A SHOCKING SURVEY RESULT: In a recent Barna survey, nearly half of practicing Christian millennials said that evangelism is wrong.
- Matthew 28:18-20.
- After more than 20 years of being a pastor, it’s rare than I read anything that makes me say, “Whoa.” I’ve read too many “debased culture” stories and seen too many depressing survey results. This one, though, got my attention.
- Let’s define a few things so we’re all on the same page:
a. Evangelism is the act of a Christian sharing his or her faith with someone who is not a Christian. It’s central to our mission as the church. It’s the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20).
b. In this survey, the specific wording was “It is wrong to share one’s personal beliefs with someone of a different faith in hopes that they will one day share the same faith.”
c. I’m not picking on millennial Christians.
- Other generations also held this belief, though in lower numbers.
- What millennials believe is largely a reflection of the culture in which they’ve been raised and that’s on us older generations for creating a dysfunctional and myopic culture.
d. There are other parts of the survey that push back on this finding. For instance, 96% of practicing Christian millennials agreed that “part of my faith means being a witness about Jesus” and 94% that “the best thing that could ever happen to someone is for them to come to know Jesus.”
- This tells me that they “nearly half” number that I started with is not a well-thought-out belief, but rather a soft belief that is a reflection of the cultural values they have lived in.
WHAT'S THE CORRECT DEFINITION OF "TOLERANCE": “Everyone has the right to decide their own beliefs” or “Every opinion is equally valid.”
- As Baptists we enthusiastically endorse the first idea. Everyone has the right to believe the way they want.
- Historically, this is an important one for Baptists. At various points in church history, state churches tried to dictate what the mandatory religious beliefs were in certain countries. When Baptists stood in opposition to those beliefs, they were persecuted. And that’s why freedom of religion is one of the core beliefs that Baptists have.
- So we absolutely agree that everyone has the right to decide their own beliefs.
- In recent years, though, a wider definition of tolerance has become prominent in America – the second one I’ve shared above. It’s the idea that every opinion is equally valid.
- In this view, the facts don’t ultimately matter. In this view, logic doesn’t ultimately matter. Everyone’s opinion is equally valid and no one has the right to call any opinion “wrong.” Even if the facts don’t support it. Even if it doesn’t make sense. Why? Because if the person “feels it’s true,” that’s sufficient.
- You may think I’m exaggerating, but that is fully where we are today.
- One survey showed that a majority of Americans believed that one person could think one thing while another person thought a contradictory idea and they both could be right. That’s logically idiotic. Contradictory ideas both can’t be right!
- One way to put it is that today people think of matters of truth not in terms of mathematics but in terms of ice cream.
- With math, one answer is right and one is wrong. 2 + 2 = 4 means that 2 + 2 doesn’t equal 5.
- With ice cream, everyone can have an opinion that’s equally valid. You like vanilla? I like chocolate. And we’re both right!
- This is the way that people think of truth issues today – like ice cream. Yes, you believe one thing and I believe the exact opposite, but we’re both right!
- This idea plays right into the evangelism survey results that I shared earlier. In fact, it’s a direct manifestation of it.
- What is not only thought in culture, but is now seeping deeply into the church is this: I can believe what I want, but I have no right to think that I what I believe is true for someone else.
- This is a big deal and I want you to understand it.
- Let me speak myself as if I believed in this idea. I would think something like, “I believe in Jesus, but that doesn’t mean I have any right to impose that belief on someone else. Just because Jesus works for me doesn’t mean that I should tell someone else what to believe.” Obviously, this would negate any call to evangelism. Why would I feel called to share the good news about Jesus when I have no right to “impose my beliefs” on someone else?
- All of this is why we as Christians must enthusiastically live out the first definition of tolerance while simultaneously strongly resisting our culture’s push toward the second.
- Before I move on, let me give an example of where this type of thinking leads us from this month.
- Actor Chris Pratt appeared on Colbert earlier this month. Among the things he talked about, he mentioned the church he attends, which appears to be a church that holds to traditional Biblical truths (Hillsong Church). Following that appearance, actress and LGBT activist Ellen Page blasted him on Twitter for attending a church that is anti-LGBT. Pratt responded graciously on social media claiming that his church loves everyone and responded to his journey through divorce with kindness and grace. I’m not exactly what Pratt’s beliefs are, so I’m not going to claim here that he’s an evangelical Christian.
