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without knowing it.
    A woman once sent me an email saying she was raised in a home where the rule was that Christians should never expose themselves to nonbiblical ways of thinking. “But when I read your book Total Truth ,” she wrote, “I discovered that I had unconsciously absorbed ideas from secular thinkers like Rousseau and Kant.” Because she had never studied their ideas, she had no critical grid to recognize and reject them.
    The lesson is that Christians must never treat idol analysis as a matter of addressing only how other people think. Scripture does not allow us that luxury. In the original Greek, there are no chapter breaks; the first chapter of Romans flows immediately into the second chapter, where Paul turns to the reader—the person who has God’s written revelation—and says, “Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things” (Rom. 2:1).
    All through Romans 1, it appeared that Paul was directing his teaching to pagan idol worshippers. But now, in a surprise move, he places his readers on the same level as pagans. He even repeats the same phrase as in 1:20, “without excuse.”
    By that verbal link, Paul implicates everyone in the charge of suppressing the truth and creating counterfeit gods. Christians are not immune. Scripture is addressing Christians in verses like “flee from idolatry” and “keep yourselves from idols” (1 Cor. 10:14; 1 John 5:21). We must be committed to turning away from idols and toward God as the ultimate source of truth in every area of life. To avoid being “conformed to this world,” we must “be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom. 12:2).
    The ultimate goal of learning a biblical apologetics strategy is to love God “with all your mind” (Luke 10:27). Whether you are a Christian already or just beginning to learn about God, you may be surprised by joy when you discover that biblical truth is bright and resilient enough to be “a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps. 119:105), illuminating every area of life.
    Let’s get started honing our skills to identify the idols of our age. How can we learn to recognize false gods, especially when they are hidden under secular labels and taught through the secular education system?

PART TWO
    PRINCIPLE #1
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PRINCIPLE #2
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PRINCIPLE #3
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Secular Leaps of Faith
    A few years ago, CNN published an article titled “Why I Raise My Children without God.” Instantly it went viral. The author, a young mother named Deborah Mitchell, listed several reasons why she shielded her children from learning about God—most of them variations on the problem of evil. Mitchell argued that a loving God would not allow “murders, child abuse, wars, brutal beatings, torture and millions of heinous acts to be committed throughout the history of mankind.” 1
    The classic Christian answer to the problem of evil is that God created humans with free will—and they have made a horrific mess of things. This is called the free-will defense, and it acknowledges the tragic reality of sin and suffering, while at the same time affirming human dignity. It portrays humans as genuine moral agents whose choices are so significant that they alter the direction of history, and even eternity.
    Having rejected the Christian answer, what did Mitchell offer as an alternative? She proposed a materialistic worldview in which humans are completely determined, without free will. “We are just a very, very small part of a big, big machine,” she intoned, “and the influence we have is minuscule.” We must accept “the realization of our insignificance.”
    Is that meant to be an appealing alternative to Christianity? That humans are little machines trapped in a big machine? That their actions are insignificant? Mitchell claimed that her materialist view