1 big answer

In the blog "7 or so questions, 7 or so answers: an elevator pitch" I set out an approach to talking about one's faith in terms a non-Christian might better understand.

Greg Koukl recently released a video of his answer to precisely that situation.

An edited transcript is provided below.

What is your elevator speech answer to the   question "What do you believe and why do you believe it?"

First three stories.

1.  There is a God who is there.
2.  He has not been silent. (Francis Schaeffer's title)
3.  He has visited this planet in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

He gave evidence of who he was, and then did something to rescue us from ourselves that will determine what happens to everybody in the final resurrection.

That's, maybe, the content. At the end of history. Maybe I'll put it that way for a non-Christian.

Why do I believe it? Well, this one, in a certain sense, is I'll give the general point that I've given many times, because that answer is about the nature of reality—I'm not talking about my faith, my beliefs, as such.

Of course, they're my faith and belief, but what I believe about those things is that this is the way the world is. And I think that this is an accurate take on the world.

It's the accurate picture of reality, taken as a whole, because it turns out to be the best explanation for the way things are. And, so, when you look at the way the world is—that the world came into existence, that the world has conscious beings, that one set of the conscious beings—human beings—have a moral nature, and that concepts like mercy and goodness and justice and wickedness and evil. All of these are real parts of the universe— the worldview, the picture of reality—that makes the most sense out of all of these things. This turns out to be the Christian view of reality.

In the book, “Street Smarts," I have two chapters on atheism followed by one chapter on the problem of evil, and the chapter on the problem of evil is called Evil: Atheism's Fatal Flaw. I position the problem of evil, not in a defensive way, like, well, let's see if I can find out how I can convince you that it makes sense in our world; I did that in "The Story of Reality”. No, I'm trying to show there is a problem of evil, and that's not bad for us, it's bad for atheists, and here's why.

Simply put, the problem of evil fits into our world. Our story is about   the problem of evil from the beginning to the end”. It starts in chapter 3 of Genesis. It ends 66 books later. So, it fits in our story, and our story is not over yet. It's just part of it.

While there's no real problem there, in a certain sense. there remain questions that come up that we can speculate on and try to answer, but the key thing is, the problem of evil makes sense in our story. It does not make sense in the atheist's story.

In that, there's one example of our view of reality being a much better explanation than any other. In fact, the best explanation for evil or for the origin of the universe or for the existence of consciousness or the reality of human freedom or a whole host of other things.

If I was to give a short elevator speech, would I include any testimony in that or would I stick to, what I have just described?

No, I don't think I would put testimony in, partly because nothing in my testimony is evidential. It isn't like I heard a voice, I went blind, and then I got healed of blindness three days later (referring to the Apostle Paul’s encounter with the risen Christ). So, there's nothing that's third person public that I can offer.

Secondly, I really want to work to avoid relativizing my own views. This is why I don't like when people say, "Well, the Christian view is." There may be a place for that, but we have to be very careful that we're not just saying this is kind of, as you put it earlier, our club. I don't like "Well we believe this," or "We have faith that," "My faith tells me thus and so."

I'd rather put this in terms of my understanding of the nature of reality. These are my convictions about the way the world is, and I have particular reasons for thinking that my convictions match the world, and then I can talk about that. I'm going to try to stay away from the subjective element, in my case, for those reasons. I especially don't want people to be tempted to relativize my view. They could say it's inaccurate. Fine. But if my view is relative, it can't be inaccurate. It's true for me. That’s all you can say.