Why So Pushy?

It was as direct a question as someone could ask me. "Why," the visitor in my office quizzed me, "are you Christians always trying to convert us Jews?"

To be honest, I hadn't really been trying to convert my guest. I am embarrassed to admit that at best, my evangelistic style is indirect and oblique. So I was surprised that my new friend (so new that we'd been talking for less than 30 minutes) now thought I was putting the squeeze on him to become a Christian. Indeed, the thought actually went winging through my mind that maybe God was joshing me a bit, using my guest to taunt me about the fact that, no matter what he thought, I really wasn't being all that faithful in my duties.

But whatever God thought about my intentions, my guest thought I was being pushy. Why the urgency, he asked?

My new friend-a newspaper reporter from New York City-had just come from visits to the campuses of two Christian colleges. He had attended chapel services at both schools, and sat through an altar call at one of them, finding it tedious and repulsive. "It went on for 30 minutes," he told me, "and it wasn't even directed at me. It was directed at their own students. Why is all this so important?"

I tried an analogy. "Suppose," I suggested to him, "that we've known each other for six weeks instead of just 30 minutes. Suppose that we've formed a good enough friendship to eat lunch together once a week, and that in the process we've found a mutual interest in investing and are now regularly exchanging hot tips about stocks that seem to have great futures."

"But now suppose as well," I said, "that you tell me enthusiastically how you're taking $100 of your hard-earned income every week and salting it away in a particular company. I am dumbfounded, for I happen to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that your company is headed soon for bankruptcy.

"So now am I intruding on your private life, am I being somehow less than personally gracious or unloving if I tell you what I know, and warn you against further investments there? Isn't it really the other way around-that if I fail to tell you, that would be the ultimate expression of my personal disregard for our friendship? The fact is that if what I believe about the Bible is true, you're investing in something much more precarious than a bankrupt company that might end up costing you a few thousand dollars."

My friend did not immediately drop to his knees and ask me to explain the plan of salvation. But neither did he suggest that he was offended. "That's an intriguing way of looking at things," he responded. "I'll admit that I've never thought of it just that way."

Two years have now passed since that meeting. My mind goes back to it often, and I wonder what my friend is thinking now. Indeed, we've corresponded from time to time-although he's never expressed any interest in pursuing that particular question any further.

So do I sit and congratulate myself for having cleverly moved the question that afternoon from my corner to his? I wish. If this were only an academic debate, it might be that simple. If it were just all a matter of winning converts and proselytizing folks from other religions-then things would be so much simpler.

But these are real people, with real eternal destinies. The fellow in my office that afternoon is not just investing his life savings in the next Enron. He's investing his whole being in a thought system so bankrupt that if he continues in that direction, he will spend all of eternity grimly separated from God.

All this is true, of course, not just of our Jewish friends and acquaintances. It is true as well for everyone who ignores or explains away Christ's offer of grace and tries to earn acceptance with God some other way. The gospel of Christ is wonderfully inclusive-but it is inclusive only for those who embrace it. Everyone else is excluded.

So instead of thinking about a cleverly won argument, I have to think instead: Was I so intent on respecting my new friend that I ended up not respecting him at all? In my zeal not to appear too pushy, had I ended up not being nearly pushy enough? And what will my friend himself think about all this 10,000 years from now? Will he think of me as his friend?

Joel needs to stop beating himself up. He says his friend sat through two services in which he would have heard the gospel message and seen others respond. Joel cannot convert, he can only plant seeds and pray that the Spirit of God will draw this one. If Joel prays earnestly for the very salvation of this man (which is the will of God), he must have faith that God will perform it.

It's the folks out there for whom no one plants seeds and no one prays I think about most often. Therefore I find myself praying without ceasing - for almost every lost soul I come across. It's tiring, but I ask myself when I meet (or even see across a crowded parking lot a person getting out of his/her car which has God-hating messages in bumper stickers) - what if there is NO ONE ELSE in this world to pray for the salvation of that person? It must be me, or I shall surely be accountable for all those missed opportunities. And if that's all I did in what may be 80 years in this life - with no recognition or awareness on the part of others that I did it - I would thank God for that calling.

Some will undoubtably think this statement harsh, but it ultimately comes back to the issue of free will.......you choose, you decide.....because there isn't a person on this planet who is going to make you believe in anything.

Some of us are gifted evangelisits... others (and I think I fall in this category) are called to do the work of an evangelist. I'm not the best communicator of the gospel. There are some I know who are able to start a conversation with almost anyone, and have seen much fruit. I, on the other hand, labor seeing little fruit. I can only trust God that another may water, and that God will bring forth an increase from some of the work he has done through me.

I dunno... I'm wondering if my gift is in the area of teaching. I need to find out :-)

I have often pointed out that people who object to Christians evangelizing are simply telling them not to practice their faith, in two ways. First, we're told to spread the Word; second, it's the loving thing to do.

Practicing what I preach, I don't object to JW's turning up at my doorstep (in fact, I wish more Christians matched their zeal and dogged devotion). What I object to is their claiming to believe the Word, while denying its fundamental teachings.

Dan

Yes, you do need to find out Jude. There is no hope for the unsaved unless they hear the word of God as taught by gifted teachers. And teaching the word of God is key to discipleship for the believers as well.

Faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the Word of God!

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Why so pushy?

We shouldn't "respect" people so much we show them no respect at all