As we were leaving my parent's house in Porter Saturday morning a Jehovah's Witness approached me as I was loading the vehicle. Short on time I figured I would give this guy some slack and cut right to the chase (after all he was almost twice my age). He was shocked I knew most of his "difficult" questions like "Who will inherit the earth" and etc. He was doing ok till he said that God promised us to live peaceful happy lives here on this earth. I wonder if he heard the audible voice of the Holy Spirit saying, "Let's Get Ready to Rumble...................!"
As Neil McClendon says, I descended on him like a heard of drunken monkeys. For every question he asked me about the earth and why it is such a big deal that we reign on it, I asked him questions that drove a spike into the marrow of his identity. When he told me that Jesus offers salvation, I asked him if he could earn his salvation. He basically said yes but tried to sugar coat it claiming that he can lose it also. I asked him what it felt like to lay down at night and not really know if that day had been a win or a loss on God's big scale of good and bad deeds. His lip was quivering (not sure if it was fear, revelation, or hatred... I didn't care... I pressed on).
At this point he had wasted all of his standard "I'm smarter than you comments" and began searching his memory for anything that could trip me. He began to use circular logic on me by saying that I was claiming that all good people get to go to heaven. So I told him, "Quit defending arguments that I am not even making." I briefly told him the process of salvation and who really was getting into heaven. His method failed. Entire lower jaw was shaking at this point.
He then resorted to saying that the Jehovah's Witness believers were several billion strong and in 250 countries world-wide, and how that made him happy. I fired a dart directly into his heart when I asked, "What if you were the only one on earth who believed what you do, would you feel the same way?" That's not a deep theological question I know but it must have been seasoned with the Spirit because it pretty much made him speechless. I wrapped up a few loose arguments and wished him well on his journey (physical and spiritual). By this time Shelly, the girls, and my dad were all outside watching the show (my mom had sent them all out for the sake of the man).
Robert, you’re so mean! You shouldn’t have been so rude to him. Listen people, there is a big difference in a life that offends and a life that provokes. I don’t tell you this story to make me sound super human, because i'm not. I tell you this story because no matter if it is a Jehovah’s Witness, a waitress, or our lost neighbor, we must dialogue with people in a way that brings them to the end of themselves.
My purpose was not to woo him with biblical knowledge, I wanted to dissect his heart and ask him questions that later that night when he was lying on his pillow would reverberate deep inside his brain and keep him from any satisfying sleep.
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Husband to 1 wife, daddy to 4 kids, ravenous consumer of peanut butter.
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2 comments:
you seminary guys really should wear labeled t-shirts or something so the JW's can steer clear...
It's funny to me how Fundamentalists on any side of an issue can come to see each other as walking belief systems as opposed to human beings. What value is there in trying to humiliate a man who so honestly believes something, he is willing to go door-to-door to tell people about it? There should be no pleasure to be taken in causing a man pain and there is less grounds to farm anger, rudeness, and lack of humility and joy on a call from the Holy Spirit to defend truth. Maybe instead of trying to "dissect" one another's hearts, we could listen and try to love (and show love) to people that we disagree with?
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