Bankai

This term God has blessed my good friend Jonathan and myself the privilege to present the CCF about the importance of apologetics, which is the "art" of logically defending our faith so that other people can be convinced of the truth of Christianity. If you are interested about the details, there is a doc.

Our primarily focus is to emphasize the important of learning about apologetics for every Christian, as this is not just something reserved for pastors or ministers. Also, we gave some examples of the existing apologetic arguments regarding different topics such as "does God exist?", "is the Bible reliable?" , "is Jesus the only way?", "is there an absolute truth?"

One particular thing that I want to point out is that apologetics is not about demolishing other people's arguments, and preach that Christianity is the truth. The reason is because a person can have a lot of knowledge, and able to logically defend the our faith so well that is flawless, but people might not still be convinced. Because knowledge isn't everything (1 Cor 8:1). We are commissioned to preach the gospel to make disciples of Christ, and the gospel is the "good news" showing the all powerful God pouring His love to save us by sacrificing Jesus. The gospel centers on the cross of Christ, where God showed the greatest display of love. So the gospel is the good news about the great love God has for us.

The point of apologetics is to convince to other people that Christianity is true, and it is something we do when preaching the gospel. Since this message is one of love, we as God's ambassadors (2 Cor 5:20) should present ourselves consistent with the message. Meaning that there is congruency between the message and the messenger. That's why Christians ourselves can be either the greatest hindrance for evangelism, or we can be the greatest tool to share the gospel (since God chooses to use humans to make His message known).

Therefore, when we defend our faith and share the gospel, it is not all about logic or words. We also need to show credibility with our character, that we "walk the talk". So we should convey the essence of the gospel when we defend our faith, which is love, that God loves us, and we are filled with this love to love others, and we want other people to know God, because we love them.

So there needs to be this "harmony" between the message and the messenger to make the delivery of the gospel effective. It is similar to the anime Bleach, which is about people who fight with spiritual swords. And the closer the warrior get to know the sword, the stronger he becomes. If the warrior can call his sword by name, he attains a great portion of power from the sword. As he continues to train and grow, the harmony between the warrior and the sword become so great that the warrior can unlock the full potential of his sword, which is bankai.

In the same way, if we practice apologetics and share the gospel, our character and lifestyle needs to be very consistent with what we say :).

There is a caveat: many people use the excuse that actions of love are enough, and that words are not always necessarily to make the gospel known to others. And that knowledge is not that important. It is true that you need to "walk to talk", but you need "to talk"! Otherwise, it is still inconsistent as there is no message, and no sharing of the gospel. So my point is that both are necessarily, but that there is priority in love.

Here is a more eloquent post about apologetics.