Called To Defend: An Apologetics Handbook for the Middle School Student

Called to Defend: An Apologetics Handbook

© 2017 Valerie Locklair

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NRP Books

PO Box 54032

Irvine, CA 92619-4032

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Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data

(Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)

Names: Locklair, Valerie.

Title: Called to defend : an apologetics handbook / by Valerie Locklair.

Description: Irvine, CA : NRP Books, an imprint of 1517 the Legacy Project, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: This book provides a helpful introduction to apologetics for middle school students, using a variety of disciplines with which they are already familiar. Students will learn to defend their faith in an age appropriate way.—Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: ISBN 9781945978647 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781945978654 (softcover) | ISBN 9781945978661 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Apologetics—Juvenile literature. | Apologetics—Handbooks, manuals, etc. | Preteens—Religious life—Juvenile literature. | CYAC: Apologetics. | Religion.

Classification: LCC BT1103 .L63 2017 (print) | LCC BT1103 (ebook) | DDC 239—dc23

NRP Books, an imprint of 1517. The Legacy Project, is committed to packaging and promoting the finest content for fueling a new Lutheran Reformation. We promote the defense of the Christian faith, confessional Lutheran theology, vocation and civil courage.

For my brother, Daniel, a knight of the cross and a true friend. Thank you for your continued encouragement, friendship, and prayers. Philemon 1:4-7.

Contents

Foreword

Part One: The Theoretical Foundations

1: Introduction

2: Criteria, Principles, and Overview

Part Two: The Handbook

Unit One: Focus on Understanding (Truth)

1: Becoming CPR Certified

2: MESH-AGE and You

3: What Is Truth?

Unit One Review

Unit Two: Focus on Judgment (Goodness)

1: Distinguishing Tough-Minded and Tender-Minded

2: Mathematics: From Wonder to Wisdom

3: Computer Science: An Apologist’s Paradigm

4: Introverts and Extroverts

Unit Two Review

Unit Three: Focus on Reasoning (Beauty)

1: History: An Inheritance from Lessing

2: Creative Writing: Subjects and Subcreators

3: Get Your Armor On

Unit Three Review

A Parting Word

Acknowledgments

Selected General Bibliography

About the Author

Foreword

Called to Defend takes on a challenge of seemingly daunting proportions: not only does the author call the reader to take seriously St. Peter’s largely ignored admonition to be ready always to give a defense (1 Pet. 3:15), but she sounds a clarion call that this biblically commanded apologetical task be aggressively and creatively introduced to that slice of contemporary culture seemingly the least inclined to be receptive to its aims—namely, the middle school student.

But enter the fray Valerie Locklair does and does so undeterred by the legion of war stories of the youth group leader (no doubt a catechized, confirmed regular church attendee, with even a mission trip on his or her resume), who went off to college and came home ten weeks into an Intro to Philosophy class as a convinced atheist. To be sure, the statistics of those who dump the Christian religion after going to college are telling and provide clear and convincing evidence of the cost that has been paid by the church for ignoring St. Peter’s admonition. Like Luther’s unbelieving man stumbling down the street and bouncing from one extreme and bankrupt philosophy to another, the church’s response to the objections raised by unbelievers has been either to wall off contact with the secular world and to consider objections to the faith to be the result of the sinful rebellion to be expected of the non-elect (witness fundamentalism and aspects of Calvinist orthodoxy) or to absorb the secular world and become indistinguishable from it and to consider the settled truths of postmodernism and Darwinian naturalism as hopelessly irrefutable (witness liberalism of the theological brand as well as the implicit belief of most of mainline denominational Christianity). The consequence is that we have sent out a generation of young Christians from our churches utterly without any armor whatsoever and in a day when such armor has never been more necessary.

While a renaissance of interest in apologetics has been occurring in some unlikely quarters like orthodox Lutheranism and Anglicanism, American evangelicalism has never lost its interest in equipping the church to defend the faith once delivered. What has not dawned on even the evangelical church is the need to introduce apologetics at an age thought impervious to serious theological and apologetical content. In fact, and as Ms. Locklair powerfully demonstrates, classical education recognized (as the sainted Dorothy Sayers notes in her marvelous essay on Regaining the Lost Tools of Learning) that the polemical nature of the middle school years is actually a natural ally to the teaching of the apologetical task. Some of us have long argued that classical education and its trivium suggest that catechism and confirmation (roughly akin to the grammar and dialectic phases) should occur before the middle school years and that apologetics (paralleling the rhetoric phase) should start in middle school in order to take advantage of the natural polemical and confrontational aspect of that period of social, physical, and intellectual development. Valerie Locklair provides both the philosophy and practicum for just that approach.

