Billions of Reasons
There are eight billion people in this world, eight billion individuals, eight billion reasons to reject Jesus, but also eight billion reasons to receive Jesus!
Praise God as evangelists we are not required to be ‘personality wonks’ or social scientists! The wonderful truth is always that Holy Spirit will assist us as we reach out in Jesus’ name. It’s for a good reason that modern Christians speak of ‘God-incidences’ (as opposed to coincidences), recognizing that for a meaningful encounter (or an anointed conversation (chapter 11)) God has very often established the ground work in advance, and the evangelist’s task is simply to ‘chat Jesus’ in a meaningful, purposeful, and understandable way, relevant to the needs of the person whom we are encountering.
“A bruised reed he will not break” (Isaiah 42: 3) suggests we are always to be gentle and respectful. 1 Peter 3: 15-16 likewise encourages us: “in your hearts revere Messiah as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Messiah may be ashamed of their slander”.
Having said that, Holy Spirit goes ahead of us, especially as we have prayed in anticipation of outreach mission. It can be instructive to know a little about different types of people, by personality trait, and how they might immediately respond to discussion of gospel truth. Perhaps the best known modern personality assessment tool is the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator. A Christian evangelist does not really require this depth of insight – in fact too much emphasis on Mankind’s tools, based on Mankind’s wisdom, might even prove to be counterproductive, and muddy the spiritual waters! We must take people as we find them to be, and allow Holy Spirit to anoint the conversation (chapter 11 adds to this).
Despite what we have just explored, we can anticipate to a certain extent, four ‘typical’ types of negative response to gospel truth, and we can probably ‘recognise’ these responses fairly quickly as conversation opens up.
Let me explain the schematic below. If we look at people carefully we find they are likely to be motivated (or indeed demotivated!) dependent on their feelings/beliefs around their personal self-satisfaction, and their self-awareness and their awareness of others (i.e., their empathy, and their emotional quotient, or ‘EQ’ ). These insights and motivators can, in a sense, be tracked on a scale from ‘high’ to ‘low’. When ‘measured’ in this way we can in our mind’s eye sense how a person sees the world, and therefore how they are most likely to respond to the gospel. Seen in this way we can summarize that an initial response is likely to be one of: Hopeless > Hampered > Hostile > Hubris.
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In psychology, EQ, or Emotional Quotient, refers to Emotional Intelligence, the ability to perceive, understand, use, and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. This skill-set includes being aware of emotions, regulating them effectively, understanding others’ feelings (empathy), and applying this knowledge to guide one’s thoughts and actions, leading to better stress management, communication, and relationships.
Of course we recognize this as a snapshot. Truly each individual is different and none of us is one-dimensional (praise God!). Personality traits rarely fit ‘neatly’ into any one ‘box’, as they may seem to above! But with this acknowledgement, there is much value in ‘recognizing’ responses along these lines, for they suggest – in turn – how people may perceive the good news, and why they might reject it. Barriers to receiving Jesus may be real, or erected artificially, but an anointed conversation needs, in a sense, to ‘get past’ these barriers. Perhaps easier if you recognize them.
Incidentally, what is described above is in the context of present western culture (which itself in fraying and crumbling) and people from non-western cultures may have differing primary motivators and responses.
I suggest that someone who is, bluntly, very self-satisfied and cares little for others will respond with hostility, albeit that hostility may be masked, or not overt. A person with high self satisfaction and high empathy may be most likely to view this world with a degree of hubris, leading to the idea that ‘I don’t need God’ and indeed, ‘why on earth should I need God?’ A person with low self satisfaction and low empathy may well feel in myriad ways quite hopeless about their own situation, and that of the broader world around them. Those with high empathy but low feelings of self satisfaction may feel (and it may be no more than a feeling) that their kindliness towards others will be taken into account by ‘god’ – howsoever they perceive deity – and so they will rely upon their supposed ‘good works’ and nice, warm ‘feelings’ to justify them before ‘god’, if indeed a ‘god’ exists.
The good news is that the good news IS good news!
The good news is for all. The good news remains that we are all alienated from our Creator God by our own daily rebellions, and are thus separated from Him and the best that He offers to us.
Alienated and separated, we cannot be with Him as He is Holy and will not commune with what is unholy. In our ‘natural’ state we are unholy (Romans 3: 23). As we all have an eternal soul this alienation and separation has eternal consequences. But God does not leave us in this dreadful situation, and has already provided a remedy to our great ‘problem’ – not His problem, but our problem. Where we failed, the Lord Jesus succeeded. The lives we were meant to live, Jesus lived for us. The death we should die has already been dealt with by Jesus on the cross of crucifixion (where each of us was complicit in affixing Jesus to that cross). If we accept what Jesus has achieved and acknowledge our own rebellions against God, and if we are willing to change our ways (repent), then God adopts us to be part of His family. In doing so, He provides us with meaning in this life, and eternal communion with Him in the next.
Wow!
We could support the above with suitable Bible references, but at its most basic this is a reasonable and accurate summary statement of what we might call ‘the great transaction’. We give to Jesus our sins. Jesus gives to us His life. This basic insight does, indeed meet the realities of those locked-in to traits we describe as Hopeless > Hampered > Hostile > Hubris.
In the schematics above, there is a dove motif reminding us of the presence of Holy Spirit; whomsoever we encounter in outreach mission, it is Holy Spirit who will ‘make the difference’. Accordingly we pray for His presence, His wisdom, and His enabling. In that sense we (always) pray for anointed conversations during outreach mission. This is not so much because we have an ‘agenda’, rather it is because we have limited time and opportunity (and so do the people whom we encounter!) and a priceless message to impart.
Always, in any mission encounter, we seek to ‘recognize’ the folk we meet with and what are their needs and ‘motivators’. No one is beyond the reach of Jesus, no matter what barriers they may erect to avoid Him. Surely, we won’t get through to everyone – nor did Jesus Himself, but most people have at least some interest in Jesus and would truly like to know more even if they appear evasive. The bottom line in all this is that we need to rediscover, conversation by conversation, the great need to preach Jesus, and Him crucified – even if we are not actually ‘preaching’, but are rather in a conversation of equals seeking to explore truth claims.
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