Listen to Their Story

Mary Jo Sharp—

Apologetics isn’t just about having the right answers; it’s about hearing the story behind the questions. I watched this play out at an apologetics summer camp when a high school student asked an apologist: “How does the Kalam Cosmological Argument affect your spiritual life?” Instead of addressing what he was actually asking, the apologist launched into a detailed explanation of the argument’s structure: premise one, premise two, philosophical implications. The student nodded politely, but I could see the disconnect. He wasn’t asking for a lecture on cosmology. He was asking, “Does this argument matter for my life? Does God actually care about me?"

This moment came back to me recently as I was watching the conversation between Christian leadership guru Carey Nieuwhof and pastor/author Timothy Keller, How to Bring the Gospel to Post-Christian America. Keller made an observation that cuts to the heart of effective evangelism: we have to connect the Gospel to the cultural narrative, understanding the plotline people are living in and showing how Jesus completes their story. His point was simple but profound. His parents’ generation believed the meaning of life was to be good, so he preached about guilt and grace. When he got to New York City, people believed the meaning of life was to be free and discover your true self, so he preached about the slavery of living for anything other than God. Today, Keller suggested, the cultural storyline has shifted again toward identity, performance, and belonging.

What struck me about Keller’s approach was how deeply formational it was, shaping not just what he thought but the kind of evangelist he became. He wasn’t just collecting arguments to win debates. He was listening for the deeper narratives people were living in: the stories they believed would resolve their deepest longings. Only then could he show how the gospel speaks into those longings more deeply than the cultural scripts they’d been given.

This is exactly what the apologist missed with that student. The question about the Kalam wasn’t really about the mechanics of the argument or its evidential effectiveness. It was embedded in a larger storyline: “I need to know that I matter. That there’s purpose to my existence. That I’m not just cosmically insignificant.” Our apologetics arguments aren’t simply responses to intellectual objections. They’re diagnostic tools that help us understand which story someone believes will offer them coherence and meaning.

Here’s the practice I want to suggest: Before you reach for an argument, listen for the storyline. When someone says, “all religions are basically the same,” they might be living in a narrative about tolerance and freedom, fearing that commitment to one path means becoming closed-minded or oppressive. When someone says, “Christianity is too judgmental,” they might be living in a storyline about identity and inclusion, terrified of being excluded or having to exclude others to belong.

The apologetics arguments we know give us the tools to address these objections. But tools are only helpful when we know what we’re building. Are we trying to win an argument, or are we trying to understand a person well enough to show them how Jesus addresses their deepest questions in ways their current narrative never could?

This week, try this: When someone raises an objection or asks a question about faith, pause before responding. Ask yourself, “What storyline might this person be living in?” Then let your response speak into that, not just into the intellectual content of their question.

Mary Jo Sharp serves as the Director of Strategic Initiatives for Search Ministries. She is an internationally recognized lecturer on apologetics who loves to be part of compassionate conversations, especially in her hometown of Portland. She is author of several books including Why I Still Believe.