No, it's great to be with you. I'm excited to do a Sunday School session. For those of you who've been here throughout the weekend, you know that the theme this weekend is actually a lot of what we're going to do in the Sunday School class, this idea of speaking the truth in love, engaging the cultural conversation that's hard to engage in because we have a tricky world we live in now. And we've been just talking about how to do that. So last night was about sort of dealing with sort of issues of sexuality in our world and how to think about the narratives that are coming our way. If you're there in the first service today, the sermon is going to be related to how the world looks at our beliefs as foolish. Some of you, I know, are headed to the second service. And then today, we're, of course, thinking about speaking the truth in love. And, you know, I know Sunday school is a short little block here, and my intent in this time is just to give you some tips on conversations. It's a real simple idea. So I want to talk with you just about things that I think are going to be helpful for you to know, think about, do. in conversations with your non-Christian friends in this complex situation we're in today. So that's where we're going to be going. Now before we get there, I just want to start with one of my own little stories about the way conversations work. I don't know if you've sort of felt this or noticed this, but there is a sense in our world today where we look around and go, whatever happened to the ability to have a good conversation with somebody? Whatever happened to the ability to have a good debate? with somebody without someone wanting to like, you know, kill the other person, right? Why is it that everything has to go to DEF CON 1 every time we're in a debate with somebody? You can see that culturally things have just changed in America in particular. This dawned on my wife and I years ago, and even years ago this predates a lot of the cultural craziness today, but years ago when we were living over in Scotland for my PhD work, we were introduced to just British culture. And because Scottish television has so few channels, four and a half actually when we were there, the only good channel that came in some nights was Parliament. And so there was, I could watch maybe Darts on one channel and another channel I could watch Snooker, if you know, it's like pool kind of, and then there was Parliament. So with not much else to do on a cold Scottish night, I'm watching Parliament. Now what's fascinating is if you've ever watched British Parliament, wow, talk about an amazing thing to watch. There is vigorous exchange, vigorous debate, standing up, and there's cheers on the one side, and there's boos on the other, and they're back and forth, and they're witty, and they're funny, and they make good points, and there's this sort of amazing exchange where they're actually debating the issues. They're actually having an interchange where they're trying to make their case for something. And at that point, you didn't get the impression. Maybe things are different now. But at least at that point, you didn't get the impression that to do such thing was the greatest moral affront to somebody. As if to challenge my ideas was to hate me personally, and therefore I hate you personally, and I will never speak again. No, there was a sense of exchange there. Now, how do we know that this was still relationally an intact situation? Well, here's what's interesting. The Scottish Parliament was right outside, met actually right near where we lived on the mound in Edinburgh. And when the sessions would let out, literally, outside our window, all the MPs would leave the session and hang out outside our window in this courtyard, and then they would all go to a local pub together, right? And so, literally, we could see them leaving on the television, and then I would hear a noise outside my window, and I'd walk over to my window, open it up, and there they all are. And then I would see them all go to the pub around the corner and have a pint together. And my wife and I talked about this, like, that never happens in the United States. In politics in the United States, it is cutthroat affair, where you're out to destroy, and any argument and any disagreement is the end of the world. And I think that's true also when it comes to evangelism. When it comes to our conversations culturally, there is a sense where it's all or nothing. And here's what I've seen out there, and this is really what I want to challenge today. I think there is sort of two extremes out there when we think about cultural conversations. There are some who never have them and hide from them whenever they come up. So there is sort of the runners, if you will. If you sense a conversation's coming, you're looking for the exits. If you sense a conversation's coming, you're trying to shut it down. If you sense a conversation's coming, you sort of lock up, don't know what to do. There's that category. But then there's the other extreme. The other extreme are not the people who run from the conversations, but you're sort of bare knuckle brawlers in every conversation, right? So they're always looking for a fight and that the slightest hint of disagreement, they're all in, they're rolling up their sleeves, right? Let's go. You know, and you realize that there's sort of the all or nothing idea. It's like either I'm running from conversations all the time and never want to have them, or I'm sort of this fighter who's looking for a fight around every corner. Is there any other other options out there? I think so. Now, in my little time