Selling Christianity

Laura has an excellent post on this. She links back to an earlier post I wrote, but that’s not why I’m calling it excellent. She also makes a number of good points, and links to a number of good posts.

Some Christians make the assumption that if you’re not “in your face” about your faith, you’re not serious about your faith. After all, how can you be quiet when people are going to hell? That’s one reason a number of people complain when I call myself a moderate Christian. How can one be moderate about Christianity? You’ve got to be on fire!

But regarding your faith as important does not mean you need to embrace ineffective or unethical methods of witnessing. Under unethical I would include any means of witnessing that doesn’t recognize the person to whom you witness as a child of God, endowed with the ability to make his or her own choices. Thus a Christian witness should try to look at God’s children the way God does, and God not only cares about us, but respects our choices.

Any approach to witnessing that drives people away is ineffective. I recall one teacher saying once that we should make sure that when we are done conversing with someone that it will be easier, not harder, for the next Christian to talk to that person. Sometimes that will mean that I have to shut up completely, because anything I say will make things worse.

The most important thing to remember, I think, is that God is responsible for conversions. You are not. I am not. God is responsible for heaven and hell. You and I don’t get to make those calls. God is also sovereign, and he doesn’t need our help running the universe. What does that leave us? Well, we simply are called to give witness.

There’s always the “gospel offends” excuse. Now I do believe that the gospel offends. Grace is unfair. God’s grace is going to let people into heaven that I don’t really like all that much. But much of the actual offense people have against Christians is not due to the gospel. Often it is something precisely the opposite of God’s grace that offends them. When Christians are unforgiving and judgmental, when they arrogate to themselves God’s prerogatives of judgment, when they treat non-Christians with disrespect, those people are offended. Even though Christians have done the offending, the gospel was not at issue.

There are two elements to a Christian witness. First is a Christian life. Not a perfect life, mind you, but a life aimed at discipleship. Second is the confession. The reason I put the confession second is that a transformed life will draw questions. The confession comes in answer.