Philosophy

Crossing Currents

An Online, Interactive Approach to Christian Apologetics for Teens and Young Adults.

Crossing Currents (XC) is a Christian organization that is committed to preparing young people to face the challenges of a post-Christian society with the knowledge and skills to examine and evaluate competing worldviews.

Philosophy of religious debate: XC uses the term “debate” loosely in order to promote both intellectual rigor and sensitivity to other individuals and situations. We do not teach an adversarial or a courtroom style of debate, but we provide the support to address issues of religious belief in situations that may be adversarial.

Philosophy of apologetics: XC promotes a three pronged approach to apologetics (defense of the faith):

Inquiry – XC provides a safe, non-threatening environment for examining and exploring beliefs through critical inquiry and discovery learning which is not antagonistic to a Christian worldview.
Equipping – XC fortifies the beliefs of young Christians by providing them with the means to defend their faith and tools to evaluate the belief systems of competing worldviews.
Evangelism –XC encourages students to see beyond winning an argument. Students are encouraged to recognize and care for the needs of the whole person and to understand the pitfalls of debate within relationships.

Teens and young adults naturally pass through a process of questioning the beliefs of their childhood. If they do not question their beliefs themselves, these beliefs are often questioned and tested from outside sources. A proper study of apologetics will assist them in their Christian growth, resulting in stimulating interaction and contributing to renewed assurance.

More tools in the toolbox: Our goal is to train students in a variety of apologetic methods and help them examine why some methods work better than others depending on the situation. As the saying goes, “When a person has a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” We want to provide an array of tools to meet the variety of challenges facing Christian young people in today’s culture.

More knowledge and skills at hand: We are concerned with the lack of accurate knowledge and rational thought prevalent in mainstream society with respect to Christianity. We aim to equip students to address these issues with compassion as well as precision. Students will learn to examine and evaluate arguments and respond with knowledge and clarity.

More than a rational approach: At the same time, we at XC are concerned that a focus on apologetics tends to steer students to an over-dependence on rationalism. Built into our curriculum is a focus on the complexity of human beings and how God speaks to us through both our cognitive/rational minds and our imaginative/intuitive minds. Understanding how God has designed these to work together will greatly assist students in achieving the objectives of critical inquiry, fortifying beliefs, sharing Christ, and contributing to humanity’s dialogue about God.

Philosophy of teaching:

Interactive: XC goes beyond listing and memorizing arguments in support of the Christian faith. When these strategies are “taken to the streets” they sometimes fall apart. We don’t consider this a successful outcome. Students may learn the hard way that the answers they believed were airtight, fail where it counts – in discussions with non-Christians. We conclude that one “best” approach to apologetics doesn’t exist and that students should be equipped with a range of skills and abilities.

The interactive aspect of XC encourages students to try new approaches to defending the faith and allows them to make mistakes here in the safety of the class. We also share what we see as changing currents in the other side of the grand debate.

XC encourages dialogue and writing. XC fits well with the classical approach to learning.

Ongoing: XC provides a unique benefit with our ongoing discussion group for those who have taken at least one of our courses. We provide continuing support and additional challenges to discover even more strategies and concepts that work. Once students complete a class they are invited to join the XC discussion group where they can continue to interact with other students and with the instructors.

While the formal teaching takes place within the classes, a great deal of learning occurs in dialogue, especially as issues arise in the lives of students. We believe in the need for ongoing discussion and support outside the XC classes, after students have had a chance to put their skills to the test. We provide this service free of charge. Most students who “lose their faith” do so between the ages of 18 and 25. We aim to mitigate this by providing students with an interactive environment where they can safely discuss the issues and challenges they are facing on college campuses, in the workplace and with friends.

Inductive: XC’s methodology does not tell students what to think, but provides an environment and the tools to learn how to think. While XC is unequivocally Christian, we do not promote any particular denomination. Our role is to prepare students with the knowledge, skills and practice to successfully defend Christianity’s core beliefs. We will assist them with guidance in conducting research and study instead of feeding them easy answers. While we do provide information, we also help them evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of various arguments on both sides of a debate. While we will insist that they be fair with the beliefs of other philosophies and religions in their evaluations, we will support Christianity as the belief system which we understand to be the most satisfying both intellectually and spiritually.