Thursday, January 18, 2007
I grew up thinking that if you debated something well enough, you could convince anyone that what you believed was true; all you had to do was win the debate. I soon realized that no matter how sound your argument is people are not going to believe it by you "winning" a debate.
Now, if you're like most humans, you are going to run into people who completely disagree with your worldview (especially as Christian's) and I think often we don't really know how to deal with such attacks on our faith or our beliefs. I am sure there are a wide variety of responses to this; however, there seems to be a trend in the responses Christian's give. Some try to respond by debating these people into believing what we believe, others by just rejecting their faith because the moment it is attacked and they don't have the answer they question it, other's become completely passive and just don't discuss their faith or back away from any argument or debate.
This leads me to think, there must be a better way then these above responses, as all of them seem to not really accomplish the end goal that we are hoping for.
I believe the answer, or at least part of it, is to show people by example who Christ is and how it's changed our life. So that when we do open our mouths to talk about Him, they believe that we aren't just spouting off some argument we learned in Sunday school.
Now, many of you most likely agree with that "Yes, we will show them by our actions" and yet so many of our lives do not reflect Christ in a vibrant and obvious way. It's like we live our lives exactly like our neighbour, but we go to Church, do a few mission trips, go to Bible Study Wednesday nights - but there is no passion. There is no reason for our neighbour, or the person we bump into in our lives to believe that we are on fire for God.
It leads me to ask my self - if someone ran into me today, would they notice that I'm different? Does my passion and fire for God shine through me, or have I settled to a "just getting by" standard?
Now, if you're like most humans, you are going to run into people who completely disagree with your worldview (especially as Christian's) and I think often we don't really know how to deal with such attacks on our faith or our beliefs. I am sure there are a wide variety of responses to this; however, there seems to be a trend in the responses Christian's give. Some try to respond by debating these people into believing what we believe, others by just rejecting their faith because the moment it is attacked and they don't have the answer they question it, other's become completely passive and just don't discuss their faith or back away from any argument or debate.
This leads me to think, there must be a better way then these above responses, as all of them seem to not really accomplish the end goal that we are hoping for.
I believe the answer, or at least part of it, is to show people by example who Christ is and how it's changed our life. So that when we do open our mouths to talk about Him, they believe that we aren't just spouting off some argument we learned in Sunday school.
Now, many of you most likely agree with that "Yes, we will show them by our actions" and yet so many of our lives do not reflect Christ in a vibrant and obvious way. It's like we live our lives exactly like our neighbour, but we go to Church, do a few mission trips, go to Bible Study Wednesday nights - but there is no passion. There is no reason for our neighbour, or the person we bump into in our lives to believe that we are on fire for God.
It leads me to ask my self - if someone ran into me today, would they notice that I'm different? Does my passion and fire for God shine through me, or have I settled to a "just getting by" standard?
Labels: Spiritual