Well hello!
I’ve been back in my home state of Michigan for the last two weeks and it has been grand. Family, friends and fireworks, it really couldn’t get better. One of the things I like best about coming home is the drive to get here. Ten glorious hours in the car with just me, my music, and my thoughts.
The whole drive home my mind was wrapped around hope and my absolute need for it. If I think back to what I would consider the “worst” parts of my life so far, they all have one underlying theme- hopelessness.
There is a quote I often remember that says “Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope”.
I think that this hopelessness is what makes me cringe with regards to “bullhorn” evangelism. Now before I proceed please understand I’m not saying that we shouldn’t call people out with regards to sin. We absolutely should. I’m not saying we should promote a gospel that is all sunshine, gum drops, rainbows and unicorns because there is a real side to God that is justice and there is a real place called hell and people will go there. What I’m questioning is the way in which we inform people about sin in their lives.
My impressions of “bullhorn/ fire and brimstone” evangelism is that it is loud. I get this impression that it’s in your face. So effectively what I think happens when we stand on street corners yelling into people’s ears about sin and hell is that we deafen them. We shout so loudly about brimstone that they can’t hear the actual good news. We tell them their sinners (which is true of everyone) and without Jesus they’re going to hell (which is also true) and then that’s where they stop listening, that’s where they can’t hear any more because we’ve deafened them. I wonder when we do this if we are leaving people without hope and how that will affect a person.
So here is my main point- the measure in which we are being severe with people (e.g. calling them out on their sin) should be met with equal measures of grace, love, and hope. We should not be spending fifty minutes yelling at people about sin and only spend two minutes telling them about grace, love, and hope.
I’m talking specifically about when we are talking to people who don’t either know the gospel, have been hurt by the church, or don’t go to church. I feel like we should be extremely intentional to balance the realities of sin with love, the reality of judgment with grace and to bind them together with the ultimate hope that we as Christians have.
I worry that when we spend the majority of our time telling people that their sinners and a miniscule amount of time telling people about grace, hope and love what we are doing is wounding people but leaving them with nothing to bind up their wounds. I worry because a wound without a bandage will fester, will get infected and will kill a person.
When we draw hard lines in the sand, and we promote walking a hard line we have to also promote grace, hope and love with an equal measure.
When we spend the whole of our sermons on wounding and pruning people but spend very little time talking about what will heal them (grace, hope and love) essentially what we are doing is chopping off their arm then handing them a child size band aid to cover the gushing wound.
I guess that’s where my formulated thoughts on this subject come to an end. I feel like there is so much more to it but I have yet to sit down and think it out.
But what about it? What do you think? How do you feel when you feel hopeless? How do you think people without the knowledge of the hope we as Christians always have, how do you think they feel without that?
