Christians and our Critics

The quote is something that Arni Zachariassen said on Facebook, and which I have quoted here with his permission.

Very often I come across atheist critiques of Christianity that are shallow, uninformed and pretty much not thought through at all. Especially, it seems, in reference to the Bible. I often feel the exacerbated need to correct these critiques. My natural assumption is that they should know better.

But why should they? I think we Christians get the critics we deserve. Why should our critics do a better job in their critique than we do in our explanation and defense of our positions? Because the level of reasoning you often find among Christians is depressingly low. There’s no reason to expect critics to reason above that level.

My responsibility, if I have one, is first and foremost towards Christians to attempt to raise the level of reasoning. Then, maybe, we can move on to correcting the critics.