Why We Should Show Young People That Christianity is Both Desirable and True Through Cultural Apologetics

A few years ago, I was invited to a bachelor party for one of my best friends. We had known each other since we were kids and were going to be spending the weekend with a lot of our high school friends. Many of them would describe themselves as spiritual but not religious, agnostic, or atheist. At the time, I had not seen many of them in over a decade. And I cared and hoped that they would come to know Jesus. So I thought, what an opportunity to share the gospel with them. 

Knowing they were not believers, I thought I’d bring some evidence with me: Apologetics. I wanted them to know why we can know Christianity is true. This included reasons to know God exists, that the Bible is reliable, and that Jesus was God, died, and rose from the grave. I went into the weekend excited for what I thought God might do. 

To my dissatisfaction, the weekend did not go as planned. Whenever religion or what I did for work came up, I was confronted with an unexpected response: “Hey man, I’m glad that works for you; it’s just not for me.” It was almost as if my friends felt no need for Jesus in their lives. And from that moment, I’ve asked this question:

How do I share Jesus with someone who feels no need for Him?

There has been a lot written recently about how spiritually open young people are today. But I don’t think their spiritual openness automatically translates to Christian belief or commitment. They may be spiritually open but it doesn’t mean they understand their need for Jesus on a personal level. 

I meet many young people who are looking for identity, justice, healing, freedom, happiness, and some way of holding the world together. Yet, at the same time, they may hear the word Christianity and think of an outdated, oppressive, political, or hypocritical institution and respond with, “it’s not for me.” 

This is why I believe our apologetic must do more than say “Christianity is true.” We also need to help young people see why it is good. A next-generation apologetic must show that Jesus not only gives us hope for heaven one day, but also offers us a way of life now. And this way of life works. It’s the life we were created for, a life in which we can know God and flourish with His people. 

Our best approach is cultural apologetics.

Apologetics That’s Not Just for Philosophers

Before going any further, I want to make the word apologetics a little less intimidating. At its core, apologetics is giving reasons for why we believe what we believe. When someone asks, “Why do you believe in God?” or, “How do you know Jesus really rose from the dead?” and you try to give them a thoughtful answer, you are doing apologetics.

This can include philosophy and logic, or it can include historical evidence. And I love this part of apologetics. Learning not only what I believe but why I believe it has given my faith a foundation when life does not go the way I planned or when my emotions waver. 

But as I’ve read many books on the truth of Christianity, I’ve begun to develop an unhealthy assumption: If someone just had the right facts and logic, they would be convinced. Apologetics can easily become about constructing intellectual explanations and winning philosophical debates. And that’s a problem.

Joshua Chatraw and Mark Allen point out in The Augustine Way that some modern apologetic models treat people mainly as thinkers. To persuade someone, you must give their minds enough facts and logic. But human beings are much more than minds. We think, but we also love, desire, imagine, trust, and hope. Our reasoning is connected to what we love and takes place within how we live [1]. 

When I was with my high school friends, I came prepared to answer questions they weren’t asking. I assumed they already wanted Jesus and they only needed the right information or evidence to convince them to follow Him. I’d not taken the time to consider what they love, desire, imagine, trust, and hope for.

Now, sometimes facts and logic are exactly what someone needs. But sometimes it’s not. 

A young person may hear an argument for the deity of Jesus and dismiss it because they do not want Jesus to have authority over their life. They may hear historical evidence for the resurrection but ignore it because they already believe Christianity is harmful. 

Someone else may never ask whether Christianity is true because they cannot imagine what Jesus has to do with their loneliness, identity, pain, or future. In these cases, the evidence is simply disregarded and never gets a fair hearing. It is being filtered through a story someone already believes. 

This realization has changed the way I think about apologetics. 

What is Cultural Apologetics?

A more holistic approach to giving reasons to believe and answering objections, and one that can really resonate with young people, can be found in cultural apologetics. 

Cultural apologetics tries to understand the way a person already sees life, and then tries to help them see how the Christian story makes better sense of the things they already care about. 

Paul Gould defines cultural apologetics as “The work of establishing the Christian voice, conscience, and imagination within a culture so that Christianity is seen as true and satisfying” [2]. These last two words have caught my attention: True and Satisfying. 

Truth matters. We ought to be curious and seek it. But many times truth does not get a fair hearing because a person sees no reason to want it. And this leads to an important apologetic question: Why should someone want Christianity to be true? 

Cultural apologetics helps us make the case that Christianity is both reasonable and desirable. By desirable, I mean showing why the Christian story is good, liveable, and able to satisfy the deepest longings God has placed within us. 

Now, to show that Christianity is desirable, we must first understand what someone already desires. What do they believe will give them happiness? What makes life meaningful? Where do they find their identity? What do they think will make them free? Put these answers together, and they begin to form a larger story about what life is and how it should be lived.

It’s an approach we should pursue with young people today when sharing the gospel.

People Are Already Living Inside a Story

Throughout our lives, everyone answers a few basic questions: 

• Who am I? 
• What’s wrong with the world? What will fix it? 
• What is life ultimately for? 

You may have never written down your own answers to these questions. Most people haven’t. But we still live as if we have answers. 

Take identity. A common answer today is that to find yourself, you must look inside to discover who you truly are and express that authentically to others who affirm you. 

Or take what’s wrong with the world. A common modern answer focuses on abusive people, unfair systems, oppression, or institutions that hold people back. If that’s the problem, then the solution is to remove all the things that restrict us. 

