we had two really great conversations as well!
we first spoke with a couple (Wanna and Michael) sitting on a bench who told us that they were Greek Orthodox. When asked to explain when they believed exactly and waht it meant to be Greek Orthodox, they got a little flustered when they realized they couldn't really explain it themselves. As we continued to probe and ask more questions, we eventually shared the TWTL presentation. I asked which way they felt like they were living, and Wanna said that she felt we should try to find a balance between the two because there were areas in our lives which we controlled and areas where we didn't have control. We tried to explain that the two ways of living weren't necessarily related to control, but this topic sparked a discussion between the couple where Michael said that we weren't really in control and Wanna disagreed...
in the end, we felt like God really used us because through our talk we got the couple to talk more about spiritual things and question what they really did believe.
we tried to talk to two people who were walking, but both said they had stuff going on, so we just wished them well and moved on.
The last individual was a student named Sylvan. He professed to be a Christian and said he believed in Christ - prayed and read his Bible daily - but he seemed to emphasize his good works and his efforts in being a good person. He admitted to not going to church on a weekly basis but believed that you didn't need to go to church to have a connection with God. He also said that Christ died for our sins, and went to heaven (which I thought was odd because he didn't mention the resurrection, but he could've just misspoke). Sky asked him the question about getting into Heaven, to which he responded "I think so, because I believe in God and I've been trying to lifve a good life." We recapped the TWTL presentation really quickly, touching on what was similar and also what was slightly different. I felt that he believed most of the correct things of the Christian faith but was missing out on some key points... but we weren't 100% sure where he stood. What WAS good is that we invited him to service next Sunday (pointing out that it was Easter and he SHOULD come to church on that day, if anything) and he seemed receptive to that.
woot. God is good.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
That's cool that the couple actually started talking with each other as a result of your conversation!
Even though the female college student that we talked to calls herself a Christian, her beliefs really did seem to boil down to her own good works. The same was true for the middle-aged man, though he would probably call himself an agnostic or a Daoist. It's no surprise that the apostle Paul had to write so strongly against legalism (see Galatians, for example). Human pride insists that we bring something to the table for our justification. God's grace insists that we can't and that if we try, we've misunderstood grace.
Post a Comment