Another chapter 3 gem catching my eye here this morning … (p. 83)
When I witness, I do not take up a self-centered, asymmetrical stance closed off to the needs, wants, desires, goals, dreams, story, or insights of the person to whom I witness. That is to say, witness is not a monologue but is dialogical in nature.
I think this may be key to why so many people are turned off by apologetics today. So much of it is assymetrical. I.e. I have something for you … you have nothing for me. You need to shut up and just listen to me. I am the teacher … you are the learner. You are nothing more than a repository for the wisdom that I have to deliver to you, and in fact you are a responsibility of mine, which I mean to discharge by informing you of my received wisdom, thereby washing my hands of further responsibility for you and your rejection of my message. On judgment day, I want a checkmark beside your name so that I don’t get dinged for not fulfilling my obligation to you. Because it is all about me, and my own self-perceived standing before God.
That is putting it all in the direst, uncharitable terms - and (one hopes) that any self-styled modern apologists with any human sensibility at all would be properly horrified at the above characterization and think to themselves … “surely I don’t do that!!?”
And yet that is how so much of it is perceived and received (or more commonly … rejected). And when it is received, it might invoke the warning that “you travel far and wide to win a single proselyte, and when you do, you turn him into twice the son of hell that you yourselves are!” (or words to that effect, spoken by somebody who I think we all agree knew what he was talking about.)
Christians would do well to take stock of “the other side of the ledger” in this assymetrical imbalance that we unwittingly or even wittingly perpetuate.