Yet church youth groups rarely teach apologetics, majoring instead on games and goodies.

An idol is not necessarily something concrete, like a golden calf. It can also be something abstract, like matter. Is matter part of the created order? Sure it is. So the philosophy of materialism qualifies as an idol in the biblical sense.

When we encounter the world of ideas for the first time, we easily get overwhelmed. Scripture is telling us, 'Don't be distracted by the details. Cut to the core by asking, What is its idol?' Whatever functions as its God substitute will shape everything else.

The gospel is like a caged lion,' said the great baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon. 'It does not need to be defended, it simply needs to be let out of it's cage' Today, the cage is our accommodation to the secular/sacred split that reduces Christianity to a matter of personal belief. To unlock the cage, we need to become utterly convinced that, as Francis Schaeffer said, Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth- truth about the whole of reality.

In many churches, the message of justification- how to get right with God- is preached over and over again. But much less is said about sanctification- how to live after you're converted.

Because humans are capable of choosing, the first cause that created them must have a will.

The more we learn about life, the less plausible is any evolutionary theory that relies on blind, undirected, piece-by-piece change.