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Great hearts feel differently. They process, think, remember, bleed, and heal in a multitude of ways. Jesus never calls those unlike him monsters for their unbelief. He brought unbelievers and religious Pharisees together to help them move toward the Father. Together.
He was persuasive, not argumentative. Curious, not critical. Careful, not crushing. Asked, but didn’t assume. Connected before he corrected. Jesus was not the loudest proclaimer of what he believed to be true, but he was the busiest doer of what he knew to be love.
“Okay . . . if I went to church, I would go somewhere where I could ask questions and I wasn’t judged for thinking differently.” What an incredible answer! My new friend would go somewhere as long as he was able to think for himself. Months later, we started the Doubters’ Club together. Doubters’ Clubs are gatherings led by a Christian and a non-Christian who model friendship and pursue truth together. It is not an apologetics ministry. It is a club for the “monsters.” Great minds don’t think alike at the Doubters’ Club.
In fact, making disciples isn’t getting people to think like us at all. Thinking like us may be the barrier, not the bridge.
In October of 2020, there was a post on the Religion in Public blog by Professors Paul Djupe and Ryan Burge. As they continue to research the decline of religion, they stated that “the most momentous change in American religion over the last 25 years has been the growth of the religious nones from 5 percent in 1994 to 34 percent in 2019.”[1]
“The natural, fear-based reaction to these changes,” Dickerson writes, “is to raise our guard and fight for our rights.”[2] Based on the statistics, it’s safe to say fear-based reactions are not winning others over. It’s time we respond, not react.
I thought the day I invited Jesus into my heart, he would protect me from all the intruders who would come barging in. Apparently, he wasn’t in there anymore. Doubt and depression made themselves right at home. At this point, I would have taken either: a pill or a Savior.
“In some farming communities, the farmers might build fences around their properties to keep their livestock in and the livestock of other farms out. This is a bounded set.”[5] That is, it keeps track of who’s in and who’s out. Religions do this in a variety of ways. Church membership rosters are an obvious one. Contrary to a bounded set, a more Christ-centered way of thinking about the Kingdom is by picturing a rural community where farms and ranches cover an enormous geographical location. The area is so vast that fences are out of the question. Under these conditions a farmer has to
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Rather than seeing people as in or out, what if we started seeing people by their degree of distance from Jesus?
Perhaps our dogmatic approaches to who’s in and who’s out are obstructing people’s view of Jesus. Instead of obstructing people’s view, we need to be sycamore-tree planters. We need to be well diggers. We need more spaces like the Doubters’ Club. You can be that space.
My love for the church won’t allow me to say that the body of Christ is delirious, but it’s not always delightful. Additionally, one of the greatest battlegrounds isn’t just in what we have witnessed alongside our unbelieving friends, it’s in the shared experiences we have of the church. Our experiences motivate us to ask the same questions. Why do my non-Christian friends seem more authentic than my Christian friends? How come there seems to be more grace from unbelievers than believers? Why are there so many hypocrites in the church?
And if personal interactions are at all indicative of societal trends, those outside the faith are apprehensive of those inside the faith, while those inside the faith are exhausted by the demands of their own in-group. Mostly because the demands of our in-group continue to reinforce a sometimes well-deserved, spoiled reputation derived from perceived and experienced legalisms and dogmas.
Jesus’ selection of friends is based more on those he can help than those who can help him. This may seem obvious to those of us familiar with the Gospels, but remember, we are talking about friends here. We are not merely talking about how he interacted with people. Too often, we think that success in the Christian life is being friendly with sinners. It’s a step in the right direction, for sure. Being friendly, however, is not what records show Jesus doing. He was a friend to sinners.
If we befriend the skeptic, one of our massive responsibilities is to defend them and their story in the face of other people’s disapproval. Brothers don’t always approve of one another, but those are conversations to be had behind closed doors. Being friendly would be acting closer than a brother through nice, even vulnerable, conversations. Being a friend means sticking around when their vulnerability and mistakes tempt you to run the other way.
Jesus defines friendship as letting people in on what God is saying.
Friends talk about what they are most passionate about. Since we are passionate about our relationship with Jesus, wouldn’t it make sense that at least some of our spiritual energy is devoted to sharing that passion with others?
Being friendly doesn’t mean we are sharing Jesus in order to close the deal before the conversation ends. Being friends means we are talking about the spiritual aspect of our lives because it is something we are passionate about.
Salt must be associated with something that would be flavorless without it. Salt never takes the credit. People hardly notice it because there is a blending in quality to it. It’s totally associated with whatever it’s seasoning. What people notice is the food it is on. When the right amount of salt is used, the food tastes much better! Let me put it this way: Salt doesn’t seek attention. It seeks to make whatever it is being sprinkled on so desirable that people come back for more.
We must not politicize it. The quickest way to suck God’s justice out of a room is by politicizing it. An issue can be so encrusted with so many layers of politicization that we can hardly see a human being on the other side. Politics have certainly charged topics such as poverty and sexuality. What we often forget in the discussion is that issues are always raised by a person or about a person. If we keep people at the heart of the discussion, we will rarely see their unique situation through the eyes of our political party (if we even have one).
We must not generalize it. No one likes to be lumped with oversimplifications about the issues at hand in order to fit a preferred narrative. People can have thoughts that don’t fit. In fact, if we are going to have any chance at people changing their minds as we pursue truth with them, it will require some level of cognitive dissonance, knowing that some level of inconsistent beliefs or thoughts exist that don’t line up with practice.
