On the Need for Apologetics

I came across this article indicting the Church for its failure to teach Christians why they should believe anything the bible teaches a while back, but kept putting off linking to it. It's well worth a read. Actually, the entire site is well worth the read; while I disagree with the author on some matters of eschatology and the place of Torah in the Church today, he has an enormous respect for and understanding of the original cultural and linguistic context from which the Bible came. I'll probably be posting links to him fairly regularly for a while.

Anyway, here's the article in a nutshell:

The only way to solve this is with a solid educational program, which is exactly what we lack in so many of our churches. It's time for fewer prefab sermons, with their rampant decontextualizations, and time for more demonstrations on textual criticism, the authenticity of the Gospels, and so on. It's time to make such efforts a priority and not something we take after the damage is done and we need to play "catch up". It's time to be proactive instead of reactive. It's time to make these things something that is discussed from the pulpit on Sunday morning, not hidden away in Sunday night church training classes or Wednesday night Bible study. It's also time to make this part of our evangelism, and throw away or at least de-prioritize all the gimmicks like the "Evangecubes" (I can never get a full picture on all six sides anyway) and the poorly drawn Chick tracts.

Amen and shalom.