Apologetics Strategies: Fr Matthias Shehad

Challenge the Premises

Don't assume that their arguments are rooted in intellectual grounds. They may have many false assumptions.

When you hear someone speaking negatively about Christianity, they don't really understand what it is... they say things like "God is teaching you to kill your enemies." Anyone who is Christian knows that it isn't true.

The number one reason people don't believe in God is the problem of evil.

1. You say God is the creator of everything
2. Evil is something
3. Therefore, God is the Creator of evil and is not worthy of my worship

What problem does this argument have? The second premise! Evil is not something... evil is the absence of good! Darkness is not something... it is the absence of light. Evil is the absence of God. When God is rejected, there is His absence. When Adam and Eve rejected God, there was evil.

What goes with this assumption is whether or not we have Free Will. There must be a choice between good and evil for there to be Free Will. The ability to reject God is the evidence that we have Free Will.

Human beings do evil actions when they choose to reject God, who created good (c.f. Genesis 1).

For example, the story of Jonah

1. When God commanded the storm, the storm obeyed.
2. When God commanded the fish, the fish obeyed.
3. The only one that did not obey was Jonah, himself! Because he has free will.
4. The storm, fish, tree, worm, etc. obeyed regardless of their nature... it is not in the nature of a fish to swallow a human without digesting him. But Jonah did not obey.

Reverse the Burden of Proof

Typically, an atheist may say "unless you prove to me that God exists, I won't believe in Him" - but we can reverse the burden of proof by asking them for answers to life's essential questions; answers that are coherent and correspond to reality.