Throwing in my two small copper coins... (Mark 12:42)
On October 2nd, 1999, a preacher in Minneapolis, Minnesota wrote an editorial for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. In this editorial he argued that it was a loving thing for Christians to speak the gospel of Jesus Christ to Jewish people because of what it says in 1 John 5:12: “He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.” In response several Christian clergy members wrote to the paper saying things like, "Unfortunately, arrogant is the right word to describe any efforts by Christians to ‘win over’ their Jewish brothers and sisters. Thoughtful Christians will disassociate themselves from any such effort.”
We live in a society of relativism. Relativism says there is no such thing as objective and/or absolute truth. What's true for you isn't necessarily true for me. In fact, our culture has been so infiltrated by the philosophy of relativism that Christian ministers would actually call sharing the gospel an arrogant thing to do.
In 1908... well ahead of his time... G.K. Chesterton wrote, “What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place… A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man, that a man does assert, is exactly the part he ought not to assert – himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt – the Divine Reason… We are on the road to producing a race of man too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.”
That's relativism. The world says, "follow your heart," but the Bible says, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" (Jer. 17:9) The world says, "What's true for you is not necessarily true for me," but the Bible says, "Your word is truth," (John 17:17) and Jesus himself says, "I tell you the truth," 30 times in the book of Matthew alone!
If all truth is relative, what happens when my truth says yours is a lie?
Christians believe the Bible contains the very words of God himself, the creator of everything. And that book says things like, "He who has the Son has life; He who does not have the Son of God does not have life." (1 John 5:12) And also, "I (Jesus) am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6) If we believe these statements it's not arrogant to try to get others to believe them... it's loving.
The best way I've ever heard it explained actually came from an atheist...
It can't be arrogant to believe what the Bible says and share it with other people. As you just saw... if Christians take the advice of those clergy members who responded to the editorial they would beunloving, not thoughtful.
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