What Should I Say to a Reformed Christian Who Dismisses Many Non-Believers as Lost Causes?

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What Should I Say to a Reformed Christian Who Dismisses Many Non-Believers as Lost Causes?

June 13, 2024

Questions about the best way to respond to someone who believes in double predestination and who dismisses many non-believers as lost causes and whether someone who believes they need faith plus works for salvation can still be saved by their faith.

* What’s the best way to respond to someone in the double predestination camp who vocally dismisses many non-believers as lost causes?

* Can someone who believes they need faith plus works for salvation still be saved by their faith?

Transcript

Once again, it's time for Stand to Reason's hashtag-STRask podcast with Amy Hall and Greg Koukl. Nice variation there Amy. I like that.

Okay, here we go with a question from John D. How do we effectively encourage Christians who are so often prone to withdraw, trust the Lord, let go and let God, or otherwise, bury their head in the sand when they come up against any issue that's controversial or emotionally burdensome, to get into the fight and take on the spiritual and ideological challenges of our day? Well, that's the problem, isn't it? It isn't like I have a silver bullet answer. The let go and let God mentality is actually a faulty understanding of sanctification. It goes back to the 19th century holiness movement, the Keswick movement out of England, and a number of books that were expressed that idea.

It's basically the exchanged life that Christ lives through me, and of course we don't take exception with that, but it's the way that that's characterized in their view. It's all of God and none of me. Let go and let God is the idea.

And I don't think that's a sound understanding of sanctification because, for example, I had this struggle the first few years, I was a Christian, and I read Hannah Whitehall Smith and Hannah Hernard, and I read Hudson Taylor and all of these who seem to operate and advance in this exchanged life mode. And these were all good people, and Hudson Taylor was one of the incredible missionaries of that period of time who opened up the Inland China for missions. But the problem is, and this is what I kept running into, is the Bible is filled with exhortations to behavior.

Do this, don't do that. And it wasn't so we could try to obey what it told us to do and got utterly frustrated, and then we finally give up, and we finally surrender, and then Christ lives through us. And that's the way it works.

No, that isn't. The exhortations, they're not to frustrate us, but to guide us. We are to discipline ourselves for the purpose of godliness.

That's Paul's statement. And so I take from that that we have a responsibility, and this is where I have kind of conjured this phrase 100% God, 100% man, that God is responsible for 100% of his side. It's all God, but it's also all to me.

It's 100% me for what I'm responsible for. And I think that's a much more sound, understanding of biblical sanctification. So when somebody says, let go and let God, it may be because this is their theology.

Now, from the way the question was phrased, though, I got a feeling like this is just a Christian who's lazy. And so the let go and let God as a way of spiritualizing their laziness. Oh, I don't want to do all of this.

This is too much work. It's too hard. All the things that were described there, how do we get them moving forward? And so they just over spiritualize their laziness to say, I just want to let go and let God.

Well, if you're letting go and letting God, why is it God doing anything in your life? You know, so that might be what's going on here. And the question is, how do you motivate then a lazy Christian? One that just fine with this grooving on whatever and not doing much and then especially finding spiritual excuses for that. And I don't know.

The church is filled with Christians like that. And you can pray for a person like that. You can give them examples from the scripture.

You can help them hopefully in discipleship, you're motivating. This is part of what happens in discipleship. We're encouraging one another to love and good deeds or whatever.

We are encouraging people to press on and to strive hard after the Lord and seek his face. And there's all kinds of phrases that we use to identify our aggressive pursuit of God. My soul follows hard after thee, the Psalmist writes.

Early in the morning, I'll rise up and greet thee. And so these are, this shows effort. Now, people don't want to do the effort.

Excitation plays a role. This is partly what preaching does. Good preachers will communicate these things and motivate people.

Prayer could help. But some people just, you just can't move them. And other people have character flaws that are very entrenched.

It was praying this morning about a circumstance. And maybe they love the Lord, but they just have this total blind spot. They never think they're inconsiderate on other people.

And you can point this out maybe if they're willing to see it. But, and then you wonder why isn't, why aren't they being convicted of their sin? And I don't know. Part of our role is to give feedback to people.

But that's all we can do. We can't change another person. We can exhort.

Well, what does Paul see in Second Timothy? Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with great patience, new teaching. Now that's a pastoral epistle. So he's giving advice to Timothy as a pastor.

