MBA 6: The 5 Types of People You Will Meet in Apologetics

Many women shy away from apologetics because they assume that apologetics means that you will always be debating with atheists. That is simply not true. Our children need reasons for their faith just as much (if not more so) than the local atheist. And guess what? YOU are the primary missionary to your children! In […]

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Many women shy away from apologetics because they assume that apologetics means that you will always be debating with atheists. That is simply not true. Our children need reasons for their faith just as much (if not more so) than the local atheist. And guess what? YOU are the primary missionary to your children! In the first years of their lives, your children will likely waver between the first 3 stages: Learners, Seekers, and Doubters. In this podcast, we discuss what apologetics looks like for these first three categories.

In this podcast, we addressed:

Panic Attacks and the anxious personality
Generic Differences between men and women in apologetics
The connection between sleep and spiritual energy
The need for women in apologetics to bring gentleness and relational sensitivity to the field.
Feminization of culture as a reaction to the abuse of illegitimate masculinity
“Lord of the Flies” apologetics
The 5 main types of people you’ll meet in apologetics

Learners
Seekers
Doubters
Hardened Doubters (apathetic and angry)
Firm Believers

Traits of Learners :

Blank slates
Open
Don’t have their minds made up yet
Actively taking inventory of all the pros and cons
May not be aware of the different perspectives or different beliefs out there
Assume that their teachers know everything
Very black and white thinkers (especially kids)
Not trying to prove you wrong or find discrepancies
Honest questions
Gracious interpretation of scripture
Building a foundation
Deals mostly with Pro-position (very little con-position)

Traits of Seekers:

Aware that different perspectives and beliefs exist
Trying to figure out which perspective/belief is true
Very open and go where evidence leads
Ask good, probing questions
Intentional
Honest questions with gracious interpretations of scripture
Testing their foundation
Deals mostly with pro-position and some con
Actively weighing the pro and con positions

Doubters

Discover grey areas where they had been taught there was only black and white
Individual is wrestling
Deals heavily with both pro and con positions
Con positions are starting to appear more robust than preciously thought
Deals with discrepancies
World is being rocked a bit – but this can be a good thing
Actively looking for discrepancies
Less gracious interpretations of scripture

Hardened Doubter – next podcast
Believer

Very gracious reading to scripture
May or may not have gone through a period of doubt
May or may not be aware of differing positions
Believers arrive as believers either by the gift of faith, or a journey of discovery

How to deal with learners, seekers, and doubters

Importance of humility
Presenting the different orthodox perspectives
The turn-off of “absolute certainty” for areas where there is orthodox disagreement

If we present ourselves as 100% sure that we are 100% correct on our doctrine, the moment our kids discover areas that we are wrong in, it lends doubt to everything we have said.

Doubters – have they ever doubted their doubts?

Role of apologetics for believers:

Putting them on a more solid foundation by making them “more sure and more certain” of their beliefs
By definition, this increases their faith. It does not diminish the role of faith
Gives them the confidence in their faith to where they can now go find their own learners, seekers, and doubters

Resources/People mentioned:

Rebekah’s paper
Natasha Crain’s blogpost about “How to get your kids to start asking more questions about their faith”
Ed Faser

Vocabulary:

Epistemic – of or relating to knowledge or to the degree of its validation (i.e. how do we know something and how certain are we that we know it)
Epistemic humility – being honest about what we can know and what we can’t know and where the gray areas are. We can know what we believe about something, but that is different from knowing in the sense that it is testable.
Calvinism – the belief that we are chosen by God, we do not choose God. Also known as “predestination.” There are a lot of different shades of this belief. The doctrine of predestination is very evident in scripture, but can be taken to unhealthy extremes when people begin to cast doubt on the existence of free will, reject any human ability to choose God, or deny the necessity of evangelism because “we can’t change who God is going to choose.” You can see the 5 main points of Calvinism here.
Sovereignty – the biblical teaching that all things are under God’s rule and control, and that nothing happens without His direction or permission
Fideist – (from the Latin “fides” or “faith”) is the view that religious belief depends on faith or revelation, rather than reason, intellect or natural theology. This is the “faith alone” camp who can sometimes scorn the use of evidence or reasoning.

Hillary Morgan Ferrer

Hillary Morgan Ferrer is the founder of Mama Bear Apologetics. She is the chief author and editor of Mama Bear Apologetics: Empowering Your Kids to Challenge Cultural Lies and Mama Bear Apologetics Guide to Sexuality: Empowering Your Kids to Understand and Live Out God’s Design. Hillary has her masters in Biology and has been married to her husband, Dr. John D. Ferrer, for 15 years. Don’t let her cook for you. She’ll burn your house straight to the ground.

www.mamabearapologetics.com

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