Faith and Balance

Q:    As you share your faith with your friends, what are some things you need to keep in     mind to be an effective witness ?

A:    Personally, this is something I struggle with, knowing what to keep in mind. My passion for truth often threatens to overtake my rational mind when speaking to nonbelievers, and I begin to lose that precarious balance between checking my heart and working towards theirs. So for me, one thing i need to keep constantly in mind when I start to slip is Balance: between heart and mind, between the ideal and the real, between my worldview and the view of the world. However, the one thing all Christians should keep in mind when witnessing is Love. Not necessarily deep, passionate love, but that low, ever present, burning love that the Christian can find themselves blessed with when they are in a right relationship with God.
         Okay, so how does that help me ? Well, it becomes easier to understand when we look at Paul's words to the Corintians in I Corintians 13. verses 4-7 characterize love thusly:

4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

I know we all know these verses. However, what we sometimes forget is that Love is not an emotion, it is a choice, just as being patient, or kind, or calm, or protecting is a choice. When it comes to witnessing, what we choose to love is an even more important choice. When we choose to love the Word, we are taught to hate sin. However, too often we confusing hating sin with hating those who sin. When we love the word, we are also choosing to love humanity as God did. This means being patient with your friends' misunderstandings of truth; this means being kind and considerate towards their points of view. This means eliminating any feeling of pride in your "special Christian knowledge" that these "pagans are too lowly to understand". There is no special knowledge, only maturity. That being said, our love must also be mature. Mature love humbles itself to the point of being able to admit when it may be wrong. It always will look to understand the heart and, therefore, views of those it is speaking with to the best of it's ability. This means asking questions and dialoging, not just attacking and defending, and doing so with the utmost patience, because your Love is representing Christ and His Love. It also means letting some attacks brush by you, and not letting them ruffle your feathers. All in time.
           And yeah, it can be frustrating, especially when we fall from Loving. There is a song by Saosin called "Why Cant You See?" i feel that unprepared (or misguided, or mistaken) Christian witnesses can relate to. The chorus reads "Why cant you see with my hands holding your eyes open ? it's hard for me to think straight when your mouth is moving". We may feel sometimes that no matter how much straight-up truth we throw at unbelievers, they still wont see it, and we will only get more rialed up the more they say back that opposes what we told them. I been there, and i am sure i am not the only one. But that usually means we were approaching the issue incorrectly. And yeah, we wont win every argument. And well we shouldnt, because we should never be arguing. We should be dialoging with respect and with a mind to understand. Now i am getting redundant, but my point is we basically have to remember that, when our Love slips (as it will, we are only human), there are views outside our own created from very real life experiences held by other very real, God-made human beings, and only teachers can get away with expecting others to learn and accept by cramming information down their throats ;)