Walter: So given the despair, given the fact that people are asking all sorts of questions about hope, how do you explain the gospel in a way that compellingly addresses those issues?
Lisa: Yeah, great question, one way is embodiment, right? So, apologetic, I believe, has two wings: informational and incarnational. And I take that from The Popular Encyclopedia of Apologetics as an article by Dr. David Wheeler, who says apologetics has these two kinds of wings. And we always focus on informational, but incarnational, the embodiment, I think, is the greatest way to help people navigate the hypocrisy. Because if you've seen it done wrong, or if you've seen people live duplicitously, you need to see people who were to combat it.
It's not just a debate, or it's not an argument you could give, it's really show-and-tell. I have to demonstrate my life. So, the greatest apologetic against hypocrisy is a life lived well, a life that honors God, not a perfect life, but a life that has repentance, that you’re the hope of the gospel is shining through. You live with a level of, I want to say, a redemptive bent. You’re not as cynical… I think all of those: the way you forgive people, the way you handle people who’ve mishandled you. I think that demonstrates a level of draw for the next generation.
I think about 1 Peter 3:15, which is the core apologetic verse. And I always tell people that Peter is saying that if you live in such a way; if you go to 1 Peter 3, how you treat your spouse, how you treat those who are hard to deal with, how you navigate suffering, those actually make people inquisitive. And then people begin to ask you questions. I ask people all the time: Do you live with such a hopeful life that is attractive, that people begin to ask you about the hope that you have?
Walter: That's a different way to navigate some of the deep hypocrisies of the church over the centuries. The ways in which Christians have been wrongfully involved in injustice, whether it's slavery or Jim Crow laws. And rather than just arm ourselves with arguments, kind of the informational wing of the truthfulness of Christianity, despite all the hypocrisy, fallen leaders, or fallen moments in our Church's history, that we need an incarnational response, like to actually be present in a way that says, “Okay, these may be true things about the history of Christianity in America and things for which there are deep wrongs that require repentance, lament, and so forth."
But I love how this whole incarnational thing has a redemptive element to it. Because you want to be present, if I'm hearing you correctly, you want to be present to demonstrate what the ultimate solution would be. And that is a forgiving, a loving, a listening, a humble, physical embodied response that demonstrates while there may be hypocrisies, there's actually redemptive, hopeful restoration. Am I hearing you correctly on that kind of incarnational impact?
Lisa: Yeah, because that's what Jesus did. He didn't just critique the Pharisees for their hypocrisy. He demonstrated something else. He was able to give an argument about why what they were communicating was problematic or incomplete. And he was able to demonstrate by his life a different way. And so he lives in this informational incarnational life.
He could get down with the best of them in an intellectual conversation. But he also is with the people that have been caught there. The ways in which people are interpreting the law is causing actual harm to people. And he goes to those people, and he lives among them and he demonstrates love and care and shows them what the law was intended to do. And so that's what Jesus is calling us to do.
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