Thinking to Believe

In the February 2005 issue of Stand to Reason’s bimonthly newsletter, Greg Koukl shared some sound advice concerning the way we talk about our Christian faith to non-believers.  I think you will find his advice valuable.  He wrote:

If I said “Abraham Lincoln was the 16^th president of the United States,” people would know I was talking about historical facts.  By contrast, if I said, “I believe in the resurrection of Jesus,” most people would not think I was talking about historical facts, but personal faith: my sentiments, my feelings, my preferences.

From their perspective, words like “faith” and “belief” don’t describe the world, they describe me.  Statements about Jesus may reflect personal “truths” (i.e. “true for me”).  But they’re not true; they are not facts.  They are merely “beliefs”-well-intentioned falsehoods, useful fictions, convenient illusions.  That’s not what we say.  It’s what they hear.
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Let me suggest a simple adjustment.  Since there is often a difference between what we say and what they hear, don’t give others the chance to misunderstand.  Instead of using emotive “faith” language, use the language of truth.  Don’t talk about your beliefs, talk about your convictions, about what you’ve been convinced of.  Don’t talk about faith, talk about truth.  Don’t talk about values, talk about what you understand the moral facts to be.
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I’ve actually encouraged Christians to ban words like “faith” and “belief” from their vocabulary.  These words no longer communicate what we intend them to.  It’s not that faith isn’t valuable.  It’s vital.  But faith is often misunderstood as a “leap,” a blind, desperate lunge into the darkness.  It sounds too much like religious wishful thinking. … When he [an Christian ambassador] talks about Jesus, he is careful to communicate that he is talking about facts, not just the kind of religious wishful thinking the words “faith” and “belief” frequently conjure up.

I couldn’t agree more.

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) has found that the following one-liner is the most effective way of communicating support for traditional marriage: “Gays and Lesbians have a right to live as they choose, [but] they don’t have the right to redefine marriage for all of us.”  I like it.  It communicates two important things:

1. Opposition to recognizing same-sex marriage is not tantamount to opposition against homosexual behavior itself.  Many advocates of traditional marriage are content to let gays and lesbians engage in homosex in the privacy of their own homes (tolerant), but do not consent to letting gays and lesbians redefine the historic understanding of marriage in order to ascertain a sense of social respectability.
2. Same-sex marriage advocates are forcing their views on the majority through political lobbying and the courts, which is both unfair and undemocratic.

One minor improvement to this statement would be to preface it with “I believe in tolerance, so I think….”  Using the actual word “tolerance” will help us communicate to an audience who thinks of tolerance as one of the prime virtues.

NOM highly suggests that we avoid speaking of “banning same-sex marriage” because it is unnecessary, and this language has a negative connotation.  Indeed, there is no need to ban same-sex marriage so long as the traditional definition is left intact.  Instead, we should speak of being opposed to “redefining marriage” or supportive of “marriage as the union of husband and wife.”