Excerpted From
Good News for a Change
By Matt Mikalatos
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ‘THEM’
“Why are Christian songs so creepy?”
I was teaching at a conference called Big Break. It took place in Panama City Beach, Florida, which is Mecca for partying college students over spring break. Cru (formerly called Campus Crusade for Christ) held a conference every year where about a thousand Christian kids would come together each week not to drink and party, but to sing praise songs, be trained in evangelism and hit the beaches to talk to people about Jesus.
Not all the students at this evangelism conference were Christians. Every week, for one reason or another, a handful of non-believing students showed up. You can imagine it might be a little weird. One particular student (let’s call him Brandon) had been dragged along to the conference by his sister, who had just decided to follow Jesus the month before. She wanted her brother to come hang out with her and her new Christian friends for the week.
I had spoken that night, and afterward I invited any non-Christians to come hang out with me, where we would discuss “How to survive a Christian conference when you’re not a Christian,” as well as the basic beliefs of Christianity (this, actually, was a brief presentation of the “universal gospel”). Brandon, along with five other students, had come to hang out.
During our conversation, he asked me, “Why are Christian songs so creepy?”
“Can you give me an example?”
“Yeah, that one song was so weird. ‘Consume me from the inside out’?! What, you want God to eat your guts? It’s so gross.”
I didn’t laugh, but I did grin at him. I was so delighted by the question. The song is from an Australian praise group called Hillsong United, and it’s sung often and with great gusto by Christians all over the world. I’m guessing there weren’t many people sitting in church and thinking to themselves, What am I saying? Do I really want God to devour my innards?
“Anything else?” I asked him.
“Yeah. Why do Christians hate sheep? You’re always singing about slaying them, about taking baths in their blood. It’s weird and it’s gross. I don’t understand.”
Believe it or not, Brandon’s creeped-out feelings about Christian praise music was the key to him hearing the good news about Jesus. But not the good news I expected. And I’m pretty sure it’s not the good news you are expecting, either.
I started by telling him it was perfectly normal to think those things were weird. Then, using simple words and leaving out the more complicated details, I explained to him about the sheep. I told him a short version of the Passover story. I told him about the Jewish sacrificial system, and how sheep were killed as an atonement for the wrongdoings of the people.
“That’s horrible,” Brandon said. “Do they still do that?”
“No,” I said. “Let me explain that, too.” He was still interested and asking questions, so I went on. Then I got to the important part. The good news! “So,” I said. “People deserve to die because of the wrong things they’ve done. But Jesus (God) came to earth as a human being and even though he had done nothing wrong, he was killed. He came back to life to show God’s power over death and to invite us into relationship with him! Because of Jesus, people don’t have to die. They can choose to live forever with God.”
Mission accomplished. Good news delivered!
“What about the sheep?” Brandon asked.
“What?” I didn’t understand. Brandon was off script.
“What about the sheep? Do they still have to die?”
“No,” I said. “No, since Jesus died, the sheep don’t have to die.”
“Wow!” he said, and his face lit up. “That’s really good news!”
BRANDON’S GOOD NEWS
Jesus didn’t die for sheep. Did he?
Doing away with slaughtering sheep might be good news for Brandon, but is it really “the gospel”? Can Brandon’s relief that sheep don’t have to be sacrificed and Christians don’t bathe in their blood be sufficient to bring him into a saving relationship with Jesus? Seeing the good news through the eyes of someone who doesn’t yet know Jesus gives me deeper, more beautiful insights into the good news myself. See, the alteration to the sacrificial system has never been part of my personal good news. Maybe it’s because I’ve never had to buy a sheep and walk it down the temple. I’ve never raised an animal only to kill it. And while Brandon’s good news is not part of the universal good news, he showed me a truth about the good news of Jesus I hadn’t ever really considered: Jesus’ death created a fundamental shift in Christian (Jewish at the time) religious practice that allowed us to move away from animal sacrifice. Sheep don’t have to be sacrificed anymore, thanks to Jesus. And Brandon’s insight is good and beautiful and has so many interesting theological echoes as I consider creation, the role humanity is meant to take toward animals and the creation and the intense care God shows toward all the things he has made.
It’s beautiful that Brandon’s good news became mine, just as mine became his. I learn more about Jesus by seeing him through Brandon’s eyes. A non-believer shared the good news with me! And he gave me the gift of understanding how God was bringing the good news to him, outside of my preset expectations. A lot can happen when we set aside the plan and join God in his endlessly creative pursuit of the ones he loves.
FINDING GOOD NEWS
In the 1960s, Dr. Bill Bright (Campus Crusade for Christ’s founder) came up with this idea for a great way to present the good news called the Four Spiritual Laws. At the time, most evangelistic conversations started with some version of “You are a sinner.” In other words, “You are terrible and you are going to burn in hell.” The good news (of course!) was that Jesus could save you from your fate.
Dr. Bright added a new, simple point before “you are a sinner”: God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. This addition wasn’t without controversy, which seems strange all these years later. But there were people who felt that starting with God’s love “softened the gospel” and would cause a weak, flabby Christianity (online you can find plenty of people talking about how the Four Spiritual Laws is unbiblical, which is ludicrous—it’s chock full of biblical backup and says only things which have been orthodox theology for centuries).
Notice what Dr. Bright’s good news focused on: forgiveness of sins and eternal life in heaven through Christ. The main message of the Four Spiritual Laws is this: You can live in heaven with God. Or, as the more updated version says, you can know God personally. Thousands and thousands of people have decided to follow Jesus as a result of this little booklet. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. I know people who came to Christ years ago through that booklet and are still in deep, vibrant relationship with God today.
But let’s think about this: The Four Spiritual Laws, as great as it is, tends to focus on one selective piece of the good news. What if the person reading it doesn’t see anything in there that sounds like good news? What if heaven isn’t good news to someone?
I’ve been doing evangelism among college students for the last 20 years or so. And here’s what I’ve noticed: As millennials started entering college—from the early 2000s through today—the students I speak with are increasingly unconcerned about heaven and hell. By unconcerned, I mean precisely that: It doesn’t mean much to them either way. It’s not of interest. That’s not to say no one cares about it, or that there aren’t individuals who would like to talk about it at length. But overall, as a generation, they don’t much care—especially compared to previous generations.
In fact, more than once, I’ve had a student say something along these lines: “I don’t care about what Jesus will do someday in the future, after I die. What is he going to do today?”
Is eternity in heaven good news? For some people, absolutely.
But these students shrug when I ask them. “I guess so.”
You know what really interests those same people? The idea that God has something to say about our world today: sex trafficking, child abuse, racial discrimination or the rights of various minority groups. For some people, the statement “God has a plan to fix the broken places in the world” is far better news than “You can go to heaven.”
Likewise, many students I talk to today are interested in God’s plan for dealing with sin, not because they want to be saved from the “wages of sin” but because they want a way out from the terrible weight of brokenness in their daily lives. They’d much rather hear how Christ can help them become better people today than hear about how Christ can save them from sin-related spiritual death in the future.
The Bible is clear that both these things are true: Jesus can save us from the penalty of sin as well as the daily side effects of sin (the theologians call the first one justification and the second sanctification). If sanctification is more interesting than justification to someone, why wouldn’t I steer the conversation to the more relevant topic? Both are good news. But which one is better news to the person I’m talking to?
And by the way, that’s precisely what Dr. Bright did in the 1960s. He noticed that starting with “you are a sinner headed to hell” didn’t seem like good news to people. So he added some more good news about Jesus. And the news that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life still sounds pretty good to a lot of people.
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Taken from Good News for a Change by Matt Mikalatos. Copyright © 2018. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.