![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2013\/10\/McD2.jpg\")
<\/a>Among American fundamentalist and white evangelical Christians, \u201capologetics\u201d is a an internal<\/em> exercise \u2014 it\u2019s not an attempt to answer questions posed by outsiders, but rather a device for reassuring insiders that they need not worry about, or listen to, such questions.<\/p>\nBooks on \u201capologetics\u201d therefore tend to sell very well. They\u2019re widely recommended, but far less widely read<\/em>. I learned this growing up among the fundamentalists. I would ask some question and, often, the response would be something like, \u201cGaaah! Questions!<\/em> Um, I dunno, here\u2019s Josh McDowell\u2019s Evidence That Demands a Verdict.<\/em> Read that.\u201d<\/p>\n So I did. It didn\u2019t help. If anything, McDowell\u2019s evasiveness only left me more insistently asking the same questions. \u201cSo I read that book you recommended, and in chapter four \u2026\u201d But it turned out the person who recommended the book hadn\u2019t actually read it and couldn\u2019t offer any further help to me except, perhaps, to recommend that I also read Josh McDowell\u2019s More Evidence That Demands a Verdict.<\/em><\/p>\n McDowell\u2019s unsatisfying books were supposed to enable me to obey the much-quoted verse of 1 Peter 3:15: \u201cBe ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you.\u201d That verse, I was taught, charged us to be prepared to win a debate with any doubter. But I\u2019d enthusiastically read all the \u201capologetics\u201d books in the church library and I still didn\u2019t feel prepared to do that.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t until many years later, by the way, that I finally grasped the full context of that verse in 1 Peter<\/a> \u2014 which isn\u2019t about offering a defense of orthodoxy in debate, but about orthopraxy<\/em>:<\/p>\n Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?\u00a0But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear,\u00a0and do not be intimidated,\u00a0but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an account of the hope that is in you;\u00a0yet do it with gentleness and reverence.\u00a0Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Nothing in there about the question-begging redefinition of terms or the bestiary of straw men or any of the other tactics I\u2019d found discussed by McDowell & Co. The only \u201canswer\u201d or \u201cdefense\u201d suggested in that passage is \u201cdo what is good.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019d lost track of and interest in Josh McDowell over the years until began noticing his worries about the Internet<\/a>. His concern that the vast amount of unfiltered information and argument on the Web would deceive Christian youth seemed to reveal a lack of confidence in the pat answers he\u2019d previously offered. He seemed worried that \u201catheists, agnostics, skeptics\u201d on the Internet would present an overwhelming tide of evidence leading to a different verdict from the one he\u2019d taken as his conclusive starting point.<\/p>\n Today I read, via<\/em> Hemant Mehta<\/a>, that McDowell is still making this argument about the Internet, and that his lack of confidence in his own answers seems even more pronounced<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cEvery pastor, youth pastor, and every parent is in competition with the Internet and the information it is spreading,\u201d said McDowell.\u00a0\u201cMost young people don\u2019t get their news from CNN or CBS, they get it from bloggers. There are about 181 million bloggers vying for the attention of your children.\u201d<\/p>\n The unlimited amount of online information that people have access to has caused an increase in skepticism\u00a0that will only continue to become more pervasive, says McDowell.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hemant\u2019s response to this is exactly right:<\/p>\n The 181,000,000 is a\u00a0tad<\/em>\u00a0high, but McDowell is wrong about something more important: The access to all the online information doesn\u2019t (generally) lead to skepticism about\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0ideas, only\u00a0bad<\/em>\u00a0ideas. The truth has a better chance of emerging when all the viewpoints are out there, not when you\u2019re sheltered and only hearing what your pastor wants you to hear. If Christianity is losing that battle, it\u2019s not the Internet\u2019s fault.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But none of that is why I think Josh McDowell has jumped the shark. That has to do, instead, with something else McDowell has correctly observed about the Internet: It\u2019s full of porn<\/em>.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve heard that elsewhere and I\u2019m assured it\u2019s true. But I can\u2019t agree with McDowell\u2019s claim that Internet porn \u201cis the greatest threat to the body of Christ in 2,000 years.\u201d I don\u2019t think less than two decades of one-handed Web-surfing really ranks up there with, say, four centuries of Christian approval of slavery. Or the crusades.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no difference in and out of the church\u201d McDowell says, when it comes to the consumption of Internet pornogaphy, and he says that \u201c50 percent of fundamental, evangelical pastors watch porn while 80 percent of youth pastors have a problem with porn as well.\u201d (I don\u2019t find those sad claims implausible, but I do find the claim to have authoritatively measured<\/em> such a thing implausible. I mean, I\u2019ll stipulate that 4-out-of-5 evangelical youth pastors might be watching porn, but I\u2019m intensely skeptical of the idea that 4-out-of-5 evangelical youth pastors would admit<\/em> to it in any poll or survey.)<\/p>\n I don\u2019t share McDowell\u2019s hyperbolic anguish over this, but I\u2019m sympathetic to his concerns so far. Until he gets to this:<\/p>\n McDowell pointed out that porn provides only a momentary satisfaction and porn addicts often seek other opportunities to satisfy their sexual desires.<\/p>\n \u201cThe average person starts with heterosexual sex then after a while, that no longer satisfies, then there\u2019s anal, from anal there\u2019s oral, from oral to homo, from homo to bestiality then to children,\u201d said McDowell.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What in the wide world of sports is he talking about?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Christian Post<\/em> reporter Jessica Martinez does not tell us how this statement was received by McDowell\u2019s audience at\u00a0Southern Evangelical Seminary\u2019s Christian Apologetics conference. Did they quietly exchange puzzled looks of did he really just say what it sounded like he just said?<\/em> Or were they knocking over chairs in a rush to back out of the room and get away from this strange man as quickly as possible?<\/p>\n I\u2019m aware of Rule 34<\/a> and Rule 36<\/a> and of the vast cornucopia of human diversity when it comes to sexuality, so I\u2019m very cautious about categorical statements. But I think it\u2019s appropriate to make one here: No actual human being, anywhere, in any time, has ever<\/em> experienced what McDowell there asserts is the average experience of the average person. Caligula<\/em> would look at McDowell\u2019s statement and shake his head in perplexed horror.<\/p>\n The only imaginable exception to that is the terrifying possibility that McDowell is speaking from experience \u2014 that he was, in effect, saying to his audience, \u201cWe all know how it is \u2026 you start out with pin-ups and, before you know it, you\u2019re into zebras, amirite guys?<\/em>\u201d But I really don\u2019t think that\u2019s true. I\u2019m certain<\/em> he wasn\u2019t speaking autobiographically \u2014 that he was describing an imaginary scenario as foreign to his own experience as it is to everyone else\u2019s.<\/p>\n And in a way that\u2019s just as bad. McDowell is not confessing his own sins, he\u2019s asserting that \u201cthe average person\u201d is guilty of sins that he himself would never commit.<\/p>\n If \u201capologetics\u201d is going to be worth anything at all, it\u2019s going to have to start coming up with better answers than the ones Josh McDowell supplies. And it\u2019s going to have to remember, as 1 Peter says, that any such apologetics has to start with \u201cdoing what is good.\u201d<\/p>\n That means loving our neighbors. And loving our neighbors means, at a minimum, not assuming that the average person is probably growing bored with bestiality and is therefore about to become a pedophile.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" No actual human being, anywhere, in any time, has ever experienced what Josh McDowell there asserts is the average experience of the average person. Caligula would look at McDowell’s statement and shake his head in perplexed horror.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[31],"class_list":["post-18436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evangelicals","tag-sex"],"yoast_head":"\n