Loving People We Disagree With?

Apologia Studios

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00:00

Yeah, so I would say, thank you for the talk, by the way. My name is Garrett. I really appreciated, and I can appreciate the presuppositional philosophy.

00:09

I have some reservations as to the approach in interacting and communicating with people.

00:19

I lean more towards the effectiveness of establishing common ground and building that.

00:25

Of the what now? Like establishing common ground, trying to understand, and I'm not saying presuppositional.

00:35

Apologetics doesn't do that. But just a lot of the frankness of like, so what? And like, I don't know if that's the most winning approach.

00:44

So I would almost consider myself to be presuppositional in philosophy, but not in apologetics.

00:52

What would you say to that? I would say, explain that. Because when you talk about apologetics in defense of the faith, you're dealing with philosophy.

01:02

So I would just say, what do you mean by that? In the approach. In the approach, okay. Like to constantly attack, like I understand, and I see where you're coming with your, with like pointing to scripture that you're pointing to, they're sinking sand.

01:15

I just wonder in practice, and I'm not an expert because I haven't done a lot of apologetics, as much apologetics as you have, but I'm wondering if that's the most effective and the most loving manner to win people over to Christ.

01:30

So that's, I love that that's what you're asking. Because actually, I find that the presuppositional methodology in terms of standing on scripture is the methodology that brings across the most love in terms of genuine affection and an obvious appeal to it.

01:47

And let me explain how. When you mentioned common ground, like to try to establish common ground, that's one of the main aspects of the presuppositional approach, is actually establishing common ground, but demonstrating that there is common ground only because it's

02:04

God's ground. Like there is no common ground with the unbeliever unless the word of God is true.

02:12

Like the common ground that we have is common ground because they're image bearers of God living in God's world.

02:19

So it just has an example, with the atheist, for example. Like that's the radical disconnect, right? Unbelief versus belief, right?

02:26

Trust in God versus I'm at war with him. When you're talking with the unbeliever trying to establish common ground there,

02:32

I would say that the only way you can establish common ground is ultimately through scripture by demonstrating that the only meaningful conversation that can happen right now is in the context of them being an image bearer of God, having value, dignity, and worth, and me too, of there being something that is objectively true outside of my own perception, my own feelings, my own desires, because they're in the image of God, they know the same

03:04

God. And the only way we can talk about ethics at all or complain about anything is if we have the objective character and standard of God's own revelation of his character.

03:16

That's the grounding of it, and that's the way we can establish common ground. What I would say is this, and I know we have limited space right now at the moment, but we can maybe talk more tomorrow.

03:26

Do you have access to the internet here? Yes, okay. I would say just do some YouTube video searching and maybe look up, and I'm not special in this respect, but maybe so you can get some examples of how

03:38

I think it's applied. Just look up Jeff Durbin Mormon, Jeff Durbin Atheist, Jeff Durbin Jehovah's Witness, and look through some videos, and I would say just ask this question.

03:50

Do those appear loving, respectful, gentle?

03:55

When you hear me teaching on confronting radical unbelief, saying things like, so what?

04:02

I'm not walking up to the unbeliever on the, hey, so what, hey, you know, and like, you know, just, it's not like,

04:11

I wanna show philosophically speaking, I need to be able to take this person's legs off, philosophically speaking, so that I can be there to pick them up and say, now come to Jesus.

04:24

You can only have this with Christ. I'll give you a good example of maybe one video to watch.

04:29

It's perfect, I think, in this respect. After my public debate with three atheists in California, I ran into an atheist who then became an agnostic, and then something else in the midst of the conversation, at a bar after the debate.

04:45

I'm at a bar waiting for everyone to come so we can go hang out outside at the hotel, and this guy sits down, and we end up having like a 45 -minute conversation, and I think that's a fantastic conversation to listen to, because I think you're gonna hear in that conversation the constant appeal that I'm making to the fact that he is valuable, he does have worth, he does have dignity, he is worthy of my love, and he can only have these things that he's asking for with Jesus Christ, and he needs to turn to him in faith.

05:14

So I would say, listen to that discussion in terms of I took his legs off constantly in that conversation, and there was nothing but love while I was doing it.

05:24

So I would say, listen, it's Jeff Durbin, I think, and Psy, and atheist at a bar.

05:34

Something like, look up Durbin and bar. You won't usually find me there, but yeah.