Preaching Truth to Postmoderns
Last friday night while preaching the gospel Charlottesville, VA I had one of my favorite hecklers return to me.
This is the second time in three weeks I have preached the Gospel in the downtown mall in Charlottesville. This is the second time she has showed up.
Her name is Ryan. She's in eighth grade.
Ryan is the typical middle school girl. She is in love with her own ideas, her own view of the world and she is above anything else incredibly postmodern.
She has the idea that if God is true, then he would be ALL-loving. ALL-forgiving and willing to accept anyone from all faiths. Afterall she is incredibly post-modern.
She really doesn't like us preaching. She hates it. Every time we preach Ryan runs to the CVS and spends her own money on a poster board and writes some messages that are supposed to take some attention away from us. Last week the sign read "Freedom from Religion means Freedom from Decision", this week the signs read "Imagine there's no Heaven, Imagine there's no Hell - John Lennon"
I got to talking to her again this week and she said that I made her cry last week because I told her that holocaust survivors deserve to go to Hell. It amazes me how she wanted to make me look evil by using a trump card to show me the most pitied men in all of time, and how dare I would say that their earthly torture would allow them access to heaven.
After speaking to her some more for awhile I told her to leave.
"Ryan, leave...you hate us, go away!" I told her.
She responded as I knew she would "No!, I'm not done"
I replied "Why don't you leave if you can't stand what were doing, why don't you flee" She didn't say anything.
So I told her "Admit it, there is something deep inside of you that really likes seeing people standing up for what they believe in"
"Yea. I do."
Open Air Preacher. I submit to you that the best way to share the Gospel to those who deny truth is to boldly stand and proclaim it.
You are a mystery to a postmodern world. When you stand in the middle of a busy shopping center, intersection, or street corner and proclaim truth to ears that don't believe in truth...they become as moths to the flame. Completely annoyed, yet strangely attracted, unable to flee from the beautiful glow.
And yes. They hate it. They despise it. But deep down, they want to stand for something. They want to be able to fight for something. It may not be God. It may not even be moral. But God can use their desire for meaning and bring them to awareness of the Truth, the only Truth which is Christ.
So please pray for Ryan. Pray that God will use our stance on God's truth to draw her to himself.
This is the second time in three weeks I have preached the Gospel in the downtown mall in Charlottesville. This is the second time she has showed up.
Her name is Ryan. She's in eighth grade.
Ryan is the typical middle school girl. She is in love with her own ideas, her own view of the world and she is above anything else incredibly postmodern.
She has the idea that if God is true, then he would be ALL-loving. ALL-forgiving and willing to accept anyone from all faiths. Afterall she is incredibly post-modern.
She really doesn't like us preaching. She hates it. Every time we preach Ryan runs to the CVS and spends her own money on a poster board and writes some messages that are supposed to take some attention away from us. Last week the sign read "Freedom from Religion means Freedom from Decision", this week the signs read "Imagine there's no Heaven, Imagine there's no Hell - John Lennon"
I got to talking to her again this week and she said that I made her cry last week because I told her that holocaust survivors deserve to go to Hell. It amazes me how she wanted to make me look evil by using a trump card to show me the most pitied men in all of time, and how dare I would say that their earthly torture would allow them access to heaven.
After speaking to her some more for awhile I told her to leave.
"Ryan, leave...you hate us, go away!" I told her.
She responded as I knew she would "No!, I'm not done"
I replied "Why don't you leave if you can't stand what were doing, why don't you flee" She didn't say anything.
So I told her "Admit it, there is something deep inside of you that really likes seeing people standing up for what they believe in"
"Yea. I do."
Open Air Preacher. I submit to you that the best way to share the Gospel to those who deny truth is to boldly stand and proclaim it.
You are a mystery to a postmodern world. When you stand in the middle of a busy shopping center, intersection, or street corner and proclaim truth to ears that don't believe in truth...they become as moths to the flame. Completely annoyed, yet strangely attracted, unable to flee from the beautiful glow.
And yes. They hate it. They despise it. But deep down, they want to stand for something. They want to be able to fight for something. It may not be God. It may not even be moral. But God can use their desire for meaning and bring them to awareness of the Truth, the only Truth which is Christ.
So please pray for Ryan. Pray that God will use our stance on God's truth to draw her to himself.
posted by Marcus Pittman at
6:48 PM
2 Comments:
"It is impossible to express the great pleasure and delight which religious persons feel in the lowest prostration of their souls before God when, having a deep sense of the divine majesty and glory, they sink to the bottom of their beings, and vanish and disappear in the presence of God by a serious and affectionate acknowledgement of their own nothingness, and the shortness and imperfections of their attainments."
I have yet to meet any modern day open air preacher who lives his life with these words weighed heavily in his own heart.
She's also a middle schooler though. Perhaps she needs to be understood. By all means do not shrink back, but acknowledge her and encourage her, plead for her, explain to her, dignify her.
I know that the word of God is the miracle worker, but remember that the doctrines of grace are about grace.
Do not stop preaching the death and resurrection of Jesus, by any means. Likewise, don't give her opinions any weight. But perhaps God has sent her to you so that you might get under the heart issue. Perhaps she was raised by fundies who starved her of the gospel and would only preach to her the law, and that unlawfully.
Of course she is wrong. It's doesn't take an apologetical miracle to get there. But her opinions probably have a lot more to do with her own rebellion and spite against her view of "religion" than the logical inconsistencies and fluffiness of her positions.
Approach her humbly knowing that it literally took a miracle to convert you yourself, and meanwhile plead to God in humility that she may share in that same miracle of new birth.
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