Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Brownies and Apologetics

Today’s post is more lighthearted.

Brownies are great things. You buy a small, relatively cheap box containing a mix. You bring it home, and your wife does the rest! Soon enough you get brownies. Of course, they must be pre-mixed and baked according to the proper instructions. After about 40-45 minutes of baking they are finally ready to be pulled from the oven.

Apologetics is quite a lot like baking brownies. As apologists, we gather resources like crazy. A lot of them are good, and some of them are even cheap! What if one did not read the instructions and had never made brownies before? I daresay the final product would not only be unpalatable, but maybe unrecognizable as well. Sometimes we rush in to discussions or topics related to apologetics that we don’t sufficiently understand. We have not properly prepared our minds for the task. This mind preparation is analogous to following the instructions.

Next, the brownies must be baked. I have seen unbaked brownie batter. It’s quite rich and quite tasty. However, the brownies are not all they are supposed to be. In fact, it is probably not that healthy for someone to consume only the unbaked product (at least relatively speaking). The baking is essential to the final product matching what one sees on the outside of the box. As apologists, we need to match the picture we see of apologetics as done in the Bible; apologetics as done by Jesus.

If the proper mixing of the brownies is our intellectual preparation, then the proper baking is our spiritual preparation. The heat cooks the brownies and conforms them to their proper structure and function. Instead of a gooey mess, apologists can be exactly what they were meant to be only in the case of proper spiritual function. The heat that helps us comes in many forms. God’s Word, the Holy Spirit, other believers, our pastors; all of these should be included in one’s spiritual growth, and none should be neglected.

Apologists are a lot like brownies: if they don’t know enough about what they’re speaking they are bitter and damaging; if they don’t go through the baking of spiritual discipline, they fall apart like a gooey mess.
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