THE SPIRIT OF THE THING - WHEN YOU WANT TO HELP, BUT THEY WON'T LET YOU.

God desires everyone to be saved and come to a knowledge of The Truth (1 Tim 2:4). But He’s not going to drag them into faith. Nobody is pushed or pulled into a personal relationship with Jesus, or with anyone else, for that matter. That’s not relationship; it’s coercion.

Paul aspired to become “all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some” (1 Cor 9:22). But he didn’t seek to yank them over to Christ. By his own words, he sought to win them over. With mercy and love.

But he only saved some. For all our best efforts, good intentions and loving care for those around us, nobody has a perfect record. Sometimes, you lose.

We all have that one person (some of us, more than one) who we truly want to come to church – or come back to church. We want them to know what we know about God, and to have what we have from Jesus Christ. We love them and we love Him, and we just want to be sure that they’ll be with us in heaven. It cuts us deeply to think they might not be.
               
So we invest immeasurable amounts of time in prayer for them (which is good), along with an abundance of pokes and prods, hints and invitations. We’ve tried for years. No luck.
               
The most common relational dynamic for this heartache and frustration is between parent and child, followed closely by grandparent and grandchild. The hard part is that usually the child is no longer a child. You cannot make them do anything, and they’ve grown hardened to your attempts to take them where they just do not want to go.
               
What happened here? You raised them up as Christians, going to church, baptized and confirmed, keeping the family tradition of faith. But somewhere in the journey, their passion and interest fizzled. They found other things more important, more interesting, more inspiring.
               
Whether this is your son or daughter, a long-time friend or someone you met more recently, you are in all likelihood encountering one of the Nones. These are the people – usually younger – who have left “organized religion” and adopted a more patchwork approach to spirituality, if they’ve given it any thought at all. The reality is that some have simply fallen away due to disenchantment, disillusionment or plain boredom. {In a world now driven by incessant stimulation and entertainment, i.e. video games, social media, etc., many people across the generational spectrum are hooked on the constant dopamine drip of artificial interaction}.
               
The Nones now make up almost 30% of the population if the US, according to Pew Research. Since 2-4% of the population is atheist or agnostic (included in the Nones), we’re talking roughly 83 million souls who are wandering, searching or substituting a generic homebrew for The Truth.
               
According to americannone.com, nearly 70% of the Nones are former Christians. The reasons they left are largely doctrinal disagreements, conflict with science and reason, mistreatment of the LGBTQ community, sex abuse scandals or other trauma in their church life, or profiteering pastors getting rich (I don’t think we have to worry about that last one here). To that list, those who embrace and glorify the None life add the instant internet exposure to other ideas and “advances in travel technology made it easier and generally more affordable to experience vastly different human realities on this planet, thereby dismantling inherited staid worldviews on a first-level basis.” {I’m really not sure what that means}.
               
So we are by no means alone in this consuming concern for the souls of those we care about who are categorized as unaffiliated, de-churched or whatever term we pastor types use to label (labels are also a big turnoff for the young). We also are not without hope.
               
Among those same souls, Pew Research tells us that over two-thirds still believe in God, and more than one-fifth pray every day. In other words, for many of these children of God, the seed that was planted however long ago is still alive.
               
And therein lies the key: how do we get back to watering and growing that seed? It can happen, but here’s a harsh reality: it probably won’t come from you.  Paul talks about that: “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants for he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow” (1 Cor 3:6-7). You may not be the one God has called to continue this process, as much as you want to make it happen. That’s hard.
               
Here’s what each one of us needs to do:

1. Pray again. Only this time, don’t tell God your plan. Ask Him for His, realizing you might be on the sidelines for this one.
2. Ask Him for a missionary. Pray the Lord to send someone into this child of God’s life that they will listen to, who will reach them and inspire them.
3. Love without lectures. Set aside the speeches and just love the Hell out of them. Literally. As Luther said, “Preach the Gospel; use words if necessary.”
4. Remember the goal. It’s not to get them to heaven. Or even to church. It’s for them to get connected or reconnected to Jesus, to discover or rediscover The Truth. Jesus will take it from there.
5. Repeat. Don’t give up. Your hope is not in how good you are at this, but in how good Jesus is at it.

 
To this I would add one key principle for the whole Community of Believers: Be the Church Christ designed and our children need.  I’m talking the Church as a people, not a place. People who love as loved and forgive as forgiven. Acknowledge that we are all sinners in need of repair and restoration, knowing that the Nones and the Somes and everyone else needs the same.  

Following Paul’s advice, we can become like those who don’t have It to win them over. “To the weak I become weak, to win the weak.” We don’t abandon The Truth, nor compromise The Truth. But we can find other ways to proclaim it, to reach the unreached or reconnect the disconnected.

A long-time saying in educational circles, more recently attributed to Ignacio Estrada, is this: “If I can’t learn the way you teach, maybe you can teach the way I learn?”

The Truth God wants everyone to know is this: There is one God and one mediator between God and us: Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all. (1 Tim 2:5-6).

In Christ,

​Pastor Steve Kline