In this webpage we will look not merely at the objections to Christianity that we commonly face when witnessing, but at the motives behind the raising of these objections. These insights are not only encouraging, they can further empower our witnessing. First, let’s set the scene:

When witnessing, our ultimate goal is not to win arguments, but to win souls. The goal of my Issues that make Christians squirm, for example, is to see God-haters fall in love with Jesus.

Now for someone to fall in love with you how many arguments do you have to win?

That’s worth thinking about.

Respect non-Christians

In this discussion we will often mention non-Christians, but we do so without any feeling of superiority. After all, each of us was once non-Christian. And in the following we can only speak of typical reactions and motives. When witnessing, we must listen carefully both to the person and to the Holy Spirit to see how we should tailor what we say to meet that person’s specific needs. The Spirit alone fully understands the person and has the answers to humanity’s deepest needs.

Conviction

We often focus on the work of the Holy Spirit in a believer’s life, but the Spirit also has a vital role to play in the lives of non-Christians. The Holy Spirit ‘will convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgment,’ taught Jesus (John 16:8). When we witness, the Spirit of God is not only working within us, prompting us as to what to say, but he is also working within those we witness to, convicting them of the truth of what we share and of their need of salvation.

To understand the processes at work, we’ll look at Adam and Eve. Adam was not just another human. He is the human from whom all humanity came. All human genes (even Eve’s) come from him. Our entire genetic make-up was incorporated in him. So his reactions are likely to be typical of all human reactions.

When Adam and Eve sinned, the first indication that they were under conviction was that their eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked.

Conviction is God in his mercy opening our eyes to the reality of our spiritual condition. Without it we would be blissfully unaware that we are sinners. We’d be on our way to hell and not even know it.

When we’re under conviction there are the two possible reactions:

1. Seek God for forgiveness.

2. Try to squirm our way out of our guilt.

We know Adam’s choice and, being the father of all humanity, we can expect his reaction to be similar to all human reaction.

Adam tried to minimize his shame by:

• Trying to cover his nakedness

• Running from God, and trying to hide from him

• Trying to blame others for his sin – Eve and God (And Eve blamed Satan).

Virtually all objections to Christianity fit these categories.

Covering up

Using fig leaves, Adam and Eve did their best to cover up, desperately trying to hide the extent of their shame. Non-Christians today try to cover up and hide the extent of their moral shame. ‘I’m as good as the next guy,’ they say. That’s probably true, but what a pathetic way to try to minimize our guilt.

Another way in which people attempt to cover up their moral shame is by putting on an air of respectability and/or engaging in lots of good deeds, such as church involvement.

Hiding

Next, Adam tried to run and hide from God. When we’re witnessing, people often say things that indicate they are running from God – that they won’t face Him and dialog with Him. ‘There is no God,’ say some. They won’t even face the fact that there is a God that they are answerable to. Other responses include:

• Don’t ram religion down my throat, you Bible-basher!

• All religions are much the same.

• It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you’re sincere.

What most people really mean when they say such things is, ‘I don’t even want to think about God.’

Another way people run from God and stop themselves from thinking about him is to cram their lives with so much activity that they have little chance to think about life’s most important issue.

Our witnessing ally, the Holy Spirit convicts not only of sin and righteousness, but of judgment. ‘A loving God wouldn’t send anyone to hell’ is the sort of straws people cling to in their attempt to hide from the fact of judgment.

When we are witnessing, people often throw in a question like, ‘Where did Cain get his wife?’ Such questions are usually just a ploy to get the conversation off their need for God. They are trying to duck for cover again. If we don’t realize this we’ll end up unwitting accomplices in their escape plan. We’ll think we’re witnessing, when they’ve actually stolen our witnessing opportunity. Their escapism could end in eternal tragedy. That’s why what we’re examining in this webpage is so important. We need to get below the surface questions to understand what’s happening at the spiritual and heart levels. That’s where the action is.

It’s too easy to be content with dealing with superficial issues when witnessing. For instance, some Christians have complained that I don’t go into Creation Science deep enough. But rather than focus on the ages of rocks, I believe God is more glorified, and people more helped by talking about the Rock of Ages.

Blaming Others

When finally cornered, Adam tried to blame another human. Common ways people of today try to blame other people are:

• It’s not my fault I had rotten parents.

• The church is full of hypocrites.

And Adam blamed God. (‘The woman you gave me.’) Here’s some of things people say to blame God:

• If God made me, my sinfulness is his fault.

• If there were a God of love the innocent wouldn’t suffer (ie God is as morally corrupt as I am).

