Our Aims

What do we want to achieve here? What are our goals? There are three verses that guide the goals of this site. The first verse is our overarching verse, the one that guides everything we do – 1 Peter 3:15 – “...sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defence to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence...” The word that is translated as “defence” in this verse is the Greek word apologia, and it’s the word from which we get the English word “apology”, but in the original Greek it describes what a lawyer does in court, presenting a defence of her client’s actions. This verse is actually telling us to always be ready to defend what we believe to those who want to know why we have hope, and to do it in a certain way, "with gentleness and reverence."

With that as the foundation, the goal here is actually twofold: to equip students to be able to stand against the things that they are going to encounter once they leave school and move out of home and find themselves in a world that is largely hostile to followers of Christ, and to present a Christianity that is thoughtful and compelling in a way that is appealing and attractive.

As followers of Jesus Christ we want to be thoughtful, we want to be careful in how we understand what truth is, we want to get it right, and we also want to communicate it correctly. There are two Biblical passages that we want to use to guide our discussions and our content:

Firstly, Colossians 2:8 – “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.” Here is a warning, not against philosophy as a discipline, but of philosophy that is according to the traditions of men contrary to Christ. So here is a command to defend our beliefs, but how can you defend against that which you don’t understand? If we are going to be in a defensive mode we have to understand those ideas that are in our culture right now that are contrary to Christ.

Secondly, 2 Corinthians 10: 5 – “We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ...” So you see in the Colossians passage we are in a defensive mode, and in the Corinthians passage we are in an offensive mode. We are actually going out to take those false theories, those speculative ideas about God that are hostile to Him and we’re tearing them down and showing them to be false. This is like the one-two punch! We need this for our own protection, and we need to be thoughtful about our Christianity.

As people who are entrusted with the truth, we need to be able to pass it on to those in need. We have to make sure that we don’t get the poison, and we have to make sure that we deal with the poison that’s out there that keeps people from taking this truth seriously.

These are the goals of this course – to give you the armour you’ll need for your protection, but also the weapons you’ll need for destroying speculations and lofty things raised up against the knowledge of God.

Thanks to Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason for the material presented here.