But in general, it's a good RX for passive people. So let's get moving. However, even when pastors do that, reprove, rebuke, and exhort, people who don't want to move, don't move.

Or they move to another church. So you have this difficult circumstance where you have people who are, in a certain sense, in control of their own lives. And you can, as the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water.

You can't make him drink. It's only so much you can do. And if this is something that's important in Roger's life, which it may be.

This is John. Oh, this is John. Oh, I'm sorry.

Roger, get out of here. That was the last show. That was the last show.

This is important in John's life. Then, and I understand this particular dynamic, then there's only so much you can do. And God's got to do the rest if he's willing to do the rest.

And what I suggest is applying yourself to prayer regarding this individual and keep pressing until maybe God moves to change them to fire them up. Sometimes, by the way, what ends up firing up people is when they hit the skids. They hit a real low spot.

And then if you, John, if you're there for them, when they hit the low spot to help lift them up and then point them to Christ, that's what brings people oftentimes out of this apathy and laziness. So, so here are my thoughts on this. If you're worried, John, about people bearing their head in the sand, when they come up against an issue that's controversial or emotionally burdensome, you want them to get into the fight.

You wanted them to take on the spiritual and ideological challenges of our day. The first thing I would say is, I think people are overwhelmed because we are exposed to so many different challenges. And we're exposed to challenges we can't do anything about.

So, the first thing I would say is only push people to carry the things they were meant to carry. That's good. So, I mean, on my own, I'm not going to change this entire country.

And there are aspects of this country that I can't have any influence on, no matter how upset I get about it, no matter how worked up I get about it. So, I think we have to be wise about what pressures and that we take on to ourselves and what we take on as our responsibility. In many cases, I see people getting very upset about things when they actually have no possibility of having any effect on it whatsoever.

So, if you're getting upset at people for not being upset enough about things, well, maybe you're expecting things that are unreasonable or that we shouldn't take on. But there are certainly things that we can do in terms of the people we're interacting with in our lives. One of the best things we can do to combat the ideological challenges of our day is just to live a very good local life.

We are living in front of the people in our community. We're reaching out to them as neighbors. We're raising children well.

We're contributing to our local community. All of those things are actually very effective in changing the nature of the bigger picture. So, don't look down on that if that's what people are doing.

And that's what's on their mind to do because I don't think God brings everyone to a position where they're arguing things in front of the Supreme Court or they're teaching on a podcast, whatever it is. But the local level is also very valuable. So, if people are living well and they're living according to truth and they're not being influenced by the ideas of the culture and they're standing there as a bulwark, I'll be at a small one.

It adds up and it makes a difference in our culture as a whole. So, don't look down on that. But there might be ways you can get out of your bubble a little bit because part of the problem I think many people aren't even aware of what's going on out there because they live in their communities where people are very reasonable.

And they don't see all the things that are happening in certain areas of the country or with certain people or whatever it is. So, maybe you could think about ways to get people in your church out of their bubble. Can you invite their friends from work? Can you invite people with other ideas? Can you start discussion groups? I used to go to a meetup group where we would have people from all sorts of different ideologies and have these conversations.

So, if you can get outside your own bubble and you can start to see the damage that these other views are causing and I think that's what brings people into the fight when the damage hits home. When someone they know is having some trouble that comes from the ideology of the culture, that's when they get into the game. So, maybe there's a way you can bring that home to more people so they start to reach out to their neighbors and their families and just to have conversations.

And here's where tactics comes in. Because at the local level, the difference you can make may not be laws and things like that, but you can change people's minds just by talking to them about what they believe. So, even just using tactics and discussing things with people is a valuable thing.

And if people don't think that's valuable, they're not going to do it. So, that's something you can encourage. This really makes a difference.

You're spreading the truth, it grows over time and it makes a difference in the culture. So, I may have misunderstood the question. You're saying part of it, maybe not laziness, but maybe what John's expecting is for every Christian to be a kind of a cultural warrior for Christ.

And that may be asking too much. And having your one's own lane, so to speak, that you focus in. That's not laziness, that's just doing what you can do.

And for a lot of families, it's just raising the kids in the Lord and for a season, a long season, childhood, early adulthood, that's for many people, a totally full-time task. So, ultimately, we will all come into, well hopefully, if we're in, I guess it could depend, that we could be in an area of the country where we don't encounter anyone who believes things that we would disagree with. But for most people, you will come into contact with somebody who will start talking about what they believe and you might have a disagreement and you might think their beliefs are damaging.

