1967
"What is faith?" asked the Sunday school teacher.
A young boy answered in a flash, "Believing something you know isn't true."
That's how Paul Little began his classic apology for the faith, {153} Know Why You Believe. Little was serving as director of evangelism for Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship and had already penned the helpful How to Give Away Your Faith. Later he would add another volume: Know What You Believe, presenting basics of Christian belief. It's an impressive trilogy that squarely meets its audience—young people considering Christianity, accepting it, and wanting to share it with their friends.
Of course faith is not "believing something you know isn't true." Christian faith works side by side with intellectual exploration. Becoming a Christian, Little says, "does not mean kissing your brains good-bye."
But that wasn't always the accepted wisdom. For the first half of the twentieth century, fundamentalist Christianity had a decidedly anti-intellectual bias. After all, colleges were teaching Darwin, Marx, and Freud and questioning Christian dogma.
Kids would leave the farm, go to college, and lose their faith.
The church had no answers for the skeptics. One main reason for the anemia of the fundamentalist churches in the 1930s was that they had kissed their brains good-bye.
The evangelical movement of the 1940s and 50׳s brought a new attention to evangelism but it also recovered an interest in scholarship. Among the many new organizations founded in that period were new Christian colleges and seminaries, as well as ministries to young people in high school and college. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship sprang up in the 1930s and 1940s to help Christian kids keep their beliefs during college years.
This would happen through the support of a Christian fellow-
ship but also through instruction in the intellectual basis for Christianity.
And that's the job that Little takes on in Know Whv You Believe. With only 108 pages, it's not a catalog of Christian truth (like the later Evidence That Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell), but its brevity is a plus. This is no college text to pile on top of other assignments, just a book a strident can tuck in his back pocket and skim in an hour or so at the dining hall.
{154}
It doesn't answer every question, but it covers the big ones: Is there a God? Is Jesus Christ God? Did Christ rise from the dead? Are the Bible documents reliable? Are miracles possible? and several others. There is something of C. S. Lewis in the tone of this book. It draws the reader into its own world of evidence and logic, coolly explaining why Christianity is reasonable. Lit-tie's avuncular style inspires confidence and affection. He's not shouting down the skeptics but embracing them. This is consistent with Inter Varsity's style. Evangelism is never just proving a point but establishing a relationship.
Little's books have all proven to be valuable resources for students and Christian workers. They have strongly influenced at least one generation, not only with their solid content but also with their Christian character.