I’m taking a class at church about the changing culture and our role in it as Christians.\u00c2\u00a0 Traditonally, Christians treat non-Christians as “others” and try to evangelize them.\u00c2\u00a0 This class emphasizes finding common ground and building relationships rather than blunt evangelism.\u00c2\u00a0 In the last session, we had to get into groups and one of us had to ask a difficult question that a non-Christian may really ask, and the others had to answer.\u00c2\u00a0 My question was basically “See Darfur?\u00c2\u00a0 How can there be a loving God?”\u00c2\u00a0 Another guy had a question about why Christians are so non-chalant regarding global warming.\u00c2\u00a0 Another wondered about death.\u00c2\u00a0 As we talked about our subjects, I realized something.\u00c2\u00a0 Crisises of faith are a Godsend.<\/p>\n
I know that most Christians would tell you that having a crisis of faith is the worst thing ever.\u00c2\u00a0 Once you become a Christian, doubting is no longer an option.\u00c2\u00a0 Just believe God in all things.\u00c2\u00a0 I get that.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s comforting.\u00c2\u00a0 But I have found that I end up closer to God when I allow myself a full-on faith crisis.\u00c2\u00a0 For instance, I have actually asked God what’s up with Darfur and how could he be loving and allow that to happen.\u00c2\u00a0 I have even wondered if he was really there at all.\u00c2\u00a0 Is this world and what we make of it really all there is. Does he see what’s going on there?\u00c2\u00a0 Does he care?\u00c2\u00a0 I mean, honestly, I really want to see someone get struck down by lightning over this!\u00c2\u00a0 I honestly wondered if I could worship someone who could let those things happen.<\/p>\n
The thing is, I dared to question my faith and my worship of God because I know that my love for him is a choice.\u00c2\u00a0 Not that God isn’t worthy of my adoration, but I have to give it freely or it isn’t real.\u00c2\u00a0 I would rather ask God about Darfur and ask myself if I wanted to worship him with the world being in this state and him letting it happen, than to blindly give my devotion for no apparent reason.\u00c2\u00a0 I still love God and I have continued to love him through really difficult circumstances.\u00c2\u00a0 He has promised not to ever leave me, and I plan to stick around with him, too.\u00c2\u00a0 Oddly enough, my faith crisises force me to reason everything out and account for my faith in a way that blind devotion doesn’t, which ultimately brings me closer to God, not farther away.<\/p>\n
So what does this have to do with evangelism?\u00c2\u00a0 A LOT.\u00c2\u00a0 When non-Christians ask us questions and we give some pat answer from “Church 101”, they know it’s fake.\u00c2\u00a0 I think the thing that bothers them about us is not so much that we believe, but that it seems as if we are so bent on the next life that we truly stop caring about this one.\u00c2\u00a0 It seems as if we don’t think about things like whether the war we are in is just, why things like Darfur happen and what we can do, or whether we should try to stop global warming.\u00c2\u00a0 I think they would listen to us more if we would actually allow ourselves to ask the question “where is God in all of this” and then allow him to answer.\u00c2\u00a0 It also helps to admit that we wrestle with that question and that sometimes God doesn’t answer and we just don’t know.\u00c2\u00a0 Non-Christians are people who don’t believe in Christ.\u00c2\u00a0 They aren’t stupid.\u00c2\u00a0 They aren’t children.\u00c2\u00a0 For the most part, neither are we.\u00c2\u00a0 We should be able to relate as adults and find some common ground.<\/p>\n
You know what?\u00c2\u00a0 That faith crisis that non-Christians exist in and Christians avoid, where we\u00c2\u00a0ask “God, where are you?” is possibly the most common ground of all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m taking a class at church about the changing culture and our role in it as Christians.\u00c2\u00a0 Traditonally, Christians treat non-Christians as “others” and try to evangelize them.\u00c2\u00a0 This class emphasizes finding common ground and building relationships rather than blunt evangelism.\u00c2\u00a0 In the last session, we had to get into groups and one of us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1","category-taking-up-your-cross"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/faithmile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/faithmile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/faithmile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faithmile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faithmile.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/faithmile.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/faithmile.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faithmile.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faithmile.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}