11/2/19 Zoe (see conversation HERE)
As I am learning the art of initiating gospel outreach
conversations, I’ve learned the value of asking good, thought provoking
questions to begin and keep the dialogue going.
Of course, I should be ready to get some good questions in return, and
that’s what happened between myself and Patrick, from my church, and a man we
reached out to in a sidewalk conversation named Zoe.
Zoe describes himself as a faithful Catholic, but rather
than read the Bible for himself, he prefers to stick with general religious
beliefs, such as “God is love” and that humans just need to basically treat our
neighbors as ourselves. These simplistic
limitations on God’s behavior or simplistic explanations of morality leaves him
with simplistic judgments about Christianity, such as “how could a loving God send
people to hell” or “what about people in remote areas who have never heard of
Jesus”, or “what about innocent children who die young, are they going to hell
too?”
These are questions that deserve far more than a yes/no
answer, that need a little time to build a biblical foundation for explanation. But rather than hear it out, Zoe instead
threw another controversial question at me that divides Christians of good
faith “Do you believe in capital punishment”?
It’s a question worth discussing, yet at the time felt like a
smokescreen to divert our attention from the issue at hand.
If it was, it was successful. In the end, it felt like Zoe didn’t want to
take the time to read and study the Bible to find answers to his questions, and
he didn’t want to take the time to hear it from Christians either.
Zoe, if you read this and these are truly sin A good place to start might be
www.gotquestions.org which has
biblical answers for thousands of questions like this and recommends additional
resources for further study.
cere questions rather than diversions from the details of the Bible or smokescreens to change the subject, I hope you will take the time to get a biblical perspective on your own.
Thanks for allowing us to record our conversation. It can be seen HERE at https://youtu.be/ETywfHjkgWk
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