I thought the first post I put on this blog would be discussion-oriented. Now, normally this would go on my personal blog, but I thought “Hey, what the heck, we need to use this thing.” So here I am.
Now, the issue at hand. My question may seem a little outrageous at first, but I want the readers to examine it carefully. I’ve recently been curious as to why my generation seems to be opposed to the idea of ‘forcing beliefs on someone.’ Now, I’m not talking about laws, or codes, or government, or society, or any of that right now. That’s for another time.
Here’s my question: if you knew that someone could accept the gospel truly in their heart through you forcing your beliefs on them, would you do it? I’m not talking about someone deciding to imitate you and not having a real heart change. I’m talking about you talking to them and talking to them and even debating with them until they realized that the Gospel really was beautiful and were reborn. I know the typical response to this would be: “Doesn’t the Holy Spirit bring the change? We really can’t make someone become a Christian.” I would agree with you. But ‘living out our lives’ and ‘showing compassion’ are really not any more powerful than intellectual discussion without the Holy Spirit’s action.
I know I’m playing devil’s advocate here. I know that I sound like a grumpy grumpskins right now. But I want us to examine what it is we don’t like about the idea of intellectual arguments with unbelievers who will respond to intellectual arguments. If that will bring them to see the Gospel as beautiful, then why are we opposed to it?
Jimmy Needham has a lyric from a song that goes a little something like this:
We pass out paper facts all week but they won’t come around
We can debate theology but they won’t come around
apologetic reasoning but they won’t come around come around
there’s only one way they’ll come, and it’s love
I don’t think Needham is wrong here, but I can’t help but think to myself: showing love to someone has no more innate power to save than intellectual reasoning. Furthermore, showing love to someone doesn’t always have to mean living a nice, compassionate life and giving someone a pat on the back. Showing love to someone can mean going head to head with them intellectually if that is the best way the will be brought to a place where they see the Gospel as true and beautiful. I don’t want this to turn into an Armenian/Calvinist debate, so let me just set my view here: I pray and worship God like a Calvinist, but preach and proselytize like an Armenian. Ultimately, the Holy Spirit brings the change, and I know that. But I’m puzzled as to how our generation thinks that intellectual reasoning can’t bring people (through the HS) to a place of repentance. Yes, intellectual reasoning can only go so far. But so can compassion. Nothing against showing love to someone, and I’m not trying to be Scrooge here, all I’m calling for is a matter of perspective. If a person I know is an intellectual and reasons more on that plane, that’s where I’ll target them. If a person will respond better to compassion and niceness, I will target them there.
19Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 20To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. 21To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. 22To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. 23I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. (1 Corinthians 9:19-23)
Let’s not forget that ‘showing our faith’ (also ambiguous.. what the heck does it mean?) is one way the Holy Spirit can use to bring change in a lost person’s heart. Intellectual/apologetic reasoning might be another. Friendship might be another. Logic might be another. Let’s not limit God first of all, and let’s not limit what he can do in us either. So to Needham’s lyric I’d have to respond:
We pass out paper facts all week but they won’t come around
We can debate theology but they won’t come around
Apologetic reasoning but they won’t come around
Showing love to them and they won’t come around
There’s only one way they’ll come, and that’s the love of God.
Yeah, I know I’m being all crazy YRR up in here. I’m just trying to create some discussion and give my position. Intellectualism gets a bad rap from a lot of the young crowd these days because many think it can’t do the same things that showing outward, obvious compassion to someone can. Neither can do anything without the Holy Spirit. And yes, while 1 Corinthians 13 is true, ‘having love’ doesn’t have to mean stereotypically what it usually means. It is possible to debate with love. Many people I know and I’ve heard have come to faith in Jesus Christ through logical debate and apologetics. It’s the way their mind works.
So here’s to befriending people and showing niceness to them with love for the sake of the Gospel and the glory of God, and here’s to intellectual apologetic debate with love for the sake of the Gospel and the glory of God. Both need the Holy Spirit, and both can be just as glorious if God works through them.
-Riley
Well, I stumbled upon this, and though no one else has commented, I will(:
Generally I agree with everything you said. I am so glad that you see that both are ways to love people!
Hebrews 12:6 “For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.”
Discipline gets a bad rap, calling people out gets a bad rap… but sometimes that is the sweetest form of love!! God tells us this and proves this. He will give us grace when we need it, and consequences when we need it. It’s a part of His love.
But, that’s not really my point, rather there are many different forms of love. Love is not self-seeking, and sometimes it may not seem like love, but there definitely are a TON of ways to show love.
Also, I think that we need to put to use all that Christ has given us. He has gifted us all differently and I believe we are to use every facet of who we are for His glory!-our gifts, talents, minds, and hearts.
1 Cor 10:31 “So whether you eat or drink, whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”
That means daily living for His purposes! Being intentional in every aspect of your day is essentially what we’re supposed to do. How we treat others, what we do, what we say, how we say it, in EVERYTHING.
Sometimes we’re supposed to have a debate with someone, other times we’re to be a silent witness with our life. But to get the two confused!-what a tragedy! We’re to be led of the Holy Spirit, and to be led of Him, we’re to cultivate our deepening intimacy with our God, our wonderful Redeemer!
Romans 8:14 “because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.”
I think there is a delicate balance we must maintain in everything. We are to love and worship and offer ourselves to God!-but we are to seek His truth through His word, to study it, know it, defend it, live it. Ignoring worship because it’s too much of an experience is to miss so much! Just as never reading your bible you miss out on so much of who God really is!
A.W. Tozer said, “Being made in His image we have within us the capacity to know Him.”
God is our intelligent designer, yet His Spirit is within us. We have the capacity to grow in our mental and spiritual understanding! Our spirit is moved by His, our hearts are moved by His, our minds can be moved by Him as well!
