A few days ago I was discussing with a young lady how we understand the gospel. The point I was attempting to make was that our experiences is what gives us the context for understanding the gospel. This is true not only for the gospel but for all beliefs. It is primarily through participation in our community, be it our family, friends, or whatever social body we belong to, and the resulting experiences we have in that community, that shapes our beliefs. How they live life is for us the telling of what is true.
Truth is not learned primarily through rational explanations but by observing others and participating in community with them. The context for this was a discussion about how you evangelised those who have never heard the gospel, who are unchurched. If you begin with a verbal explanation more likely they will consider what you say as fantasy. Why? Because whatever you say is being validated or not through their own experience. As it is likely they live in a community that discounts God, they will lack any experience of Jesus or whatever we say regarding the gospel. In their own experience they will feel that they are doing just fine without the gospel.
She kept saying though that one needs to explain how much better life is with Jesus. But then why should they believe you? Where is the proof they might ask? By this they don’t mean a rational, logically supported argument but a life lived. She was struggling to grasp this until later in the discussion when she shared her own story of why she decided to follow Jesus. She did not mention Bible verses or a talk she heard someone give. Rather she talked about the life of her own parents, Christians who lived an exceptional life of love and service, of sacrificial giving. She observed their lives and participated with them in their lives and as she summed it up, “Having seen how they lived their lives, I could not imagine living life any other way then to follow Jesus”. I then asked her if they ever taught her, as in giving rational explanations for their way of life. She hesitated for a moment and then the light came on as she replied, “No, they didn’t”.
Truth is not learned primarily through rational explanations but by observing others and participating in community with them. The context for this was a discussion about how you evangelised those who have never heard the gospel, who are unchurched. If you begin with a verbal explanation more likely they will consider what you say as fantasy. Why? Because whatever you say is being validated or not through their own experience. As it is likely they live in a community that discounts God, they will lack any experience of Jesus or whatever we say regarding the gospel. In their own experience they will feel that they are doing just fine without the gospel.
She kept saying though that one needs to explain how much better life is with Jesus. But then why should they believe you? Where is the proof they might ask? By this they don’t mean a rational, logically supported argument but a life lived. She was struggling to grasp this until later in the discussion when she shared her own story of why she decided to follow Jesus. She did not mention Bible verses or a talk she heard someone give. Rather she talked about the life of her own parents, Christians who lived an exceptional life of love and service, of sacrificial giving. She observed their lives and participated with them in their lives and as she summed it up, “Having seen how they lived their lives, I could not imagine living life any other way then to follow Jesus”. I then asked her if they ever taught her, as in giving rational explanations for their way of life. She hesitated for a moment and then the light came on as she replied, “No, they didn’t”.
Their lives were the telling of the reality of Jesus, of what it meant to follow him. Of course she has “heard” the gospel, had it explained to her. But it was observing and participating in the lives of her parents that provided a history of experiences that convinced her that this is the way to live. When the gospel was then explain to her, her experiences validated what she was being told. The gospel was the explanation of what she already knew to be true. And so our unchurched friends cannot consider the gospel to be true until they see it lived out in front of them.
One of the greatest lies of the enlightenment which we moderns bought into, including us in the church, is that beliefs are learned and believed through rational and objective statements and persuasion. The truth is that we learn and develop our beliefs through observing the lives of others and doing life with them. In our community we subjectively learn to do life in a certain way and take on the undergirding beliefs. In time the beliefs of our community are verbalised but often they are simply the explanation of what is already known and believed.
It used to be that a significant part of Western society attended church and were part of a community whose way of life affirmed the gospel. Growing up in such communities, when the gospel was presented they had already believed in much of it. I grew up with Christian parents, attended church regularly and most of my friends were Christians. I cannot remember every not believing in Jesus and accepting the Bible as truth. My community, being my parents and Christian friends, lived their life according to the gospel and as I participated with them in this way of life, I subjectively took on the undergirding beliefs.
Now a significant part of Western society grow up in communities who have no association with Christians much less a church. They do life at the exclusion of God and it seems to work. For them their experiences tell them you don't need God and there is little if anything in their way of life that affirms God's presence or existence. So when they hear the gospel message it makes no sense to them, not in that they don't understand what is being said, but in that there is nothing in their life that validates what is being heard. They need a new story, a history of experiences that point to God.
We Christians need to do life with the unchurched. Our lives become a telling of the gospel. When the unchurched are befriended by us and they see and experience our love, grace, kindness, humility, servant attitude, forgiveness, vulnerability and more, then when we speak the gospel we aren’t informing them of something they know nothing of but explaining what they have come to know by having seen and experienced it through us.
Consider Luke 7:18-23, Luke 19:1-10 and Titus 2:9, 10
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