We must personalize the relationship at hand.
There is something profoundly symbolic about two hands joining as the first interaction we have with someone we don’t know. We acknowledge unity before we engage with our differences. Personalizing the relationship really means we are willing to listen to their story, carry their burdens, and help them find freedom from the pressure they feel in life.
But by yelling at those who think differently than us, we end up losing ourselves—and our could-have-been friends.
In his book God in Search of Man, Polish-born American rabbi Abraham Heschel rightly stated, “When religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion—its message becomes meaningless.”[7]
The peculiar thing about poison dart frogs is that their toxicity comes from their diet.[4] So if they aren’t eating prey that assimilates plant poison, they are safe. Swap out the beetles and termites from the Amazon with your local PetSmart cricket paste, wait long enough, and you have a toxic-free frog. What an incredible species! The impression we get from these paperclip-sized killers is that we can come close to them, hold them, or play with them. It’s a misleading impression. What they have engorged themselves with will determine whether they are playful or deadly on any given day.
The things we talk about have become a predictable poison: how to apply spiritual pressure, how to stand for what we are against instead of being known by what we are for, what political party aligns most with the Kingdom, and why we have all the answers. I put the above statements in a DIET acronym to help us remember the diet that is ruining our impressions: Do you know where you are going? I disagree with you. Enter the voting booth. Thanks for asking.
Pressure works in one of two ways: It either pushes in or pulls out. The spiritual pressure we are used to exerting tries to push people into belief. Or push people over at the altar. Or push someone to make a decision based on their vulnerable state. If we aren’t careful, we might be pushing people into captivity when the whole Jesus story is about pulling them out. I don’t think it is wrong to apply spiritual pressure. I just think it needs to pull them out, not push them in.
It would behoove us to remember that everyone is already captive to a habit, ideology, or religion. We may have been trained to pressure people toward asking God for forgiveness, but that’s not necessarily where people are when they first encounter the gospel. Their response may well be: “Forgiveness for what?” And in any case, the opportunity to ask for forgiveness is itself not “good news,” which is what gospel signifies.
What if we reframed the question: “How does the Good News of Jesus free this person from the pressures they feel in a particular area of life?”
There is a time and a place to speak about the negative consequences of truly destructive behaviors. And it is certainly the case that Jesus was known for both what he was for and what he was against. Even so, Jesus mostly spoke of what he was for when speaking to the nonreligious, and he spoke of what he was against when speaking to the religious.
If I am wrong on this issue, would I be willing to admit it?
Is this a head or a heart issue to the person I’m talking to?
What is the desired outcome of this conversation?
Will I be committed to the cleanup if this disagreement causes a mess?
There can never be a distinctly Christian political position. Political positions are based on superiority, and disciples of Jesus are called to pursue humility. The attitudes of Christians are to be entirely different than, say, the attitudes of a political party.
The echo chamber of our friend groups reinforces our perspectives, and before we know it, we are equating our constitutional rights with the way God intended things to be. Sure, we should vote wisely. But we should never label our party as “Christian.”
Something feels toxic when our moral convictions can be boiled down to red or blue. If you are going to be red, let it be because you have bled for your enemies. And if you are going to be blue, let it be because you have sat in sorrow with people who are experiencing pain. The Kingdom of God is holy. Meaning, it is set apart. It is other.
Faith is anchored in confidence, not certainty.
In the introduction to his book Jesus Is the Question, Martin Copenhaver cites two published studies that point out Jesus’ answer-to-question ratio is 1:100.[7] For every answer Jesus gives, the Gospels record that he asks a hundred questions. Whatever his reasons were, it was not for a lack of knowledge.
Let’s not miss a significant detail: Jesus has blood on his robe before he rides into battle. To this point, N. T. Wright points out that “the actual weapons which Jesus uses to win the battle are his own blood, his loving self-sacrifice.”[10] John, the Revelator, gives us the impression that Jesus wins not by the amount of people he can kill but by the amount of people he has died for.
If we, the church, are not willing to bleed for the one we disagree with, we should not expect to win them over.
When it comes to people having the right impression of you, everything is about acting like Jesus. If you are like me, there is probably an impression that you need to rebuild. Here is how you know: Someone thinks about Jesus in an unfavorable way because of the way you reacted when you disagreed with their action or confession.
Apologize where you missed it. Ask your nonreligious friend how they experienced you during that moment. We are all likely to continue showing up in the world the same way until we are told how people are experiencing us. Plus, if you have experienced an apology from someone in your life, you would agree that apologizing is the Miracle-Gro for any relationship.
Appreciate the journey they are on. Have you ever felt what it is like to be appreciated by someone who disagrees with you?
They have all sorts of stories and influences wrapped up in them. You don’t have to agree with someone to appreciate the journey they are on.
Anticipate that it’s a long road ahead. People who are committed to the friend in front of them will find themselves more satisfied, over time, with the relationship.
Pick one or two people in your life who aren’t like you, and commit to them just as Christ committed to you before you were saved.
Committed friendships between nonbelievers and believers help us unlearn what it means to be churched and relearn what it means to be the church. Sometimes we find our beliefs changing—sometimes profoundly—but what always, inevitably changes is our hearts.
How to Invite People into a Life-Giving Relationship
Make seeing them a natural rhythm of your life.
