Artfully avoiding the real issues

"Come after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men".

We had two carloads tonight, which was exciting.. I was stoked to see such a big group. The group included Myself, Mark, Emmanuel, Sarah Jo, Kenny and Michelle, Luke, Spenser and Daniel.

Since we had 8 people, we split into 4 groups, and Sarah Jo and I teamed up. She wrote up a great report of the people that we talked to.

Here's Sarah's report (in italics)

Friday, we hit the streets again. I can officially say "again" since I am now a repeat offender. ;-) Two car loads went. Luke, Mark, Daniel and Immanuel were in one car, Kenny, Michelle, Jason and me were another car. We split into groups of two. I went with Jason since I’m still learning and didn’t need to say much. I was surprised to see that an area that had been teaming with people on my first trip was now lifeless. Jason told us that a lot of the clubs and parties have moved to another area so we might try witnessing in that area in the future.

We ran into a group of people outside an art gallery. Jason handed them a track which they started reading. Part way through one girl said rather accusingly “Oh, are you church people?” to which we had to wonder, ‘what exactly does that mean?’ but Jason told them where we went to church and then proceeded to have an in-depth conversation with two of the guys present. He started out talking mainly with Paul using the “good person test”. Paul believes that everything is chaos and that no outside moral standard exists nor is one written on our hearts (Romans 1). He readily agreed that he did bad things but tried to argue that we only think it’s bad because our culture has pre-conditioned us. He tried to use rape as an example saying that we define it a certain way and think of it a certain way because our culture, and that in ancient days what we consider rape was accepted. A girl in the group refuted him suddenly by saying it was wrong no matter how you put it. That was an encouraging surprise. About this time the group left except for Paul and another guy whose name is Robert? The conversation was all over the place but you could tell that Paul had some knowledge in the scriptures and was familiar with Christian terms. He revealed that his parents were Lutheran but seemed to have a big problem with the way Christians acted and used it to argue his point that there was no outside moral standard. He talked about the crusades, etc. It was really depressing. Jason made a good point to him that God hates hypocrisy, that God will judge righteously, and that He will take care of all those people who did wrong while proclaiming that they were doing right. Paul didn’t want to admit that he would have to answer to God for his own behavior. He didn’t want to admit what was written on his heart – the law of God – and that his own conscious testified against him.

Paul left and we ended up talking with the guy who was hanging around. He seemed a lot more open to the gospel. He talked about believing in Jesus and how it was all about how you feel and there’s forgiveness and grace. It almost seemed like he was using that as an excuse to say that he was okay in the scheme of things because he believed Jesus was real (not because he had repented). Jason pointed out that even the demons believe in Jesus and that, as a righteous judge, God may understand that you feel sorry but He can’t just let you off the hook. If a judge in our courts had a murderer, no matter how contrite and no matter if he realized what he did was wrong, the judge would not be considered “just” if he let the murderer go without consequences. Jason was trying to get at the point of Jesus and his death but we never quite got there. Robert kept veering to the topic of how you felt. He didn’t want the consequences, they didn’t feel good. I wanted to say, God cares about how you feel but He cares about your soul more. At that time the group came back (but not Paul).

Robert’s? attitude towards us was really positive and it was just as hard to see him come so close as it was to see Paul be so far away. The night ended on an awesome note because we asked Robert? if we could pray for him and the girl who spoke up earlier, Shannon, came over and was like – let’s do it!- and then she talked about how messed up her sister was and started telling us all this stuff that we could pray about. It’s amazing how open people are sometimes. I don’t think she was a Christian but when we prayed – she seemed really grateful and said “People still care.” I told her God cared- which may sound cliché but it’s true and the truth will stay with her far after we’ve left.