John R. Erickson, the author of the Hank the Cowdog book series, recounts his struggles with reconciling his Christian faith with what he was taught at a secular college. He states that typically Christians responded to the assertions of the secular world by turning:
. . . inward, looked for guidance in the Scriptures, focused on personal salvation, and made few attempts to engage the wider culture.”
That might have solved the problem for pastors and church leaders, but it didn’t solve mine. To me and a number of other young people who were coming of age in the early 1960s, it appeared that Christians were talking only to themselves, and were sending their children off to college poorly prepared to defend their faith against students and professors who considered the Bible a book of fairy tales. [1]
Things had not changed much in the 1970’s because John’s experience was essentially the same as mine. Today Christians are much better at responding to the assertions of the secular world as is evidenced by, for example, the courses in apologetics offered by Biola University (see my blog of February 27, 2013).
However, there are still questions about Christianity which the Christian community has ignored and an example is the questions we have raised in this blog. Why? Is our faith so fragile we cannot deal with these questions? Or are we so content with our current life and belief system that we are not interested in resolving any questions that arise?
Questions and contradictions within our belief system are simply a signal that we do not fully understand who God is and how he relates to us. Should not that motivate us to address these questions?
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[1] http://www.worldmag.com/2015/10/mugged_by_nietzsche
