This article first appeared on the Desiring God website Here
Four Ways to Witness to Atheists
My next-door neighbors are not atheists. They are Muslims, New Age pagans, agnostics, nominal Christians, and one family of evangelical Christians.
Most people in the United Kingdom (where I live) are not card-carrying atheists (20%), even less so in the United States (14%). However, many people are atheists by default, with “no religion” being the self-designation of 50% for the UK and 23% for the US.
Many Bible-believing Christians view this as a complete disaster. I have a slightly different perspective. In my experience, it is much harder to reach religious and nominally religious people than it is to reach atheists. And I want to encourage all Christian brothers and sisters not to see their atheist neighbors as threats to their faith, but as reachable people who need the good news of Jesus Christ.
To help, I suggest four things to keep in mind when you engage with your atheist neighbors.
1. Treat them with dignity and listen carefully.
“In my experience, it’s much harder to reach religious and nominally religious people than it is to reach atheists.”
Our first responsibility is to listen. We need to listen to the culture — to what people are saying — and seek to understand where they are coming from. We can’t assume people understand our language, and we can’t expect to understand theirs. It’s similar to American missionaries who come to Scotland thinking that because we all speak English, we all will naturally understand each other. They soon discover their mistake. The words might be the same, but the meanings are often different.
2. Be willing to address their “defeater beliefs.”
I call the most extreme form of atheists NFAs: New Fundamentalist Atheists. They tend to be angry young men whose motto is “There is no God, and I hate him.” You are far more likely to come across them online than you are over the garden fence. But their basic beliefs are the ones that filter down through the media, entertainment industry, and much of academia. What are these basic beliefs?
- We have no beliefs. We are just people who don’t believe in a God — but if you provided enough evidence, we would.
- You Christians are unbelievers in Thor, Zeus, and all gods except one. We just go one God further.
- We have science; you have faith — and faith, by definition, is blind.
- People can be moral without God. Therefore, people have no need of God.
You may be tempted to think that you don’t need to be able to answer these assertions because no one was ever won to Christ simply by being out-argued. But on the other hand, how many atheists do you know have been won to Christ by Christians just doing something nice for them? Or by just going to church? Or by just reading a Christian book?
“When we witness to atheists (or anyone else), our first responsibility is to listen.”
No one can even see the kingdom of God unless they are born from above. We need the Holy Spirit to take his word and apply it to those whom he convicts of sin, righteousness, and the judgement to come (John 16:8). But he uses means, and those means include his people — his people who love their neighbors.
And if we really love our neighbors, we will listen to them, care about how they think, and do our best to help remove their “defeater beliefs” — the beliefs that prevent them from even considering Christ.
3. Recognize that atheists are believers.
An atheist is someone who believes there is no God. Furthermore, they believe they have the ability to absolutely determine whether or not evidence is objective. In other words, many of them don’t recognize that they too have faith — they have faith that they don’t have faith! They have faith in the reliability of their rational powers and in the belief that they should only believe things they can prove.
Atheism is based upon a series of beliefs, most of which are unverifiable. For example, every atheist I’ve ever met believes in naturalism. It’s not that they have verifiable evidence that everything is material; they believe that everything is material.
They also believe there is no (and can be no) evidence for God’s existence. A simple way to respond to this is asking what evidence they would actually accept.
4. Pursue their hearts through their heads.
I’ve observed Christians who have bought into the cultural narrative that Christianity requires a kind of blind faith, while atheism is the rational, strictly empirical, and frankly more intellectual position. This tends to lead them into mistakenly thinking that the only way to “win” atheists is to be extra nice.
“Our goal is not to defeat atheists in a debate, but to show them the glory and beauty of Christ.”
While we shouldn’t be arrogant or belligerent, it isn’t loving to concede rational superiority to atheism — because it isn’t true. The atheist position is intellectually vacuous. Atheism is not an intellectual problem, but a heart problem. But Jesus and the apostles showed that the path to the heart usually passes through the head.
