Defeating our Fears in Evangelism: Giving up on Knowing it All

            I have had a lot of opportunities to talk to my fellow Christians about evangelism.  Evangelism is a strange subject in our North American Church because, although it seems like every Christian believes it is a command from God and the duty of everyone, very few Christians are engaging in this practice.  There a number of reasons people have shared with me as to why they are not engaged in evangelism even though they know they should be.  One of the most common reasons is people have a fear of not knowing enough.  Although some have a fear that they will not explain things well, the bigger factor is the fear of questions.  They are constantly worried that whoever they are speaking to will ask a few well pointed questions and systematically destroy whatever presentation of the Gospel was offered.  Not only is there a risk of not leading the questioner to Christ, but there is a danger of anyone within ear shot hearing the discussion will be convinced all Christians are fools.  And let us not forget the shame and embarrassment that will result from clearly not having thought things through!  Well, if this your primary reason for not taking the Gospels to others, take heart, for I have good news: you are never going to have all the answers.  Now, wait a minute!  Isn’t that bad news?  No, I believe this good news.  Allow me to elaborate. 

Although there are many things we can do to help alleviate the fear of questions (such as realizing we can always follow up with this person later), I believe one of the most helpful cures is to realize that you do not have, nor ever will have, all the answers. That’s right.  You can study till you have a PhD on the wall and five books on apologetics, evangelism, and culture written in your name and you still will not have all the answers.  God simply has not given us everything we need to live by reason alone.  As Ravi Zacharais said in a recent tweet, “God put enough into the world to make faith in Him a most reasonable thing and left enough out to make it impossible to live by reason alone.”  If Ravi is right on this, then you will never have all the answers to reason someone all the way to fully orthodox Christian faith.  Now that may still seem like bad news, until you consider what that means for everyone else: they do not have all the answers either.  No matter how confident a person appears and no matter how well studied on philosophy and religion they are, they do not have all the answers to reason you out of your faith!  So do not let them!  No matter how much you know about a certain “truth” that does not make something more or less true.  I may have reasons for why I believe my favorite football team won a game, but whether I can tell you how they won or why they won does not make it more or less true.  Even if I cannot find the score in the paper to show someone, I can know still now it is true.  So it is with God.  I know enough and have experienced enough to know my God. So when someone asks me a question about Christianity in an attempt to make me stumble, I am not worried.  I simply say, “That’s a great question, I’ll have to give that some thought.”  I am fully aware that there is probably a reasonable answer and explanation out there, I just do not have it.  Does not having that answer now make my faith any more or less true?  No.  And the truth is I could ask questions back that could make them pause just as much.  But at what point will this conversation break down into a debate?  Can our faith really be decided by whoever just has more questions?  I do not think so. 

So, you see, we do not have to have all the answers.  We want to be able to intelligently explain why our faith is most reasonable thing.  But we also want be able to allow the Holy Spirit to be at work.  No one is going to change because we have studied harder them.  No one is going to become a Christian because we have debated them into submission.  And no one should doubt our faith if we reply to good questions by saying, “That’s a good question.  I’ll have to give that some though and would love to get back to you on this.  Would you be willing to give my questions some thought, too?”

Keep the Faith,

Pastor Matthew