As an apologist, “why” and “how” is a question I often ask myself, my students, and others around me. “Why do you believe that?” “How does this entail that?” I however, fail to remind myself to ask myself a reminder “why.” The question of why and how I got into apologetics in the first place. This is a bit of a shorter story but it is one that I want to reflect on with you.
High school and college are formative years for every individual. These years often make or break people. These years both made and broke me. They made me into the man I am today but also broke me down in such a way that God was able to build me back into something that is more like Jesus. For me, the breakdown began in high school with breakdowns.
I am a huge fan of metal. Like HUGE. If you were to look at my Apple Music artist list, you will find that metal bands populate about 95% of it. It will be anywhere from old-school metal like Motley Crue to the newest Slaughter to Prevail song. I love it. And it was these breakdowns that began my breakdown beginning with a band called My Heart to Fear (a band I would later join for about 6 months). Their lead singer was and still is a close friend of mine and he went through a faith crisis of sorts. Because his band was a Christian band at the start, the pressure of knowing what he believed was really weighing on him. This led him, but did not cause him, to question his faith so as to be sure that God existed. His method of questioning his faith was that of asking a conditional question, “If you are real, God, then show me a demon.” Little did he know, he would get what he asked for in a way that he and anyone else involved with the family would never forget.
He did not tell me what was going on until about a year or so into the crisis and by then, things got pretty crazy. He caught it (or them, I am not entirely sure how many there were anymore) on camera multiple times. Apparitions were appearing. Strange noises were appearing out of nowhere. People were being touched/hurt. I will spare you the stories of my personal experiences with the demon(s) for the sake of space and focus, but needless to say, these experiences left me wondering what I believed about it all.
This all started in late high school and by now, we had graduated high school and I was in undergraduate studies at a local university to be a teacher. He and I would talk about the experiences often and the band ended up writing two songs about the experiences. Because I needed more than experiential information to back things up, I turned to theology, specifically demonology. The question about what they were and what the Bible said about them lingered in my thoughts so much that I began to just read what I could or watch/listen to lectures on YouTube. It was here that I got my toes wet in the world of apologetics and would be what I now call pastoral apologetics.[1]
This is where my story takes a bit of a turn and another influential person in my life enters.
In my sophomore year in college, I had gotten involved with a campus ministry and the college minister at this ministry picked up on my interests. He noticed that I would ask deep questions and though he loved talking about them, he directed me toward a man named Ravi Zacharias. At the time Ravi was a college ministry sensation. His ministry RZIM was booking him and other speakers at universities all over the country and world. Ravi was my first formal entry into the world of apologetics. Though he fell (spiritually) and has a tainted name now, he will forever be my apologetics “father” and will hold a special place in my heart.
With the introduction into the world of apologetics with Ravi, I did a nosedive into it. My college ministry had prepped me well for this (as a good pastor should) nosedive. He had indirectly taught me how to think through a passage of the Bible or a topic of interest so as to remain faithful to the central doctrines of Christianity. This nosedive launched me into the YouTube page of William Lane Craig’s ministry, Reasonable Faith. Not only did Bill take over where my college minister left off, he unlocked an interest in how philosophy interacts with Christianity.
At this point, I was getting ready to take the required philosophy course at school and it could not have been a duller class. The professor did not do it justice. Because I had always thought about deep philosophical things, my interest was there, and with the newfound interest in how it related to my faith, I was eager to learn. The class introduced me to necessary people but did not increase my interest as it should have. Likely, this was the professor’s teaching style issue and the expectations I had for the class itself which were robust discussion about things that matter. From my recollection, this did not happen. We learned more about the people and what they wrote rather than what their writings meant or how they apply to life.
With this stunted philosophical growth, I turned toward the theological side of apologetics. In this phase, I gained an interest in Islam and I think I consumed all of Nabeel Qureshi’s material on YouTube and begun binging as much of David Wood’s material as I could. From these two apologists alone I gained some confidence to take it to the internet and began to talk to whomever I could about it.[2] It was then that I began to notice something… This is where the “why” comes into the picture.
I noticed the lack of apologetic appreciation and ability in my hometown. There were pastors that were minorly interested in apologetics but would not be able to really answer questions that go beyond the surface. The modus operandi was to only give proof texts for beliefs rather than a rational case that included passages from the Bible.[3] This bugged me to no end because in the town where I grew up, there were eight universities within a two hour drive making interaction with well versed professors inevitable. It was not the only thing that bugged me either. For the longest time I had my mind set that I would leave the town behind, move to one of the Carolinas and only come back for holidays and to see family. I was at a crossroads: continue my teacher education or graduate and seek opportunities to do apologetics ministry where I am from. God had quickly and made it clear what I was supposed to do because I got married. Getting married and still being in undergraduate school made me lay down roots in my hometown. By then I had pretty much accepted the call into college ministry where I could impact my hometown and its many campuses by bringing apologetics as a tool for evangelism and training. It was just a question of how, where, and what school to enroll in?
Because college ministry requires interaction with professors and with my interest/burden to bring apologetics to my hometown formally, I saw the need for further and formal education. The books that I was reading were not going to cut it. I needed some sort of teacher/student atmosphere to help prepare me better. Not only that, but when you interact with the ideas that apologetics deals with, having some letters behind your name helps those with PhDs want to hear what you have to say a bit more. With some searching and influence from William Lane Craig and Nabeel Qureshi, I landed at Biola University in their Master’s of Arts in Christian Apologetics.
It was this program and one of the professors, J. Warner Wallace, that prompted me to start a blog and this ministry that you are taking part in by reading and interacting with my material. It was the beginning of public ministry. I had gotten the training I needed after being broken down to where I was asking questions. The “whys” and “hows” are so important to ask ourselves often so that we do not forget why we do what we do and how we got to where we are. This reflection is only scratching the surface and I could go on for pages on the why, but it thought it necessary to recount how I got to writing this blog you just read.
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[1] Pastoral apologetics are aimed directly at boosting one’s faith in such a way that it fulfills the 1 Peter 3:15 mandate as well as give a zeal and hunger for more.
[2] I even wrote a lesson/unit plan for children about apologetics to Islam. It was a fun one and based my whole plan on Nabeel Qureshi’s book Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus.
[3] There are better ways to defend your beliefs than offering proof texts and this needs to be made known for effective evangelism.