“We don’t need apologetics, we just need to ‘experience’ Jesus!”
Unfortunately, this is something I hear from fellow believers quite often and it never fails to set off the warning sirens in my head; not because I think that ‘experiencing’ Jesus is bad—in fact, I think it’s a good thing, but if you’re basing your faith on experience alone to the exclusion of reason and knowledge, then you’re building your house not on solid rock, but on sand—and when the rains come down, the streams rise, and the winds blow and beat against your house it will fall with a mighty crash (Matthew 7:24-27).
We need to stop teaching people to ‘experience’ Jesus and teach them to know Jesus. Let me explain what I mean: In his post titled, High School Students and Apologetics, teacher Dan Gehrke said,
“I’ve observed that kids have changed over the last seven years since I last taught apologetics. All of the evidential facts that I used to put in front of them to give evidence to the reliability of Scripture and the resurrection was exciting! The notion that they didn’t have to throw their brains away to be Christians was life-altering for many of them."
Read the full article here.