Like most young believers of my generation, I was drawn into apologetics. I loved watching the clips of famous apologist “destroying” the atheist in formal and sidewalk debates. While I appreciate the ministry of those who have done the hard work of providing a defense of the faith, especially in our ever-intolerant age, I have found the context and heart behind the actual use of my own apologetics is much less tainted with intellectual rigor and more covered with tears and weeping.
The standard apologetics verse:
1 Peter 3:15b
always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you;
Some great apologists have made sure to include the immediate context of this verse, saying that we must first “but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy,” and then giving us the methodological advice of doing so “with gentleness and respect.” This is a vital reminder that all of our apologetics is done under the Lordship of Christ and should be done in a spirit of love. But even in this context, we have missed the context that goes even further.
Verses 13–14 state:
Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled.
One of the most frequent contexts for apologetics is in our suffering. I would add that our suffering itself provides a powerful defense of our faith. Paul develops this connection as well between suffering and hope. In Romans 5, he argues that our own suffering is what leads to our hope.
Romans 5:3–5
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Suffering here is more than just persecution; it is all affliction from the inside and out. It includes persecution but also anxiety, despair, worry, medical suffering, financial suffering, disability, death, and grief. Each one of these, when handled with faith, produces endurance, which produces character and ultimately leads to hope. The hope of the gospel: believing that this world is not our home. That we have something greater prepared for us.
From my own experience, I have found that after every trial that I have faced, it has enabled me to be a stronger witness to our great Savior. In expressing the grief that I have experienced, I have been placed in front of other people made in the image of God who have suffered in similar ways. They have asked me some of the same questions that I have heard from the mouths of the great atheistic debaters, but in reality, it is not the doubt that has cast them down. Instead, it is the weight of the world crushing them, and the doubts provide a foothold for the Devil to keep them from the real hope to be found in Christ. They are asking, “Why?”
I can articulate, in some sense, the ontological argument, teleological argument, Anselm, Augustine, Van Tillian apologetics, and all of those are fantastic ways to argue for the hope that we have. But people are not searching for answers in the academic sense; they are searching for the hope within their soul. I could point to morality, beauty, logic, and the grounding of knowledge, but in Christ, the best apologetic is the hope given to us. A hope that, as C. S. Lewis put it, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
My apologetic message is primarily presuppositional, but perhaps I have misunderstood what that means. I don’t simply presuppose the existence of God when I stand before an atheist and defend the faith. I presuppose that Christ is better than anything this world can offer when the world takes everything away.
I don’t always have an answer for why suffering comes. I don’t always understand what God is doing. Sometimes I don’t even know what to say. But I know that Christ is faithful.
And perhaps that is part of the defense Peter had in mind. The world wants to know why we have hope. Sometimes the best answer we can give is not an argument we have prepared, but a hope that has been tested by suffering and has not failed. The hospital room can become an apologetics classroom. The tears of a Christian can become a testimony. Not because suffering is good in itself, but because Christ remains good in the midst of it.
We do not suffer with hope because we have answers to every question. We suffer with hope because we know the One who does.
And when someone looks at us in the middle of our suffering and asks, “How can you still have hope?” we finally have the opportunity to give the defense we have been preparing for all along:
Because Christ is enough.