Sharing Faith in a Secular World: A Narrative and Existential Approach

This short post aims to outline an approach to sharing Christianity in our increasingly secularized world. In doing so, I want to emphasize the practical explanatory power of faith and make people aware that much of what they take for granted might be better grounded within a Christian worldview. The focus here is less on the concrete elaboration of individual concepts and more on providing food for thought to pursue this path further.

Thus, the point is not so much to show that Christianity must be true, but rather that it would be desirable for it to be true, precisely because it interprets our reality in a specific way. We rarely make decisions based purely on rationality; psychological factors always play a role. For this very reason, an approach that also addresses our sensibilities seems promising to me within a larger apologetic endeavor. Gavin Ortlund writes aptly regarding the connection between our desire for something to be true and the concrete claim to truth:

"Of course, beauty in itself is not a sufficient criterion for judging truth. Just because we wish something to be true does not make it true. On the other hand, our desire is not irrelevant either: it is part of the data that must be considered and interpreted together with other factors. For example, hunger is not proof that one has food to eat, but it can be an indication that there is such a thing as food out there somewhere. It is similar to the deep-seated longing of our hearts for meaning, love, and lasting hope—a desire so strong that life without it feels unbearable. It is precisely this desire that can prove relevant—among other considerations—when we judge this world, which produces creatures with such longings, as a whole."

Navigating Modern Crises

Younger generations are confronted with a multitude of phenomena that can be deeply unsettling—be it the flood of information from the internet, global crises, AI and its further development, a lack of meaning in life, and more. These crises can evoke a desire for something higher. I am convinced that the Christian faith can provide an answer in many aspects by grounding generalized values and interpreting and shaping our current reality—thereby giving us stability.

This approach primarily involves:

• (1) Making people aware of the assumptions they base their vision of life on.
• (2) Choosing a narrative approach to explore the extent to which the story the Bible tells us can offer a better explanatory framework.

Key Frameworks: The Imago Dei and Existential Restlessness

1. The Image of God (Imago Dei)

A doctrine such as the creation of human beings in the image of God (imago Dei), for example, provides a starting point for communicating the biblical message in a world where human uniqueness is increasingly questioned. For a "holistic understanding of the imago Dei [can] help us explore the essence of being human with gratitude and humility..." and thus form an important anchor point of our worldview.

The image of God, which in Christian tradition grounds both human dignity in the inviolability of life (Gen 9:6) and our special position on this earth in connection with our calling (Gen 1:28), can hardly be overstated in its relevance to today's situation. Engaging with the naturalistic alternative to the Christian image and its implications is, of course, reserved for another occasion.

2. The "Already" and the "Not Yet"

Another point that is currently on my mind is the explanation of the often-felt existential restlessness of human beings, as well as the tension between the "Already here" and the "Not yet," in which we can paradoxically find peace. Probably everyone knows this restlessness in some form: the feeling of never quite having arrived, even when you have achieved what you set out to do. The Christian tradition places this very experience into a larger context, with the promise of a perfect rest that does not dissolve our present restlessness but interprets it.

Augustine wrote in his famous Confessions:

"You move us to delight in praising you, for you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."

Ortlund comments on this:

"We were made for God, but we cannot hold onto him. He alone can fulfill us, but we cannot grasp him. Thus, creaturehood, as Augustine sees it, has an inherent restlessness: the very thing we were made for is intangible to us, and nothing else can fill this void."

At the same time,

"[for] Augustine, creaturely happiness consists in entering into God's eternal rest. Temporality implies changeability, and changeability means a constant falling away from the unchangeable God, who is the source of all good. The highest goal of every creature is therefore to enter into God's eternal, unchangeable rest and thus (in a certain sense) participate in God's unchangeability."

Commenting on Hebrews 4:3, Guthrie writes:

"When he says: We who have believed (past) enter (present) that rest, he emphasizes that the rest he has in mind is an experience already in the process of fulfillment. It is not something merely to be hoped for in the future. It is an essential part of the present reality for Christians."

Nevertheless, the Bible also knows a rest that is still outstanding (2 Thess 1:7; Rev 14:13). For those who know this tension—between our imperfect desire and the longing for more—this can offer a way to interpret their own reality and thus find a certain peace.

Conclusion: A Powerful Alternative

Further examples could be pursued based on beauty, music, mathematics, logic, morality, and more, but that would go beyond the scope of this post. The main point, however, should not lie in the concrete examples, but in the general impulse to argue also via the beauty and explanatory power of the Christian faith.

The connection to our Creator and the adoption of a divine framework of interpretation can therefore form an attractive alternative in a world characterized by uncertainty. The story the Bible tells can be a powerful means of interpreting oneself and one's environment in connection to God.

Here, it should be emphasized once again that:

1. The specific phenomena chosen (creation, perception, or otherwise) should always vary from person to person.
2. This approach must, of course, stand in a larger context alongside more direct arguments for the existence of God and a defense of the rationality of faith.