with you today, I'm not going to sort of, you know, talk about every aspect of conversations, but I do want to give you five tips that I think can better our conversations, improve our conversations, and hopefully give us a little more balance in these things. These aren't in any particular order, but we'll start with the first one because if you were in the first service today, this is a theme that also comes up in my service, or sorry, in my sermon, in the first service. Okay, tip number one. If you're going to be in a conversation in our world with a non-Christian and all the complexities therein, you've got to have some understanding of what biblical humility means, and maybe more importantly, what it doesn't mean. And people get trapped all the time in a conversation about this. In my mind, one of the Christians' biggest fears, I brought this up last night if you were there, one of the Christians' biggest fears, I think, is this idea that we're going to be viewed as arrogant know-it-alls. And we're worried about that. And so in a conversation, we're going to work really hard to not look like an arrogant know-it-all. What does that mean? Well, that means, unfortunately, often adopting the world's definition of humility. What's the world's definition of humility? Well, as you can see in your notes, the world's definition of humility is uncertainty. How are you humble on the world's view? You're humble by saying, I don't know. You're humble if you say, I don't know. It could be this way or it could be that way. You're humble if you're the kind of person that's sort of fuzzy and wishy-washy. But if you're certain about something, well, you're arrogant. If you think you know something, well, how dare you? And there's this sense in which that mentality is pressed into conversations today in such a way that most Christians crumble under it. They crumble under it so much that we're afraid to make claims. We're afraid to state truth. We're afraid of how we might be looked at. And so this is a dominating factor in conversations today, is this idea that if you claim something is certain, that somehow you're breaking the rules of the way people should act. Now, I also pointed out last night that the irony of this is that the non-Christian who scolds us for being overly certain smuggles in their own certainty through the back door, right? And so there is a sense in which they're not playing by their own rules. But leaving that aside, why is it that they view us as so arrogant? Well, here's what I want you to see under that first point A there. Non-Christians, and I think you know this, but you need to let this sink in for a moment. When non-Christians look at you and I as arrogant, they are operating on their definition of religion. Not the Christian definition of religion, their definition of religion. What is the non-Christian definition of religion? It's simply this, human attempts to figure out God. If you were going to look at it on a chart, Religion on your non-christians view is an arrow going from the bottom up. It's human beings trying to find out things about God Trying to discover things about God. I really want to know what God is like and what religion women attempts to figure it out now if that were true by the way if all religion was was human attempts to take the vertical arrow up and figure out God and Christians go around saying we figured out God that is arrogant isn't it and Basically, what it would mean is that Christians think that as opposed to all the other religions who failed to figure out God, we're the only ones that figured out God. Now, I would agree, on those terms, that would make us arrogant. But notice that that only works if you assume their definition of religion. What if that wasn't the way religion works? What if religion wasn't us fallibly sort of stumbling around trying to figure God out, but what if it was God revealing himself to us? What if the arrow was down? What if the arrow was down in such a way that God had spoken clearly about who he was? Then, saying that we know something is no longer about me figuring it out. Now, when I say I know something, it's because God has revealed it. Those are very different things. Now, our non-Christian friend can't see it that way. In his mind, all religion is a fallible, fallen, stumble around in the dark attempt to find out God, so you don't know anything any better than anybody else. But that's not the Christian view. The Christian view is, in fact, that God has revealed himself from the top down. It's not that I try to figure out God, but that God has revealed himself certain about what we believe and humble at the same time. I mentioned this in my sermon in the first hour, and if you're coming to the second hour, you'll hear me say more about this. But our world will say certainty and humility don't go together. The Bible says they do. You can be absolutely humble because God revealed himself to you by his grace. You can be absolutely certain because God revealed himself. And if it's God revealing himself, then you can know something. Why does this matter so much for conversations? Because you can't take the bait on the uncertainty thing. I've seen it happen many, many times where you get in a conversation like, well, I don't want to look arrogant, so I guess I better act like I don't really believe anything. I don't know anything. Meanwhile, your non-Christian friend is smuggling all his uncertainties to the back door, right? And you're in a losing situation from the outset. Now, before we leave this first tip, there's an illustration you're going to hear out there that tries to prove