How to Engage Apatheism (i.e. When They Don't Care about God)

Sharing the Gospel Without Taking Responsibility for Another Person’s Response

This is a really interesting one, so let's jump right into the last question here. The question is, how do I share the gospel with someone who says, I don't care about God? What a great question. And I'm thinking about people I know in my past that have said this to me.

You know, yeah, that's all interesting. I just don't care, you know? I'm doing my own thing, you know? I wrestled with this idea in grad school. The one thing that I really wanted to know that no professor could ever tell me was related to this.

How do I get a student, because I knew it was going to happen. I was going to enter into the classroom on day one, and I have a bunch of students coming into my English class, you know, with an attitude, because everybody hates English by the time.

Their sophomore is in. A good attitude, because they're all really excited to.

Read The Grapes of Wrath, right? Yeah, yeah, right. And, you know, hey, let's go. Everybody open your Herman Melville on page one of 9000. It's Moby Dick. Anyway, so I, but I really wanted to know, how do I get those students with an attitude to change their attitude?

That's this question, you know? And by the way, I asked all my professors and they had no answer. So, what is your answer? I'm curious.

Okay. So, my first answer to this, and I think this is an important grounding, is you can lead a horse to water, you can't make him want to drink it. Yeah. Okay. So, and the reason I point that out, first of all, there's a biblical precedent for this, because after Paul spends so long trying to preach to the Jews, and they just refuse to hear him, he finally says, you've judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life, now I'm going to go to the Gentiles.

So, that does happen. I point that out just to say, I think that sometimes we take responsibility for other people's choices on ourselves, and that's unhealthy, and I think it's inappropriate too, because we have to remember, because I think that sometimes we kind of unconsciously are taking the role of savior in those relationships, and that's not our job.

Our job is to share the good news. So, I think that that's the first point. The second one is, so if the question is, like, they just say they don't care about God, I think that there could be a couple things going on with that question, because especially with sensitive subjects, sometimes the excuse we give is not the real reason.

And that's not always even intentional deception, but sometimes you're just looking for a way out of an uncomfortable conversation, right? So, what I would do if someone just said, well, I just don't care, my first question is going to be, well, why?

Yeah, why not? Yeah.

Yeah, why not? And I think that if somebody is, so they're probably going to give one of a couple of answers. One is just a longer version of, I just don't see why it's relevant, or I just don't care, in which case I would go to, well, okay, what do you think happens to us when we die?

Don't you think that's relevant or important? And if not, why not? If you are consistently getting that, and they are consistently saying, I don't want to hear about this, I don't like religion, so forth and so on, I think we have a situation there where you can't make them want to drink the water, okay?

And in that position, even, and that might be really rough, because that person might be my sister, I don't have a sister, you know, it might be my brother, it might be my dad, it might be somebody close to me, but I think that that principle still holds.

And I think at that point, you maintain the relationship, you model Christ in your own life, and you pray for them, and you make it clear that if they ever want to talk about it, you're still available there to talk to them about it.

So, I think we do what we can, but at the end of the day, we can't make that decision for them.

Keeping Relationships Open for Future Evangelism

Jared And I think it's a really great point that you make, which is, just because somebody says, I don't care about God today, doesn't mean that tomorrow they're going to have a completely different outlook, because a lot can change in a day.

And that is why it's very important to keep that relationship open, too.

Pete. Yeah. Maybe you could say a little bit more about that, because we did touch on this before, but it's always good to repeat things. The idea of treating your relationships with others, especially the ones that you want to evangelize to, as purely a utilitarian dynamic, you know?

Could you say a little bit more about?

Jared Yeah, so here's a good example, and I'm not going to name any names of specific programs when I say this, but you all know the stereotype of someone who's really into a particular multi-level marketing thing.

And, you know, people who sometimes try and turn their, you know, it could sometimes feel like if you're on the receiving end of that, they're just friends with me because they want to sell me something.

Pete Inauthentic.

Jared. And I think that we, as Christians, need to be very careful that we're not treating our friendships as just a means to conversion. Because just like somebody who, you know, has a great product and they think their friends would really benefit from it, they really believe in it.

Well, even as Christians, if we are perfectly sincere about that, we just really want this person to come to Christ. If the person on the receiving end of that, that's all they get from us, it might start to feel like, yeah, they just want some more bonus points at church, right?

They just want another checkbox on their, you know, Christian scorecard or whatever. And so I think that that is a real danger. And the other thing is that I think that it's not right and it's not biblical to only care about people as long as they come to Christ.

I think the biblical idea is that all people are children of God, all people created by God have that inherent human dignity. And I think that we're not treating them with that proper dignity if we only care about them if they come to the faith.

I just don't think that's right.

