How Can I Enjoy Sharing My Faith with Others? (Part 2)

As a college minister I once listened to a Chinese student as he shared his belief in Taoism and their view of creation. I asked him several questions along the way, sincerely wanting to discover more about Taoism. After listening for about 45 minutes, he finally asked me, "What do you believe?"

At this point, my new Chinese friend began to listen intently, as I had when he spoke. He seemed very interested as I shared a brief explanation of Genesis 1 and the gospel of Christ.

From this I learned a major lesson. If I want to be a "bridge-builder" for the gospel, I need to first listen closely to what that person believes. This communicates love to that person and builds a relationship. But it also may allow us to share our faith with people from different backgrounds and beliefs and still make the Christ message relevant to them.

Imagine if you were chosen to become the American Ambassador to China. You'd consider that quite an honor! How would you prepare for your task? You'd want to do a thorough study of Chinese culture and customs. If you simply said, "No problem, I'm an American!" and neglected this study, you'd find yourself very ineffective as an ambassador.

Some believers today seem to take a similar approach to sharing their faith -- especially those who tend toward a "pietistic" approach to the Christian life. Pietism began in the 1800s, but it had a certain deficiency. According to Francis Schaeffer, "it was 'platonic' in that it made a sharp division between the 'spiritual' world and the 'material' world. The totality of human experience was not afforded a proper place." I think pietism has sapped the real life out of the Christian experience for many people. That's because one's spirituality never quite comes "down" far enough to integrate with the real world. We end up trying to be nice Christians, but too many areas of our humanity get left out. It no longer looks very attractive to those first investigating the faith, either. In fact, some nonbelievers may get scared away.

How might we change this pattern? We can remove this "sharp division" as we discover more and more how our spiritual life works in the physical world. As we learn to apply the Christian faith to our own life and world we become able to tell nonbelievers how it applies to theirs also. This opens many doors for the gospel.

We need to follow Christ's model of "contextualization." Contextualization means becoming identified with the opposing party and requires breaking through cultural barriers in order to establish communication. Through the incarnation of Christ, God crossed a rather large "cultural gap" to seek man, and identify with man, by actually becoming a man. God took on our context, and in doing so, He broke through two barriers that kept man from having a relationship with Him. What were these two barriers?

First Christ broke through our humanity barrier. Christ took on the flesh, cultural patterns, thought patterns, practices, and frailty associated with humanity. He left His world and entered into our world. Second, Christ broke through the sin barrier. He went to the cross and became sin on our behalf so we could be forgiven of our sins and come to know God personally.

In 2 Corinthians 5:20 we see that God has called every believer to be an "ambassador for Christ." How do we go about this task? We can do this by following Christ's model, breaking through the same two barriers He did. First, we need to break through the humanity barrier. Motivated by His love, we also need to enter into the world of nonbelievers, seeking to understand their context, and finding areas of common ground. This means that, without compromising, we are to get involved with real people and their needs, struggles, and intellectual doubts. Second, we need to help people overcome the sin barrier. We do this by sharing the gospel within their context, in a way that "makes sense" within another person's cultural and intellectual makeup.

In the next article we'll see how to make this model practical on a daily basis.