I majored in religious studies at Vanderbilt University. Most of my professors were skeptics. They were modernists. They were agnostics.
In my early 20s I struggled mightily whether to jettison my beliefs that I was taught as a child, whether to pseudo-intellectualize my beliefs, or whether to embrace historic faith.
I believe that most of my professors would've been happiest if I had abandoned the faith or radically reinvented it.
Because of God's gracious and sovereign plan for my life and eternity, I was exposed through my involvement with FCA and Cru to a book entitled, Evidence That Demands A Verdict by Josh McDowell. I also looked hard at the impact of the lives of my professors which, in my view, was meager. I looked at a few people that I knew who took the Bible as the true word of God and I saw that their lives had a profound impact on the lives of others.
As a result, I took the leap of faith and began my journey of believing the Bible as true and trustworthy. Over the years, I have not found it to be filled with flaws but filled with jewels of beauty.
I wish I had been exposed then to the book, Orthodoxy, by GK Chesterton. It would have helped immeasurably as I tried to muddle my way through the assault on my faith at Vandy.
Orthodoxy is, admittedly, difficult reading. I'm not sure I could've grasped its profundity back in my university days. I certainly am not grasping it all today.
But Chesterton lays out specific reasons why he holds to the orthodox faith. His wit and his ability to turn things upside down, inside out, and view them in a third way are compelling, surprising, and convincing.
I recently read someone who gave advice to a reader of Orthodoxy that one should read the last chapter, chapter 9, first. That advice was too late for me. I waded through chapters 1 through 8. But 9 was worth the wait!
I have now read chapter 9. I have also listened to it via Audible. I want to reread it and re-listen to it over and over.
It's that brilliant. And, not surprisingly, Chesterton ends this amazing book and personal testimony about why he is an orthodox believer with a mesmerizing and provocative look at the central figure of the Book, Jesus Christ.
Somehow, I would love to expose church-raised high school and college students to this amazing piece of work. I think it might help them withstand the assault on their faith that too often happens in the undergraduate classroom.
Chesterton teaches us that one can have an apologetic without being apologetic.
As persons of faith, we have come to our beliefs the same way skeptics have come to theirs: Some combination of an experience, a relationship, a consideration, a book, a lecture/message/talk, a story...
So says GK Chesterton in this monumental work, Orthodoxy.
If I am asked, as a purely intellectual question, why I believe in Christianity, I can only answer, 'For the same reason that an intelligent agnostic disbelieves in Christianity.' I believe in it quite rationally upon the evidence. But the evidence in my case, as in that of the intelligent agnostic, is not really in this or that alleged demonstration; it is in an enormous accumulation of small but unanimous facts. The secularist is not to be blamed because his objections to Christianity are miscellaneous and even scrappy; it is precisely such scrappy evidence that does convince the mind. I mean that a man may well be less convinced of a philosophy from four books, than from one book, one battle, one landscape, and one old friend. The very fact that the things are of different kinds increases the importance of the fact that they all point to one conclusion. Now, the non-–Christianity of the average educated man today is almost always, to do him justice, made up of these loose but living experiences. I can only say that my evidences for Christianity are of the same vivid but varied kind as his evidences against it (GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy, p. 139).
I agree. People both in the Christian faith camp and out don't settle on a position via sheer unmixed rationalism. World views come about because of a mixture of sources.
Therefore, believers in Christ should never be apologetic about our beliefs. We stand on the same intellectual/experiential ground as our detractors when it comes to the mixture of causes for settling on our doctrines.
We need never to stand down in conversations with skeptics, even if that skeptic is a best friend, a family member, or a college professor.
Only the ground on which we stand is ground that has been tended by the joyful and creative Divine Gardener, the Spirit of God.
And let's pray that this same Gardener will tend the ground on which those we love and encounter take their stand.
Chesterton's intellectual grasp of the fallacies of skepticism and the gloom of materialism are genius. The church protects meaning in a too-aimless outlook and Christ produces mirth in a too-joyless philosophy.
Had I been able to reference this work at Vanderbilt, I would have known that my professors who disbelieved were intellectual pygmies in a world filled with believing giants.
Holding to the orthodox faith is the way to experience great joy and meaning in the midst of a world filled with sorrow and pain.
I highly, highly, highly commend this book as a great one to strengthen faith and, perhaps in some cases, to be used by the Spirit of God to awaken it.
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