Walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, redeeming the time. Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one. Colossians 4:5,6
Paul tells the Colossians to be wise in knowing how to answer each one of those who are outside. This seems to imply that there is no one way to answer a question about or an objection to the Christian faith. There is no one-size-fits-all apologetic.
There is nothing new under the sun. Every worldview that opposes Christianity boils down to a denial of God's ethics, His epistemology, and/or His metaphysics. All other religious or philosophical systems are just variations on the same themes. So, from a logical perspective, choosing an approach is not difficult. When people are standing on shifting sands, it is rather easy to knock them off balance. (Sometimes, as my son's comic shows, even a child can do it.)
From a rhetorical perspective, though, we don't merely want to win a technical argument. We want to be effective. In order to be effective, we must know what our goals are. Once we know what our goals are, we need to see how those goals can be accomplished in every medium--including the Internet.
When it comes to the people listening and learning from the Word, the Scriptures present two types of people. There are the scoffers, who are hardened and will not be instructed, and there are those who have been given ears to hear the truth and are able to profit by it. We cannot know the hearts of men, and from our perspective it may be difficult to tell which sort of person we are talking too. Scoffers may be very polite folks who enjoy the intellectual exercise of engaging in polite debate, but have no intention of giving up their unbelief. There may be some who have been given ears to hear, but have not yet come to faith. They may be hearing the truth and wrestling with it. Sometimes such people seem pugilistic and argumentative but then finally surrender to Christ.
Knowing that there are some who will not hear, and will not be convinced no matter how perfect our presentation of the truth, allows us to see how our goals toward these two groups of people must differ. We do not want to convince the scoffer. We want to reveal the foolishness of his so-called wisdom to others who are listening but are not hard of heart. In other words, we do not want his worldly ways to harm the faith or understanding of those whom God has called and those whom He is calling. So as far as the scoffer goes, our goal is this: that we prevent him from doing harm.
This leaves us with those who will hear the Word. Our goal here is always instruction. Some need to know the Gospel so they can repent and turn to Christ for salvation. Others of us have already done that and what we need is further sanctification from the Word. We need the kind of instruction that helps us to more and more conform our thoughts and lives to the Scriptures and thus be better equipped to take dominion of and disciple the world.
Bearing in mind these two goals, then, first to prevent the scoffer from doing harm, and second to edify or instruct the others, let us look to the Scriptures for instruction on how we can be wise in our approach. Especially when interacting in the digital world, those listening in may be numerous and unknown to us. We do not want to give the scoffers among them weapons to use against the truth, nor do we want to fail to edify God's people.
Proverbs 9:7,8 He who reproves a scoffer gets shame for himself, And he who rebukes a wicked man gets himself a blemish. Do not reprove a scoffer, lest he hate you; Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you.
Proverbs 15:1 A soft answer turns away wrath, But a harsh word stirs up anger.
There are many similar Proverbs to these that tell us that rebuking fools and scoffers is a fruitless pursuit. Not only is it fruitless, but it may actually backfire and end up causing us harm. Yet, I have seen many, many times, Christians publicly arguing with fools, and accusing them of sin, in an attempt to evangelize them. Often the Christian ends up looking like a mean and arrogant person, and often his own sins are thrown right back in his face. How many times have we seen the mean-spirited words of Christians quoted as an attack on the Church? Perhaps this is the blemish our Proverb warns us against.
We do not have to explore the abomination of homosexuality to know that a man who practices it is in sin and needs to repent. We already know that every person is in sin and needs to repent. In that regard we are all on equal footing. When speaking with a person who claims Biblical standards have no hold on them, all we need do is find out what standard he does adhere to. It will then be easy to discover, or he may readily admit, that he has not kept that standard, either.
As to believers, they are rarely in need of a public rebuke for personal sin, though they may need to be shown how public statements are in error. This can be gently done by going to the Scriptures and making a case for a Biblical point of view, rather than making a harsh rebuke.
In either case, then, a pugilistic, attack-style apologetic is uncalled-for and ineffective and may even cause harm.
I am not advocating here that we should sugar-coat or deny the hard truths of God's Word. There is no need to deny the horrors of Hell, or the coming wrath of God's judgment. Nor should we deny that repentance is absolutely necessary, and no one who is not found in Christ will be acceptable to God. My only point is that the scoffer can make no use of this information and the believer already knows it.
What is more effective toward our goals, though, is to demonstrate, for the benefit of believers, (or soon to be believers), the foolishness of the foundation upon which the scoffer stands. Once that is done, his foolishness cannot harm the believer, and the believer has learned something about the wisdom of the foundation upon which the Church stands.
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