Ms. Locklair attacks the idea that apologetics is above the capabilities of middle schoolers and in fact turns that argument on its head by arguing that it is fatal to fail to teach apologetics to middle schoolers—namely, that Christianity has (as Sayers notes) compelled the mind of man (including middle schoolers) not because it is the most cheering view of the world or of man’s existence, but because it is truest to the facts. Rather than let those critical middle school years be dissipated in futile efforts to make the middle school church experience a theological version of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, she invites (even demands) that we equip the next generation of Fidei Defensores with the apologetical tools they most assuredly need now as secularism pushes down to more and more vulnerable ages. We ignore her call at our peril, for if the next generation is not presented the many infallible proofs asserted by St. Luke (Acts 1:3), we can be sure they will either leave the faith once delivered or end up holding to a Christianity unrecognizable by the Apostolic band.

It was our pleasure at the International Academy of Apologetics in Strasbourg, France, to have Ms. Locklair defend the thesis that later became the basis for this important volume. There she combined theological and apologetical acumen with zeal for those who are the least among us and presented a compelling case that to be ready always to defend the faith was not directed to a particular age or station in life. In the process, she has a critical message that needs to be heard by the Church Militant of all ages.

On the Feast of the Holy Innocents

December 28, 2017

Santa Barbara, California

Craig A. Parton, trial lawyer and United States Director of the International Academy of Apologetics (www.apologeticsacademy.eu)

Part One

The Theoretical Foundations

Chapter 1

Introduction

We live on a battlefield. Whether we are blissfully, naively blasé or vividly aware of the combat going on around us, we were born into a world at war. There is no demilitarized zone and no neutral ground. Every day we send our children out into a minefield, and most of them are totally unprepared for what they find.

You see, it doesn’t look like a battlefield. On the contrary, it looks like paradise. There is no forbidden fruit, no right or wrong, and all ideas are equally beautiful, alluring, and welcome. No thought is turned away, no matter how eccentric, shocking, or controversial—except perhaps those that are labeled as narrow-minded and phobic—while emotions, dreams, and euphoric highs paint the world in candy-coated ecstasy. There are no demons here, no dragons to slay, no evil to shun. Welcome to postmodernism. Check your outdated definitions at the door and we’ll get along just fine.

Our culture has become the ultimate altar. Youth serums, surgeries, meditation, and holistic health all clamor that if we try this, buy this, or do this, we will never age. We’ve each become Peter Pan chasing Neverland. Our greatest fear is seeing a wrinkle in the mirror or finding a silver strand on our hairbrush, and in our quest for immortality, we’ve completely ignored the new-and-improved twenty-first-century face of child sacrifice.

Oh, it isn’t called that, of course. It has prettier names, names like education, sensitivity training, acceptance, reform, and—Yes, yes, yes, you interrupt, I’ve heard all this before—that’s why I picked up this handbook. If you have any interest in this at all, it is safe to assume that you are concerned about the current state of affairs in our society and the impact it is having on our children. While you may be slightly unnerved by my bold child sacrifice statement, you aren’t particularly surprised or unduly shocked; but you may be wondering, Why this handbook? Why do we need apologetics instruction to begin with? Why for this age range? Why interdisciplinary? And so on.

I was educated at home mainly by my mother, who raised and taught five children, and my father, who was (and still is) a distinguished professor at a Lutheran university. While I did attend Sunday school and catechism class like most of my Lutheran peers, the majority of my religious education was accomplished at home. I vividly remember bringing home anecdotes from Sunday school that my parents and I fact-checked on various occasions. Two examples in particular stick out in my mind. The first was quite shocking to me—the second less so but equally troublesome.

Around fourth or fifth grade, I was in a certain Sunday school class where we were discussing the Christmas account. The instructor had just finished reading the annunciation of the virgin birth. She paused and then said, I’m not sure if Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born.

The second incident happened a few years later. My family had moved and changed churches, and I was enrolled in catechism class. It was a small class of three or four students, and the majority of class periods were spent trying to keep one or two disruptive individuals from swaying the whole class into utter anarchy. I can imagine how frustrating that must have been for the pastor at that time. What I can’t imagine is why he gave the response he did to a simple question.