And the purpose of life? The common answer is simply to be happy. 

If you put all these modern answers together, you have a story about life. And when someone believes a story like this, the Christian concepts they may hear do not land on neutral ground. 

• If I say freedom, I may mean being freed from sin so I can live within God’s good design. Someone else may hear freedom as having no one outside themselves tell them what to do.

• If I say sin, I may mean our moral rebellion against the God who created and loves us. Someone else may hear a concept of shame and condemnation imposed on others.

• And if I say Jesus, someone may already have a whole collection of images in their minds involving politics, church hurt, hypocrisy, or judgment.

So simply giving more information is sometimes not enough. We first need to understand the story through which that information is being heard. This is especially true for younger generations today.

Four Simple Steps for Cultural Apologetics

So how do we actually do this? How do we understand what someone believes, and how do we share the truth and goodness of the Christian faith? 

I have found four steps that outline a simple cultural apologetic. Now, these are not scripted. You do not have to memorize the correct response to every cultural issue. Rather, we can think of them as four simple principles that can guide your conversations with young people. 

An Example: The Search for Identity

Let’s take identity as an example to see how these four steps can work in practice. 

If you scroll for any extended amount of time on social media, odds are that you will come across a post of someone expressing their identity. It may be through a clothing haul which portrays a sense of status and worth. It may be through someone telling their story of self-actualization and finding their inner self to combat mental health struggles. It may be through a story shared about casting off some expectations from a job or group and authentically being oneself. 

These examples tell us to look inside ourselves, discover our true selves, express them outwardly, and find people who will recognize and affirm us. And people have adopted this idea and expressed it in the modern mantras of live your truth, you do you, and follow your heart. The first thing we need to do is understand why this is attractive.

Some people have been defined by shame, performance, or the expectations of family, church, and culture. So when someone hears the news that they should not let anyone define them, that can feel like freedom.  

We should affirm something here. You should not find your worth in abuse, shame, performance, or someone else’s cruel opinion. And God has placed inside of us a sense of our true value and uniqueness. And we all desire to discover that.

But the modern story also needs challenging. If my identity comes from looking inside, what happens when I find conflicting desires? Which one is the real me? And although we are told to define ourselves, we still depend on others to recognize and affirm that identity. This can leave us constantly trying to create, prove, and protect ourselves. That’s exhausting. 

The Christian story shares our true identity. And it begins with not ourselves but God. You were made by God with intention and in His image. Your worth is not something you earn. You have dignity before you succeed and value before anyone applauds you. And for someone who belongs to Christ, Scripture goes even further. We are forgiven, redeemed, adopted, and welcomed into the family of God. Our true identity is received from the One who created and redeemed us. 

That identity gives us something the modern story struggles to provide. It lets us look inside ourselves honestly. 

We can celebrate good desires and gifts without having to call every desire good. We can confess sin and admit weakness without believing those things remove our worth. That is a deeply desirable story of who we are for those exhausted from trying to create themselves.

This Way of Doing Apologetics is Not New

Not only is this approach to apologetics relevant for today, it also has a rich history. Christians have been doing this for a very long time.

One of the clearest examples is Paul in Acts 17. Paul arrives in Athens to see a city full of idols. He is provoked as he sees people God made worshiping false things. But when he is asked to speak, he does not begin by throwing a list of arguments at them. He has paid attention to their world. He knows their objects of worship. He knows their poets. He begins with things they already understand, affirms what he can, challenges what is false, and then leads them toward the true God and the resurrection of Jesus.

Centuries later, Augustine also lived in a culture where people questioned whether Christianity was good for human life. In response, he challenged the stories his culture was telling about happiness, society, human nature, suffering, and the good life. And then he showed how the Christian story made better sense of them. 

Much later, Blaise Pascal put this approach into memorable words. He wrote: “Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next, make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is. Worthy of reverence because it really understands human nature. Attractive because it promises true good” [3].

Helping Young People Take One Step Toward Jesus

The good news is that we do not need to know every argument or have an answer to every objection to do this well. We simply need to know why Christianity is good and desirable to us. We should learn to recognize the stories that people around us are trusting to give them identity, freedom, happiness, or meaning.

The goal of one conversation may simply be to help a young person take one step. Maybe they begin thinking, “Christianity is ridiculous,” and leave thinking, “Maybe it isn’t as ridiculous as I thought.” Or they begin believing Jesus has nothing to do with their life and leave wondering whether He might actually have something to say about what they are searching for. 

Showing the desirability of Christianity simply helps make others willing to consider its truth. 

One pastor I spoke to recently called this approach “a breath of fresh air in apologetics.” I understand why. It means apologetics is not reserved for people who can remember twelve philosophical arguments. It can look like listening closely to a friend, taking their hopes seriously, and sharing the truth, goodness, and beauty you have found in Jesus.

I still think about that weekend with my friends. I still want them to know why the resurrection is historically credible. But I have realized there is often a conversation that needs to happen before that one: What are you looking for? What do you think will give you life? And is it working? Part of helping someone see their need for Jesus is helping them recognize what they have already been asking someone or something else to provide. 

Sources:
[1] Chatraw and Mark Allen, The Augustine Way. See Chapter 2
[2] Paul Gould, Cultural Apologetics. Pg 21.
[3] Blaise Pascal, Pensees, trans. A.J. Krailsheimer (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1972), 34