God is mighty to save! God recently saved a woman named "A". "A" was a former skeptic who came to the BMC to volunteer and left a new creation in Christ. I have asked her to share a few things which she did not like about Christians and their approach to evangelism. Below is what she shared...
- Christianity is a seriously weird concept. Even being Christian when I was younger I still found it very very strange when I was thinking about it more recently. I think this is something a lot of Christians I talked to forget. I suppose once you know it's true it doesn't seem so unreasonable. But it is very odd - the creator of the universe decided that he wants a relationship with us (already seems very unlikely!) but since we wronged him he had to send his son (what's with the whole 3 in 1 thing?) to become a human and then be put to death by other humans so that would pay for our sins... I mean I know this is basic Christianity but it just seems so crazy.
- Similarly church (in England anyway) isn't aimed at non-Christians. Over the last couple of years I went to a quite a few different churches in an attempt to figure this stuff out, but mostly it wasn't really the right place to be because it seems church is aimed at people who are already Christian. I completely understand that that's the point of church, but a lot of my Christian friends didn't really get it. Most church services work from the assumption that you already believe, and teach Christians how to be more Christian, rather than answer fundamental questions. I appreciate isn't exactly something that necessarily needs changing since church needs help Christians grow, rather than just stagnating on the basics... but a some of my friends didn't really understand why I didn't find services on how to do evangelism, for example, very helpful when I didn't even know whether to believe in God. Also if I'm honest to begin with I found church scary + weird - lots of spiritually crap made it seem a bit like a cult... obviously I understand that now, but I think sometimes Christians forget how odd it is to someone on the outside.
- I had quite a few random people from my childhood asking me why I stopped believing in Christianity, presumably expecting honest answers. I suppose it's upsetting to think of someone going to hell, but this is a really personal question if you think about what you're asking and perhaps should be approached a little more gently rather than in an accusatory way that some of them had. At least not everyone stops believing because they want to get drunk at parties and sleep around, which is what some people seemed to think. Even now as a Christian, I think it's perfectly reasonable to look at the evidence for Christianity and conclude that it's probably not true. Just the further you look the harder it is to do that.
- One of the reasons I was antagonistic towards Christians was I really didn't want Christianity to be true and I thought if I could satisfactorily break Christians arguments then I would feel happy in the conclusion that it wasn't real or so I could somehow use their response to justify that it's not true. Unfortunately I was never quite satisfied with this and couldn't stop looking (or perhaps fortunately!).
-I know some people are fairly open about their atheism/skepticism, but for a long time (a year or two ago) I could be outwardly very antagonistic when really I wanted to figure out the truth. As well as being generally angry at Christians there were times when I didn't want to be honest about my uncertainty as it would give them a foothold to preaching at me. A lot of Christians (perhaps understandably) couldn't see past the resentment/confusion, but there were some who were willing to get their hands dirty and have serious conversations without getting offended. I took a LONG time to getting to this place, so I just want to encourage you to keep loving them. Which is probably a strange thing to say, but I know I wasn't always easy to love when I was searching for the truth, so they may not be too!
Sorry if this is a bit random. I don't really have a clue how to be Christian, but I do have some knowledge on how not to do evangelism!
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