"You’re intolerant.”
Sometimes that one sentence is enough to get Christians to balk at sharing the gospel, said Greg Koukl, founder and president of Stand to Reason, an organization that trains Christians to think about their faith and give a gracious defense.
“‘You’re intolerant’ is the adult equivalent of a kindergartener saying, ‘You’re mean,’ and it often stops Christians in their tracks before they even get started,” Koukl said to those present at the SALT apologetics conference Jan. 19. “It’s meant to humiliate a Christian, but it strikes me as so silly that I’m surprised people are impressed with it.”
If people want to think that, it’s OK, Koukl said. Not that Christians want to actually act that way, but graciously leave the insult there and “get on to an intelligent adult conversation about spiritual matters,” he said.
And talk with them about spirituality in the same way humans talk about other areas of life, Koukl said.
“We think about things and decide if the ideas themselves make sense,” he said. “We also observe the world around us and decide if those ideas fit with the world.”
For instance, when someone told Koukl once that he believed life had no meaning or purpose, Koukl asked him if he had ever tried to talk someone out of suicide.
The person said he had, and Koukl asked why. “The man said, ‘So they wouldn’t waste their life,’ and I asked, ‘How could he waste something that had no meaning?’”
Our ideas should add up with what we experience in the world, Koukl said.
“I’m not an atheist because there are so many things that are counterintuitive that I would have to affirm — that life came from no life, that something came from nothing, that morality poofed out of thin air,” he said.
Guide people to see the fit between the Christian worldview and the way the world is, Koukl said.
For more information, visit www.str.org.
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