And you started a discussion with tactics. That's where courage comes in. And that's where it goes beyond the other things I've already talked about.

So the question now is, how do you get the courage to talk to people about what they believe? Because again, for most people, this is probably the most that we will be able to do in terms of changing the culture. So it is valuable, but we need courage to do it. And here is where I just have a couple ideas for this.

And the first one is, we get courage from looking at who God is. And when you look at David and Saul, what you see is that every time Saul fails, it's because he's afraid. And when David succeeds, it's because he trusts in God.

That's ultimately what it is. He knows who God is and he trusts in God. Whereas Saul is afraid, oh no, the people are going to leave me.

They're going to do this. And he wasn't trusting that God would follow through with his promises. So that's the first thing.

We need to understand who God is. Secondly, we need to know who wins and what the consequences are. And this is why Revelation is at the end of the Bible.

And this is why Peter talks about, and I know I've said this before, this is why Peter talks about in his book, First Peter, on suffering and staying strong and being courageous in suffering. He talks a lot about the victory of God and how we suffer now, but we have glory later. So you have to have that in your mind also.

And then finally, I think you simply have to love the glory of God more than the glory of man. You have to care more about what God thinks and glorifying God with your words and your actions than you care about other people hating you or thinking you're a terrible person. Now, how we get there? Again, I think this involves relationship with God.

It involves reading about who he is. It involves knowing him and how great he is. It involves fellowship with other Christians.

All these things help. But I think that's where the courage ultimately comes from. And you have to just do it.

You have to practice. Tactics is so helpful. So I just think that is where people start.

And some people who begin with tactics will go on to create a bigger organization or they'll start to organize people to do bigger things that will happen. But you all have to start somewhere. So don't beat up on people for not starting a movement of some kind to fight the culture.

Just encourage them to start at this lowest possible level and then see what happens from there. Okay, Greg, I have a related question here from Dave. Greg recently discussed a SCOTUS decision restraining DEI indoctrination, a depressingly small victory.

We know how it ends. Jesus has overcome the world. But today it's a depressing world.

Any suggestions, Greg and Amy, to battle culture-induced melancholy? Well, of course, we all have to deal with this because we're all living in this culture and we're mindful of the impact of error and lies, cultural lies on individual people and groups of people. The decisions that culture makes, the trends in culture, influence lots of people. So influences a lot of people, they influence.

So I'm sympathetic, obviously, to this. I'll tell you what I do. I don't watch or listen to the news and I don't read news periodicals.

You mentioned, I'm not sure if it was, maybe it was just a little earlier, that there are, we can't, there's so much happening in the world that we cannot do anything about. And if we can't do anything about it, then why worry about it? Why? And the one hand, people have argued, it's helpful to know what's going on. Okay, kind of.

But on the other hand, when you learn about all the things that happen and all they do is generate anger and confusion, not confusion, depression, what's the point? Why continue to go over that? Now, there's a passage in Philippians that is meant to be applied to individuals, but I think can apply to broader issues too. And Paul says whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there's any excellence or anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things. Well, that's dealing with individuals, I think, but it certainly has application for culture.

Why dwell on some thing that's happening in culture that you don't like and have no way of making a difference on? And sometimes I don't know if we are saying beefing about something earlier off the air, but it got into something. I said, well, I can't do anything about that. I'm just, I'm just letting it go.

I'm not going to talk about it. Something political or policy-wise or whatever. So one way to deal with the melancholy, I think, is to not, what's the word I'm looking for, not obsess on all the bad things that are going on.

That we have no capability of having an influence on. No, you and I have a little bit different kind of capability because we have a bully pulpit. We have a radio show or we have a podcast.

We have thousands of listeners, so we can influence thousands of people by working on certain ideas and communicating that does help. But most people don't have that bully pulpit. And so if you don't have that ability to influence lots of people and change the circumstances, then there's not much you can do about it.

Why fuss and worry about it? Why focus? The last thing you do is evening news before you go to bed. First thing you do, newspaper, news reports or whatever, when you get up. No wonder you're melancholy all day long.

You start the day bad. You end the day bad. I'd rather start the day, not with all of that stuff.

And the news things that I do focus on a little bit more are things that are appropriate to my field, are things that I can speak on, I can do something about. So a couple of weeks ago there was a news report about suicide trends and how the concern is that suicide is going to become a social contagion, a fad. Most people can't do anything about that.

