One More Follow-Up

One of the many things I admire about my brother is his genuine heart for the lost. There are many Christians who have an understanding that they are supposed to be sharing the Gospel with others but fall to the temptation of finding one excuse after another of why they aren't up to the task or why someone else would be a better ambassador for Christ. Some are afraid of backlash or losing a friend. Some insist that they don't know what to say or wouldn't have the right answers to all the questions that would likely be thrown at them. Well, guess what? You probably won't have all the answers. It is likely that the person you are talking to will always have one more question than you have answers. But that shouldn't stop you from learning as much as you can and gaining a better understanding of how to approach people. My brother gets it. He cares enough about the lost to pursue knowledge and wisdom to reach them more effectively. And at the end of the day, he knows it is God that changes hearts and opens eyes. We are just called to be faithful to the task of being the messenger.

I used to have conversations with Pastor Zimmerman about witnessing. One thing he used to say was that you should learn to back someone who doesn't know Christ into an intellectual corner. You should take them to the point where the hole in their belief system is exposed and they have nothing left to stand on. After all, if Jesus Christ is truly God's plan for salvation, then every other belief system would have to be false and have some glaring inconsistency that can't stand under the light of truth. Again, this isn't ultimately about winning an intellectual argument. It's about caring for that person's heart and wanting them to see the truth. But sometimes, in order to help them see, you first have to show them why their beliefs are flawed. Now, just because you are able to do that doesn't mean that their eyes will automatically open. They may simply choose to be in denial about the fallacy of what they believe. But at least you will have raised a question...one that might not be so easily dismissed regardless of how hard they try.

So along those lines, I am copying and pasting some thoughts my brother shared from a book called "No Doubt About It" . It offers arguments against the kind of relativist and skeptical thinking that was on display at the BBQ. I found it very worthwhile and felt it was worth sharing here:

Relativists are illogical - because they apply a standard to
everyone else that they exempt themselves from. They say there are no
absolutes...but that itself is an absolute statement.

a) Partial knowledge is still knowledge. While we don't know it all,
absolutely, it is a logical fallacy to conclude from this caution that
we cannot have any genuine, absolute knowledge at all. The remedy is
not to deny the things that we can know for sure, but to qualify our
standpoint.

b) We are not final reference points for truth. Events occur beyond
our conceptualizations. Like it or not, what is true or false is often
defined for us by reality. The person who denies the law of gravity
will still die if he or she jumps off a skyscraper. Reality, not our
preference, needs to be the ultimate source and authority of truth.

c) Relativism leads to the impossible attitude of skepticism.
Relativism says that everything, including contradictory statements,
can be true. Skepticism says that we cannot know anything to be true.
It turns out that skepticism is a position that nobody can hold, for it states that one cannot know anything. Does the person who makes that statement know it or not? If the skeptic thinks that skepticism is true, then it is false. The skeptic argues that we can know at least one thing, namely, that skepticism is true (that we cannot know anything for sure). If the skeptic does not claim that skepticism is
true, he or she is not saying anything meaningful.

We must distinguish here between what can be said and what can be
affirmed meaningfully. You can say that you cannot know anything, but
you cannot affirm it meaningfully. You cannot even think it: as soon
as you think it is true, it must also be false.

d) Relativism cannot be lived out. An individual will live his or her
life almost entirely on a nonrelativistic true-false basis. Either I
missed the bus, or I didn't miss the bus. Either this is Friday, or it
is not Friday. Relativism only seems to pop up at certain crucial
moments, usually in a sphere of morality or religion.

e) Of course, the best critique against a position like relativism may
be to show that there are better alternatives than to suspend
judgment. The book continues on from there.