Wednesday, October 12, 2005

 

Evangelism

Joe Carter - Evangelical Outpost - is celebrating his second blogiverssary by reposting some of what he thinks is his best past work. This is a real goodie.
The people responded to Jesus the way they did because he is, well, you know, God. He is what our hearts have always been seeking. When we come face to face with him we may accept or reject him. But we can?t not know him. Calvin claimed that there is an awareness or sense of God (sensus divinitatis) implanted in all people by nature. The context of this universally distributed belief being rather minimal: there is a God, He is the Creator, and that He ought to be worshipped.* Philosopher Alvin Plantinga interprets this as being more akin to a disposition to form a religious belief. Not surprisingly, when people came face to face with their Creator they were inspired to follow him and to boldly proclaim the gospel.

How different our situation is today. Some Christians (particularly new ones that are still enthused by their budding faith) are still eager and willing to ?share Christ.? Others have a more difficult time. I suspect that the average Christians hesitancy to ?witness?, though, has little to do with timidity or lack of courage. After all, many a believer would have no problem explaining why they support a particular political position, yet become tongue-tied when the topic turns to religion or (gasp) Jesus himself.

I suspect that much of the fault lies with our misunderstanding of ?faith.? In our age, the term has become almost synonymous with an irrational (or at least nonrational) acceptance of beliefs for which we lack evidence. When we Christians accept such an idea it?s no wonder that the nonbelievers don?t feel the need to take us seriously!

But our faith isn?t a matter of embracing fideism. The ?good news? isn?t about a religious belief but about a person.
Joe's essential point is that Jesus is the gospel, not Calvinism or Armininism or.... But as someone who is not the least bit tonggue-tied when it comes to explaining my faith, my hesitancy to "witness" comes from a very different source. It comes from the fear that my live does not sufficiently reflect Jesus, that I have insufficiently tapped that power that made people respond to Jesus so readily.

If the message is a person, and it most assuredly is, then the reason more people don't respond to the message must be that person is not apparent in what we do. Jesus is not apparaent in us because not only do we only share iodeas about Him, but that is all we have -- ideas about Him, we ourselves have not come to meet Him face-to-face.

I was involved in a small group discussion yesterday about where it is that face-to-face encounter occurs. We talked about the variety of Christian experience in coming to that meeting. There was only one common factor to be found -- the emptying of self and turning to God.

Intimacy requires the opening of oneself. We can not keep things reserved and and become intimate. To know Jesus, to be able to introduce Him to others, we must be intimate with Him. We don't do intimacy well in America circa 2005.

I am increasingly convinced that we have to practice intimacy with each other as a part of learning to be intimate with the Almighty. How do you think that would look and how do you think we can make that happen in the church today?

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