Summary: <p>1 Be Ready<br><br>2 Keep It Simple, Keep the Main Thing, the Main Thing<br> Armageddon, the Rapture, Calvinism, Arminianism, church attendance, blood moons, red heifers, numerology, and Anakim giants but…<br><br>3 Avoid Religious Language, Spiritual Jargon, and Christianese<br>What is Jargon and what effect does it have?<br>Christianese means you are speaking a different language than the one the person you are speaking to speaks.<br>EXAMPLES: <br>Things like, “I see that hand,” “ask Jesus into your heart,” “soul-winning,” “backslidden,” “heads bowed, eyes closed,” (you know what to do), “we just come before you Father God,” “hedge of protection,” “pot-lucks but not good luck,” “prayer walks,” “amen,” “vacation Bible school,” “bachelor till the rapture,” “divine appointment,” “life verse,” “missionary dating,” “gift of singleness,” “unspoken prayer request,” “bless your heart,” “speaks to my heart,” “I’ll pray about meaning ‘no’”, “covered in the blood,” “put it on my heart,” “stepping out on faith,” “testimony,” “I struggle with that,” “altar call,” “sanctification,” “fellowship,” “love offering,” “covering a multitude of sins,” “sold out”, “brother in Christ,” “causing you to stumble,” or doing things like praying over unhealthy food, <br><br>Communion- this represents the time when you eat a really small cracker and a small cup of grape juice and afterwords are more spiritual because of it, and just not the church providing lunch.<br>Prayer- for those who are not Christians, it looks like we are talking to our imaginary friend. <br><br>We avoid religious language because we aren’t trying to make the person religious.<br>What do people mean by religious?<br>Don’t let your style get in the way of the message.<br><br>4 Focus on the truth of Christianity, not merely on its benefits.<br>There is a vital difference between whether we like something and whether it is true or not.<br>There is a difference between choosing an ice cream flavor and choosing a medicine. When choosing ice cream, you choose what you like. When choosing medicine, you have to choose what heals.<br>People often choose religious views according to their tastes, not according to what is true. The question of truth hardly even comes up in the conversation.<br>People may like the idea of reincarnation, or karma, but that doesn’t make it true, and surprisingly people don’t often consider that.<br>Religious truth is what you believe right? It's that leap of faith you take. It has nothing to do with reality, ultimately. It is not anything you can test or measure. It is something you have to believe and hope against hope that it's true. It becomes a kind of wishful thinking, a religious placebo of sorts.<br>People will sometimes agree and say “I’ll visit your church, if you visit my temple.” What this often means is come check out my religion to see if you like it. But again, something doesn’t become true or untrue because we like it. <br>The real issue is whether your religious beliefs are true or not, not whether you like them, not whether you try them and find them appealing.<br>ILLUSTRATION: What happens if you let a child eat only what they find appealing, how healthy will they be? <br>When we choose our religion based merely on whether we find it appealing we are talking about the placebo effect. We argue that Christianity can be defended apart from our feelings, fantasies, or wishful thinking. We are not just emoting, or giving expression to our emotions.<br>Henry Beecher discovered the placebo effect as a medic in World War II. After running out of pain-killing morphine, he replaced it with a simple saline solution but continued telling the wounded soldiers it was morphine to calm them. To his surprise, almost half of the soldiers reported that the inert saline solution actually reduced or erased their pain.<br>But we have to get past ourselves and connect with external reality.<br>Philosophers like Freud and Nietzsche have accused Christians of inventing God because of psychological reasons, that we have created God in the image of our own desires.<br>But remember, the God of the Bible is not a God that we could or would invent. <br>Testing your Religion:<br>Can you have a square circle, a one-ended stick, or turn left and right at the same time? No, these are things we can dismiss out of hand as being incoherent.<br><br>5 Give Reasons<br>Here’s an example. Christianity explains what it means to explain. It explains how we got here, how everything got here. Evolution doesn’t answer the question of how everything got here to begin with. It only explains, or purports to explain, how it developed. Atheist Richard Dawkins said that the biological world is a complex world that gives every appearance of having been designed for a purpose. But he’s quick to add that you shouldn’t be misled by appearances. His explanation is that the apparent watchmaker design was really the blind watchmaker of natural selection and genetic mutations, i.e., neo-Darwinian evolution. That’s what he holds. But notice that he says it sure looks designed. Even if we are willing to grant that Darwinism is a possible way of explaining design, maybe another possible, legitimate, reasonable, rational way of explaining design is through design. Maybe the world looks designed because it is designed. <br><br>6 Stay Calm. Don’t get frustrated. Don’t get mad. Don’t get mean.<br>My wife and I are vegan and sometimes people like to poke fun at this. Someone sent me a picture that said “The hardest part about being a vegan is having to wake up at 5am to milk the almonds.” Or, “That moment when your steak is on the grill and you can already feel your mouth watering. Do you vegans feel the same when mowing the lawn?” Is this something I should get mad about or can I laugh along with them? <br>Ending our Facebook posts with “Just sayin,” or “I’m saying this in Christian love,” doesn’t give us permission to be rude.<br><br>7 Pay Attention to Signs that the Person Wants Out of the Conversation.<br><br>8 Give the Person a Way to Further Explore, Meaning, Don’t Let Them Leave Empty-Handed.<br>An invitation to Alpha or to church are two ways of doing this. You can invite them to read one of the Gospels or direct them to a Christian website.<br><br>9 Notice the Difference Between a Dismissal and a Response.<br><br>“Do you mind if I ask you a question?”<br>“What do you mean by that?” <br>“How did you come to that conclusion?,”<br>Sometimes you hear “I don’t have any reasons; I just believe it,” to which you can ask, “Why would you believe something when you have no reason to think it’s true?”</p>
