Introduction

How to Reach a Culture of Radical Unbelief

On March 3, 2005, The Washington Times published an article about the decline of atheism.1 The author presented several good reasons to believe that godlessness was in trouble and there would be fewer atheists in the future. I distinctly remember the piece because I heartily endorsed its thesis on my radio show that week. Boy was I wrong! While the Times certainly presented solid reasons for people to reject atheism,2 the prognosis that more people actually were going to do so was clearly premature. Atheism, at least in America, is in ascension, not decline, as more and more people openly reject the existence of God.3

This trend is largely due to the work of a few vocal and aggressive atheist writers, the most popular of whom are Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett. Inspired by the terrorist attacks of 9/11,4 the “Four Horsemen” of the new atheism have sold millions of books railing not only against Islam, but religion in general. Along with Hollywood types like Bill Maher, they have made atheism fashionable, particularly among college students.

This movement is part of a larger cultural shift toward religious skepticism in general. While not all skeptics embrace an ardent form of atheism, they all are becoming much more cynical about traditional religion and openly suspicious of any strong claims to revealed truth. As this culture of radical doubt has gained strength, my email inbox has been inundated with requests for help in dealing with it. Christians are running into more and more friends, family members, and co-workers who not only question the faith, but are antagonistic toward it, and they aren’t sure how to interact with them.

There are three main areas in which people request assistance.

First, many people want to know how to respond to challenges to Christianity. They are looking for answers to tough questions and rebuttals for difficult arguments. For example, Tim sent me this email:

Hi, Don,

An old friend from high school has looked me up on Facebook. He has abandoned his faith and is an aggressive atheist. He keeps trying to negate my faith, so I’ve been asking him to come up with something besides just telling me I’m stupid. Finally today he sent a list of supposed errors in the Bible. I am no expert on different manuscripts but . . . Junias the female apostle given a sex change? What? I don’t see anything in the Bible about this—am I missing something? If I can trouble you for some input . . .

Tyler was also looking for answers, although in a more general sense:

Dear Don,

I will be beginning my freshman year at a secular college, studying civil engineering, in about a month. I have been reading books such as Reasonable Faith, Tactics, and Evidence for the Resurrection and listening to your podcasts and others like Stand to Reason and apologetics.com for the last year. I am not sure what I will be facing at college, so I wanted to know if there was anything that you know of that would help me with these challenges. Is there a group of things that I should memorize in order to be prepared, or any books/podcasts that I should study both during and before school starts? Any other suggestions that you have would be greatly appreciated.

Tim and Tyler wanted to know what to say in defense of Christianity when faced with a charge against it. Other people are interested in learning how to explain the Christian faith clearly to unbelievers. For example, Louis asked for help in sharing the gospel with a friend of his:

She was raised a Baptist and at one point in her life she became skeptical and suddenly none of the Christian claims made any sense to her. She claims she honestly wants to know, but has yet to hear a coherent answer to her inquiries. She is now a self-proclaimed agnostic. She’s embraced pluralism; she feels there’s a bit of truth in all religions and no one religion has the exclusive truth because God is too great for us to fully comprehend. When asked how she knows that Christianity isn’t true, she says she doesn’t, but the whole Jesus thing doesn’t make any sense to her. Why did Jesus have to die? How does his death and resurrection “save” us? And why does she have to believe now, in this life? How does that make a difference? If God is a God of love, why not give us a chance to change our minds when we have proof He exists in the afterlife? I have a problem explaining this to her in very simple terminology so she can get it. Can you help?

Some inquiries speak to a more foundational need. A ministry leader came to my office the other day wondering why the old methods of evangelism weren’t working for his congregation anymore. “What do we need to change?” he asked. He realized that there was something wrong at a fundamental level, but didn’t know what it was.

This book will address all three types of questions, albeit in reverse order. Our focus will move from the broad and philosophical to the more precise and practical. This is necessary because the philosophical provides the foundation for the practical. If you are wrong or unsure about what you are trying to accomplish in a very general sense, you are much more likely to get sidetracked or bogged down in a conversation. So we will start the book by discussing the nature of religion and what that means in regard to the overarching goal of evangelism.

Then we will walk through the initial steps to take in framing a conversation properly. This is a key element to the book and provides an important distinguishing characteristic of my evangelistic model. As much as I appreciate all the apologetic and evangelistic resources available to us, most require immense amounts of memorization and expertise. Also, they leave the Christian on the defensive, always at the mercy of the next question or objection of the skeptic. My approach avoids those pitfalls. It offers a natural model for conversation that allows the believer to direct the discussion and can be implemented organically by almost anyone. Also, it is easily adaptable to various situations. Life doesn’t always look like a university classroom and we aren’t all trained professors; I try to take that into account in the pages that follow.

In part 2 we will elaborate on some of the most common misunderstandings skeptics have about God and discuss how to gently instruct them in the truth. Learning how to tell the story of the world in a winsome and easily understood way is essential to reaching unbelievers.

Finally, in part 3, we will talk about how to compare worldviews and address objections to Christianity. In doing so, we will learn a few arguments to present in support of the Christian worldview.

Before we begin, let’s clarify what I mean by the word skeptic. Is this book only good for reaching hard-core atheists and agnostics? Not at all. I use the term in a very broad sense to refer to those who either aren’t sure Christianity is true or are convinced that it isn’t. That includes everyone from Richard Dawkins to the guy who has been going to your church for fifteen years but is starting to have some doubts about his faith. (It happens more than one might think.) Skeptics come in varying kinds and degrees, and the principles in this book can be applied across a wide spectrum of unbelief. Admittedly, the typical skeptic I had in mind while writing is what we might call a “secularist”: an atheist or agnostic who has been soaking in the naturalistic ideas of the Western education and entertainment industry for too long and now has at least a vague sense that Christianity is not intellectually feasible. Most of the skeptics you run into will fall into this category, so that is where I focused. However, you can easily adapt this model to reach members of other religions and even spiritual seekers who are quite open to the faith but just have questions.

I’ve been talking to all kinds of skeptics for many years now, and I’ve made a ton of mistakes. I’ve tried to learn from those blunders, though, and over time I’ve realized that no matter who you are talking to, the key to a fruitful conversation is to frame the discussion properly and then direct it along a particular path. That is what we will learn in this book.