Good News Gone Bad?

In America, sharing the Gospel is not just unnecessary, it’s violating the Great Commandment, says John Shore, author of I’m OK—You’re Not: The Message We’re Sending Nonbelievers and Why We Should Stop (NavPress). In this in-depth Q&A, he reveals why today’s Christians should forget that nonbelievers need to be saved—in order to show them the love of Christ.

Q. What do you believe is the greatest evangelical challenge we face today?

A. I believe what’s difficult about evangelizing today is what’s always been difficult about it: the fact that it’s tricky business indeed to simultaneously live out and fulfill both the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.

Q. What do you think is particularly difficult about that?

A: When I love a nonbeliever as much as I can—when, as the Great Commandment tells me to, I hold that nonbeliever as dear as I hold myself—that means that I love that person unconditionally, absolutely, truly. But the fact that that person is not a Christian means that I also want them to be a Christian, doesn’t it? And that means that I want them to change.

So there I am: Wanting to love someone unconditionally—which is to say, exactly as they are—and yet, at the same time, desiring that they radically change the very essence of who they are. Tough combo! If someone said to you, “I love you very much—but I’d love you more if you were really different than you are,” how would you feel about that person? Probably not too warm and fuzzy, right?

The question of how to love someone as they are, and desire them to change, is the dynamic I explore in I’m OK—You’re Not.

Q: But why do you think it’s so critical to love a nonbeliever exactly as they are?

A: For the very simple reason that people can tell when you don’t love them that way. People know when you’ve got an agenda for them—and they do not like it. I don’t like it when I know someone is trying to change me. Especially if what they’re trying to change me into is someone who thinks and believes as they do. Once I sense that the reason someone is in a conversation with me is because they want something from me—and especially if I understand that what they want is for me to be someone other than who I am—then I’m no longer interested in that conversation, am I? Then I feel, at best, like I’m just being sold something.

If I send the message to a nonbeliever with whom I’m meaning to fully engage that I desire them to be significantly different than they are, then I will alienate that person. And that means I will not have a relationship with them. And I can’t love someone with whom I have no relationship. And not being able to love someone means breaking the Great Commandment with them. And, as a Christian, that’s simply not an option for me.

Q: What’s your solution to the problem, then? How do you suggest that we go about living out both the Great Commission and the Great Commandment?

A: It’s my firm conviction that when dealing with nonbelievers, we believers have to completely set aside our desire for them to become Christians. We have to utterly ignore within us our natural drive to fulfill the Great Commission. It sounds weird—and I know it’s radical—but it’s right. And it works.

Q: But how can any Christian ignore their desire to fulfill the Great Commission?

A: Because we must. We must fulfill the Great Commandment, which is Jesus’ supreme, overriding directive to all of his followers. We must love the nonbeliever with everything we have in us. If, while we are loving a nonbeliever, we are also holding in our minds that we wish that nonbeliever would change into a believer, then to that extent we are disrespecting them: We are feeling that the choices they’ve made about God, the afterlife, morality, and so on, are simply wrong. If we feel that about so much of what’s vital in life the nonbeliever is just plain wrong, then we are, in one way or another, bound to communicate that—which means that person is going to be repelled from us, which means that with that person we are going to break the Great Commandment. And that’s unacceptable. So we must ignore our desire to fulfill the Great Commission.

Q: So you’re saying that we must simply forget that we want nonbelievers to be saved?

A: Well, of course it’s not possible to out-and-out forget that we want the nonbeliever to be saved. But as much as we can, we’ve got to respectfully set that desire as far as possible from our minds. And that’s a challenge, of course. But it’s one we can meet. And the reason we can meet it—the reason we really can absolutely ignore our concerns about the ultimate welfare of the nonbeliever—is because of the simple, joyous fact that here in America today, everyone already knows about Christ. In this country, the Great Commission has been fulfilled. Everyone is aware of what our faith is about. They know that Christ was God come to earth as a man; that He was born of a virgin; that He performed miracles; that He died on the cross for the atonement of our sins; that He was resurrected. Everyone is familiar with those basic truths of our religion.

