The Good News Will Mean More
On a recent podcast interview, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikNUEMFWpms] Andrew Klavan told his viewers about a conversation he had while speaking at an evangelical Christian school. A longtime pastor there explained what had changed over the years: “When kids come in now, they’ve never read the Bible. They don’t even know who Noah is. They don’t know any of the stories. We’re really starting from scratch.” These were students raised by devout Christian parents.
In this episode, Klavan is interviewing Bishop Robert Barron, the popular Roman Catholic prelate and founder of Word on Fire. When asked about this phenomenon, Barron offered a telling insight. The Church Fathers, he said, saw the Incarnation as the great saving event, not just the cross, which is its culmination. God becoming flesh, God becoming one of us, is what heals us. That, Barron explained, is what Christmas is truly about. Beneath all the sentimentality and superficiality, Christmas celebrates God with us so that we might become sharers in His nature. But how many think about it in this way?
This may explain why Christmas remains a joyful season even for many who have never experienced salvation themselves. Immanuel—God with us, is unique among all religious traditions. Yet Christmas has become so commercialized, so tied to gift-giving with little personal investment or sacrifice, that the meaning of Christ’s birth is nearly trivialized. What did we ever do without gift cards? The deeper irony is this: fewer and fewer people even know why He was born, let alone why we needed Him to be.
Bishop Robert Barron
Barron goes on to paraphrase C.S. Lewis: before you can give people the good news, you must give them the bad news—because they no longer believe they are broken or in sin.
We have reached the point where ignorance is no longer bliss. It is anxious and miserable, a warning sign of a mounting tragedy.
The deaf, the dumb, and the blind stand ready to be swallowed whole. That is why the ancient hymn O Come, O Come, Emmanuel resonates so deeply: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD-jBLZSZNU&list=RDMD-jBLZSZNU&start_radio=1]
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here,
Until the Son of God appear
Christmas is not yet over. In fact, it should never be.
Western civilization is in more than steep decline. Europe, in particular, appears all but finished. The younger generations that managed to be born inherit little sense of pride, purpose, or identity. Klavan noted that many of his friends in England admit they simply do not care about the massive migration into their country, at least not as long as their own comfortable lives remain undisturbed.
Europe’s birth rates have collapsed well below replacement levels, driving mass migration and accelerating cultural fragmentation. After World War II, Europe surrendered its weakening connection to Christendom. Today, the once-great cathedrals stand empty or converted, and Christian identity has largely disappeared from public life.
What all of this means is that the Gospel can no longer assume what it once could. Evangelism once began with answers because people still understood the questions. They knew who God was, what sin meant, and why guilt mattered. That shared moral vocabulary has nearly evaporated. When people no longer believe they are broken, the promise of healing sounds odd and seems unnecessary. When people no longer know the story, the ending makes no sense.
This is why apologetics is no longer optional. Before the Good News can be heard, the bad news must be understood. Before Christ can be proclaimed as Savior, the need for salvation must first be explained.
Why Christian Apologetics Matters
What we are confronting in the West is not merely moral decline or cultural confusion. It is something more fundamental. We are living among people who no longer know the story they inhabit. For centuries, even those who rejected Christianity still understood its basic claims. They knew who God was, what sin meant, and why guilt mattered. That shared moral and spiritual vocabulary has largely disappeared.
CS Lewis
This is why evangelism today often feels ineffective. The message has not changed, but the audience has. We are no longer speaking to rebels who know the law and resent it. We are speaking to people who deny there ever was a law at all. As C.S. Lewis warned, before the Good News can be heard, the bad news must be understood. A culture that no longer feels the weight of sin cannot recognize the beauty of grace.
This is not enlightenment. It is disconnection from truth, from meaning, and from reality itself. Ignorance is no longer bliss; it is anxious and restless. People sense that something is wrong, yet resist any explanation that places responsibility anywhere other than the system, the culture, or someone else.
This is why apologetics must now come first. Not because arguments save souls, but because truth must be made intelligible before it can be embraced. Apologetics does not replace evangelism. It prepares the ground for it.
The Incarnation as the Ultimate Apologetic
Christian apologetics does not begin with an argument. It begins with an event. Before God explains Himself to the world, He enters it. The Incarnation is not merely a doctrine to be defended; it is the answer to a hurting world that no longer knows why it hurts.
God did not shout truth from heaven. He took on flesh. He entered history. He accepted limitation, hunger, weakness, and suffering. In doing so, He addressed the deepest modern confusion—not simply doubt about God’s existence, but doubt that meaning itself still exists. The Incarnation declares that reality is not empty, that life is not accidental, and that human existence is neither random nor disposable.
This is why Christmas still resonates, even in a secular age. Long before people understand the cross, they sense the weight of God with us. In a culture marked by anxiety, loneliness, and fragmentation, the Incarnation confronts the lie that we are alone in the universe. God does not observe human misery from a distance. He steps into it.
The Incarnation also exposes the problem we resist naming. Christ does not come merely to affirm us. He comes to redeem us. God becomes man because something is wrong with man. The manger already points to the cross. The child is born to die. This is not sentimentality. It is diagnosis.
Here, apologetics and evangelism converge. The Incarnation explains why the world is broken and why hope is still possible. It restores coherence as it offers comfort. It tells us who God is, who we are, and why salvation is necessary. In Christ, truth is not merely spoken. Truth is made flesh.
I am persuaded that the mission and ministry of Charlie Kirk, is a typology of the martyrs found in the scriptures and down through the ages. He confronted the world order in its own den: the college and university campuses throughout the country. He spoke this truth to power. We, The Church, must now pick up his mantle, and using the gifts and talents God gave us, inspire the world to seek this Truth as never before.
- For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. —Jeremiah 29:11 (NKJV)
May you have a Happy and Blessed New Year!
Jeff
Photo by Anastasiia Rozumna on Unsplash