It was a typical weekday evening, and the class was a bit calmer than usual. One of the routine troublemakers was a trifle subdued. In a rare spirit of attentiveness, he appeared to be listening as the pastor discussed sharing faith with friends and peers at school. The young man, James, paused and seemed to be considering something.

Um. He coughed uncomfortably and shook his long hair out of his eyes, attempting to cover the sincerity of his question by assuming a carefree attitude. Yeah, but what if you’re, like, talking to a terrorist and he has a bomb strapped on you and he asks you if you’re a Christian and if you say yes he’s going to kill you?

The room was momentarily silent. This was after 9/11 and years before the publicized ISIS beheadings, but it still raised uncomfortable questions in the minds of the tweens gathered in that study room. I looked at the pastor, expecting one of the beautiful Scripture passages about the certainty of salvation for all who trust in Jesus and have the strength to speak His name in all circumstances.

The pastor looked at the young man coldly. When you’re deployed to the Middle East and actually facing that situation, let me know and we’ll talk. Until then I doubt you have to worry about it.

I stared at him in shock. James mumbled something incoherent and began doodling on his folder while I wondered if feeling sick to my stomach was enough of an excuse to leave class early. Had our declaration of the gospel just been downgraded from a lifelong joy to a situational ethic to be taken out when it’s convenient and to be hidden when it may save our lives? Is our faith in Christ alone until we’re confronted with earthly danger, and then we’re allowed to take a page from our sinful nature’s self-help book and deny our Savior to extend our mortal lives?

Both of these accounts come from within Christendom and within Lutheranism. If we think that we will be saved because of the initials on our church’s signboard, we are deceiving ourselves. I say this not to point out the speck in my brother’s eye but to highlight the plank within our own lives. We’re not preparing children for the real world, the real questions they will face, and the real heartaches they will experience.

Because we live in a postmodern world, we need an apologetic that is able to interact with culture and at the same time not be overcome by it. We need to be sufficiently in the world if we are to, by grace, carry out our commission to be salt and light, but we must also realize that there is a grave difference between sodium chloride and sodium hypochlorite. We do no one any favors—and indeed we perform a great disservice to our neighbors—if we treat truth as a slipshod handle for something that makes you happy, brings you fulfillment, or works for you. How, then, do we approach this in a culture where truth is seen as entirely subjective?

I once had a heartbreaking conversation with a friend concerning truth. We were discussing faith, and he requested hard evidence for why I believed what I believed. In the midst of the conversation, he shook his head and said, What you’re saying is probably true—but I can’t accept it. Truth—objective truth for truth’s sake—for this young man was not enough. While he said that he was seeking hard evidence, what he was really seeking was a tender, personal, and intimate reassurance that there was something unchanging, something absolute in a world where he had been told his entire life that truth, far from being the revealed word of God, was an experience that you had to create for yourself. He ended the conversation by rejecting any further comments from me. I can’t help but feel that I have seen how the rich young man looked as he walked away from his Lord.

A day doesn’t go by that I don’t mourn for that young man. For the first time in my life, I saw a personal glimpse of how the Spirit groaned as Jesus sighed, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!¹ I recount this story not to highlight my piety—indeed, were it not for the grace of God and the knowledge that He brings good out of all things, I would be scourging myself day and night for what I consider a deep and painful failure—but as a warning. We dare not forget that we are dealing with eternal souls who will spend forever glorified with Christ or screaming in hell. We dare not focus on ourselves, our worthiness, or our false humility in our interactions with the world around us. We are not discussing opponents to beat, debates to win, or intellectuals to snub. We are talking about individuals created in the image of God and loved with an everlasting love by the Creator of all men.

In a time when there is no right or wrong, we must be sure that our apologetic is touching the heart as well as the mind. When Jesus Christ became man, He became fully human; because of this, Christianity has an incredibly holistic approach to offer to a world that sees the universal issue not as How can I be saved? but How can I be happy?² The postmodernist has done away with the old paradigm that held that if you have the right teaching, you will experience God in favor of the newer, hipper, more inclusive paradigm of if you experience God, you will have the right teaching.³ Our world today is increasingly concerned with experience, emotion, and the unholy trinity of Me, Myself, and I. How can Christians adequately defend the faith to a generation that refuses to believe that there is a need for a war at all?