Our goal is not to defeat atheists in a debate, but to show them the glory and beauty of Christ in the hopes that some may be saved. We argue with atheists not to win the argument, but to have Christ win them.
Reblogged this on Talmidimblogging.
Hmmm.
Do you have to be Christian to (fortuantly) live in a society founded on the bedrock of Christian beliefs?
I think the only way to convince people is in the practical sense where they can see the “good” such a society can do and perform.
However many of “us” are intensely sceptical of any/all religion as a whole, it has, over the ages, a lot of blood on its hands.
Here’s hoping this debate can continue in a civilised manner
AB
Atheists are believers. Interesting. Is not stamp collecting then a hobby?
Oh dear. Can atheists not come up with something a little bit more original? Can you not see the flaw in that old argument? Take your time.
Bald is a very pretty hair color too…
Btw, “original”? You have yet to meet your burden of proof on the god question, but by all means: continue to deflect.
Andrew,
Firstly, that’s very welcome that you want to debate this matter in a civilised manner. That’s not always the case on, I have to admit, both sides. Do you know of the website ‘Strange Notions’ where they try to conduct a debate in a civilised manner. They say that they have several mechanisms for keeping the debate charitable.
No, you don’t have to be a Christian to live in a society founded on the bedrock of Christian beliefs. (But, maybe, as they say, it helps.) But what exactly are those beliefs and is there any society which, today, can claim to be founded on the bedrock of Christian beliefs. Founded in the past? Perhaps. But today?
I do think that you have to treat religions separately rather than just lumping them together. I also think that you might also have to distinguish between a religion and the behaviour of its adherents. As far as Christians are concerned we recognise that we are all sinners so it’s maybe not surprising that people can find things that Christians have done that don’t square with the Christian religion. You have to ask the question of whether or not the undesirable things stem from the religion or are a denial of the religion. However, I would add that some of the claims of Christians having blood on their hands can be exaggerated. The exaggerations generally stem from opponents (not always atheists) with axes to grind. Lots of figures have been invented over the years with no connection to the truth. And any honest assessment of Christianity will weigh up the enormous amount of good which Christians have done, not just the bad. In that balance I would argue that the good far outweighs the bad.
“I think the only way to convince people is in the practical sense where they can see the “good” such a society can do and perform.”
That takes us back to the era of the Roman Empire. In that time it was the usual practice for Romans to leave unwanted babies to die. The Christians would collect these babies and look after them. That impressed many people of the time and many people converted to Christianity as a result of acts like that.
@mike17
I concur with what you say, I’d just to emphasise that I didn’t single out Christianity alone for the negatives.
David has mentioned previously online sermons and the use of that gathered and manipulation of Information FB.
Really?
There can be nothing more insubstantial than an app based believer.
I also agree that the benevolent actions of Christian based groups are far more likely to generate a positive reaction and may well brink more back to kirk.
O Drc, where can I meet to bow under the high places of the boughs of your omniscience of all that there has been, is, and every will be, for there is no god like you. Can it be that you don’t exist? You give me hope for the future in the middle of world atrophy and entrophy.
And can it ever be that you have the magical omnipotence to prove the negative. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.
And even today in the Times newspaper is a report of post scientific, science speculation of aliens and their cigar in space and at the same time it is down to a closed system of nature. A Harvard prof of astrophysics opines “but perhaps aliens have a mother ship that travels fast and release baby spacecraft that freely fall into the planetary system on a reconnaissance mission”. Other astrophysicists theorise that there are between 1and 10 “visitors” per year into our solar system but they move so fast we’ve never been lucky enough to spot one before”…
And there is more.
Spaced out science, anybody?
And are these aliens a natural or a social construct, that Dawkins is against…unless,of course, it is a construct of a Society of scientist. From the article there seems to a confusion of categories
We don’t want to be ‘witnessed too’,the reason we are Atheists,is we were brought up Theists,and you are way off base.
Again thats a strange logic….atheists keep telling us the reason we are theists is that we were brought up theist…now you tell us that the reason you are atheists is because you were brought up atheist….go figure! That atheist logic is weird!