Avoiding Shoot-First Apologetics

My Christianity Today Connection e-mail this morning contained a link to an excellent article, Shoot-First Apologetics. I don’t want to steal the thunder from the article itself–go read it in place, but I do want to quote from the e-mail:

And while defending the core elements of our faith is imperative, we sometimes shoot too hastily at those we’ve misidentified as enemies.

I would like to note that the folks involved in this discussion are conservative evangelicals. The issue of courtesy in what we say, and care in determining friend and foe is one that cuts across the lines of the various parties in Christianity. It’s very easy to identify “different” as “hostile.”

Of course we do need to remember that even if we identify someone as hostile, Jesus commands that we love that person, and not in the cartoon sense–“love those meeses to pieces!”