https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=5tkW-wTV-Z8
What do you think is the right way for Christians to evangelize in the modern world? I personally have an instinct to try and explain the difficult parts of the Bible to friends and family in an attempt to help them see what I see in the stories, similar to what J.B. Pease seems to do, but something tells me that this is the wrong approach. Seeing as Jesus commands us to, any thoughts on how we might approach evangelization effectively? I think that the best way to evangelize is to become a saint, that’s for sure. The best way to evangelize is for people to see joy and love and meaning in your own life. That’s the thing that attracts people the most, even more than any argument you could do. People are attracted to those who have purpose and meaning and who have a stable foundation. Those who love their neighbors, all of that I think is the best way to evangelize. I also do think that there is room for a more engaged approach. One of the things that has happened in the past hundred years is that Christians have fallen back and back and back and back. Most Christians have taken on the scientific point of view as truth incarnate. I remember being a Baptist and hearing people say something like, modern science is just the mind of God. It’s like, wow, that’s crazy. But if you’ve taken that point, then they keep falling back, falling back, falling back, losing ground in the discussion. I do think that right now there’s a moment with the type of discussion that I see someone like Jordan Peterson doing, this whole discussion about consciousness, about the return of the phenomenological point of view, the problem of consciousness. All of these are opportunities to now help people see what the Bible has always been about and what Christianity is really about, the transformative aspect of Christianity. I think that right now there’s an opportunity to do that. Hopefully that’s what I’m trying to do as well. But for sure, it’s not the first way to evangelize. But I do think that it’s having an effect. I’ve seen it. I’m meeting more and more people. People are writing to me. And so I’m seeing that there is talking about scripture and about Christianity in that way and that kind of trying to understand it as a description of reality, trying to understand it as a description of the person in the world and this experience of the world and how it lays itself out to us, I think is a good way to do it right now. For $10 says, how do we edify the church? I try talking about metaphysics with people, but nobody seems to care. It sucks because if I make it political, it would be personal, but it’s too divisive. So I would say the best way to go for it is beauty. Beauty is not an argument. Beauty is just there. And so showing the beauty, let’s say showing the beauty of the patterns in scripture, let’s say in the church, that’s something that everybody loves. I’ve noticed it. Like it just depends on how you do it. When I sit with like an evangelical pastor, usually by the end of the conversation, the pastor is like is over the moon happy because I’m not there to confront him. I’m not there to criticize this thing. I just want you to see how beautiful this is. And so I do it and I talk about scripture and I point out the different parallels that they might not have thought about. And it’s like I’m giving him food that he can then use in his own sermons that he can use in his own stuff. And usually they’re excited about it. So I think that beauty is the best way to go about it. I found that arguing with people is rarely useful. It can be sometimes. Sometimes some people change through that type of arguing or and talking about metaphysics is really too abstract. If you understand the metaphysical aspect of Christianity, then you should be able to apply it and you should be able to manifest it rather than just talk about it. And so like I said, love and beauty.