We can. So I can talk about it here and have a broader impact. So I have a certain lane that maybe is broader than most people.

But even so, I don't do deep dives into all this new stuff. I learn what I need to learn to serve the needs that I can serve. And then I don't go, I don't obsess about the other stuff.

I just let it go. And this goes back to what I said about only carry what you were meant to carry. We have a limit to what we can influence.

And that doesn't mean you don't look at anything, but it just means you have a realistic understanding of what you can do. And again, you can influence people around you, even if you're not, if you don't have a radio show. But I think when we're talking about how to combat the melancholy that comes about as you feel all these things are just coming down on this culture.

And we seem to be losing. Again, I just go back to the end of the book. And this is how God chose to encourage the Christians, the early Christians.

He had John right revelation. And revelation is the declaration by God that he wins. So no matter what it looks like now, no matter what suffering we're going through now, that is the future.

And I honestly think this is the key to our keeping going on these things. Now, all you have to do is look at the big picture of the whole Bible. Look at the prophets.

Look at Jeremiah. He was the weeping prophet. Look at the horrible situation he was in, but look what that led to ultimately.

That wasn't the end of the story. Look at Moses. Now, when Moses first talks to Pharaoh and says, you know, you got to stop.

You got to let my people go. And then what does Pharaoh do? He makes their job harder. And everyone says, this is terrible.

Stop trying to help us. But of course, that is only the middle of the story. And we know that God actually rescued them out of there.

So we can't have this short term view of all of reality. We have to be aware that God wins. And we have to keep reminding ourselves of that.

And then also, when you look at the fact that God uses terrible things to accomplish good things. So, for example, the cross. The worst sin ever committed happened on the cross.

And it was the best thing that ever happened to us. And think about when he was dying on the cross, how the people felt at that time, how the Christians felt. It seemed like the end.

It seemed like everything was over. This nothing worse could possibly happen than this. And I imagine they were pretty depressed.

But that wasn't just something that was going to change. That was actually the means that was going to bring the victory. Right.

Yeah, that's a good point. Momentary light affliction, Paul writes in Second Corinthians 4, is producing for us an eternal way to glory. And I like that passage because, in part because of the power of the verb.

It is the affliction that is producing this thing that's going to be better than it would have been had we not had the affliction. Better for us in eternity where neither moth nor rust destroy or thieves break it in steel as Jesus put it. So, I do take refuge in that a lot.

It is painful. I think the American experiment was noble and produced for 200 years, something magnificent, which is why people from all over the world have been the American dream, if you will, the American culture, all the good things that we have that are a result of godly men who build something based on a Christian understanding of reality, a Judeo-Christian understanding of reality with checks and balances and all these things to make it work. And then to see all of that kind of deteriorate before my eyes, not just in one lifetime, but just in the last 15 years to see so much of this just completely disappear.

It's painful. I don't want it to go away. I value the appropriate liberties that we've had, and I think it's created good for human beings, and there was human flourishing was the result.

But nevertheless, the kingdoms of this world are going to all crumble, ultimately, and before the kingdom of our Lord is ushered in. And that's going to be, of course, so much better than all the others, obviously. But it's painful going through the process.

So this is why looking at the end game is so important for us. And again, it makes such a difference to me, or at least this is what I focus on to varying degrees of success in overcoming the melancholy. But it makes such a difference to know that it's not just that, well, God's losing for a little bit right now, but then he's going to come back.

That's not the same as saying actually what is happening right now is furthering God's plan in some way, even though it's fighting against God. And this is why in Acts they quote that the Psalm about why do the nations rage against God? It's completely futile because God is, they can't ruin God's plan in any way. If we can just take some rest in that and continue and know that we suffer now and we have glory later, that is the way Peter describes it.

The temptation is to look for it all right here in this life. And there's wonderful things to be had in this life that God has appointed for us, of great world that he's made. But of course, sin corrupts everything.

And so it's not going to be as we like it in this life. There will be a time when the earth will be as we like it and we're going to be back on earth, one that's remade and it's not broken and be enjoying things beyond what we could even imagine. Well, thank you, John and Dave.

Great questions. And we'd love to hear from you. Just send your question on X with the hashtag STRAsk.

Or just go to our website at str.org and look for our hashtag STRAskPodcast page. We look forward to hearing from you. This is Amy Hall and Greg Cocle for a stand to reason.

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