the non-Christian view here. And you've probably heard it. in terms of the way they think religion works. It's the illustration of blind people feeling around the elephant. Have you ever heard this? I was visiting the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina years ago with my family, and they had an art exhibit there, and we were walking around the art exhibit, and my kids were young at this time, and one of the art exhibit was this ceramic elephant. It was probably about that big, about that high. And then around the elephant were these monks, sort of Buddhist monks, climbing and feeling around the elephant. One's on the trunk, one's on the tail, one's on a leg. And my daughter, Emma, who was younger at the time, looked at me and goes, what is this? It's the weirdest art I've ever seen in my life, right? Why are there a bunch of Buddhist monks crawling around this elephant? I said, well, actually, this art is capturing an illustration that people use about the way religion works. And the illustration goes something like this. All religions are like a blind man filling an elephant and telling you what the elephant is like. So one blind man fills the leg of the elephant and says, you know, God is like a tree trunk. And then another person fills part of the elephant, fills the tail and says, God is like, you know, a rope. And then another blind monk fills the trunk of the elephant and says, no, God is like a snake. And each of them are partly right because they're all blind and just filling the elephant. And that's the way religion works. That is the world's view of religion, right? Blind people trying to figure out God, and they only get part of it right. Now, you know what's great about that illustration is it sounds so persuasive until you realize something. And that is the person giving the illustration sees the whole elephant. In other words, the person giving the illustration isn't blind. But wait a second, isn't the point of the illustration that everybody's blind? But yet the person given the illustration is effectively putting themselves in a position of, I see how religion really works. I can see the whole elephant. And I can see the whole elephant and tell you that all these other religions are only seeing part of the elephant. But if you can see the whole elephant, then you're exempt from your own story? You're not actually blind? Here's the example I mean about smuggling in your own uncertainty through the back door. Non-Christians will tell you all the time, well, you can't know about religious truth because You know you only know part of it, but then but then they turn around and give some dogmatic statement about the way religion really works You have to realize that's what happening in conversations Don't take the bait you can be certain for a very different reason and that is that God has revealed himself By his grace to you all right. Let's look at tip number two Understanding biblical humility was tip number one tip number two is just the way to disposition yourself in a conversation have patience with the non-christians intellectual situation What do I mean by this? Have you ever been in a conversation where you're talking about something with your non-Christian friend that seems so obvious, it's like the sun in the sky, and your non-Christian friend doesn't get it? In fact, I think we feel like this often about the Christian worldview. It makes a lot of sense to us. We look at it, it fits together, it's coherent, it has such great explanatory power about so many things, and we explain this to our non-Christian friend, and it's like you're bumping up against a brick wall. And that can become very frustrating, right? It's like you're talking to someone and you can't get in there. You can't find a way to make them see. And they seem to be, I guess, blind to what is so obvious to us as true. Now, in that kind of situation, it's easy to become irritated. It's easy to become impatient. It's easy to become frustrated. And maybe even worse than that, it's easy to become disdainful of our non-Christian friend, almost to the point of, you're just an idiot. Can't you see this? You know, only a moron wouldn't get this, right, sort of attitude. That can come across sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly. Sometimes it's just subtle, but that can be there. One of the biblical truths I want us to realize in conversations, though, is that that posture is not a posture that reflects biblical truth. Why? passage there, 1 Corinthians 2 14. It's actually the chapter after the chapter I'm preaching on this morning. The natural man, you know this verse well, the natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. This is actually part of the theme of the sermon. And he's not able, not able to understand them. Here's what I want to get at in tip two here, is to recognize that your non-christian friend is in a situation without God's grace and help, he cannot see what you're saying. That demands a response from us, a response of patience, to some extent even a response of compassion, and certainly a response of prayer that we would ask that God would open their eyes so they can see. There's a sense then in which we want to treat them patiently like God treated us. Think about it for a moment. Was God patient with us when we didn't see? Was God compassionate on us when we didn't understand? Absolutely. God has been patient, slow working with us, compassionate on us when we didn't get it. Not irritated, not frustrated, not you're an idiot, but rather always looking to find a way to persuade and ask God prayerfully to open up their