Semi-Random Musings (31)

Sometimes witnessing doesn’t work, even when you do it to the best of your ability and everything initially appears to go swimmingly.

I’m sure you’ve had the experience. I know I have. I used to be a great believer in dialectical arguments and persuasive apologetics. I would study up a storm to answer a question from scripture that I believed might be important to someone’s salvation or growth in Christ.

I’m not saying a good apologetic never works, but there are things even the most polished and articulate argument can’t possibly accomplish.

Robby Lashua explains the problem from personal experience:

“I’d been preparing my argument for six months, and now it was time to deliver. I was precise, winsome, and articulate. Honestly, my delivery couldn’t have gone better. The conversation went back and forth as I continued to make point after point. My opponent had no ground to stand on, and I had tactically and tactfully shown him just that. To my surprise, he still did not want to change his mind. How could this happen? I had done everything right.”

Well, I’m glad he was winsome. I have had occasional trouble with that myself.

Actually, there are lots of reasons people don’t change their minds that have precious little to do with our preparation. Sometimes they need time and space to process the evidence offered. Sometimes one or more pieces of the puzzle are still required to make the truth clear. These may come later, from the most unexpected source. Even so, the most persuasive evidence in the history of the world will not track with a man who is incapable of logical reasoning. The most carefully chosen words will fall flat with a man whose experience leads him to define them differently than you do. The best dialectical argument won’t budge a man whose first language is rhetoric. And even the most emotionally powerful rhetorical argument in the history of the world can’t make a man give up a sin he has determined to keep indulging in.

Such things are beyond the power of words. The person you are witnessing to may not even know he’s going to reject your argument until you finish making it. He might engage with you willingly. He may even ask you to give it your best shot.

Then … nothing.

I never forget Abraham’s final line in the Lord’s parable about the rich man and Lazarus: “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.” The first time I read it I thought, “That’s ridiculous. Of course they’d believe.” Life has taught me otherwise. People need something more than reason, evidence and even powerful emotions stirred up.

That’s where the Spirit of God comes in, but even his work is no infallible guarantee that we will get the results we are looking for, changing minds and hearts. I notice Robby doesn’t mention preparing his argument with prayer, though I would be surprised to find any veteran apologist who would consciously leave prayer out of the equation. But let’s assume Robby prayed diligently as he prepared to speak to his friend, and let’s assume the Spirit even brought conviction, as he does. Even with all that, it’s still possible to resist the Holy Spirit, like Stephen accused the Jewish council of doing. Some people do it over and over again.

So, sometimes witnessing doesn’t do the thing we hoped it would do, even when we do the very best we can. But it always does something. Concerning those who heard his word and did not change their minds, Jesus said, “The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.”

Boy, that’s a solemn task, isn’t it: to share Christ’s words with someone who rejects them. To be the spiritual equivalent of an assistant in the prosecuting attorney’s office, piling up the evidence that will result in an eternal sentence of separation from God.

That’s why I never feel when I’ve shared the word of God with someone, “My job is done here.” It’s never done until they have changed their minds about Christ or gone into eternity with the decision — for or against — forever final. I don’t want my presentation of the truth — good, bad or awful — to ever be the final piece of evidence produced against them at the great white throne.

That’s just a personal preference, but there you go.

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Robby Lashua’s post brought up another unrelated issue that’s in one sense trivial and in another, maybe a little more important.

Lashua points out that there were minds even the Lord was unable to change. (That part I agree with.) But to illustrate his point, he contrasts two men Jesus healed: the paralytic at the pool of Bethesda (John 5) and the man blind from birth that the Lord Jesus told to wash his eyes in the pool of Siloam (John 9).

Robby thinks the first man showed evidence of unbelief:

“The man blames Jesus. He tells them that the man who healed him told him to carry his pallet … Immediately, the man goes and tells the Jews that Jesus was the man who healed him. He tattles on the man who cured his 38-year-long sickness. The Jews then persecute Jesus … The first man sold Jesus out …There was no gratitude shown for his healing.”

I suppose one man’s “tattling” may be another man’s defiant confession of truth. Far from assuming the man was blaming Jesus, I have always read the words “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk’ ” as a claim for the authority of the Lord. Something like “If he had the God-given authority to heal a paralyzed man after 38 years, he certainly has the right to tell me not to leave my bedding lying around in a public place!” Something like “I’m breaking your interpretation of the rules because somebody with more spiritual authority than you told me to!”

Again, one man’s “selling out” Jesus may be another man’s demonstration of respect for the powers that be. What was the healed man supposed to do: deny it was Jesus who healed him, or refuse to answer a direct question from the spiritual authorities of the day? That would sure smack of cowardice. He was out of his depth, and he answered the question he was asked.

More importantly, his question gave Jesus the opportunity to answer the Pharisees face to face: “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” Jesus did not heal on the Sabbath by accident. Surely he was consciously seeking an occasion to provoke the unbelieving Jews further and to call out their fake religiosity for what it was. Calling God his Father, making himself equal with God, was the reason they were all the more intent on killing him. And that was not just their plan. It was his.

So … blame the paralytic and call him an unbeliever? I just don’t read it that way. The Lord used what he did to accomplish his purposes on that day.

In one sense, such a difference in interpretation is trivial. The truth is we just don’t know what motivated the man. In another, the difference in the way we interpret these events tells us and others a great deal about how we think and the assumptions we make when we come to the text.

It never surprises me when Christians disagree about this or that verse or passage. We are all coming from different levels of maturity, different experiences and different assumptions. Getting us all thinking the same way is a task only God can accomplish.

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“When they were few in number, of little account, and sojourners in it, wandering from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another people, he allowed no one to oppress them; he rebuked kings on their account, saying, ‘Touch not my anointed ones, do my prophets no harm!’ ”

Readers of Genesis will be familiar with the psalmist’s historical reference. This actually happened on three occasions, twice to Abraham and once to his son Isaac, once in Egypt and twice in Gerar. You can find the stories in Genesis 12, 20 and 26. In each case, the wandering sojourners attempted to deceive the kings of the nations in which they sojourned in order to protect their marriages and their lives, and (knowingly or otherwise) the Messianic line from Gentile adulteration. Nobody would argue these acts of cowardice were appropriate to men of God, but they happened with such frequency that some critics argue all three stories were inspired by a single event.

Each time, the Lord rebuked kings on account of his servants. In Egypt, he afflicted the household of Pharaoh with great plagues until the Egyptians finally realized what was going on. In Gerar, God closed the wombs of all the women in Abimelech’s household, and spoke to him in a dream — a literal, verbal rebuke. A generation later, the king of the Philistines went through the same routine with Isaac and Rebekah, happily discovering the deception before any injury to his household could occur. In this case, the “rebuke” was implicit, but the Philistines got the message: they said to Isaac, “We see plainly that the Lord has been with you,” and pleaded with him to make a covenant with them for their own safety.

Over and over again, we see God using even the most embarrassing missteps of his servants to glorify his own name, to identify those who were truly his, and to make himself known and feared among the nations. Should we expect any less of him with respect to our own failures?