{"id":12015,"date":"2024-02-29T21:39:36","date_gmt":"2024-02-29T16:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/29\/on-being-an-ex-apologist-hardman-part-1-of-3\/"},"modified":"2024-02-29T21:39:36","modified_gmt":"2024-02-29T16:09:36","slug":"on-being-an-ex-apologist-hardman-part-1-of-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/29\/on-being-an-ex-apologist-hardman-part-1-of-3\/","title":{"rendered":"On Being an Ex-Apologist (Hardman, part 1 of 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\"\"<\/a>Below is the first of three posts by Randy Hardman on his experiences as an official Christian apologist and why he felt he had to move on from that vocation. (Readers may remember an earlier post<\/a> with a similar theme.)<\/p>\n

Hardman speaks his truth from his experience and has a deep story to tell, some of which we read about in these posts (and I hope to see more of it in time). He\u00a0holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Religion from Appalachian State University and will graduate this Spring from Asbury Theological Seminary with an M.A. in Biblical Studies and an M.A. in Theological Studies. He blogs at www.thebarainitiative.com<\/a>\u2013as he puts it\u2013on things that most of the world doesn\u2019t care about but he thinks they should. He also is the father of two wonderful children, a church consultant for a mainline Christian publisher (a job he says he\u2019s way too opinionated for), and a freelance writer.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: Just as it is easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater, these posts are in no way an attempt to say apologetics as a whole is a pointless discipline, nor are they intended to say that by defining myself as an \u201cex-apologist\u201d I refuse any rational argumentation or apologetic endeavors.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I am an apologist in so far as it is a \u201ctool\u201d in my belt, not a vocation or an identity. These posts are intent on reflecting, through personal testimony, a popular conception of apologetics that I find to be largely one-dimensional and misguided. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Still, I want to <\/em><\/strong>acknowledge that there are people, groups, and ministries devoted to doing apologetics within a framework that I find to be both appropriate and helpful (i.e., I would be remiss if I did not mention my work with Summit Ministries<\/a> in particular stands in exclusion to the nature of what I reference here, for in my experience, while largely traditional as an organization, they encouraged me to think deep and believe even deeper\u2014they share a positive aspect of my entire story).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I was bred to be an apologist.<\/p>\n

I had the classic story that, interestingly, so many others share: one involving an initial teenage salvation, an eighteen year old skepticism that led to agnosticism\/atheism, and a re-gained confidence of my faith through reading Josh McDowell\u2019s The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict<\/a>\"\"<\/em>.<\/p>\n

At 18 years old I entered into the world of apologetics, enrolling at a secular school to \u201cdefend\u201d the Christian faith against those professors who sought to destroy it and with an intent to save the faith of the 75% who, I heard endlessly from those surrounding me, would walk away from their faith because they didn\u2019t know \u201cwhy they believed what they believe.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the age of nineteen I started an apologetics campus ministry, which quickly found a 501c3 host and went national, placing apologetics clubs at campuses all over the U.S. As a twenty year old college student, I spent my nights arguing for creationism, inerrancy, and God\u2019s existence on internet forums and spent many weekends traveling to speak on why apologetics can save your faith\u2026just like it did mine!<\/p>\n

When somebody asked me who I was, I often replied, \u201cI\u2019m an apologist\u201d and I was convinced that this was who I was \u201cmeant\u201d to be. \u201cGod is calling me to this,\u201d I would say.<\/p>\n

The sad part is, while the story is true, it is only true to a certain qualified extent.<\/p>\n

While I certainly came across \u201cevidences\u201d that allowed me to shake off some of the intellectual doubts that I had picked up on, I can\u2019t say any longer that apologetics \u201csaved my faith,\u201d which was something I said time and again in front of audiences and in writing<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I knew all the reasons as to why Christianity was true. I could spout off the cosmological argument quicker than you could say Richard Dawkins, and I certainly royally upset enough professors\u2013not to mention fellow students\u2013with my public classroom defense of the faith!<\/p>\n

But despite being so immersed in apologetics, my \u201cfaith\u201d was as far from God as ever.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know Him despite knowing all about Him. Christianity was an orthodoxy to be defended, a set of correct conservative doctrines and dogmas based on philosophical, historical, and scientific arguments, not a personal covenant or a relationship with the redeemer of souls.<\/p>\n

I knew \u201cwhy I believed what I believed\u201d yet I, too, was in that 75%. How ironic! If my private life was exposed\u2013my addiction to porn, my alcohol and pot consumption, my relationship with my girlfriend\u2013I looked like your average college guy, not the model of an upstanding Christian apologist I tried to be in front of others.<\/p>\n

Reason did little to strengthen my faith<\/strong>, despite my repeated claim that it \u201csaved it.\u201d It just turned me into a jerk with a lot of ammo\u2013a jerk who merely pretended to have things put together by the overwhelming evidence of Christianity but, in reality, who was more assuredly as confused, carnal, and lost as the person I was insistent to win over to Christ through rigorous argumentation.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t blame anyone but myself for my words or actions, but there was a large extent to where I sincerely confused salvation with knowledge, where my life and actions and personal emptiness failed to really matter in the long run as long as I had my conservative Protestant theology worked out.<\/p>\n

And I think whereas I alone bore the need to repent from divorcing my head knowledge from my heart knowledge, there is also a significant fostering of that mindset within apologetics. There is a particular invitation that says, \u201cGot doubt? We got answers\u201d as if intellectual answers can assuage our doubt and our longing for faith.<\/p>\n

When we promise someone that they can become an \u201cofficial apologist\u201d (as some programs and schools do) or when we treat the discipline as if it has the potential to create or save faith in those who doubt, I fear that we end up offering people empty promises, even if they appear to be temporary solutions.<\/em><\/p>\n

This comes from personal experience and from conversations with some of those who are our most sophisticated thinkers.<\/p>\n

The doubts that I dealt with ten years ago are the same doubts that I deal with now, albeit in different ways sometimes and I routinely pray, not read, for faith. Rationalism never quenches the thirst of doubt; it only masquerades it.<\/p>\n

Beyond this, I wonder how often simplistic conceptions of apologetics promote the notion that our best expression of our faith is our public defense of it, not the proclamation of it rooted in our life.<\/p>\n

I wonder, in fact, how many use the \u201cdefense of the Gospel\u201d as an excuse for incredible pride and judgment, a \u201cChristian excuse\u201d to tell others to be quiet and sit down, thus making Christian apologetics a very non-Christian discipline.<\/p>\n

Slowly, the dissatisfaction of \u201chaving all the answers\u201d started to eat away at me and, with that, my sense of pride.<\/p>\n

I remember one day in particular, walking into a classroom on a Sunday morning to teach an apologetics class to some youth. I was coherent, but still slightly drunk from the night before. I am sure I wreaked of smoke but nobody mentioned anything so perhaps Axe Body Spray does work after all.<\/p>\n

The shame and the guilt ran circles inside my head as I spoke about the evidence for the resurrection, standing in front of this group pretending to be a leader. Here I was, at a church teaching an apologetics class, giving the \u201canswers as to why Christianity\u2019s true\u201d but without any real conviction of it myself.<\/p>\n

Oh, in retrospect how I wished someone would have asked me not about \u201cpremise two\u201d but, rather, \u201chow is your soul?\u201d The emptiness and the shame consumed me that day and I realized that despite all my head knowledge and all my intellectual flexing, I was only what John Wesley called an \u201calmost Christian.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the day that I admitted to myself, \u201cApologetics did not save my faith. It saved my pride.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps for many, as in my case, apologetics becomes a means of hiding our faithlessness, not answering it. After all,<\/p>\n