Thanks all! Good help!
I'm dealing with a young woman who says she "doesn't want a bloody religion of pie in the sky by and by" but thinks she can "be saved" just by "accepting the fact Jesus loves her and wants her to have a good life."
I tell her as best I know how that I also believe Jesus loves her and wants her to have His best life for her, that isn't saving faith. She is determined to throw out any doctrine of blood sacrifice as barbaric and pagan, seeing herself as too enlightened and too educated for "that stuff."
How would you procede?
Until this young woman understands her sin, she will never understand why Christ is so important. But how you explain her sin to her will make a huge difference as to whether or not she can see or understand it. What she is wanting is a syncretistic addition to make her life better. Christianity is not that. Lord, help me if I ever even suggest that becoming a Christian is going to make one's life easier! It does not. True Christians who act on the Word of God will see persecution in some form, they will see God discipline them as His children (The penalty for sinners is that God lets them continue in their sin!), and they will be expected to make radical life-changing decisions in order to be a disciple of Christ. Those that do none of the above are probably not doing the first thing God tells them to do in the Word (such as love your neighbor, even if they are un-lovable).
I have developed a means of sharing the gospel without sharing the gospel, so to speak. I share all about it, but I don't recite the typical "Do you know Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior..." canned spiel. Rather than deal with "nouns" (disseminate information that someone else is expected to embrace and believe) I ask questions, and share from a vantage point of our broken relationship, both with God and with fellow human being. This method gives me the opportunity to point out our (and everyone's) sin contrasted to the way God originally designed the world and us, and also gives me an opportunity to venture into the remedy for those broken relationships.
To any that think this may be "soft-pedaling" the gospel, I disagree heartily. If anything this IS the gospel -- but we are so accustomed to hearing it proclaimed in religious terms that we don't even recognize the facts of the story if they are not couched in proof-texts.
You have already initiated the conversation, so I'll not venture far into that aspect of this method, but in short, it involves asking a big "worldview" question, then taking the time to actively listen to the response of the person. In a sense, I am trying (really trying, via intelligent questions) to get them to share "their gospel." I'm not afraid to do this because I know (KNOW) that there is no other true gospel beside that of Christ crucified and raised from the dead. What this does is allow the person to see, rather quickly at that, that they do not have a gospel. At the end of the day, no matter which alternate religion or philosophy they espouse, they all end up with some form of human works that are both difficult and counterproductive.
The "big worldview" questions are all based in one of four areas: How did the world come to be? What is the big problem in the world? What is the solution to that big problem? How does it all end? The questions are customized to the individual and I'll base them on cultural clues that lead me to see that individual in a certain light. I'm letting them do the talking anyway, so all I need is an entry point, and they'll be happy to correct any misunderstanding -- which encourages them to continue the conversation, by the way. I've found that people actually like talking about religious stuff if they get to talk. They don't so much like we Christians ramming our beliefs and doctrines down their throat, which is typically the way we are perceived.
When I actually share "the gospel" I start by painting a picture from Genesis 1-2. God made everything and it was good. When God made we humans, He said it was "very good." If an objection is raised to creation, just ask the person to go with it for a bit for the sake of discussion. After all, "I'm not trying to get you to believe anything... Just having a conversation."
In this very good world, we literally had paradise. We lived in a garden that was beautiful and met all of our needs. God created humans to have a partner, and so fulfilled human relational needs in a very loving way, plus we actually got to walk and talk to God so that we could get direct answers to important questions -- paradise! We still long for that paradise now. We go on vacation to places that are beautiful. We plant gardens and remodel our homes.
Even more, we seek loving relationships, but so often those relationships turn sour and we all know the pain of broken and damaged relationships. Even more, we've lost our relationship with God and people everywhere are seeking, inventing religions, acting in hateful manners against each other and each other's gods. All this signifies that something came to spoil that original "very good" world. That something was one of God's created beings who wanted to consolidate power for himself at the expense of everyone else. God removed that being (Lucifer) from His presence, and the first act that this rebel against God did was to convince that first loving man and woman that God's word was not what God said. He convinced these first two people to do something that God said not to do, and the moment they did that act, their loving relationship with God was destroyed. God had promised that if they ate the forbidden fruit that they would surely die, and they did eat it -- but the death was different than they thought -- they didn't fall over on the spot, but they were dead to God and dead to each other. Their relationships were shattered! More so, all their children were born into a world where shattered relationships were the only ones. No more was there paradise and no more were their totally loving bonds between God and man and between fellow humans. Murder, strife, lying, sickness -- all the bad things in this world -- came into being.
There is no human remedy for this condition! Oh, we've tried. Government after government, king after king, has tried to recreate that paradise state. We look for love, but find often that it is counterfeit -- not truly love at all, but rather merely the means to meet selfish needs. So, we might ask, "What is the answer to this huge problem? Is there an answer?
There is an answer! You see, the same God who made everything "very good," loving, and a paradise has not stopped wanting to do just that, even now. He still wishes to see His plan fulfilled, and He has made a way to accomplish that fulfillment. He will pay the death penalty that we are born into for being born under the curse placed on humankind by our rebellion. Only God could pay that much without dying, but even God had to die to actually pay the price for us! That is what Jesus is all about. Jesus came to die in our place so that we would not have to. He came to restore and redeem our relationship with God, and then He also teaches us how to love once again and with His help and power, we also start rebuilding loving relationships with our fellow humans. We learn to serve each other -- not for selfish reasons -- but to show them how much we love them. We feed the hungry, cloth the persons without clothing, send missionaries all over the world to spread this good news -- that God is STILL about His plan to redeem and restore this entire cosmos and this world to a "very good" paradise, where all is loving and just.
Now, there is something that needs to be considered... Would you rather fight against God and remain in all the brokenness or join God in His work to actually created a beautiful and loving world? The choice is before you even now, and all it takes to enter into God's plan is to get to a quiet place and earnest ask God to make you one of His own children. I know that He can do that -- He did it for me! That's why I'm so excited to share this good news with you.
I have had a lot of success breaking through difficult boundaries where people hate God with the presentation above. Of course, as I said above, I modify it to fit the person, and inevitably there are questions while I share -- just deal with them quietly in love and move forward -- or not -- return to the discussion on another day!
Let me know if you try it...