Yet it is all inclusive and you can’t forsake one for the other.
And to persist if you knew one person would come to know Christ, I’d say, why wouldn’t you?! My heart breaks for the lost and I want to do all that I can to share Christ when them!! But it’s like the story in Luke 18 where there was the widow who sought justice and kept going to the judge over and over again, eventually he granted her justice!
But above all, we’re to be right with God, pure in our intentions, genuine with each person, and led of the Holy Spirit in all we do.
Just my long two cents(:
I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive. When I think of “forcing my beliefs” on someone, I think of shoving something down an unwilling throat without any personal context. I could easily go to the slums and find heroin addicts and tell them how dumb heroin abuse is, how they should stop, and how if they don’t, they could very well die. I would be right to say those things, and yet, it wouldn’t do any good. There is a reason interventions are staged with only close friends and family present.
I look at successful conversion relationships like Tolkien and Lewis, or even unsuccessful ones like Walker Percy and Shelby Foote, and see both forces at work. They reasoned and argued, but did so in the context of love and compassion. Love is the foundation, I truly believe that. It’s the difference between street preaching and handing out gospel tracts and bearing another’s burdens and being the gospel to another. If I love them, I will tell them the truth, but if I tell them the truth without first loving them, I’ve most likely done a great disservice.
Leah – I gotcha
There is a balance. You’re right.
Andrew – You’re right too. Love is the foundation.
I think what I’m trying to say is not that I prefer intellectual debate over stereotypical live-it-out-with-compassion, but that I think the former gets a bad rap, especially in the postmodernist/emergent scene recently discussed on my Facebook status. I have a whole discussion coming on that subject, but for now I’m mainly talking to my generation and not a movement. I want my generation to realize the richness in intellectual debate and how it can be done in love and for the Gospel. I don’t think many people want to say that right now.
For starters, I completely agree with Andrew.
But I also have a few theories on why intellectualism gets a bad rap…
1. I think a large part of it is because a lot of the youth/ppl your age aren’t confident in their understanding of God’s Word or apologetics. In my experience, I’m a lot less willing to argue something (even if I want to, or know it’s the right thing) if I can’t back it up…ESPECIALLY when the person I’m talking to is more likely to respond by debating/being argumentative. I think insecurities (some of them valid, some of them not) play a large part in why people shy away from confronting people about their religious beliefs.
2. Also, as a whole, I think young people live with, and have grown up with a “live and let live” mindset. Even when they want to do something radical (like share the Gospel with someone), they tend to do it in non-intrusive ways (i.e. “loving on” the person).
3. It might be that some people think it’s genuinely more effective to love as opposed to argue/debate. We hear all the time how it’s our love that separates us…maybe people just think that’s the best way to get through or set themselves apart. Or they think that because they wouldn’t respond well to debate, no one will.
Danielle – Those are good reasons. For me, it’s not so much that I think intellectual debate through the Holy Spirit is the best option, but that it IS an option. I see the desire to grow an intellectual identity and a better understanding of God and Christianity as a diminishing school of thought with my generation.
Great post, man. I very much agree with what you’ve said. But I’d have to qualify it with something along the lines of what Andrew mentioned: Love and Intellectual Debate aren’t mutually exclusive. 1 Corinthians points out that whatever we do, if there isn’t love in it, it is nothing, not that we must decide to either try to love them into trusting God, or debate them into trusting God.
I agree that intellectual debate is often dismissed as loveless, and that definitely isn’t the case all the time, but I think what most people mean by ‘forcing your beliefs on someone’ is more akin to the blind evangelism that usually does nothing except enforce the non-christian’s dislike of evangelism in the first place.
To Riley’s point, though, the blind impersonal evangelicalism has to a large degree become associated with ALL forms of non-”loving on people” apologetics, including those which are personal, and founded on prior relationships, and done in love.
I would argue that even though God does gift certain people certain ways, and some people are naturally better suited to certain forms of evangelism, most of us probably need to hear the opposite of what is natural to us. For instance, an “I’ll argue with you until I can’t talk anymore” person like me or Riley probably should be reminded that we need to do it out of love for the person, not an abstract idea. Likewise, the “preach the Gospel at all times and use words when necessary” person should be reminded that “how can they believe if they are not told, and how can they be told unless someone preaches”.
It’s a pendulum, I suppose, and like a lot of other things must be kept in a healthy tension. I think what Riley’s trying to do is pull a little to bring it back to center.
I think everybody here agrees with each other.
Either way, I don’t think that we are near burdened enough for our friends and the people around us. I’ve definitely been convicted of this strongly lately. I think that we get to this point when there are so many lost people around us, it’s the norm. We kind of accept it – “this is the way that it has to be”. But it’s NOT the way that it has to be! And if we were more burdened in our hearts and faced with the greater reality that a lot of the people we interact with on a day-to-day basis are likely going to hell, in their current state, we’d do something about it. Yes, it’s up to God, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be doing everything in our power to lead everyone around us to the Cross (which you touched on). I honestly don’t really think that it’s as much of a method issue as it is an attitude issue. If we are praying for the people around us and see them as Christ sees them (with compassion; as people who are sick), I believe that both Love and words to persuade will naturally follow. I don’t think that when we are just living our lives as an example and “loving people” that we are really loving them. If we really loved everyone around us like Jesus would/does, we wouldn’t keep silent! Likewise, whenever we try to forcefully, intellectually convince others around us without actually caring about their eternal security, we don’t love them as well. This is a pill I’ve been trying to swallow lately – it’s a big one!
(Like Andrew said, we all agree here – I’m just attempting to add a little more depth
Haha gotcha. Sweet deal.