Christian apologetics (roughly the scientific, philosophical, and objective search to describe and prove Christianity) was very appealing to me in college. I no longer find the discipline to be particularly helpful or meaningful. My concern is not with the arguments that are offered, but with a particular assumption necessary to make apologetics meaningful. 

Apologetics searches for facts and arguments that prove the truth of the Christian story. This effort works exactly opposite of the way the mind, rationality, and knowledge production work. Humans are fundamentally story telling creatures. We go to incredible lengths to fit facts and evidence into the story of reality by which we coherently view the world. Only when facts and evidence dramatically differ from the story we tell are we forced to learn to tell a better story, and even then it may take a generational change to fully embrace a new paradigm.

This concern is so problematic for my understanding of Christian apologetics because the Christian story is necessarily one of the primary stories into which Christians place our experiences and arguments. To “prove” the truth of Christianity through the tools of apologetics is to presume there is some other more fundamental story of reality or rationality into which we can fit the Christian story. To do so is necessarily to treat scientific, philosophical, and other forms of knowledge as more essential, objective, or true than the knowledge the Christian story is capable of asserting. Thus, in the attempt to find a more objective grounding of faith, apologetics cannot help but subvert the fundamentality of the faith it seeks to prove. 

I still find plenty of what apologetics has to say to be fascinating and potentially important. I simply think the Christian faith is the context in which apologetics becomes compelling, not the other way around.