Indifference

 5/12/13                  Andres               20

The adventure of being a “fisher of men”, as Jesus commanded, is being ready for whatever I might find at the other end of the line!  Some people have strong reactions or opinions in response to my initial questions about their beliefs, but others. like a young man named Andres, respond with indifference.  This can be even more of a challenge.  Andres told me he doesn’t believe in God and never thinks about what might happen after he dies.  He said he’d rather worry about his day to day problems.  He answered my questions with short, minimal answers, responding to my questions but not elaborating or offering any additional information.  I expected him to cut the conversation short and go on his way, but he gave no indication that he wanted to move on.  I wondered what he really thought.  It could be that his indifference was a defense mechanism to avoid being held accountable to God.  Maybe he was truly so caught up in all the cares and worries of this life that he just never took the time to think about his eternal future.  Perhaps he was just so full of himself that God seemed unimportant, or he might feel so ashamed and hopelessly lost in sin that he thought God would never have time for him.  Maybe he was like I was at his age, intensely interested in God but afraid to admit it.  I couldn’t be sure, so I just took him at his word, that he simply  didn’t believe in or care about God.  But he had to care about something, so I appealed to his instinct for self-preservation, asking “Would you sell an eye for a million dollars?”  He wouldn’t.  Neither would he sell both eyes for ten million dollars. He cared about his eyes and didn’t want to lose them.  “But your eyes will die one day along with the rest of your body.  So what about your soul?  The Bible says it will last forever – it should be very valuable to you.  It is definitely very valuable to God.”  This helped Andres open up at least to the possibility that God exists and we might be accountable to Him.  Based on this possibility, I explained the Gospel.  In the end, Andres didn’t even profess to believe that God exists, but at least he now knows intellectually that there is hope if he does.