Nov 26, 2014
by Rebecca Olson
Seventh Day Baptist Church
Berlin, NY
We are living in a beautiful, wonderful, slightly horrifying time called “The Information Age.” Someday, children will look back in their history books and laugh at our pathetic technology, but for now, we have more access to information than we ever have before. With the internet as prevalent in our culture as it is, blogging has become an extremely popular form of expression. In the online Christian community alone, there are thousands of blogs with writers sharing stories of God’s work in their lives. There are also just as many blogs which claim to have the answers — the writers use logic to try to “prove” Christianity.
“Proving” the existence of God has become an extremely popular topic in the online community. With a click of a button, a person can reach the masses — of course people are going to want to use this opportunity to evangelize. And so they should. The internet has brought the world closer together, and it is a great resource for reaching out to people who do not know Christ. If your church doesn’t have a blog or website, look into creating one. It’s a modern way to get the congregation thinking and talking in the days leading up to the Sabbath.
As great as the internet can be for evangelism, it can also be somewhat detrimental to Christians. Let’s re-examine the idea of “proving” that what God says is right. It’s hugely popular right now. Earlier this year, creationist Ken Ham debated evolutionist Bill Nye. The debate was widely anticipated and watched by many. However, the debate didn’t really have a clear winner. There wasn’t much point to it when it came to changing people’s minds — creationists thought Ham was right, and evolutionists thought Nye was. The debate created unnecessary conflict, and took Christ’s message of love and made it unreachable for the millions of people who supported Nye’s argument.
This is the problem with using logic and facts to try to “prove” anything about God — it takes away from the ultimate message. It’s also impossible. Ecclesiastes 8:17 ensures us that we are never going to understand God. We as mere humans can’t argue His existence because we can’t understand it. We know that God is love, and we know that whatever God says is true. That is what we need to be preaching.
I understand why people think they need to provide logic to explain God. We live in a cynical, independent world where people require reasons and facts to back up everything they do. Christians automatically assume that we should give statistics and reasons for doing what God says so that other people will be convinced of God’s truth.
But that’s not how it works. People aren’t brought to Christ through facts and logic. Jesus generally didn’t explain things with logic — when the Pharisees would ask him a question, hoping to catch him in a trap, he would respond in kind with another question or by saying some symbolic thing that didn’t really give an answer. It’s one of the awesome, sassy things about Jesus. Jesus never told us to give people logical reasons to follow him. He told us (and showed us) to love God and to love people. He told us in John 6:44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.”
We as Christians don’t do anything in the process of bringing people to Christ. We can’t convince people that God loves them with any logic or facts or statistics. The only thing we’re called to do is treat people the way Jesus did, try to make our lives an accurate example of how God wants us to act, and be willing to step up to the plate when we have the opportunity to spread His word.
We do not win people to Christianity by explaining logically why Christianity is the best option. People are won to Christianity through God’s love, and our only part in that is to be facilitators of that love.