St. Paul tells us that we are to be all things to all people (1 Cor. 9:19–23). The other side of the coin is that Jesus Himself says that believers are not of the world, as He Himself is not (John 17:16). The narrow Lutheran middle ground must follow the footpath of Scripture and no other guiding line. Emotions, experiences, and desires must never be allowed to become the magisterial reasons by which we live, confess, or defend our faith. At the same time, we must avoid the presuppositional logic so rampant in certain Christian denominations today—the lunch buffet, here, try Christianity, you’ll like it and it’s right because we say it’s right approach. If we offer as our defense the ideas that Christianity will make you happier, healthier, and more fulfilled, we’ve done nothing but offer something that yoga, spiritism, and the local gym all claim to provide.

The point of all apologetics is to get the attacker (the one questioning) to the cross of Christ as quickly as possible. Our goal doesn’t change with the passing of time or the changing of fads, and we must be careful lest we change our tactics so much that we become indistinguishable from the babblings of the Gentiles and those who cry Peace! Peace! when there is no peace. However, we must learn to speak gently to the tender-minded and meet them where they stand. We must learn to share our story—as C. S. Lewis phrased it, the true myth⁴—in order to introduce our friend, neighbor, or coworker to the God who became flesh and is well acquainted with our sorrows, emotions, and deepest desires. We must train ourselves to be ready to give a defense to the heart as well as to the mind.

A sound, doctrinally adequate apologetic for the tender-minded is something that is surprisingly difficult to come by. Many take the tell your story paradigm too far and turn the apologetic into a personal testimony. The problem with that, of course, is that unless you have been crucified and raised from the dead, your word could, in theory, be just as useful (or useless) as anyone else’s opinion. Maybe Christianity just worked for you the way meditation, full-contact sparring, or burning incense works for your neighbor down the street. We must be on guard to teach our children that those who come to them with questions may be moved by different approaches. As my earlier story of the young man illustrated, some who claim that they need hard evidence are actually looking for the reassurance that truth is a living, breathing, personal concept that can meet their deepest unspoken needs.

This was one of the driving forces that moved me to write this handbook: there is a distinct lack of apologetics training that appropriately differentiates between tough-minded and tender-minded approaches. As noted Christian professor and writer Gene Edward Veith Jr. says, the time has come to focus on a postmodern (not a postmodernist) approach to apologetics.⁵ Neither our proclamation nor our defense of the gospel should ever bow to cultural bias. However, would you defend yourself against a samurai sword in the same manner you would defend yourself against a bullet, assuming that you were not simply going to run away and hide? Different offensive techniques on the part of the unbeliever necessitate different defensive techniques on the part of the church.

It is also important for students to realize that personality can correlate to or suggest the need for a certain apologetic approach. A rudimentary understanding of introverts and extroverts is helpful when one is interacting with and answering the questions of diverse and distinct individuals. It is difficult to help and support our neighbor and to explain everything in the kindest way if we do not understand his needs.⁶ The questions of an extrovert will appear different from the questions of an introvert, even if the heart of the matter is the same in both cases. We tend too often to think of apologetics as being used in conversation with blustering, loud critics who complain about everything from the weather, to the stock market, to religion with hardly a pause for air in between. We rarely think of the timid, quiet receptionist who sees a beautiful painting of the Madonna and Child by Ilian Rachov and wants to know more. We are quick to label individuals as quiet or loud (which, incidentally, are not synonymous with introverted and extroverted, but more on that later) without a second thought and with very little idea of how to interact with either one other than by ignoring them both equally.

This brings us to the last question to be addressed in this introduction—namely, why interdisciplinary? Much of what our children face in the realm of academia today is compartmentalized, prepackaged, and simplified. Some of this is necessary—indeed, if there were no distinction among subjects, then students of any age would quickly become frustrated, burned out, and technically illiterate in any meaningful subject. We must be cautious to feed young minds bite-sized pieces of information that can be easily digested. However, we must also guard against making the information so easy to swallow that it hardly merits a second glance or a thoughtful investigation. The middle school years dovetail well with the drawing of connections among subjects, ideas, and beliefs. Should not the logic stage support this foray into interdisciplinary thought?

Steffen M. Iverson, a faculty member of the University of Southern Denmark’s Philosophy, Education, and the Study of Religions Department, put it this way when discussing the need for an interdisciplinary approach (to mathematics in particular):

In the educational system knowledge is still in a very large scale separated into distinct blocks by different subjects. This separation of knowledge has shown itself to be very efficient in producing and teaching new knowledge, but does not necessarily provide the students with the skills necessary to navigate through the constantly increasing amount of accessible information. Interdisciplinary activities between different subjects can help to develop a