I love words and I am particularly fascinated by the way in which their meanings often evolve over time. Whoever would have thought that the word ‘multiplication’ once referred to the art of making gold and silver’ for example?

I can’t figure out how that happened. Can you?

It’s the same with the word ‘apology’ too. In contemporary English an ‘apology’ is an expression of regret or remorse for a mistake, wrong, or offence whereas it originally referred to someone making some kind of defence. We see a good example of this in a book written in the late 18th century entitled ‘An Apology for Christianity: In a Series of Letters, Addressed to Edward Gibbon, Esq; Author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’.

The author was not the first and certainly not the last apologist either. That term has been widely used to describe such ancient church leaders as St Augustine and Origen as well as more contemporary writers such CS Lewis and Professor John Lennox who has been described as ‘one of the greatest apologists of our time’.

Indeed, it’s obvious that the apostle Peter expected every Christian to be an apologist. He wrote ‘If someone asks about your hope as a believer always be ready to explain it’. Christians face the same challenge today and I must admit I was delighted to come across two good examples of Christian apologetics in the Christian press recently.

The first dealt with the aftershock of the Panorama programme that focused on that disturbing reality TV programme ‘Married at First Sight’. The headline summed it up succinctly. It read ‘Christians warn against ‘trivialisation’ of marriage and sex after Married at First Sight scandal.

Andrea Williams, chief executive of Christian Concern made sense when she was quoted as saying ‘the controversy surrounding the programme should not be viewed in isolation, but as a “symptom of a culture that’s forgotten the importance of marriage”. Marriage, from a Christian perspective she rightly argued, ‘is intended to be a lifelong covenant between one man and one woman rooted in sacrificial love, commitment, honour and responsibility, rather than what she described as a “social experiment” designed for entertainment’,

The other article focused on the results of a major international study that has looked at the relationship between faith traditions and workplace culture and looked at the corporate values of some 400 major international companies. It found that ‘many of the world’s largest companies increasingly prioritise values long associated with religious and ethical traditions, with European firms placing particular emphasis on sustainability, social responsibility and human-centred leadership’.

With reference to Christianity in particular, the report ‘linked values such as creativity, stewardship, vocation, truthfulness, moral accountability and human dignity to the three values companies increasingly seek to develop’.

As I see things then, Christians don’t need to apologise for their faith. It is based on solid evidence; it makes sense and because of that it works. They simply need to be proactive apologists.