Silenced by fear of the killer-question

The following dialogue is fictitious but, as filmmakers say, “is inspired by real events”…

“I long to lead people to Christ but have trouble even speaking about Him. When it comes to it, I just bottle out, and feel deflated and disappointed.”

“What actually holds you back when the opportunity arises?”

“If I’m honest, I’m frightened that they’ll ask a question I can’t answer, and I’ll look ridiculous and ill-thought-through, and worse I’ll represent Christ badly, push people further away from Him, and dishonour Him in the process.”

“What would be a good outcome here?”

“I wish someone like John Lennox would come to my workplace to answer my colleagues’ scientific objections, or Peter J. Williams would come to our New Year family gathering to defend the reliability of the Bible!”

“But they aren’t coming, so what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

Those final three words turn out to be amongst the most important we can use in evangelism! There is a raw honesty in admitting what we do not know, which can in fact bolster the power of our testimony when we talk about things we do know.

I had lunch with an old friend, Richard, who told me what his career as a lawyer had taught him about evangelism. Perhaps surprisingly it wasn’t the power of brilliant argument! In preparing witnesses to take the stand, Richard would explain to them that the opposing counsel would try to make them speculate, assume, or guess answers to questions to which they had no direct witness testimony. This was a ploy to discredit their testimony before the jury. If they could place the man in the dock at the scene of the crime, then they should say a clear “Yes” to that. However, they would be very unwise to get drawn into speculating about when he arrived there, how long he stayed, or how he got there; if they didn’t know those things.

Learning to say “I don’t know” to such leading questions was so important that Richard used to get witnesses to stand in his office while he threw hostile questions at them so they could practice saying the critical words “I don’t know”, so that what they did know would stand up in court.

Richard has found this liberating in evangelism! This is because we are not required to know the answer to every question and fathom all mysteries; but to faithfully report on what we do know of the Lord’s grace in our lives. The message of the Bible is completely true, but it is not exhaustive. It doesn’t tell me why my friend died, and it doesn’t tell me when Jesus will return. But it does tell me enough to know Christ and live.

When fear of the difficult question mutes our witness, it is essential to learn that the words “I don’t know” can be honourable, true and fruitful! The worst outcome is to hide, fearing that killer question.

Richard helped me further because he observed that in evangelism we are but witnesses; the Holy Spirit is the lawyer who is assembling the whole case. Our job is to offer our testimony to the Spirit for Him to use as He presses His case, and brings an array of different voices to bear on proceedings.

Now of course, we can offer to look things up for people! There are helpful resources available on almost every topic, which can make wrestling with hard questions an opportunity for us to grow in our faith and understanding. It is really honouring to people to come back to them and offer to share what you’ve subsequently learnt about their question. What is essential is that we don’t deny people hearing the life-giving testimony that we can bring, because we have been silenced by the fear of the killer question; not liberated by a willingness to say “I don’t know!”