The Apologetic of Now - Jill Carattini

Several seats ahead of me, a conversation about The Da Vinci Code was drawing otherwise subdued travelers out of their newspapers. "It really makes you look at the church differently," a voice said, triggering a quick "yes" out of the one beside her. Meanwhile, the passenger on my left, inspired by the conversation in front of us, was describing truth as coming in flavors like ice cream. "And I've never been able to develop a taste for Christianity," he told me. Sitting alone in my car after a long plane ride, I echoed the tired query of the psalmist, "Are the foundations destroyed?" My inquiry of God was equally dispirited: "What can I possibly do about it?"

The need for a coherent and compelling apologetic is reiterated daily. From time to time, it is a need I meet with despair. How do you present the gospel when words are constantly being redefined and the lines between fiction and reality are spoken of interchangeably? Those of us who long to bring the balm of Christ to a world in pain can find ourselves retreating for countless reasons: rejection, disappointment, fear, inability. Yet it is often when my skill in presenting the gospel seems most inadequate and I voice my weariness in prayer that God corrects once again my grave shift in thought.

It is not up to me to uphold the pillars and pieces of Christianity to make it a true and valid thing to believe in. It is not my skill in communicating or my winsome personality, but the gospel itself that speaks with power, and this power that speaks in my life: "For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus's sake" (2 Corinthians 4:5). It is a mindset imperative not only in understanding the Christian story, but the very nature of truth itself. That which is real, that which exists and has meaning, exists whether we choose to stand beside it or not. Even in the throes of postmodernity, Jesus is Lord and the gospel is powerful. This I forget when focusing on me.

C.S. Lewis once asked, "Where, except in the present, can the eternal be met?" In my dismay over the immeasurable need for truth and coherence, in my frustration for lack of words, and despair for not seeming to get through, I fail to live entirely in the present. Whether wishing I had paid more attention in philosophy or hoping to find one more book on witnessing effectively, I am failing to remember that within the gospel I long to bring even on an airplane is the person of Christ present and relevant now.

Jesus calls us to an effective awareness of the present, to witness to the world with every moment he has given us. Where Christ says, "Follow me," where he pleads, "Come to me," there is both urgency and immediacy in his voice. God is always nearest to us "now" and it has profound implications for the message we long to share.

The Scriptures speak little of our ability to prove the existence of God, or convince the skeptic of his illogic. What we are often reminded of is the power of the gospel spoken in our behavior towards one another and in our devotion to Christ. Both require an awareness of God in the present moment before us. "As I have loved you," said Jesus, "so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" (John 13:35). The promises of the one who came in the fullness of time are boldly written upon this very moment. What are you communicating to your neighbor right now?

The psalmist once asked, "When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?" (Psalm 11:3). Perhaps it was uttered with the same defeat we face from time to time. Yet the psalmist chose to place his dispirited inquiry beside a truth larger than his despair and more real than his inability. In the verse immediately following, the psalmist remembered the fullness of God even in that moment of seeming defeat: "The LORD is in his holy temple; the LORD is on his heavenly throne" (Psalm 11:4). In our daily attempts to provide an answer for the hope that is within us, might this vision seal our hearts. The LORD is near us even now.

© 2005 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. All Rights Reserved.