The first and primary objective is to
equip Christians to be able to defend their own faith when skeptics ask and to enable them to boldly challenge the false faith of the unbelieving world with the only Way, Truth, and Life. I am essentially teaching apologetics, meaning the defense of the faith but not just with a mind of defense.
The second and more broad-minded goal of Skeptics Corner is to provide a safe environment for skeptics to critically examine beliefs and their correspondence to reality. People are hungry for truth. They are sick of advertisements and clichés for beliefs. There ought to be a venue for people to explore the big questions of life where the Christian faith can be examined alongside of other beliefs in the market place of ideas. If Christianity is true than it should have the best answers. If another belief is true than it ought to be demonstrable. Skeptics Corner is the environment for this discussion but it might not be safe. God is real and He will be there.
Click the image to find out more about the Skeptics Corner Moderator, Head Pastor of Barabbas Road Church, Matt Smith.
Christian apologetics is not like living in a castle with the drawbridge up and occasionally tossing a stone over the walls. It is not to be based on a citadel mentality — sitting inside and saying, “You cannot reach me here.” If the Christian adopts this attitude, either in theory or in practice, his contacts with those who have accepted twentieth-century thought will stop. Apologetics should not be merely an academic subject, a new kind of scholasticism. It should be thought out and practiced in the rough and tumble of living contact with the present generation. Thus, the Christian should not be interested only in presenting a nicely balanced system on its own, like some Greek metaphysical system, but rather in something which has constant contact with reality — the reality of the questions being asked by his own and the next generation.
No one can become a Christian unless he understands what Christianity is saying. Many pastors, missionaries and Christian teachers seem to be helpless as they try to speak to the educated people and the mass of people about them. They do not seem to face the fact that it is our task to speak to our generation; the past has gone, the future is not yet here. So the positive side of apologetics is the communication of the gospel to the present generation in terms that they can understand.
(Francis A. Schaeffer, The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer : A Christian Worldview. (Westchester, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1996, c1982).)
