Why Advocates Need To Be Apologists

^{Photo by POOYAN ESHTIAGHI on Unsplash}

Christians have always seen the need for a “reasoned defense for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3:15). In every epoch Christianity has faced challenges that have helped sharpen and more clearly define “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3). Whether the Christological heresies of the early church or the scientific challenges of modernism, each generation has had to contend for the truth of the gospel in shifting external challenges.

In addition to external challenges, there are also internal challenges that create need for different reasoned defenses, or apologetics. In particular, internal corruption of the family of God creates the need to defend the gospel of God in at least two scenarios: 1) outsiders to Christianity contest the truths of the gospel on account of corruption within Christianity; and 2) those within Christianity struggle with faith because of those same corruptions. Thesis 96 is aimed at those within Christianity. The goal of apologetics for the abused is to defend the defenseless, the victims of Christianity’s corruptions, and in so doing, to give a beautiful witness to the gospel.

Christian Advocacy

As mentioned a few weeks ago, in his book Fool’s Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion Os Guinness speaks of the need for “Christian advocacy.” It’s one of his favorite phrases for the work of apologetics. His definition of apologetics perfectly describes this way of apologetics as defending the sheep:

“Here at this precise point lies the core reason for Christian advocacy, as well as its motivating passion. Apologetics (from apologia in Greek) is a “word back,” a reasoned defense mounted on behalf of the one we love who is innocent but has been falsely and unfairly accused.”

Guinness goes on to describe God as the one unfairly accused, so I am intentionally applying his words out of context. Much of the public discussions around abuse involve accusations, and not just the obvious accusations from victims against their abusers. The victims are in turn accused by their abusers, or by leaders and communities rallying around the abuser. Every time I hear such a story, my blood boils. When abusive pastors accuse and attack their victims, the beauty of Christ is maligned. The Church is slandered. And innocent sheep are twice eaten.

When vulnerable people—most often women and children—are abused and accused by Christian leaders, who will come to their defense? Where are the Christian advocates? Who will plead their cause in and before the church?

Here’s a proposal, related to theses 34 & 35 of Thesis 96: if injured sheep were believed, their stories would be the best defense for their cause. The problem is that, by and large, they are not believed in the church, and so are in need of Christian advocates and apologists. Instead of belief, victims are met with unbelief, of which Guiness says,

“Unbelief abuses truth through a deliberate act of suppression. Unbelief seizes truth, grasps it roughly, silences its voice, and twists it away from God’s intended purpose. By itself, truth speaks naturally and clearly, but its voice is censored, blocked, and silenced, so that it is no longer allowed to speak as it does naturally.”

I have heard many abuse survivor stories—in personal relationships, in public media, and as a professional counselor—which could be substituted for “truth” in that quote. Their voices spoke “naturally and clearly,” but they were “censored, blocked, and silenced,” and as a result they could no longer speak naturally. Instead of belief, abusive pastors and leaders abused the truth of victim’s stories “through a deliberate act of suppression,” “twist[ing] [their voice] away from God’s intended purpose.”

The Anatomy of Unbelief

Picking up the thread from Apologetics as Christian Advocacy which briefly explored Guinness’ chapter on “The Way of the Third Fool,” the quote above is from ch. 5 on “The Anatomy of Unbelief.” Once again, it’s striking that the majority of Guinness’ examples of unbelief are taken from Hebrew prophets confronting the people of God. There are four components of unbelief, and they all read like descriptions of a narcissistic abuser, and help to illustrate why the art of Christian persuasion is necessary for survivor advocacy. Here are the four characteristics with Guinness’ accompanying proof texts:

1. “First, unbelief abuses truth through a deliberate act of suppression. Unbelief seizes truth, grasps it roughly, silences its voice and twists it away from God’s intended purpose” (86).

   • Example: Ps 50:17, “you who hate correction and turn your back when I am speaking?” (NEB). The “you” in v. 17 is “the wicked” who “recite my statutes” and “take my covenant on your lips” (v. 16).

   • Example: Jer 5:12, “They have denied the LORD, saying, “He does not exist” (NEB). “They” in v. 12 is “the house of Israel and the house of Judah” (v. 11).