minds. Now, if you go into a conversation with this disposition, I think it will change the flavor of the conversation. It doesn't mean you don't continue to try to persuade. Of course you do. It doesn't mean you don't make arguments. Of course you do. Remember, the point here isn't, since the non-Christian can't understand without God's grace, therefore don't make an argument. That's not the point. God uses arguments by his Spirit sometimes to reach people. But what it does mean is we want to make sure we're not dripping with disdain, frustration, maybe even anger at the non-Christian's refusal to see what they can see. Now, one other thing on tip two, though, before we leave it. Simply because the non-Christian is, in a sense, blind to the truth does not take away his culpability or her culpability. Let me explain what I mean by this. We're not arguing, nor does the Bible argue, that they're innocent in their blindness. There is a paradoxical truth in Scripture that the non-Christian is both unable to see the truth and also suppresses the truth. Romans 1 teaches us very plainly that men know God by the things that have been created, not only out there in the world, but also by what's in their heart, and that they suppress that truth in unrighteousness. So when we talk about the Christian being blind to the truth, there's a sense in which they're unable to see. There's another sense in which they can see, but yet push it down by their sin in such a way that they aren't willing to accept it. So we're compassionate to them, patient with them, but we're not saying, therefore, that they're purely innocent in their blindness. No, there is a culpability there, an intentional suppression of truth. And what we actually are doing in conversations is trying to point out what they deep down actually know about God. We're trying to say, deep down, we know that you know God exists. Deep down, we know that you know in your conscience that there's laws in the universe that you're breaking. Deep down, we know that you know that you're a sinner, even if you're not willing to admit it. And those are part of the conversation points. that we need to have. There are no real atheists, okay? There's not. There's people who say they don't believe in God, but Romans 1 makes it clear that everybody knows there's a God, and they suppress that truth and unrighteousness. So the Bible is clear that there is no such thing as a real atheist, at least in the sense that's meant by non-Christians. All right, tip number three. Here's a big one. No, you don't have to know all the answers. Let's just get it on the table, right? Why is it that people run from conversations? You know, I'm talking about the two extremes. Remember, some people jump into the fight. Sort of point two is to try to tame those people a little bit, right? Calm down, relax. Point three is to get to the other side of the extreme, the people who don't want to be in a conversation. Those of you that were here last night know that I began last night with the story of dropping my daughter off to college at UNC Chapel Hill, which I did about a month ago. And this was one of the things on her mind. Dad, what happens if I get in a conversation with a non-Christian and they ask me a question I can't answer? That's kind of scary. And maybe that's one of your big fears. Everybody's got a phobia, right? Of course, one of the crazy things, one of the biggest phobias around is public speaking. That still ranks number one, by the way. And every poll Public speaking is still number one, which is crazy. That ranks above natural disasters. It ranks above dying. Let me get this straight. You'd rather die than public speak? Yeah, pretty much. Let me think about that for a second. Yes, I'd rather be dead. Some of you would rather die than be caught without an answer. And you're thinking to yourself, I'm just going to avoid all conversations so I never have a situation where I don't have an answer. So I'm never embarrassed. Now, in a college setting, it's particularly poignant because of the intellectual give and take of an academic environment, right? You've got a professor. You've got fellow students. It's an interchange scenario where people are always batting around ideas, so it's even more nerve-wracking to be in a university setting and worry about, what if I get caught on the wrong end of an exchange and look like a fool? Some of you have been in that situation where you argue with your, you know, your sibling over the holidays. By the way, why is it these conversations always happen over the holidays, right? And you're like, isn't there a rule about that? Don't talk about these things, you know, with family over the holidays, but every year we break the rule, right? And every time we do, you may think, I had a conversation with my sibling, and they had all these questions. I didn't have any answers. I'm never doing that again. I want to push back on that. And I want to suggest to you that you don't have to know all the answers to engage in conversations. Let me just mention three things here that I want you to keep in mind about this. Actually, four things. I'll add one here on the end. First, not having an answer doesn't mean your beliefs are wrong. There's this sense, I think, that we think if I get caught with my sort of intellectually unprepared, then maybe I'm wrong. Maybe what I believe just isn't true. But why would you think for a moment that not having an answer necessarily has anything to do with whether you're believing the right thing? There's lots of scenarios you can imagine where someone might be able to stump you about something you believe, but it doesn't mean you're wrong about it. I don't know if you've tracked sort of, there's all these fringe groups out there in the world. One of the ones that's most fascinating to me is the, is the moon landing deniers. You ever come across these people? Um, where they like, no, I don't think we ever landed on the moon. They say it was all big fraud and you know, it was all done in a studio and you know, everybody's in on it and it's a classic conspiracy theory. I would bet you that if you ever found yourself in a random conversation, let's say on an airplane, and you sat down against one of the leading moon landing denier people, and you had gotten a conversation about them, I bet he would work you over left and right and leave you speechless. Because he would have all these arguments you've never heard. Why did the flag wave when it was on the moon, if there's no wind on the moon? Why was it vertical anyway? Shouldn't it be hanging down? And you're sitting there going, I don't know, never thought about that before. Why is it the shadows fall a certain way? That shows it's a, they can give you all the arguments and you would have no answers, but it doesn't mean your belief is wrong. We have this idea in our mind that I have to have all the answers, otherwise I'm wrong. That's just crazy. You don't have to have all the answers. Why would you think you could? Here's the thing, is that if you find yourself in the right situation with the right opponent, lots of times you may not have the answer for lots of things, whether we really land on the moon. I mean, people could challenge all kinds of beliefs you hold. You probably have a belief about where your grandfather was born. But if someone really wanted to be a skeptic and press you on it, you may not be able to defend that belief very well. You're like, I was just told that. I don't know. I don't have any evidence for it. I don't have a birth certificate. I don't know. Maybe. And then they could press you. There's all kinds of things you may not be able to answer if a skeptic really wanted to be vigorous. Don't think for a moment that it means anything about whether what you believe is true. Second thing, not having an answer doesn't mean there isn't an answer. One of the things that I think we do in conversations is we think, if I don't have an answer to that very hard question, then maybe my faith's in jeopardy, or maybe there's not an answer to it. But why would you think you not having the answer means there's not one? There's plenty of things out there you may not have come across in some sort of give and take about the Bible or about Christianity you don't have an answer for. But that doesn't mean there's not answers. In fact, one of the things that you need to realize is there's a great sort of depth of Christian scholarship out there that have answered these questions and answered them for generations. There's hardly any real objection that's news. I can tell you that. You're going to hear objections to the faith, and they're going to sound like they're new. They're going to sound like no one's ever thought of this before. In fact, most non-Christians present it like no one's ever thought of this before. What is the statistical chance of that being right? So it just happens to be the guy I'm sitting next to on the airplane says, well, you know. The Bible doesn't do this or that, or, you know, I read this verse and this doesn't make sense over here, or, you know, where did Cain get his wife, or what about this, you know, how many angels were there at the tomb, or these sorts of sort of stock objections. And I hear that and I think to myself, you're saying it like no one's ever thought of it. Do you have any idea how many generations of Christians have answered those objections over and over again, even if you don't know them, in terms of the answer? That doesn't mean they're not there. One of the books on the table in the back that, Thankfully, the stack is a little shorter than it was yesterday, so that's good, right? One of the books in the back was my book on second century Christianity called Christianity at the Crossroads. And I cover a lot of things in that book, and it's all just about the way things were in the second century, just the first generation after the apostles. But as I was doing that book, I was struck by, and I kind of knew it going in, but I was struck again in my research by how many of apologetic situations the Christians found themselves in with objections that sound so eerily similar to today. In fact, if you don't know it, the second century was the rise of Christian apologetics. It was the golden age of apologetics. And what you think is an original objection, I would bet you say that they've been hearing this objection, Christians, for 2,000 years. There was a very famous skeptic in second century called Celsus who was just did not like Christians and had all his objections. And as you read his objections, you're like, oh, yeah, that's the one my neighbor used. That's the one that my cousin keeps telling me. It's been around that long. Just simply you not having the answer doesn't mean there's not an answer. Third, sometimes it's OK to say politely, I don't know. Why is it that we're afraid to do that? Maybe because we think it means we lost, whatever that means. Maybe because it doesn't make us look like we're smarter than the other guy and therefore we look a tick lower. I think there's something to be said for sometimes just taking the low road in a particular exchange where you're like, that's a great question. I don't know the answer to that question. But you know what? I think there probably is an answer to that question. Let's talk about, give me some time to go dig up that answer and can we talk again and I'll get back to you about it. Fairly common way to talk to people, right? But I feel like we lock up, like, I can't ever say I don't know. I'd rather just make something up, right? On the spot, pretend that I know, pretend I'm smarter than I am. No, you don't have to pretend you're smarter than you are. God's truth is not hanging in the balance on this conversation. You could do a lousy job in a conversation. You could be a total train wreck. You could not answer anything and fumble around and God can still use it to bring someone to himself. Do you believe that today? If you don't believe that today, then you didn't understand point one about grace. God opens up the minds of people, even if we're not very good at presenting his word. In fact, I might argue that maybe he does it particularly when we're not very good at presenting his case, just as a reminder that it had nothing to do with you, but it had everything to do with me. God likes using weak things of the world to accomplish his purposes, to shame the wise, in order that he gets the glory. If it was only the greatest presentations of the gospel that converted people, there'd be a danger that they could think it was because of them. It's not that different than why God took 300 men to defeat the Midianites instead of 30,000. Why? So that I get the glory. I'm going to use weak things, fallible things, sort of inept things, the people that don't have their act together, And if they're just faithful to me, it's amazing what can happen. You don't have to know all the answers. Tip number four. You do have to speak truth, but you don't always have to speak. Say it again. You do have to speak truth, but you don't always have to speak. Sort of the overarching theme of the weekend, of course, as you well know by now, is speaking the truth in love. And I think it goes without saying that when you speak, that you want to speak truth. Obviously, that's a given, right? You're not going to speak falsities, I hope. You're going to always speak courageously, boldly, faithfully, and represent God's word accurately. However, we sometimes think that speaking the truth in love means that we're always required to speak, not true. There is a sense in which we need to realize that it's not our job to engage in every conversation and fight every fight. There's this cartoon strip I saw years ago. I forget exactly how it was, but basically the wife is yelling to the husband in the other room, hey, come to bed. And he's at his computer and yells back at her, I can't, honey. I found out that someone on the internet is wrong. And I have to refute them. It's my moral obligation. Is there any shortage of people that are wrong in the world? Yeah. If you get on the internet, there's plenty of it. Is it your job to fight every fight, to be in every conversation? I think this goes to the extreme again of the sort of, remember we're talking about two different kinds of people, the I never want to talk to anybody person and then I want to talk to everybody person. This is going to the everybody person. that you don't have to fight every fight. It's not like you have to jump into every fray, throwing punches. Sometimes there's wisdom in figuring out which opportunity you take. God is not calling you to every opportunity. Think about it like we think about missions. God doesn't call missionaries to every single person on the planet. God calls missionaries, a particular missionary to a particular people group. It's these people I'm witnessing to. I'm not responsible for every single person in the world. You're not responsible for arguing with everybody on the Internet. What opportunities has God given you that are sort of right there in front of you in such an obvious way that you should take them, rather than going off into some distant place looking for them all the time? My hunch, and I've seen this over the years, and I see it in myself too, is it's actually the opportunities that are sort of on our front doorstep we miss. And then we end up getting in some conversations we maybe aren't even sort of ones that we need to be in. You start with the world you're in and think about what opportunities are there without feeling like you have to fight every single fight and be in every conversation. This is true in conversations, even with people you know well, even over, say, the holidays again, back to my illustration there. Just because Uncle Joe says something crazy over Thanksgiving dinner doesn't mean you always gotta sort of challenge it on the spot. Sometimes you might. Certainly, you don't want to never speak up, but you don't always have to speak up. One of the things I told my daughter Emma when I dropped her off to college is one of the lines is, don't be that Christian student. She's like, what's that Christian student? That Christian student is the student who goes into their religion class or whatever, and every time the professor says something that's unbiblical, that student fills the requirement to protest somehow, right? They're always raising their hand. They're always complaining. They're always saying something. They're always staying after class. It's like this sort of dripping faucet you kind of wish could turn off, right? You have to say something about it. No, you don't. You're not morally obligated to say something about everything. You patiently trust in the Lord as he leads you to the opportunities. There's a sense of which speaking less often means that you're heard more when you do speak, right? People don't tune you out as quickly. Now, can I tell you today the right balance in your situation of how often to speak and how often not to? Of course not. I don't know your situation. Maybe you're a person who needs to speak more, but you may need to be a person who speaks less. Proverbs 10, 19, when words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise. That's not an absolute rule, of course. Proverbial wisdom is just that, it's proverbial. There's a time to speak, but if you only speak all the time, chances are this is a point you need to hear. Last tip, tip number five. Rethink the goal of your conversation. We probably wouldn't put it this way, but I would imagine in most conversations with a non-Christian friend, our goal is to win. I don't even know if we know what that means. What does it mean to win anyway? Does that mean that, you know, I talked more? Well, we all know that doesn't necessarily mean you win. Does it mean that I was able to sort of lay out more evidences or refute particular arguments? Maybe. If we go into a conversation with the goal to win, to beat my opponent, I think we have created an environment that is already from the start overly combative. Is there some level in which any apologetic conversation is going to be combative at some level? Of course, because you're talking about a conflict of worldviews. But you also want to try to diffuse that in a way that doesn't overly make it sort of this antithesis between you and your opponent where everything's a war. If you go in with your goal to win, what I want you to realize is if you go in with that goal, then the conversation has suddenly become about you. You now are the centerpiece of the conversation, and you want to win. I want to suggest a different word. That word is persuade. What would happen if your goal in the conversation were to persuade? Well, then suddenly now the issue isn't about you, but about the other person. It shifts the attention off of you and onto them. How can I persuade them? How can I win them over? Isn't that the goal of our conversations, to persuade of the truth of God's word? Now, we're not suggesting that can happen on a purely human level. Of course, back to the earlier points, God's grace has to be involved here by the Spirit to open eyes, fair enough. But there is a sense in which it's a disposition. Not to win, that's about me and how I look. Rather, the goal here is to persuade, which is about how can I reach this person? What can convince them? How can I get through to them? How can I help them understand? Now, once you realize that, then you realize that persuasion changes the game a little bit. Several things to note here. First, if your goal is to persuade, you want to make sure that rudeness and overly aggressive tactics are off the table. Rudeness might win a debate. Aggressiveness might win a debate, but they may not persuade. If you just want to win, fine, use those tactics. But if you want to persuade, you're going to have to leave those aside. Incidentally, and you know this, the Bible leaves those aside. They want you not to be that way. You can see the passages there. 1 Peter 3.16, always be prepared to make a defense, yet do it with gentleness and respect. Ephesians 2.24, the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone with gentleness. So what you realize is rude and aggressive tactics could maybe win on a human level a debate, but they're not geared to persuade. There's another implication of this. And that is as soon as you realize that persuasion is your goal, you have to think about what persuades people. Do arguments in and of themselves persuade people? I think to some degree they can. I don't want to make the point here for a moment that truth isn't helpful to persuade people. Of course it is. I think arguments work. But I would rephrase it as, does bare arguments work? Or is the thing that people are persuaded by is good arguments delivered in a good way? Or to put it another way, we could realize that, as I put it there in italics, that people are often persuaded by people. Now, when I say people are persuaded by people, I'm not suggesting that people are persuaded by people in a purely sentimental way, void of arguments, but arguments couched within a relationship that's kind and loving. If you think of it that way, then what you realize is that your persuasiveness is not just about whether you're right. It's not even about how good you are delivering your arguments. Your persuasiveness is also connected to the way you deliver those arguments and who you are as a person. Let's be honest, one of the things that proves to be really persuasive with people is whether they feel like they have a connection with you, that you love them, that there's respect there for them. It's not just the arguments in a bare sense. Now, unfortunately, that can work in bad ways, too. Non-Christians can be persuaded by people who are very compelling people, even though they have bad arguments. That's unfortunate. We're not suggesting that we're choosing between people and arguments. I'm asking you to put them together. have a good argument and combine it with being the kind of person that delivers it well, with love, patience, grace, and respect. That combo is the best combo. You could try to win people over just by your winsome personality with bad arguments, or you could try to win people over with really good arguments and be really mean to them, or I might suggest that you actually combine the two together, have really solid biblical arguments with a posture and a person that loves them patiently and respectfully.