live your life in color

A simple parable about speaking to people outside the faith:

Imagine that your young son goes missing, and you come to your friend, with tears in your eyes, and you tell him that something terrible has happened to your son. He may even have been kidnapped! So you ask your friend to help you find your son, to set your son free, and to bring him home again.

Then imagine the following conversation takes place—

Friend: I found your son.

You: Yes! Thank you! Where is he? Let me embrace my son.

Friend: Well, here’s the thing, when I found him, he was indeed kidnapped, but what’s more, the kidnappers had brainwashed him into thinking that they were his real family, and that this was the best life for him, and that you didn’t really love him or want him back.

You: No! Tell me that you rebuked that lie and told my son the truth!

Friend: Oh, I told him the truth alright. I told your son that he was doing wrong and bad things, that these people he was devoted to were wrong and bad, and that he had become as wrong and bad as them.

You: What have you done?

Friend: I just told him the truth!

You: You didn’t tell him the truth, you made it seem like I don’t want him, when I DO WANT HIM VERY MUCH. All you did was condemn his behavior. That wasn’t the mission. Why didn’t you tell my son that I love him? Why didn’t you tell him that I want more than anything for him to come home? Why didn’t you make it clear that I don’t care what he has done, I just want him to return to me, and we can work together to make everything else alright? 

…In the end, as we try to free those who are captive to their sin, we will have to answer these same hard questions. God holds us accountable, not just for what we say when we’re witnessing, but how we say it.

If it was your son, you’d want it done right too. If you make a mess of things, yet find yourself responding, “but I quoted scripture when I did it, doesn’t that make it right?”, the answer to that is no, it makes things far worse.

Here is what scripture actually says about speaking to people outside the faith:

2 Corinthians 5:16-20 So from now on we don’t look at anyone the way the world does. At one time we looked at Christ in that way. But we don’t anymore. Anyone who believes in Christ is a new creation. The old is gone! The new has come! It is all from God. He brought us back to himself through Christ’s death on the cross.