I’ve read a couple of articles by Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra of The Gospel Coalition and I really like her style. It’s thorough, well thought out, and readable. I especially liked that she springboarded this article off two of the books by Tim Keller that I recommended quite some time ago as good reads for understanding basic Christianity. Keller is a great thinker and writer who is the epitome of thoughtfulness and gentleness, especially when facing the hyper-sensitive Pharisees who challenge his every move on social media (that in itself tells me something).
The article goes into something Keller and others (D. A. Carson comes to mind here) have been talking about for some time – the fact that evangelizing today is nothing like evangelizing in the days of Billy Graham. Back then, you were at least speaking to an audience who knew the lingo and had some kind of foundation in the faith. Not so now. It was from Keller that I first heard the term “the inoculated Christian” and (borrowed from Flannery O’Connor) “Christ-haunted.” In other words, the challenge was that we were evangelizing to a population who had just enough of the Christian concepts in mind that they didn’t feel the need to catch the real thing. But they had some idea there, nonetheless. To paraphrase Carson, “When they denied God, at least they were denying the God of the Bible.” Nowadays? Not so much. Fewer people possess the common language of the church, and in reality, America really has become a massive mission field.
And this speaks to some of the reasoning behind my recent writings (questioning the overinflated numbers of “Christians” in America listed in a Pew Forum study). There are still the holdouts — those who respond “Christian” on the surveys because they think that a) they’re Christian because that’s what American’s are, or b) they’re Christian because that’s what good people are.
And I’ve been trying to get across (and somewhat poorly I’m sure) to anyone who reads this that neither of those are criteria for being a Christian. There are innumerable people among the population whom we might consider “good” — I’d even go so far as to say the overwhelming majority appear to be so (and even more would say so themselves). But I’m also saying that, from God’s perspective, they’re looking in the wrong place. There can perhaps be no better example than the recent revelation of the BTK killer saying that he was a “good person who did some bad things.” Like brutally torturing and murdering ten people. All while teaching Sunday school on the side. I’m not saying that’s any one of us, but from God’s view, it may as well be.
Again, and finally (for now), a Christian is one who believes that Jesus Christ is his savior and that he could not get to heaven without the salvation that Christ offers; and that, as a result, his life is changed so completely that, even if at one time he was a serial killer of ten, he is now wholly submitted to the work and person of Jesus to govern every aspect of his life. This means following Jesus and walking as he did, but in that following and walking, not believing that that is what gets him to heaven but that because he’s already saved, he has no choice but to live that way (and certainly not begrudgingly so). It’s not that “I’m a good guy, so I’m a Christian.” There are far too many “good guys” who aren’t. It is that “I have been made good in God’s eyes by the work of Jesus, so I am now privileged and able to do the work of Christ. Not the work of ‘me,’ but the work of the one who saved me.”
Having gone through that yet again, the more important part of the article, in my opinion, is the what it spoke of in the new approach to evangelism. I was especially drawn to the role of telling the story in a compelling way as a crucial element of evangelizing in today’s society. Maybe it’s in my writing that I feel a connection – that I have a story to tell and that it might have some small impact on the lives of others who read. But the gospel is a much bigger deal than anything I have to offer, and I see the challenge. In the article, Zylstra quotes Sam Chan (author of Evangelism in a Skeptical World: How to Make the Unbelievable News about Jesus More Believable), as saying, “In apologetics, we’ve been trying to give facts and data, when we really need to tell a better story. We have to win the imagination, not just the debate.” This sounds right. In a society that no longer values the moral standard of Christianity (even if only by lip-service) — and that no longer even knows the language — it’s important that we show people the “why does this matter anymore?” answers. Why is Christianity the better way? As evangelist Ray Comfort might say, “you can’t offer them a Jesus that will make their lives more comfortable when they think they’re comfortable enough as it is.” And this is what the nominal “Christian” claimant believes — I’m good enough, so I’m a Christian. So it’s here you’ve got to weave them into the story itself and show them their critical need for Jesus.
Theologian Josh Chatraw (quoted by Zylstra) said it well. “The church has a long history of people who are appealing to the goodness and beauty part of the gospel. We can retrieve those and apply them to the present context.” Or, as Collin Hansen of The Gospel Coalition puts it, “It’s not about merely defeating non-Christians in an argument. It’s about showing them the beauty of the gospel. ‘Doesn’t this make more sense?’ ‘Isn’t this more hopeful?’ ‘Isn’t this more plausible?’
It’s there we should go.