Saturday, October 7, 2017
Indirection with David Roper
Saturday, October 7, 2017
“Let your speech always be
with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each
one” (Colossians 4:6).
"Seasoned with
salt" meant “witty” in Classical Greek usage and suggests language that is
pithy, interesting and well chosen. British theologian, G. B. Caird, commenting
on this verse, suggests that every person we address should be "treated as
an end in himself and not subjected to a stock harangue."
Case in point: I have a
friend—his name was Matt—who was invited to a dinner party in which he
discovered that he had been set up, brought in to witness to a man who loved to
bait Christians.
Throughout the evening the
man harangued Matt mercilessly about the evils of Christendom, citing the
Crusades, pogroms against the Jews, Apartheid, colonialism, the Ku Klux Klan,
the Inquisition, the Aryan Nation and churchmen throughout history burning one
another at the stake to the glory of God.
In each case Matt rolled
with the punch and calmly replied,”That’s an interesting point of view. Tell me
what do you do in your spare time? “Or he interjected some other query, showing
genuine interest in the man and deflecting the discussion away from the
dividing issue. (Sadly, under attack, like Peter defending his Lord, we
sometimes go straight for the jugular.)
As the two men were
walking out the door at the end of the evening the man fired one last salvo, at
which point Matt put his arm around the other man’s shoulders, chuckled and
said,”My friend, all night long, you’ve been trying to talk to me about God.
Are you some kind of religious nut? “The man’s animosity dissolved into
laughter.
Jesus was remarkably
oblique in his witness, using indirection, plying his listeners with metaphors,
analogies and whimsical comments that surprised them, subverted their minds and
went straight to their hearts. His practice bears imitation.
David Roper ~ 10.7.17
E-musings are archived at http://davidroper.blogspot.com
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment