Blogging to the Choir

The commentary on my recent posts on Jews and witnessing seems to have struck a chord with the commenter. On his blog “Random Thoughts” Jack’s Shack has taken to another attack on Southern Baptists, using President Mohler’s commentary on the issue (see previous post “Southern Baptist Witnessing”) While I was kind enough to attempt a (perhaps futile) response, I reflected on the whole deal about religious debate. I think I have reached a preliminary conclusion:

Antagonism by the anti-religious (or more specifically anti-Christian) is in general largely emotional with little basis on fact and reality.

Whew, that’s a very large generalization.

While I certainly don’t expect in ministry nor on this blog to get a chorus of “Amens” every time I preach, teach, witness, or post (as the case may be), I do expect someone who disagrees to at least have a convincing reason for doing so. And I don’t want to hear silly arguments such as “because I want to;” “because I don’t like it;” “that offends me;” “because you’re a fool and so is everyone who listens to you;” and so on. There’s actually a lot more than these, but these seem to be the most common. They are emotional arguments, and arguing from an emotional base doesn’t foster debate–on the contrary it stops debate in its tracks.

I have almost never seen anyone antagonistic to religion (and Christianity in particular) debate points of fact; instead they attack the messenger, decrying their words to be such things as “offensive, racist, intolerant, bigoted” or what have you. I enjoy those few who actually engage the point–in fact I count one of those people to be one of my greatest “online friends,” and I regularly seek his opinion on issues. And this guy isn’t a Christian–at best he could be described as agnostic!

I think we as Christians need to encourage debate on issues and not on emotion. Granted, religion has a deep emotional component, but when those antagonistic cannot debate without emotion, we need to shift gears and remind them of the point.