Guilt, like pain, is a lonely thing. It makes us want to drag as many people down with us as we can. The biggest intensifier of guilt is the thought that someone is more moral than you. It implies we could have done better. That makes it so important to muddy other people. That’s the pleasure of gossip and slandering the church. People know they stand guilty before a holy God. One of the few sources of comfort they can get is to reassure themselves that no one has done any better. And if they can blacken God’s name, dragging him into the mud, that’s the ultimate way to quieten the screams of a tortured conscience.

Finally, Eve blamed Satan. ‘The devil made me do it.’ That’s so unfashionable that it’s become a joke, but the need to excuse our actions has not diminished the tiniest since Adam and Eve. So today we blame our upbringing, chemical imbalances, psychological disorders – anything to deny personal responsibility.

Denial

The critical point is that all of the above things are a reaction to guilt.

Non-Christians are like burns patients smashing mirrors; like people who fear they’ve got cancer refusing to see a doctor. They are living in denial. No matter how sophisticated they pretend to be, in spiritual matters they are driven by fear and guilt. Inside, they’re Adam, naked and running for cover.

The reason people don’t flock to Jesus is not because people believe in evolution, nor because they think there are errors in the Bible. The reason, in the words of Scripture is that they love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. It’s astounding: people prefer darkness – ignorance. Why? Because the truth exposes their sin. It reveals that they stand shamefully naked in the presence of Almighty God, to whom they must one day give account. They want to run from that and live in denial. If we can understand what’s going on inside them, we’ll be much better equipped to help them.

Clever arguments will never win anyone for Jesus. The god of this world, said Paul, has blinded the eyes of unbelievers. That’s a huge area we won’t explore here, but it shows the critical importance of prayer and spiritual warfare. Someone said, ‘Prayer is the battle.’ Other ministry is just mopping up after the battle is won.

Countering People’s Reluctance to Face God

Let’s examine the two reasons why people run from God.

1. They fear judgment

That’s why we need to explain as fully and as quickly as we can (before they run off) the good news that through Jesus, God offers them love, forgiveness, and full acceptance. It is also most important that they be convinced that we in no way feel superior to them.

2. They want to remain in sin

To understand this, let’s again go back to basics and see why Eve sinned.

Satan constantly maligns God in the minds of Christians and non-Christians alike. So we need to keep setting the record straight in our own minds and in the minds of the people we witness to. God is the most wonderful Person in the universe. (An example of an attempt to portray this is You can find love.) The all-powerful, infinitely wise Lord is unselfishly and totally devoted to maximizing our eternal happiness. He is the Source of every good thing we have ever experienced. Even the fleeting pleasures experienced while rebelling from him are possible only because he created us with the capacity to experience pleasure. In the final analysis, God’s will is the most exciting, fulfilling thing anyone could ever do. (A brief webpage that attempts to expound this is Enjoying God’s Will for You. For a list of some of the benefits of becoming a Christian, see What’s in it for me?)

This must not, however, be taken to the extreme of making the Christian life seem like a picnic. Christ emphasized both the need to stop sinning and the cost of becoming a Christian. Avoidance of these issues when presenting the Gospel would render our witnessing un-Christlike.

Another reason why people want to remain in their sin is that they are so bound by sin that they fear giving it up. In the words of Jesus, the person who sins is a slave to sin. They could even think it impossible to give up their sin. They need to know the good news that Jesus can break the power of their habits and set them free. (For example, see BREAK FREE! Supernatural Solutions For Habits & Things You Dislike About Yourself.)

An obvious motivator to help people leave their sin is reminding them of the eternal consequences of remaining in their sin. Billy Graham calls becoming a Christian, ‘making a decision.’ How can anyone make an informed decision without knowing the most important consequence of making the wrong choice? I do not feel I have adequately presented the gospel unless I mention hell. Modern Christians, in stark contrast to Jesus, are so frightened to mention hell that fewer and fewer non-believers imagine that even Christians seriously believe in it. I suppose we are afraid it will cause non-Christians to run from God even faster, but hell becomes something positive when linked with the fact that a loving Savior is yearning to save people from hell’s horrors.

Be Willing to be Tongue Tied

An evangelistic article of mine was published in my university’s newspaper. A non-Christian member of the academic staff asked me about it. The conversation was going fine when he asked a sincere question. ‘When I was a child,’ he said, ‘I invented a black god and a white god. Whenever anything bad happened, I attributed it to the black god and whenever something good happened, I attributed it to the white god. How does this differ from what you are talking about?’

My mind seized up. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. After many panic-stricken moments of silence, I eventually had to say, ‘I can’t answer that.’