Patience, Rapport, and a Long-Term View of Persuasion

Jared. If you're in this relationship right now, you're in this dynamic right now and you're listening to this show, just because you've spent, I don't know, six months, six years trying to share your faith with your mother, father, boyfriend, whatever.

Well, if it's a boy, it's a different conversation if it's your boyfriend, six years. But anyway, just because they have not accepted Christ today doesn't mean that that's going to change tomorrow. And, you know, things happen.

I certainly, if I could go back in time, just get into the DeLorean and go back and meet Nate when he was 19 years old, me now, I don't think I would be able to convince 19-year-old Nate that I would be a believer in Jesus Christ at this point.

So, things look dire, things look impossible, but they are not. All things are possible with Christ. Let me add something to this, because I think it's also tremendously beneficial. You've got to understand people, you know?

My grandmother-in-law, is that right? Is that how you, I don't know how to, the grandmother-in-law? My grandmother, my G-I-L, she, I didn't like that either, so I'm going to not use that. But she would always say, well, I'm not a people people, you know?

And the thing about Christians is we need to be able to read people a little, we need to be able to get along with people well, so that we can develop initial rapport, and initial rapport can turn into good relationship.

Why? Because in the longer game of trying to persuade somebody, which is, this is what it's really all about, you know, acknowledging the Holy Spirit does a work in somebody's heart, and that's the lion's share of the job.

We're trying to persuade people to adopt new beliefs and get rid of their old ones, especially if they are not Christian. How do we do that? Well, we got to understand that beliefs are houses, you know?

And people construct these beliefs, and then they step inside them and they live in them, you know? And people get very comfortable inside their houses, you know? The couch is where I want it, I got the big screen right there, and I got the Butterfinger ice cream in the freezer.

You know, everything is where I want it.

If only, Nate. If only.

You know what would be really great, just as a side note, if there was a toilet, like, right on the couch? That's another story for another day. So, then the question becomes, if you want to get into this dynamic where you persuade somebody to give them the gospel message and be effective and get them to change their minds, you really got to get them to want to move houses.

So, then it really boils down to how do you get somebody to want to move houses? And that's the question. How do you get somebody to start caring about God? The best way to do that is to show them that their house sucks, you know?

It's not to say, oh, you know, you don't care about God, here's nine reasons why you should care about God. I mean, that's kind of equivalent to taking somebody who's really comfortable, been living in their house their whole life, and then saying, well, here's why my house is better than your house.

Then you get into this disputational thing that probably won't end well, if instead you enter into their house with them, and then you look around, and you see, hey, did you notice that half your roof is missing?

You know, so I want to stick with the house analogy for a minute. So, I don't know how much house hunting you've done, or if you've been in this house for a long time, but I'm wondering if you've ever been in a situation, I've been in this situation, where you look up a house online, maybe on Zillow or whatever, you think, oh, this house looks like it has a lot of space.

And then you get there, right? And you see someone that took a picture of the room, like, laying down in a corner with a weird angle. And it's like, this room's like a third of the size that it looked like it was in the picture, right?

And then you go to the backyard, and it's like, you know, they took the picture from on top of the fence or something. And I say this for two reasons. One, because, you know, we need to know what we're looking at as far as being in their house.

But also, I think, because of that reason, I'm pretty suspicious when I go to look at houses now. Now, we've been in our house for a while, but, and like, we're probably going to stay there for a little bit.

But when we were looking at houses, I got to the point where I was kind of cynical, I'd see a photo, I was like, it doesn't look like that. It's not gonna look like that. We're gonna get there. And so I say that to say that when you're in that position, and someone is trying to sell you on a new house, it's probably natural to be cynical, right?

If you've only seen it from the outside, you think about you've only seen photos of it, right? And so I think it's natural for people to be cynical. And that's why we have to be patient with people. And, you know, you don't necessarily want someone to make a huge worldview shift overnight.

Because then, you know, you want them to take this seriously, right? And so I think that's just a helpful example that explains why patience is really necessary when we're in these relationships.

Entering Their World and Pointing Out Inconsistencies

Jared. Yeah, and not approaching people with your agenda, but instead really going where they're at, and spending time with them. Because once you spend time with someone, and they start opening up about, you know, what's important to them, it's naturally going to flow.

The conversation is naturally going to turn to what they believe, what they believe about the world and what they believe about reality. And so, yeah, I mean, it is a matter of kind of them saying like, yeah, my house is really cool.

You know, and in my house, I got this golden slide that starts from the third floor, and it goes all the way down to the first floor. And that's how I don't have stairs. And then it's just a matter of simply saying, you know, going to their house and looking around and saying, where is it?

You know, where's this golden slide that starts from the third floor and goes all the way down? I thought you said that was there. It's just pointing out where their views are incomplete and inconsistent and contradictory.