Whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse,
and he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury.
Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you;
reprove a wise man, and he will love you. | Proverbs 9:7–8
I ended my last blog post with a reference to ‘shaking the dust off of your feet.’ This phrase comes from Matthew 10, where Jesus sends the disciples out to evangelize. He tells them that if they are rejected, they can shake the dust off of their feet as both a clearing of their conscience and a declaration that there is a consequence to not accepting what is offered. This is a gift to us who labor over those who are lost, as it allows us to not carry the weight of another’s faith with us.
However, I feel that too many times, Christians use this phrase to justify giving up on people. If someone seems to push back on us or has a hard time with the proof Jesus offers, we feel justified in simply never bringing it up again. In this, we aren’t just keeping the peace or honoring them through silence, we are declaring them not worth the trouble. We are deciding that they are worth leaving behind.
Another on of Jesus’ phrases is often used in conjunction with this:
“Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. | Matthew 7:6
A definition of this from a website I respect described it this way:
We are responsible to share the good news; we are not responsible for people’s response to the good news. Pigs don’t appreciate pearls, and some people don’t appreciate what Christ has done for them. Our job is not to force conversions or cram the gospel down people’s throats; there’s no sense in preaching the value of pearls to swine. Jesus’ instruction to His apostles on how to handle rejection was to simply go elsewhere. There are other people who need to hear the gospel, and they are ready to hear it.
There is nothing there I don’t agree with, BUT, I think we need to be very careful before we label someone a pig. Our desire to be productive and to ‘win as many as possible,’ can make us over-eager to place a label on someone so that we don’t have to deal with them. I think that this is especially true of those who have been raised in the church and are confronting a certain amount of doubt and struggle with all that they have been taught to believe. The journey of faith is not always as simple as we want it to be. A person who is working through the limits of God’s proof and the necessity of surrender that faith requires, should not quickly be cast aside as a dog or a pig. To give it another Biblical term, they may just be a lost sheep. Often the process of being found takes some time. I was reminded of this last week when I read this:
For most people, coming to faith in Christ is not a Damascus road experience. It is not one gigantic leap up Mount Improbable, but rather an evolving faith over a period of time, with the Holy Spirit using a number of factors, including evidence, experience, the Bible, coincidence, friends, foes and family.
This evolving faith may at times not look like faith at all; we have to learn to be patient with the doubt of others if we are going to be there when it is God’s time. I want to make sure that we don’t lump the skeptic in with the antagonist. A skeptic is a person who has a heightened sense of reservation that will not give trust away easily. An antagonist has already given their trust away and the source of their trust is at odds with the God. One is searching for God, the other already has a god. The problem is, both will challenge, questions, and even make false assertions against God. It is often very difficult to tell one from the other.
We don’t have to. Rather than trying to decide decisively if a person is a skeptic or an antagonist, we should simply be available to them. When they have something to work through, we are there. When they have a question, we are there. When their worldview falls apart or the thing they invested in doesn’t pay out, we are there, not to prove our rightness, but to offer something better. Christians have become adept at cutting toxic people out of our lives, but this should not be. We should be the place that toxic people find hope. We should be the last people who are willing to put up with them!
This begs the question: than what did Jesus mean by these statements? As I said at the beginning, I believe that Jesus was speaking specifically to relieve the pressure on us. He was reminding us that we can become obsessed with bringing a certain person to faith, be it a family member or friend. At times, this focus can prevent us from being able to see that there are others around us that need to hear the gospel. Jesus said this to help us see more people, not to dismiss a few.
There are times when you have to be careful, there are people you may have to set up boundaries with; this should be the exception not the rule. Our lives and our witness should reveal a certain amount of steadfastness that reflect what God has extended to us. If He gave up on us the first, second, or fiftieth time we rejected Him, we would not be recipients of grace. So have patience with both the skeptic and the antagonist, for God is using you as the means to do His work. Sometimes you will discover that the work He is doing in these relationships is on your heart.