I like to think that I am a logical thinker. For the most part, I don’t think that’s an unreasonable self-assessment. No one is perfect and we’re all prone to mistakes. In our choice of lifestyle, the things we do, say and believe.

When our theology is challenged, it doesn’t do us (or anyone else) any good to stick our head in the ground and cling to what we think we know.

I’m not an atheist because I have found the arguments presented by Christianity are more compelling, though not without it’s intellectual challenges. I’m not a Catholic because I’ve found the arguments presented by the Protestant part of the church more reasonable. I’m not a Methodist because I’ve found the doctrines of Reformed theology resonate more deeply with scripture. I could continue, but I think you get the point.

Without healthy debate, I would not have come to any conclusions at all and, in all likelihood, I would probably still be a bitter, cynical, proud agnostic (though I don’t mean to imply all agnostics are—but I was). I am much better off now than I was then.

Religious belief is a great taboo of our age. Individualism is so prized among us that a debate over such things seems to shake us to our very core. Simply vocalizing our disagreement with one another has the effect of a huge personal attack.

But I think this is a disservice to ourselves and to each other. We will not all agree on all things. Sometimes our disagreements will be small, other times huge. But, the fact that our potential for wrongness is ever-present means that if we to grow and improve ourselves, we have to be willing to be wrong. Or at least entertain the possibility.

All of that been said, I would like to invite healthy debate. Even over this, if you like. For the Church, I would like us to come to grips with what we believe. Whether we agree or not. But that will definitely mean engaging one another’s differing opinions and beliefs with respect and humility.

So, let’s do that. Emphasis on the respect and humility part.

In Have you ever read Romans 14:13? It goes like this:

“Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother”

I think I hear this verse (and others like it) way too often. It’s usually used as kind of a blanket verse. A trump card to avoid tense situations. Billy is drinking a beer and Betty thinks it’s wrong. Rather than Billy and Betty having to deal with the tension of holding differing convictions, it’s argued that Billy shouldn’t drink beer because it’s causing Betty to ‘stumble’.

Is it? Or is her sense of right and wrong taking offense at Billy’s differing opinion? They’re not the same thing.

Admittedly, this is not a topic that I have thoroughly thought through. There are still quite a few questions and points of contention in my mind over it. But the overarching issue, I think, is relatively clear.

Consider the verse, Proverbs 27:17:

Iron sharpens iron,
and one man sharpens another.

Is it possible for iron to sharpen iron without friction? No, of course not. Friction is more or less why iron can sharpen iron. Likewise, I can’t think of too many times that a brother refined me apart from my own convictions rubbing against theirs. For us to benefit from one another as believers, our sense of right and wrong must be offended some times.

In Romans 14, Paul does not want to cause a brother to stumble by eating meat. After all, many of his Jewish brothers would be violating their conscience by eating meat. But eventually, they did eat meat. There are very few Christians today who refrain from eating meat for biblical reasons. How’d this happen? At some point someone’s convictions must have been offended causing them to reconsider their resolves, ultimately allowing them to change their views and eat meat with a clean conscience.

In the situation with Billy and Betty, Billy shouldn’t entice Betty to drink beer, nor should he drink beer if Betty is feeling the urge to do so—thus violating her conscience. However, I don’t think Billy has much obligation to Betty’s preferences beyond that.

If we allow the definitions of ‘stumbling block’ and ‘offended’ and ‘conscience’ to be convoluted, then we’ll be restricted from just about everything. There aren’t many topics that Christians unanimously agree on and how specifically to live this life is far far far from being on that list. That’s okay. But it means that topics like this one shouldn’t be carelessly understood and hidden behind.

It usually results in more irritated conflict and threatens to stunt our spiritual and relational growth.

When it comes to an evangelistic lifestyle, we usually think of it in a kind of self-centered way. It has to do with what I am doing and the way that I am doing it and before whom I do it. But the reality is that an evangelistic lifestyle is a vast web of interconnected parts, of which you only have real influence over about 1  in 2 billion.

By evangelistic lifestyle, I mean living life in such a way that the spiritual conditions of unbelievers around you hold a high priority. Choosing words wisely, constantly remembering their need for the savior and affecting your actions accordingly.

As I was reading in Psalms today, David writes something that got me thinking about the evangelistic lifestyle: Psalm 69:6:

"Let not those who hope in you be put to shame through me,
   O Lord GOD of hosts;
let not those who seek you be brought to dishonor through me,
   O God of Israel."

Now let me say outright, the thoughts this verse provoked are not the context of David’s words. This is part of an entreaty to God not to allow him to fall for the sake of the faithful who would suffer because of it. However, I think that my thought can be found here, at least at some level anyways.

What occurred to me as I was reading is that almost no one judges anything in isolation. I mean that people rarely assess anything based entirely on itself. Someone might have a poor opinion of a good movie, based on the main actors bad performance in another movie. Often people want nothing to do with church, because of the church they went to growing up. I contend hat it’s rare for someone to form an opinion of anything based entirely on whatever it is before them.

If this is true, then when we hope to represent our Lord to those around us, they’re not going to judge us in isolation. They’re going to judge us first through the lens of about 2 billion other Christians on the planet (or at least the group they’re most exposed to) and what they’re doing.

Therefore, the evangelistic-lifestyle is vastly larger and more complex than simply what I do or don’t do.

This probably falls somewhere between discouraging and pacifying. Discouraging because it would seem that there’s no hope in swaying the lost because of the awful conduct of Christians historically and currently. And pacifying because being such a small peice of something much larger makes one feel like making any real change is impossible.

But, these things are only true if you remain in the me-centered type of evangelistic lifestyle I mentioned in the beginning. If indeed we’re a part of a web which helps form public opinion and that web is muddying up your personal ministry, then by all means, be discouraged. But, it’s not me-centered. It can’t be.

See, while we engage in ministry day to day, living our faith, we’re not only connected to this web of culture-opinion setters, we’re part of someone else’s web too.

When we stop for dinner on the way home, we might be tired or stressed out. If we fail to represent our Lord rightly, then we may be hindering someone else’s ministry. Perhaps that server is in some other Christian’s sphere of ministry. By failing to love as the Lord loves, we may have placed a block in another Christians evangelistic efforts.

Of course, in a perfect world, it wouldn’t be like this. People would make their decisions about Jesus based on Jesus, not us. But then again if this were a perfect world, we wouldn’t need to tell people about Jesus at all.

So, when it comes to the evangelistic lifestyle it’s important that we remember that our ministry is about as big as the entire body of Christians, at least in a local sense. And, in the same way that they can make ministry difficult for us, we make ministry difficult for them. This is another excellent reason for us to act very cautiously at all times, for the sake of our own ministry and for the sake of someone else who may come after us.