I was more than stricken with red-faced humiliation. I was devastated that I had let God down and let this man down. Naturally, I will now explain how it all ended wonderfully, right? Wrong.

You might find it difficult to comprehend, but for the next thirty years I was not just haunted by the memory of my mind going blank at such a critical time, my entire witnessing ability was crippled by the fear of a repeat. I would often avoid witnessing face to face because I was sure that any repeat would not merely be embarrassing, it could become a major hindrance to someone finding Christ, causing them to conclude that not just lame brain me, but Christianity itself, has no answer. I knew that in theory God could give me the right words whenever I need them, but I was acutely aware of the time when he hadn’t.

It might have even been before that incident that I first read God’s Smuggler. Years afterwards I referred to this book by writing in one of my own books:

Brother Andrew, ‘God’s Smuggler,‘ tells of a girl who became a Christian because he obeyed the Spirit’s prompting not to share the Gospel with her. He was in the ideal position to witness, but his Spirit-led refusal to exploit it, seized the girl with fear that she was becoming past hope. This moved her, like nothing else could, to give her life to the Lord.

Brother Andrew remained silent by choice, so I saw no connection between his experience and my own.

Many more years of defeat dragged by. Then I read about Paul Cain, a man highly acclaimed in some Christian circles as having the ability to speak powerfully under God’s anointing. Whether he really has this gift is irrelevant to the story. One night, everyone was bitterly disappointed with Cain. To a large, expectant audience, he gave a rambling sermon and ended without sharing anything special from God.

Jack Deere, a former professor of Dallas Theological Seminary, had helped organize the meeting. Greatly perplexed and embarrassed by Cain’s unimpressive performance, he confronted him about it. Paul Cain replied that he was just a silly old man with an extraordinary gift. Because it was a gift, he explained, and not a talent, he was completely dependent upon God to exercise it. If the Lord chose not to empower him to speak God’s word, there was nothing left for people to see but Cain’s inadequacy. He believes that occasionally God decides that people need to see what Cain minus God looks like so that they will be drawn to God, whom they need, and not to a man, who has nothing eternal to offer. Jack Deere likened this to the Apostle Paul’s thorn in the flesh that kept the apostle from self-destructing with pride.

That story, too, did nothing for my witnessing ability.

A little later, a friend shared with me about how she loved ministering by singing in the choir but she felt too embarrassed because for some inexplicable reason tears would often stream down her face when singing. I immediately thought of Cain humbled by his weakness and how he had to be willing to be embarrassed in front of thousands in order to be available to be sometimes used of God.

As I was trying to encourage my friend, I suddenly saw that this principle applies not just to her singing but to my witnessing. I had always claimed to acknowledge that people’s eternal welfare hinged on God, not me. If the Lord decrees, as he did with Brother Andrew, that silence is most effective at that point in a person’s life, and if he chooses to shut me up, as with Cain, by temporarily leaving me to my own inadequacy, then what feels and looks like a disaster is actually a manifestation of divine wisdom. If, like my friend finds her tears, I find it embarrassing, I need to remember how much Jesus emphasized dying to self and I should praise God for the opportunity to grow in that vital area of spiritual life.

I expect I’ll still have struggles, but I now feel freer to let God be God and to stop putting myself under the pressure of the absurd delusion of supposing that helping someone find salvation hinges on my ability, rather than just on my availability.

I once heard of a church that was amazingly successful in bringing atheists into a living relationship with Jesus. Here’s how they did it: they would send their newest converts to atheists. Before long, the new Christians would find themselves argued into defeat. In tears they would blurt out, “I don’t know! All I know is that God is real and he changed me.”

Not only don’t we have to know all the answers, pretending that we do is a huge mistake that could actually drive people from Christ. To understand this, see a link at the end of this page. It includes the words of a one-time evangelist who ended up almost an atheist because of Christian know-alls trying to help him.

Bringing it All Together

When people put up objections, we can give brief answers, (you will find some examples in a link at the end of this page) but we need to see that their intellectual arguments are primarily a smokescreen for something much more basic. They stand guilty before a holy God and they know it. So they do everything to try to run and hide from it and to turn the spotlight from their dirty conscience onto other things.

Above all, we need to remember that there are no formulas in witnessing. Jesus is Savior, not us. As we reach out to those who need him, we need to rest in him and let God be God.

The greatest thing we can ever do for someone is to introduce a person to Jesus. So, at least in our consciousness, we need to fade from the picture, and let Jesus and that person talk. We need to listen attentively to both parties and simply be the catalyst, not the focal point.

Think on that and see how it influences your witnessing.