Exploiting the Offense of the Easily Offended

Kevin DeYoung has a great piece on his blog today describing the cultural phenomenon in which it's easier to be offended than it is to be right about something. He writes, " To prove you’re offended you just have to rustle up moral indignation and tell the world about it. To prove you’re right you actually have to make arguments and use logic and marshal evidence. Why debate theology or politics or economics if you can win your audience by making the other guys look like meanies?"

But I want to take the conversation in a little bit different direction. Perhaps we can exploit the offense of the easily offended. Unbelievers often object to certain tenents of the Christian faith on the grounds that those tenents are offensive. But what if we could show them that the beliefs upon which their objections and offense are based are themselves offensive to other cultures or people groups? What if we could show that taking offense to Christainity on the grounds of the doctrine of hell, for example, presupposes something that is offensive to cultures who have a deep sense of God's righteous judgment?

I think this is often the approach Tim Keller often takes in his book, The Reason for God. And while I don't think this kind of approach speaks to the ultimate issue of unbelief, it may provide a way for us to "tear down every argument raised up against the knowledge of God" (2 Cor 10:5).

New York Magazine on Tim Keller

New York Magazine has published as nice an article as could be expected from a secular source on Tim Keller.

Read the article here.