God continues to lead me into uncharted territory and I'm no longer sure where I stand. I could use a little advice from all my blogging friends.
In finishing the book on the Spiritual Journey of U2, I've been thinking about what it means to serve out on the frontiers of Christendom - the area that, unfortunately, must now include a great deal of the United States as well. Theologically this is an area where most people probably identify themselves as religious, or spiritual, but do not identify with any particular church or religion. These people, clearly, are out there hoping for someone to show them the right path, but being either too stubborn to follow it or, having been burned by the experience before, hesitant to be lead into another soul crushing experience. What sort of theology must one adopt in order to reach these people?
I don't believe its a question of telling two different stories - one to believers and one to non-believers. I think its a question of how you engage non-believers and lead them to want to become believers. One of the issues that keeps coming up in the U2 book was how Bono could get so many people to become involved in very Christian causes (like social justice, poverty, AIDS, etc...) while on one hand being very forward about his own religious beliefs and on the other hand including all those non-believers into the mix. It probably helps being a rock star. ;) But it's interesting that so many people will recognize the importance of helping others if there isn't a religious tag associated with it, and then, ironically, lambasting religious people for not doing enough to help others.
The Geek Community has a great many people that are very anti-religious... and yet, I believe that the Geek Community is a caring community that could be a wonderful force for good in this world. But beyond their usefulness to the world, I believe there are a number of people in this community that are searching for Christ without knowing who it is that they seek, and every time the search leads them back to church, they are turned off by the notion of what the Church has become. How do you counteract that while still remaining part of the very thing that causes them such turmoil?
3 comments:
Get them involved in a small online Bible study group, or apologetics group. Later on, they can use their skills to come up with new geeky platforms for others.
To overgeneralize, I think most people who resist faith in Christ get hung up on the concept of salvation: who gets saved, who doesn’t get saved, what you get saved from, and what you get saved to. There is an inherent unfairness in the way the salvation story is usually framed. It clearly turns many people off. My personal opinion is that Christians tend to go to a discussion of salvation too quickly when communicating with non-believers. We need to introduce them to Jesus first: his personality, his vision, his agenda. And his agenda isn’t just about eternal salvation. It has a lot to do with experiencing the Kingdom of God in the here and now. Some who have a hard time believing in Heaven and Hell could find the Kingdome of God very attractive once they understand what it’s about.
I think people like Bono (I haven’t read the book, nor do I know much about his faith, so I’m taking my cue from you on this) make progress with non-believers by staying away from the salvation question. Instead, they project the values of Jesus. They say, “I’m acting a certain way and doing certain things because I’m a follower of Jesus. I’d like for you to get to know him.”
I like what you say there Dave. We also forget that only Christ does the saving in the first place - the command that we are to obey is simply to share the Good News of Christ and what He has done.
That's actually pretty freeing when you think about it - all I (we) have to do is introduce someone to Jesus - He's the one who changes the heart.
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