Mark Driscoll has been invited to write occa­sional columns for the Wash­ing­ton Post. In his first he was asked how to best present the gospel to athe­ists and skep­tics.

His answer, as his answers always are, was beau­ti­fully Christocentric.

Q: What makes the best ‘case for God’ to a skep­tic or non-believer, an open-minded seeker, and to a per­son of faith and Why?

Answer
Jesus.

Chris­tian­ity is not first and fore­most about a sacred place to pil­grim­age to, a philo­soph­i­cal sys­tem to pon­der, a moral code to live, a reli­gious tra­di­tion to honor, or an imper­sonal god to expe­ri­ence. Rather, Chris­tian­ity is about a per­son who claimed to be the only God and said he would prove his unprece­dented claim by liv­ing with­out sin, dying for sin­ners, and con­quer­ing death through resurrection.

It’s a nice opener. The gospel in a nut­shell. And he doesn’t shy away from address­ing other areas, but he starts with Jesus. And that’s wor­thy of respect. More respect than oth­ers who like to sit on their blogs and throw stones because they don’t like his sense of humour…

His con­clu­sion is help­ful too…

“And so while there is no “best case” for pre­sent­ing God, there are false ways of pre­sent­ing God: as any­one in addi­tion to or other than Jesus Christ. As Chris­tians, our goal is never to lie to peo­ple by only telling them what they want to hear, or manip­u­lat­ing them to feel what they want to feel. Instead, we want to respect them enough to tell them the truth, and love them enough to do so in a way that is com­pas­sion­ate. We care more about the truth and the love than hav­ing the “best case.”

I’ve been won­der­ing, given recent expe­ri­ences with athe­ists right here, how to move the debate away from dis­cussing theism/atheism towards Christianity/atheism. It’s a great tac­tic the athe­ists have adopted to avoid deal­ing with Chris­tian­ity specif­i­cally. It’s much eas­ier to dis­miss a non-specific deity on the basis of dis­miss­ing all deities (Chris­tians do some­thing sim­i­lar all the time, by reject­ing all other Gods) than it is to actu­ally dis­miss the specifics of the deity peo­ple are actu­ally putting faith in. But it’s a case of mov­ing the goal posts to suit the game you want to win.

The temp­ta­tion, when dis­cussing the exis­tence of God in the theism/atheism par­a­digm is to throw our lot in with other the­ists (Mus­lims, Hin­dus, Mor­mons etc) and see them as allies — when a bet­ter, more Bib­li­cally con­sis­tent model is the one Driscoll advo­cates. Using an apolo­getic based on Jesus.

That’s why I’m a Driscoll fan­boy. That, and the descrip­tion he gives him­self in his byline on the article.

“A nobody try­ing to tell every­body about Somebody.”

Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He is currently a student at the Queensland Theological College. In a previous professional life he worked in public relations for an economic development and tourism marketing organisation. He is married to Robyn. He likes coffee and the internet.

Read Nathan's 3799 articles.