How Do We Ask?

We Christians understand that we are heralds, witnesses and representatives of Jesus Christ to the world of unbelievers around us. At least we understand that if we read our Bibles and or if we sit under good biblical teaching as we should.

We realize that means we must look for opportunities to engage anyone who is interested in talking about faith. We have to ask some questions to find out where someone is spiritually. What is his worldview? What does she believe about God? Is he a theist of some kind? Deist? Atheist? Do they call themselves Christians?

I think in our present situation in the United States, and the West in general, that we are going to have to tweak our list of diagnostic questions. If the question, "Are you a Christian?" ever yielded a fairly well-defined understanding of where someone was coming from, today an affirmative answer really doesn't tell us much. That is, if you asked this question, and 100 people said, "Yes, I am a Christian," I don't think you could be confident that all, most or even a majority of them were actually regenerate followers of Jesus Christ, possessors of eternal life.

I say this because many today describe themselves as a Christian because they are American, or from the Bible Belt, or they are political conservatives. Or because they are members of a church identified as Christian. Or because they are generally good (compared to, you know, criminal types or political radicals or mean neighbors or whatever), or because they think Christianity is probably closer to the right religion than the 2 or 3 other options they know a little bit about. The list goes on.

I think we are naive to think that most people answering that question today mean to say that they are trusting Christ alone to provide the righteousness God requires to have eternal life, and that they are committed to living in obedience to Christ's commands as a living sacrifice in worship and thanksgiving.

I think we are going to have to ask more precise questions today, and probably quite a few of them, before we can begin to get a feel for whether someone is truly born again.

So, what are the options?

• Do you believe in Jesus?

• Do you know Jesus?

• Do you love Jesus?

• Do you trust Jesus alone for eternal life?

• Are you a follower of Jesus?

• Do you serve Jesus?

• Do you obey Jesus?

• Are you born again?

These, and a bunch more targeted questions may lead to more clarity, but the truth is we'll have to do a lot of careful listening and then keep following up with very particular questions every step of the way.

What seems very clear, though, is that we cannot afford to ask something so general as "Are you a Christian?" and then, upon getting a "yes" breath a sigh of relief, check that person off the list and feel good that we have been a faithful witness for Christ. We're going to need to dig deeper than that.

By the way, I am convinced that one of the places today where our general question would yield the most false positives is IN OUR CHURCHES. Many have written about this in recent years, and I would agree that our churches are full of professing Christians who are in fact spiritually dead. As in NOT followers of Jesus. As in NOT born again. As in destined for hell.

We must start getting very specific in questioning people about their spiritual condition - even in our local congregations. If we presume too much, if we ask vague questions and accept equally vague answers, we risk missing real opportunities to see dead people come to life.