Even though he denied ever calling, I’m pretty certain he has called before, and I’m even more certain that he takes pleasure in calling churches and ministries and blowing unsuspecting and unprepared Christians out of the water. It was now time to get to the “question.”
“Look, I just don’t have time today to fight for the next hour. It sounds like you have your mind made up on Jesus and I’m pretty sure I do too. I think we’ll both hang up thinking we’ve each won the conversation. We are a ministry that cares deeply about truth, but we have more important things to do than fight. I think we should simply not have this conversation. I don’t think it’ll be helpful for either of us,” I said.
“Look, I’m not going to fight. Can’t you simply have a conversation? Are you so brainwashed that you can’t even talk about how clear it is in Scripture that Jesus is not God?” he replied.
After a couple back-and-forth statements where I was trying to hang-up and he was trying hard to get me to enter into his opening “question,” I decided to engage on a very particular line of argument. We had each flexed our muscles enough to let each other know that both of us were decently fluent in the original biblical languages, Latin statements and Church History. Yet, I wanted to engage in a way that I thought would catch him off guard. This guy had clearly had many of these conversations. What could I offer that would be any different?
“OK,” I said, “I won’t hang up and I’ll try to answer your question if you will do one thing first.”
“What?”
“Tell me what my five best arguments are against your position.”
“What?”
“You’ve obviously talked to many people in this way using these same arguments. What are my best five arguments against you.” I waited for just a split second before he responded.
“There are none.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe what he said. “You don’t think there is any reason someone would believe Jesus is God?”
“That’s right, there isn’t one reason any thinking person reading the Bible would believe Jesus is God.”
Our conversation, unfortunately, went on for a while longer, but I have been haunted by his response. This guy was so steeped in his view of Jesus being a creature that he couldn’t imagine even one reason someone with a brain and a Bible would believe contrary.
One reason I was haunted by this guy’s response is I started to fear that I might sound the same way to someone else I am trying to talk to about Jesus.
I think all of us need to get a whole lot better at “Role-Playing for Jesus.”
