In this video, a caller Joe Heschmeyer and Cy Kellett how to respond to Protestant believers in Christ when you don’t have the answers immediately available.
Transcript:
Caller: We live in a world of a lot of different ways. I mean, as far as Christianity goes, and what I’m talking about is Protestant denominations and even Orthodoxy. Along with that, there’s a lot of claims coming your way, and sometimes it gets overwhelming. And I’m not like an apologist either, so even when you bring in the Church Fathers, which I think takes down those sort of NeedGod.net arguments pretty fast. However, you still got your Jordan Coopers and other people. Which is kind of like what I’m entering into as far as apologetics goes, where these people are even using the Church Fathers. So at a certain point, it’s like, how do we… I just feel like it’s nonstop arguments. I feel kind of stressed out because there’s constantly an argument coming my way. You know what I mean?
Joe: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Cy: This is a great point, Logan.
Joe: This is very much kind of the world we can find ourselves in at Catholic Answers. And I think it’s good to remember you’re probably not going to single-handedly fix the Reformation, and that’s okay. So you can do what you can in the place that you’ve been planted and with the tools that you’ve been given.
Part of that is going to include knowing, like, which areas do you just not know well enough or have the desire or interest to kind of go down those rabbit holes. So I’d say this: number one, everyone is called to be a witness to the Gospel. But number two, the chief way in which you’re called to do that is through your own story, through your own testimony, through your own witness of life.
First Peter 3:15, where Society 315 gets its name here at Catholic Answers, says, “Always be prepared to make a defense in apologia to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and reverence and keep your conscience clear so that when you are abused, those who revile your good character, your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.”
So if you’re living a holy life and you’re behaving in an upright and holy manner, especially online where it’s so easy to do the opposite, where it’s so easy to be a jerk or a creep or whatever, if you’re living a holy and Christian life and you’re carrying yourself in that way and you are overflowing with hope and you’re able to explain why you’re doing the work of evangelization, that has an important effect.
There are plenty of people who, when you talk to them about their story and who made a really big important change in their life that led them to convert, that led them to consider Christianity, led them to become Catholic, whatever. It’s not a professional apologist; it’s not a popular Catholic author. It’s somebody who was just loving and caring and gentle and showed them by the whole way that they lived the truth of the Gospel. And so we are called to do that.
The third thing I would say is that there are going to be times, no matter how much you know, that you find yourself in a conversation where somebody stumps you. The temptation there is to lie or to guess or to pretend, and don’t do that. Our fight, as St. Paul says in Ephesians 6, is not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities. This is a spiritual battle, not a temporal one. And if you give in to lying, you’re letting the enemy win.
It is much better to do the following: just say, “That’s a really good question. I don’t know. Let me look that up and I’ll get back to you.” This does a few things. Number one, you validate the person, which does more good than I think we realize. So often people want to know that we don’t just think they’re idiots for having questions about the faith. You know, this is totally normal; this is good. And you’re showing respect to them as a person. That makes them more likely to take you seriously and to respect you in return.
Second, you’re showing that you care more about the truth than about the sensation of feeling right by admitting that you don’t know. This is a move of humility, and even the proudest among us admire humility in others.
Third, even though you don’t know, you’re signaling the fact that there probably is an answer out there, that the Catholic Church does have an answer, that there are Catholic answers. And so you’re not just saying, “Well, I guess we’ll never know,” and leaving it there.
But then fourth, you’re actually doing one of the hardest things. Especially I find this in interpersonal conversations, like in real life, not so much online. You’ll have these situations where maybe it’s a coworker or a friend who suddenly opens up to you about the faith in a way they hadn’t in the past. Sometimes the walls just kind of come down for a little bit, and if you’re not careful, you can miss the opportunity, and the walls go back up, and then you don’t know how to re-engage that conversation.
But if there was something where you told them that you were going to get back to them, you’ve given sort of a key to yourself to re-engage that conversation. Because now you can say, “Hey, a week ago you asked me why Catholics do XYZ,” or “You asked me how to make sense of this Bible verse,” or whatever it is. And then you come back with an answer. This shows how much you care for the person and care for the truth. And you just bought yourself a second date to talk about apologetics and to talk about Christ.
So when you find yourself stumped or overwhelmed or any of these things, I would go to that.
But then the fourth and final thing I’ll say, I know this is a very long answer, but I wanted to kind of give these tools both for you and anybody else who may be feeling the same way. If you find that it’s discouraging you or overwhelming you or causing you trouble, step away from it.
If we just step back and think about it logically, there are plenty of very smart people in every Protestant denomination. There are plenty of people trying to follow Jesus in every Protestant denomination and in every Orthodox church. This is true. But that’s obviously not enough because there are smart people and people pursuing the truth and trying to serve Jesus in the next denomination and the next one and the next one. You just happen to be seeing whichever one.
So is that the system that Christ calls us to, that just whichever group you happen to see, you go and join that group? Of course not. He founds the Church. And so somebody might have very clever ways of co-opting the Church Fathers or co-opting Scripture, but we know rationally they can’t possibly be right because Jesus doesn’t build a Church to have it go into hibernation for 15 centuries until Luther or any Protestant denomination.
And we know that He founds a Church with Peter as the head. So any form of Church that isn’t A) 2000 years old and B) with the successor of Peter at the head is disqualified from consideration.
Cy: Logan, I want to come back to you. Is that a satisfactory and helpful answer to you?
Caller: Yeah. Thank you, Joe. That brought me a lot of peace. Thank you.
Joe: Good. I’m so happy to hear that.
Cy: Bless you, Logan. Logan, I don’t know if we’ve sent you the book, *The Big Book of Catholic Answers*, but as you’re mulling things, it’s got 250 of the main questions about the Catholic faith and the answers. Did we send it to you before or no?