Public relations companies battle for the correct and best image in the minds of potential customers or clients. I think that believers should seek to correct the wrong views the public has of Christianity’s system of beliefs; and when needed, strongly defend Christianity’s truth claims. This is the job of the discipline called apologetics. Not meaning to apologize, but refers to respectful and honest defense as well as providing reasonable and intelligible answers (1 Peter 3:15). I know some pastors and believers may disagree with me; but the apostle Paul says believers ought to “demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ,” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5, NIV). In this sense we become lawyers of the Christian Faith.
It’s not important if one doesn’t like the analogy. My point here is that both the public relations specialist and the Christian believer seek the same thing in principle from their particular audience. Both want the people to know the truth about themselves and their views and what they stand for. Both end-goals are the same, in principle. For the companies, loyalty to their services and products; for the Christian Church, loyalty to the lordship of Jesus Christ over their being and lives.
Now believers do not like to associate the goals of Christianity with the goals of financial, profiteering institutions. Yet we all need money. We need finances to run our churches and do effective evangelism with humanitarian services. Nothing is wrong with money nor the association with it. The problem is the purpose for which it is used and the extent to which we choose to go after it. The Bible says, “the love of money [that is, the greedy desire for it and the willingness to gain it unethically] is a root of all sorts of evil,” (1 Timothy 6:10, AMP). It never says that “money is the root of evil” as it’s popularly misquoted through ignorance and or deliberate bad-mouthing by those who don’t know the true and pure value of the Christian truth claims.
To effectively deal with the war of ideas when we try to do what Jesus tells us to in evangelism—that is, in making disciples in the world, as we preach and teach the gospel (Matthew 28:19-20), here are some questions we should get some answers to in readiness. Do we have any real intellectual grasp of Christian teaching? Are we trying to be informed in a variety of disciplines? Not to be experts, but just to keep up with what has become common knowledge? Are we aware of the popular objections to our faith with readiness of reasonable answers, first to ourselves and then to recent converts? Pushing further, do we know about the competing views with our truth claims so we can properly inform the people we meet why and how Christianity is different? Before sending out the disciples to do evangelism effectively, Jesus “opened their minds to [help them] understand the Scriptures,” (Luke 24:45). He also promised to send them the holy spirit to empower them (Acts 1:8).