Would Jesus be good at communicating in the media and the web?

Posed by Rev Dr David Wilkinson at ChristianX: The Church in a Digital World, the question was also answered by the theologian, astrophysicist and Methodist minister as he challenged the audience to consider how they could make apologetics relevant in today’s digital environment. 

“Apologetics is more about our faith’s relevance to life than it is about a defence of our faith,” he said.

Quoting Alister McGrath, author of Bridge-building: Effective Christian Apologetics, who wrote: “The chief goal of Christian apologetics is to create an intellectual and imaginative climate conducive to the birth and nurture of faith”, Wilkinson challenged: “There is a place for us to defend the Christian faith to answer questions about the Christian faith.

“But the biblical background is much more exciting than that. We are the bridges that God uses – that’s incarnation: God becoming a human being amongst us.”

Following is an excerpt of his talk:

Culture and the Gospel 

For many people outside the Christian faith, religious belief gets very muddled up with various things from culture because of the way that culture overlays the Gospel.

How do we, as Christians, build bridges that allow others to see the relevance of the Christian faith?

And instead of allowing the Gospel to simply be dominated by culture, how do we pick our way through culture to speak about Jesus?

What does it mean to understand the nature of story in pop culture and its myriad of forms, be it the Kardashians or superhero movies?

What does it mean to take the thought forms and assumptions, language and culture of the digital environment and subvert it to show the reality of the Kingdom?

And what might that mean in terms of the digital environment where we think and work in?

Lessons from Star Wars

There’s something profound about hearing, and learning, from pop culture – for example, the power of story.

I’m a science fiction nerd. For me, the greatest movies of all time are Star Wars.

Star Wars has elements of an American Western (with Han Solo as a gunslinger), science fiction, the space race, samurai movies and little bits of religion sprinkled here and there.

But there are also big themes of hope and good and transcendence.

That’s why George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, puts in the Force. Lucas himself says: “I would hesitate to call the Force, ‘God’. It is designed to make young people think about mystery.”

That’s not to say: “Here is the answer.” Rather, it is: “Think about this for a second: Is there a God? What does God look, sound and feel like?”

There is something about holding spirituality and truth together; we need to be clear about the reasonable-ness of our Christian faith and our experience about Christian faith.

Short messages serve

The other is, how do we deal with short bits of communication?

In old media, they call them, “soundbites”. A lot of Christian leaders would say: “We can’t reduce the Gospel to soundbites!” But I think Jesus would be pretty good at communicating in the media and the web: “The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.” (Matthew 13:31)

Of course, Jesus had extended periods of teaching, but He was also very good at representing the Gospel in a short form. How do we help Christian leaders to do that?

Third, pop culture is full of visuals and the stimulating of the imagination. It is all about entertainment. There’s nothing wrong with that or with laughing together. Indeed, it’s a gift from God; let’s give thanks for it.

But part of the challenge is, how do we use it? How do we bring entertainment under the Lordship of Christ?

And what does it mean, (to be able to use) the digital environment to affirm the good and say, “This is God’s gift” – in creation, technology, science?

The big-ness of God

Of course, it is not just what we say or communicate; it is also how we communicate it. If we don’t have love, Paul says, we are like clanging cymbals and gongs (1 Corinthians 13:1).

Do we think about context and how to use language that does not alienate people? Do we think seriously about these dynamics of communication?

But the most crucial question is: How big is your vision of God?

God the Father, who created the whole universe, also gave us the digital environment as a gift. Apologetics in the digital environment is about understanding that God is at work, not just in the Church, but also in the world.

Wherever you start, if you have a big enough vision of Jesus, there’s always a connection; there’s always a path to Jesus. It may be difficult sometimes to find the apologetic bridge, but it is there – because He is the source of all things and in Him all things hold together (Colossians 1:17).

Rev Dr David Wilkinson’s talk, “Apologetics in a Digital Age/Contemporary Culture” was given at ChristianX: The Church in a Digital World, which was held in November 2019.

From jetsetter to faith preacher: A supermodel’s journey to wholeness

Demystifying Chinese medicine