That means that when I’m dealing with a nonbeliever, I can relax around the idea that they need to hear about Christ. I can rest assured that they have heard about Christ, that they have heard the Good News. That means the obligation to tell them about Jesus no longer belongs to me. That’s a wondrous, glorious thing, for which all of us modern Christians are of course deeply indebted to all the good, proselytizing Christians who came before us. It’s due to their amazing efforts that now, today, we can just be with nonbelievers, without having to worry about whether or not they convert. Now we really are free to simply love them, as Christ directed us to.

Q: But what if a nonbeliever in our life does want to know more about God? What if they do want a deeper understanding of Christ?

A: Then they can ask us! That’s the great moment; that’s what we want to happen, of course. We want nonbelievers to ask us about what makes our life work. And if we’re in a real relationship with them, sooner or later they will, because that’s exactly the kind of conversation real friends always have with one another. But if they don’t ask us about our faith—then we must wait until they do before we start the ever-alienating Christian Sales Pitch.

Love; get into a relationship; wait until God comes up. That’s it. That’s the only evangelical “method” that ever really works anyway. Beyond that, we can rest assured that if any nonbeliever out there wants to know more about God, then the Holy Spirit is moving in that person, and hallelujah for that. And the wonderful thing there is that anyone who wants to know anything at all about our faith is certainly not hurting for access to information about it, are they? Christianity is everywhere around us. We’ve got churches everywhere—we have radio shows, TV shows, movies, DVD’s, books galore, the Internet—it’s simply not possible for someone who wants to know about Christianity not to pretty quickly become immersed in it as deeply as they care to go.

That’s what’s so terrific about our time. It means that all we Christians now have to do, in our dealings with nonbelievers, is to obey the Great Commandment. If we love people, and they get interested in Christianity, then we’ll be able to point them to a million places where they can learn more about it. And the truth is, we’re much more likely to get them interested in Christianity if we just love them, than we are if we try to love them and convert them at the same time. That’s a mixed message we no longer have to deliver.

Q: So you’re not suggesting that we stop making the Good News available.

A: Absolutely not! Just the opposite. It’s vital that we continue to offer in so many ways whatever of the Gospel message anyone might ever want to hear. We should, of course, keep churches open, and preachers preaching and teachers teaching. Anyone wanting to learn about Christ should be able to rent a DVD about it, get a book about it, hear it on the radio, listen to it on the Web, watch it on TV. All of it that is pure gold, of course. And it all means that in our immediate, one-on-one relationships with nonbelievers, we’re free to simply and finally relax. The Commission’s already being taken care of. Our two-part obligation relative to our relationship with nonbelievers has now been effectively divided. The Commission has been, and is being, covered.

Our job, now, is to just love, love, love our neighbors. In the end, that’s all we can do anyway. What I think we too often forget is that conversion isn’t an intellectual experience; it’s an emotional one. No one converts because of information they get, from us or anywhere else. What causes a religious conversion is the direct, immediate experiencing of the majesty of Christ’s love. The absolute best thing we can do to help bring someone to God—ultimately, the only thing we can do—is to show them as much of Christ’s love as the Holy Spirit has put within us. We have to love others in the absolute way Christ loved us. And then we simply have to trust that God can take it from there.

John Shore is the author of I'm OK--You're Not, and Penguins, Pain and the Whole Shebang; he is also co-author of Comma Sense. John also blogs on Crosswalk.com and Christianity.com. He is currently co-authoring a book with Stephen Arterburn, author of the Every Man series. A resident of San Diego, you can visit John online at www.johnshorebooks.com , or email him at johnshore@sbcglobal.net.

-Outreach magazine, "Web Exclusives," July/August 2007

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