The Lost Love of Angry Apologists

By jozefmicic

It happens so often that I’ve lost count.

I’m enjoying conversation with an unbeliever, and then they learn about my theological background. Suddenly, a guarded and suspicious fog rolls into our conversation. “What do you think of them?” I'm asked. They want to know if I'm associated with them or if I'm like them or approve of them.

We'll call them angry apologists.

I’m sure you know a few. Angry apologists are overwhelmingly male—a rather bearded version of the gender, too—and typically spring from my theological tribe, the reformed Baptist tradition (or a sad and narrow caricature of it). Their primary theatre is digital. Blogs and podcasts are their stage, and social media is their microphone (the acoustics are especially excellent in YouTube and Facebook). They uphold apologetics as critical to engaging unbelief, perhaps because it was so instrumental to their own conversion, yet they do so with all the wit and charm of a Marine Corp drill instructor.

Not all areas of unbelief interest them, though. Simply the ones they deem most dangerous to believers and damning to unbelievers. For example, the various heterodoxies in the United States are given far more attention than, say, eastern religions despite the massive difference in adherent populations. Most Hindus live thousands of miles away, but the “cults” quite literally stand on your doorstep, posing the greater threat. Angry apologists also tackle the myriad problems of secularism, from philosophical follies to immorality, but often do so in a way that only makes sense to biases begging to be confirmed. I'm not saying anything is wrong with this approach. I'm always up for seeing naturalism shellacked by good arguments for miracles. But to what extent this approach is helpful to doubters and skeptics is far less clear to me.

My intention is not to list candidates; you know the ones I'm writing about. If you don't, perhaps you're being written about. I am, however, addressing a sort of Zeitgeist in apologetics, an unclean spirit possessing apologists and their ministries. It causes them to rummage through the basket filled with the fruit of the Holy Spirit only to pick up kindness and gentleness, examine them with a tinge of disgust, and toss them aside.

Let me not bury the lead any longer: anger has no place in apologetics. If for no other reason, it barely has a place in the life of a believer. Of course, anger is unavoidable in a fallen world, but what is the Christian to do with it? “Be angry,” Paul says, “and do not sin” (Eph. 4:26). Don’t even let the sun set before you’ve settled things, he adds. Here, the apostle riffs off David, who cautioned the same thing, adding that we ought to “reflect in [our] heart while on [our] bed and be silent” (Psalm 4:4). According to the Bible, anger ought to be personally reflective and silent, not publicly reactive and scrappy.

And anger is certainly not the default disposition of Christians toward unbelievers. “Let your reasonableness be known to everyone,” Paul commanded (Phil 4:5). There is no asterisk in the Greek suggesting certain exclusions may apply. He means everyone. In fact, the Greek word for “reasonableness” is the same that James says is born from wisdom above (Jas 3:17). An angry apologist is also a foolish one with no regard for his reputation and even less respect for the authority of God over his emotions. And let’s not forget that harshness is reciprocal. It is “a soft answer [that] turns away wrath,” instructs the Proverb, “but a hard word stirs up anger” (15:1). Apologetics aims to stir up interest and affection toward the gospel, and nothing else.

Cue: the objections.

“Well, what I say matters more than how I say it. It’s the gospel message that saves, not me.”

Yes, of course, but are we called to make converts or disciples? I’m not being pedantic. To convert someone is to change their mind about something. But to disciple them is to ask that they follow you as you follow Christ. Who wants to follow someone they perceive to be angry?

I’m not saying it’s wrong to warn unbelievers about the consequences of sin. Jesus did it a lot. But the physician who irritably gives bad news to a cancer patient shouldn't expect great reviews on Yelp. And this gets to an important point. Whether intentional or not, the reputation of many apologists among unbelievers is incredibly poor, which curtails their audience to people who already agree with them. The bad news of sin is bitter enough on its own. No wonder a minimum threshold requirement for pastoral character is being gentle, not violent, and not quarrelsome (1 Tim. 3:3).

“But Jesus overturned the money changers’ tables.”

Yes he did, that one time, and you aren't Jesus. I’m not saying one-off events aren’t worth repeating. Jesus was resurrected only once, and I hope for the same one day. But we cannot justify undesirable behavior as a norm based on that one time the incarnate Son of God was consumed by zeal for his house and cleaned it up (John 2:17). And this point is key: it’s his house, his representatives, his servants that his anger was directed toward. Isn’t the head allowed to clean the house if his servants produce corruption? Jesus thought so (Matt. 24:14–30). So this doesn’t fit as a model to approach unbelief. Jesus flipped tables at the temple in Jerusalem, not the one in Samaria.

Also, that wasn’t the only time Jesus was angry. Earlier in the Gospels, he scowled at Pharisees for their opposition to him healing a man’s withered hand on the Sabbath (Mark 3:1–9). He healed the man’s hand in spite of the Pharisees’ hardness of heart. In that story, Jesus’s anger didn’t translate into overturning a table but un-withering a hand; not heaving but healing. Jesus shows us that righteous indignation doesn’t always need to show itself in sternness.

Imagine a scale that weighs the times Christ was harsh with corruption against the times he was gentle with sinners. Doesn’t one side, the gentle side, immediately collapse to the ground and jettison the opposite side filled with harshness like a catapult? There are times for scathing rebuke of the broods of vipers. Perhaps you were once like that, a proud nail needing hammered down by truth. But not every unbeliever is a nail and apologetics isn't a hammer. There are many spiritually parched women waiting near wells to hear about the grace of living water (John 4:1–26) and many fathers who believe but need help with their unbelief (Mark 9:24).

This is partly why Peter commands apologetics to be done in gentleness and respect (1 Pet. 3:15). We have to wonder; of all the fruit of the Holy Spirit, why did Peter choose gentleness? And why pair it with respect? Perhaps he knows how odd it is to be treated with gentle respect by those we disagree with. In a callous and contempt-filled world, our opposites expect incivility from us. Don’t believe me? Yes you do. You have social media, too. Let’s give the unbelieving world what they never anticipated; a radical message delivered in meekness.

Otherwise, we run the risk of continuing the legacy of the Ephesian church.

The Lord Jesus was proud of that church, perhaps in ways that remind us of apologetically-minded congregations today. He was proud of the way they stood for doctrine and purity. The Ephesians tolerated neither false prophets nor feigned practitioners. They upheld orthodoxy—confronted the cults and contended with culture. Theirs was a church known for truth and piety, and they worked very diligently at preserving the faith within their church.

“But I have this against you,” said Jesus. “You have abandoned the love you had at first” (Rev. 2:4). What love? The same love that compelled the Father to send his Son to redeem the world. The same love that first captured the hearts of the Ephesians in unbelief and transformed them into champions of orthodoxy and godly living. It’s not that they were unloving to one another; they were unloving to the unevangelized world. They had a selfish zeal, one that favored those already in the kingdom to the exclusion of those waiting to come in.

I sense a similar lost love among angry apologists. Yes, they are to be commended for defending orthodoxy. Yes, they strive to live and teach orthopraxy. But this isn’t enough for the Lord they claim to defend. He wants more; he wants better. He wants a strong witness from a gentle spirit.

In the end, God will ask all of us to give an account for our gospel encounters. I imagine there will be two questions. First, “What did you say?” Did you stand for truth even when it was “out of season” or did you scratch itchy ears (2 Tim. 4:2–3)? Angry apologists will be happy to report their stalwart loyalty, but then the second question comes.

“How did you say it?”