Author Jonathan Noyes
Published on 03/13/2023
Tactics and Tools

How to Approach Believers with Unbiblical Beliefs

Jon Noyes explains how you can approach Christian friends who seem to support ideas or causes inconsistent with biblical morality.


Transcript

How can someone claim to be a Christian and then also have a positive view of LGBTQ ideologies? And when I say that, I mean, if you’re a Christian, and a Christian who supports someone like Leah Thomas or Caitlyn Jenner, well, I’d say that they’re confused. I’m not saying this to be disparaging or mean. Oftentimes, they haven’t really looked into what the Scriptures have to say on these issues.

The way that I talk to my Christian friends is, I have them affirm where they are in Scripture. Does Scripture inform your Christian worldview, or does your worldview inform Scripture? If we start with the baseline that Scripture is authoritative, we have a common ground to start. Oftentimes, what we’re going to see is a revisionist view of Scripture, and they’re bringing their preconceived notions to the Scripture and laying those on top of the Scriptures. Well, that relativizes the Scripture. So, if that’s the case, I’ll talk to them about biological sex. I’ll bring up genetics. I’ll bring up the functioning of the body, that even from an evolutionary perspective, it seems that our bodies have been designed for a purpose, and that purpose from an evolutionary perspective is to procreate. Well, how do we procreate according to the evolutionary perspective? This isn’t rocket science.

All of a sudden—in the last 10 minutes, it feels like—now, this is all in question. So, sometimes I’ll talk to my Christian friends along those lines, but I always try to start with a common ground, whether it’s talking to somebody who’s wrestling with this openly as a transgender person or finding common ground as people made in the image of God, valuable and of infinite worth just because of who we are. Then, from there, common ground as a sinner.

With a brother or sister in Christ, or someone who claims to be a Christian, I will find common ground. What does it mean to be a Christian? What do you have to affirm in order to claim the name “Christian”? When we say, “Hey, I’m a Christian,” we mean something by that. Well, what do you mean? What do you mean by that? And then there’s a common ground, and we set that in stone. Is the Bible—the Word of God—authoritative in your life? Well, here are some Scriptures. I want you to tell me, what do you think about this? How does this seem to sound? And then ask them to think about it and think it through. I talk to them and see what they’re reading and who they’re allowing to influence them, and then we have to know how to respond to the revisionist people. So, it’s a process. It’s going to be getting to know somebody and asking them what they believe and why they believe it.