There’s a new person at church. As you welcome them and get chatting you realise she’s actually new to Christianity altogether – she’s part of the growing wave of seekers looking for something more.
You’re full of excitement and gratitude to the Lord, until… “So can I just ask, what does this church believe about LGBTQ+ people?” Your stomach drops into your shoes. Why did she have to ask about that?
If you can relate to that reaction, I don’t think you should feel guilty about it. It’s not a mark of cowardice or a lack of faith in God’s Word. It’s a deeply Christian instinct. We don’t want to start their journey towards faith with hot topics of political debate. We want to start with Jesus.
So I think sometimes the best way to answer that kind of question is not to answer the question at all. What if, instead of either outlining the Bible’s doctrine of marriage or curling into a ball with embarrassment, we gently suggested, “I think it’s actually impossible to grasp the Christian teaching on that issue unless you’ve got your head around who Jesus is. Christianity starts with Jesus himself and everything else flows out from there. What impression have you got of Jesus so far?”
That might lead to a much more fruitful conversation. But it’s not just a tactic; it’s the truth! How many of us have come to believe in Jesus because we found the Bible’s teaching on sexuality compelling? There might be a few. But how many of us have come to trust the Bible’s teaching on sexuality because we found Jesus compelling? That’s certainly how it worked for me.
As we see more people without any church background getting curious about faith, it will be tempting for them and us to let the culture set the agenda for how they explore Christianity – whether that’s someone coming to church “from the right” because they like the idea of Christian values in the public square, or someone coming “from the left” who’s deeply suspicious of those values. But Christianity doesn’t really make sense if you approach it from the edges and work inwards. It only makes sense if you start at the core. The risen Christ is the beating heart of everything; it all flows out from him.
"But Christianity doesn’t really make sense if you approach it from the edges and work inwards. It only makes sense if you start at the core."
I would be the first to put my hand up and say that pretty much nothing I believe makes sense without Jesus. But if Jesus genuinely died and rose from the dead, that changes our perspective on literally everything. If Jesus rose, that vindicates His claim to be our Creator in the flesh – which means He knows how we were made to live. If He died in godforsaken agony for our sake, then we know He wants the best for us. And if He went through the cross into resurrection life – through what looked like miserable ugliness into glorious joy and wholeness – then suddenly it makes sense to believe that even when His teaching sounds hard or counterintuitive to us, He really is leading us into life to the full.
If someone is curious about Christianity, then, like Paul in Athens, I want to do everything I can to get them thinking about “Jesus and the resurrection” (Acts 17v18). If Jesus rose, our deep longings for hope and justice finally make sense. It would tell us everything we need to know about God, how He feels about us, and what lies beyond death. And there are so many compelling reasons for us to be confident that the resurrection really happened.
I came to trust Jesus 15 years ago because I was convinced that He must have risen from the dead – and everything has flowed from that ever since. In recent years I’ve seen the same thing in others time and time again: if people grasp the reality of the crucified and risen Christ, that changes everything.
So let’s take the initiative. Let’s encourage people not to start at the controversial edges but to dive straight in and get to grips with the heart of it all – the truth that transforms our thinking about everything else – Jesus is alive.
