As a student, I was privileged to sit under an advisor for whom Christian ethics and its application were a vibrant passion. With his careful drawl and smiling eyes, my professor slowly and gladly brought me to an understanding of ethics that would never allow me to leave it, as I might have left a stuffy, uninteresting class. Ethics, for the Christian, is no more optional than the scriptures that tell us who we are. In one of Dr. Verhey’s more recent works, he writes;
“There is no Christian life that is not shaped somehow by Scripture. There is no Christian moral discernment that is not tied somehow to Scripture. There is no Christian ethic—no Christian medical ethic or sexual ethic or economic ethic or political ethic—that is not formed and informed somehow by Scripture.”1
That is to say, Christian communities are communities who practice ethics on some real level because they live by a particular identity, because it is who they are.
Now working within the field of Christian apologetics, one of the comments that I hear most often as a reason for rejecting Christianity is that of its followers: “Christians are so hypocritical!”, “The problem I have with Christ is that his followers do him more harm than good.”, “I am continually disappointed by Christians; why should I consider their religion?”, “The problem I have with Christianity is Christians.” I can try appealing to these voices to see the gap in their logic; I can try reasoning that the abuse of a religion must never stand in the way of getting at the truth of a religion. But many will not be swayed. I leave these conversations saddened not merely because the obstacles seem immovable, but because I fully understand the grievance. The letter of recommendation written upon the countenance of professing Christians is far too often a message that deters.
Like ethics, Christian apologetics is a daily activity writ large upon the life of Christians and Christian communities whether they realize it or not. The world hears clearly their message with or without words. For they go about life confessing, commending, defending, and living the gospel, showing the world an ethic and a religion whether they speak of these things or not. Both disciplines are thus inherently Christian activities, disciplines that must take seriously the responsibility the identity imparts. The Christian is a person of the Book, commanded to remember the movement of God in history, the nearness of the Spirit today, and the promise of Christ’s return in every word he speaks, in every thing she does.
In the midst of this great reality, the Christian need not live as one who holds every answer, but as one who lives with the confidence that is ours through Christ before God, as we grow further into our conversions and the abundant life Christ describes. In this, both the world and the Church is benefited when believers learn to see their own conversions as a process, salvation as more than a ticket to heaven, and faith as something deeper than sheer preference or unquestionable certainty—for this will likewise help us see that reaching our neighbours is a lifelong activity. In the meantime, John Stackhouse argues that it is imperative for the apologist and the ethicist to take with her the right questions.2 Instead of evangelicalism’s favourite foci—Is he saved? Does she have a personal relationship with Christ? Or, what must I do to convert them?—a far better question was entertained by the one the believer follows: Who shall I say is my neighbour? At this question Jesus recounted a story that left everyone asking appropriately, If the world is filled with my neighbours, how then shall I live?
If every member of the body of Christ on earth lived an apologetic life that reflected the inherently Christ-like response to that question—with love, with grace, with truth and humility—perhaps we would find the distance between Athens and Jerusalem converging, bridged by the glory of the one who rose from the grave.
