless they seek to know God first. For it is our experience with God that produces belief, not a book or an argument.