- Here’s the point I want to draw out of the exchange. Why did Pratt get criticized? He didn’t say anything in the Colbert interview against LGBT. He didn’t march against LGBT. He merely attended a church that dared to say that the traditional Biblical view on homosexuality was right and therefore homosexuality is wrong. That, of course, violates the second definition of tolerance – daring to call someone else’s actions wrong. And that was a sin that Page deemed worthy of rebuke – not saying anything or doing anything, but merely holding the belief that homosexuality is wrong.
- A continued movement in this direction obviously has horrific implications for Bible-believing churches.
WHAT IS TRUTH THEN? For Christians, the question is not “my truth” or “your truth,” but His truth.
- John 14:6.
- It’s easy to take the ideas that I just shared and look at someone and say, “What you believe is wrong.” But it’s just as likely that what I believe is wrong. We all have ideas that we believe in that aren’t right.
- Something isn’t right because I believe it. We are all fallible.
- Truth is not what I believe to be truth. Truth is not what you believe to be truth. Truth is what God says is truth.
- Jesus said this in John 14:6. He said that He is the way, the truth, and the life. He is the truth.
- This is essential for a proper understanding on the issue we’re addressing this morning. Our goal is not to get everyone to think like we do. Our goal is to seek God’s truth and to encourage others to seek His truth too. We’re not pointing to ourselves – we’re pointing to Him.
APPLYING THESE IDEAS TO EVANGELISM:
1. A really good definition of evangelism is “one beggar telling another beggar where to get bread.”
- It’s easy for people to think of evangelism as a “I’m right and you’re wrong” exercise. That goes along with the “Bible thumper” stereotype with people hitting people upside the head with a thick leather Bible. And there have been Christians who, unfortunately, have lived up to those images.
- The “I’m right and you’re wrong” picture is problematic, though. We are not saying that we know everything, but that we have found the source of wisdom and truth. It’s “God is right and we are all wrong.” I have no wisdom in myself. The only reason I know the truth is not any natural intellectual or moral superiority – it’s all God’s grace and mercy.
- That’s why I like this picture of evangelism so well. It’s “one beggar telling another beggar where to get bread.” I’m just as needy as the next person. I’m not better than you. But I have been shown where there is spiritual bread and I want you to know it too.
- This is where humility and truth meet. Yes, I believe that Jesus is the truth and I want you to find out about Him. But I don’t share that truth as someone superior to you. I share that truth as a happy recipient of God’s undeserved blessings.
2. A great temptation in the years to come will be for the church to sacrifice truth in the name of love.
- Beth Moore issued a prescient warning to 55,000 young Christians at the Passion Conference in 2017: “You will watch a generation of Christians – OF CHRISTIANS – set the Bible aside in an attempt to become more like Jesus. And stunningly it will sound completely plausible. This will be perhaps the cleverest of the devil’s schemes in your generation. Sacrificing TRUTH for LOVE’s sake. And you will rise or fall based upon whether you will sacrifice one for the other. Will you have the courage to live in the tension of both TRUTH & LOVE?”
- That’s an extremely powerful quote that possesses great cultural insight. Let me unpack it for a moment.
- When she says that a generation of Christians will be tempted to set the Bible aside in an attempt to become more like Jesus, she is speaking of the tolerance viewpoint I shared earlier. If you believe that Jesus was love and that as long as you love someone, that’s all you have to do, you head in this direction. This is especially true when you define love in the way you want to – just being affirming to everyone and not contradicting what anyone wants for themselves. And, so, if the Bible says things are truth that would condemn that person, then you should set aside truth for love’s sake. We are already seeing this happen all the time.
- Understanding though, as we spoke earlier, that God’s truth is truth, then if I am doing something that contradicts God’s truth then I am wrong. If someone I know does something that contradicts God’s truth then they are wrong.
- It is easy to move in this direction – to affirm that whatever someone believes is great just because they believe it.
- Now, of course, this represents a misunderstanding of Jesus that could be remedied by actually reading what Jesus said, but most haven’t done that. They just presume what they think Jesus is. In fact, the real Jesus is quite different from the presumed Jesus.
CONCLUSION:
- Even an atheist is smart enough to figure out that truly loving someone requires sharing truth with them.
- [Show the Teller video. (Look up “Teller - A Gift of a Bible” to find it.)]
