WARNING: PREACHY
I’ve been considering lately my lack of
concern for those who don’t care about their spiritual lives. Many of my fellows would say that I am not
being Christian in this but this is where I'm at. I’m fully engaged with non-believers who are
concerned for their spiritual lives and I am very happy to work with and pray
for them, but for those who could care less, I really don’t feel like God is
directing me to stress about them in all of my free time. And yes, my voice dripped with sarcasm as I
wrote that last comment.
I have an acquaintance. One
day while meeting with him he made an off comment with a hint of sneer in his
tone, “Do you want me to repent too?”
I really wasn’t sure where this came
from or, how to respond, so I just told him “Nope”.
He told me that a mutual friend told him
that his life’s problems were because he would not repent of his sins.
“Do you believe that Jesus Christ rose
back from the dead and is alive right now?”
I asked.
“No, I believe that when you’re dead,
you’re dead, end of story.”
“So you don’t believe historically that
Jesus died on the cross for our sins and was brought back to life by God on the
third day?”
“Nah, I don’t even believe in a
god. Like I said, when you’re dead you’re
dead.”
While he knows that I am a minster of
the gospel, our relationship has always only been business related, so he knows
me well enough that I wouldn't get offended by his admission of disbelief, and
I knew him well enough that I knew he would understand when I said, “Then by
all means don’t repent, for what’s the use?
If you don’t believe in God, and the resurrected Jesus from the dead,
then Christianity doesn’t have anything for you.”
We continued talking for a bit and I
told him about 1 Corinthians 15 where the apostle Paul wrote about the necessity
of the belief in the resurrection from the dead for the Christian faith not to
be a fool’s errand. Then we concluded
our business and we parted until the next time.
As I think about it now, I may have been
a little too flippant about the whole thing.
Of course Christian morality can benefit even the non-believer in this
world but I don’t think this was what I needed to stress with him at that
moment. I felt like to preach a Christian
morality to him would not bring him to faith.
At best, if he accepted it, he might rid his life of some present
irritations but nothing that would last long, as I believe that once the immediate
problems were solved his faithless life would create new problems. Sort of like putting salve on the burned
fingers of a child who is unwrapping a new carton of firecrackers, I decided to
stay clear.
