Clobbering doesn't work

This week I read about a so-called ‘Christian’ leader who did not believe that Jesus is the only way to God because that would “put God in an awfully small box” and did not believe what the Bible says because we have to consider “modern” findings.

At first I was angry and wanted to write a sarcastic letter, something to the effect ‘don’t call yourself a Christian if you refuse to believe what Christ Himself has said,’ but I’m not sure that is the best way to respond to darkness. This person has no light. Sarcasm will not give it to her. Sigh.

Obviously I didn’t graduate from ‘evangelism and outreach school’ because of my tendency to try and debate people into believing. A good argument never convinces anyone of the truth about Jesus Christ. But I take a lot of convincing too. I think, if I could just tell them this . . . or that . . . then they would see it; then they would believe.

It doesn’t work that way. I should know; it didn’t for me. Believing came as a surprise. I’d read the Bible for sixteen years and didn’t believe. Then God visited my heart. Even though “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God,” I know that believing is a gift. It isn’t something a person can conjure up for themselves.

Nor is faith something I can force or cajole in another person. Only God can change the way a person thinks and believes. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the GIFT of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

For today: “Watch, stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong. Let all that you do be done with love” (1 Corinthians 16:13, NKJV).

However, God does say that I am supposed to defend “the faith” — a term that means the body of truth that the Bible clearly teaches and the church has consistently believed. Included in “the faith” is the belief that Jesus is the way to God, the only way. He said it Himself: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).

So as I read today’s verses, I’m thinking these things: bravely and with strength, stand fast in the faith, but do it in love. The love part is difficult when I want to clobber someone over the head—if not with the truth, at least with their own lies.