2. “Second, unbelief abuses truth through a deliberate act of exploitation. Unbelief not only suppresses the real truth and twists it away from God’s true ends, but wrests it towards its own ends and its own agenda” (86).

   • Example: “The men who now live in Jerusalem have said, ‘Keep your distance from the LORD; the land has been made over to us as our property’” (Ezek 11:15 NEB).

   • Example: “But you [Jerusalem] trusted to your beauty and prostituted your fame” (Ezek 16:15 NEB).

   • Example: “Listen to this, leaders of Jacob, rulers of Israel, you who make justice hateful and wrest it from its straight course” (Mic 3:9 NEB).

3. “Third, unbelief goes further still and abuses truth through a deliberate act of inversion. Unbelief not only suppresses truth and exploits it for its own ends, but seizes it and turns it completely upside down, inside out and the wrong way around, and then holds it there for its own purposes” (87). “[S]in is essentially and willfully narcissistic” (88). “[T]he Hebrew prophets focused on this same inversion, and excoriated the skeptics and the enemies of God for the ludicrous absurdity of what they were doing in worshiping idols” (88).

   • Two examples of “the skeptics and the enemies of God” are prophetic speech against Assyria (Isaiah 10:15) and Tyre (Ezekiel 23:2);

   • Judah is a third example: “How you [Judah] turn things upside down, as if the potter ranked no higher than the clay! Shall the thing made say of its maker, “He did not make me?” Shall the pot say of the potter, “He has no skill”? (Is 29:16 NEB).

4. “Fourth, unbelief abuses truth through a deliberate act of deception that ends in its own self-deception.” . . . “The logic behind this drive to deception and self-deception is simple. If sin is the claim to ‘the right to myself,’ it includes the claim to ‘the right to my view of things.’ . . . There is therefore a close link between the prideful love of self, its aversion to the full truth and its creation of allusions. . . A key part of deception and self-deception is the fact that evil must imitate good, unbelief must copy truth, and vice must mimic virtue” (89). “If we can act so as to produce the appearance and effects of proper love in spite of motives that are quite contrary and come from improper self-love, we can appear to be honorable and generous before our fellow humans” (90, emphasis original). Guinness gives a few illustrations, including the Pharisees and a quote from Søren Kierkegaard:

   • Example: “But spiritually understood, man in his natural condition is sick, he is in error, in an illusion, and therefore desires most of all to be deceived, so that he may be permitted not only to remain in error but to find himself thoroughly comfortable in his self-deceit.”(89) Kierkegaard’s quote about self-deception is from Attack upon Christianity. He was writing to Christendom, ie those claiming to be Christians.

   • Example: “Just so did the Pharisees love to pray on street corners in the sight of all” (90).

Left-Brain Confrontation vs Right-Brain Subversion

Because of the characteristics of sin behind church responses to abuse allegations, direct confrontation rarely works. What is required instead is, to use Walter Brueggemann’s phrase, prophetic imagination. The dynamics of unbelief entrench doubt in survivors’ stories, and therefore advocacy “in a flat, confrontational mode, without imagination, is a non-starter.”¹ In some ways, the stories themselves are the best apologetic, for they partake of the same subversive qualities of artistic persuasion. As Brueggemann put it, “poetic imagination is the last way left in which to challenge and conflict the dominant reality.”²

Imagination is a specialization of the right-brain, and includes not just poetry but art in general: story, drama, visual art, music etc. I wonder if these less (directly) confrontational genres should be the channel for the energy of Christian advocacy. In case you missed it, see my recent post Womanly Trouble for one example of this use of imagination in advocacy.

Quote from Greg Koukl

“Fundamental rule of engagement: never make a frontal assault on a superior force in an entrenched position. The man with the microphone is going to win. Don’t get into a power struggle when you’re outgunned.”

Question

Have you ever experienced a conversion—a deep change of any kind, whether spiritual, theological, behavioral, etc.—that was occasioned more by indirect methods than direct confrontation? If you are passionate about reforming the church’s response to abuse, how do you feel about direct vs indirect approaches? Not just what do you think, but what do you feel: doubtful, hopeful, hesitant, confused, interested, etc.

1 Walter Brueggemann, Prophetic Imagination, 2nd Ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), xiv.

2 Ibid., 40.