Anyone who regularly discusses the Faith with unbelievers knows there are many kinds of unbelief. One kind that can drive the believer nuts is the “endless objections” kind. Rather than engage with the Faith, the endless objector will rehearse again and again the many “foolish” things that a life of Faith would compel him to accept. After all, “How could I accept a religion that would want me to believe in talking snakes/Noah’s Ark/old-fashioned sexual ethics/God’s punishment of his own son/[fill in the blank]?”
The Christian in this conversation can feel compelled to respond to each and every particular objection. But the overarching problem he senses is getting the objector to stop rolling his eyes long enough to consider the actual content of the Faith.
What to do?
Online, recently, I saw an evangelist suggest that we simply tell the person, “You’re making excuses . . . attempting to justify yourself rather than bending the knee to Christ.”
This strikes me as a pretty good diagnosis accompanied by a hazardous prescription.
Even if (as seems likely) the person is using objections as excuses, that doesn’t mean the objections are “just excuses.” They are also actual questions. Accusing the person of refusing Christ, without giving him a reason to accept Christ, and without patiently addressing objections in a respectful way, seems unlikely to bear fruit.
Perhaps, by answering objections with good humor, the one sharing the Faith can build up trust. And as this trust is built, the Christian can ask questions, including, “Are you sure you are not just treating all of this as foolish to give yourself an excuse not to love God and neighbor as the gospel would require?”
Building relationships, establishing rapport, listening more than talking so the real obstacles can be discovered and removed—these are the hard work of sharing the Faith. We might want to offer our diagnosis of what is wrong with the other person, but, really, how likely is that to help?
What we want is an opening to share our Faith, rooted in what Christ has done for us. We can’t force the other person to accept it. Most don’t. We, ourselves, mostly didn’t, until the day we did.
Another evangelist, replying to the one mentioned above, said he might ask, “Are you saying you would become a Christian except for that one, single objection?”
This seems to me a better strategy. At least it requires the Christian to listen rather than accuse. Listening in such a way might provide, in time, an opening for a real discussion about who Christ is and what he means.
At the moment the discussion moves away from the endless objections and on to the person of Jesus, the Christian is evangelizing.