Imagine that I am your doctor. You come to me and I check you out. I discover a terminal illness. I also know a sure cure. But in talking to you I sense that you want to get a good report from me so I tell you that you have nothing wrong with you and you leave happy. Did I help you? Of course not. My lying to you to spare you any discomfort today would be an outrageous breach of my obligation as a doctor. On your deathbed, you would not be saying that you were happy that you left my office with a good report. You would be cursing me for not telling you what was wrong when it was curable.
Now I hesitate to finish this comparison, because we are not spiritual doctors charged with diagnosing everyone's spiritual ills. But we do know the one major ill, which is sin. And we know the one sure cure, which is salvation in Jesus.
Often we have relationships which allow us to speak into someone's life. Our culture tells us not to offend or be judgemental by thinking our way is better than anyone else's way. We are told to build people up, not tear them down. But when we fail to point the way to salvation, we are not building up anyone; we are insuring their eternal doom. If we really believe what we say, we are being criminally negligent when we fail to point others to Christ.
3 comments:
I have to respectfully disagree with parts of this post. I don't believe that the "cure" for sin is Jesus. Whether a person is saved or not, they are still all sinners and sin will continue to be a part of all of our lives until the day when Christ sets all things right again.
Also, your post seems to imply that we as Christians must always do more than simply live a Christian lifestyle in order to help bring others to salvation. While I do believe there is a time and place for one on one "witnessing" as you would put it, I also feel that some Christians do too much "diagnosing" of sin in others' lives and that this does nothing more than turn others off to Christianity. I think we have to consider that our actions, how ever good the intentions, will do more harm than good.
Finally, and this is just the lawyer in me, to say we are "criminally negligent" when we don't tell others about Christ implies we can be criminally prosecuted for such a failure. Of course, this is not the case. :)
Correction: We have to consider that our actions will SOMETIMES to more harm than good. My original post makes it sound like they will always do more harm than good.
I admit that this post is a little "old school", and I voiced my hesitance at finishing the comparison because I have had unpleasant interactions with people who felt "led" to diagnose a spiritual problem in me.
I do agree with you that living out a Christian life is one of the most important (and underpracticed)types of witnessing. It is that life lived out in relationship with others that brings the invitations to speak into another's life about spiritual truths. I'm not a proponent of "cold call evangelism".
My point, although poorly made, is that if we truly believe that salvation is only in Jesus, and we pass up an opportunity to give that word to someone who is seeking spiritual answers, we are being complicit in keeping that person away from making an eternity changing decision for Christ. It may not be criminal, but it is inexcusable.
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