But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect. 1 Peter 3:15
“If I, as a Christian, am going to debate someone who is a non-Christian, I want to be able to put my arm around that person’s shoulder and say, “We are looking for truth together, and if you can show me where I am wrong, I’ll take your side.” I’m not there to beat someone into submission. Jesus never worked that way. The only people he rapped on pretty hard were precisely the people who were positive they were right, when in fact they were totally blind to the truth,
Apologetics isn’t intellectual bullying, it isn’t belittling, and it isn’t a way of getting people saved without God’s grace. We work with the Holy Spirit in gentleness and reverence. We surrender our powers of reason to the Holy Spirit. We expect God to enhance those powers and use our words, under the teaching of the Holy Spirit, to relieve the burden of doubt from a troubled heart. Doubt is a truly terrible thing. Some of us have been Christians for so long that we haven’t really struggled with itm but doubt is a terrible thing.”
Dallas Willard in The Allure of Gentleness: Defending the Faith in the Manner of Jesus (New York: HarperCollins, 2015) 50.
We are living in days when gentleness and respect are lacking.
In hard times, people are asking questions and looking for answers. The trouble with many of us, me included, is that if we think we are positive we know the answers, we often lack gentleness and respect.
And we may be totally off base in our thinking! I am learning that gentleness helps release the burden of doubt. Whereas the lack of gentleness causes people to become more deeply entrenched in their opinions.
The key, as Willard notes, is to surrender our powers of reason to the Holy Spirit.
This makes total sense for me as gentleness is a fruit of the Spirit. So one of the most generous things we can do today, tomorrow, and the next day is to surrender our powers of reason to the Holy Spirit.
When we do this, gentleness surfaces. This creates a context where generosity (another fruit) can also emerge. It makes us safe people who can help those with doubts and fears to let go of them.
These are pretty profound ideas, and for the most part, I feel I am just understanding them. I have a long way to go in living them out. There’s hope because I’ve learned to surrender my mind.