Radio Evangelism

Reccently I heard an amazing thing,
Someone was trying to witness to someone else on the radio. Let me give some background.

As I have said before I work nights and I tend to listen to talk radio because of that. Well there is a radio show on at night that I usually do NOT listen to because the host is against just about everything I am for.
He has always portrayed himself as a very liberal, anti religion, type of person.
The real problem is that he always acts as if he wants to get into serious fights, I mean knock down fisticuff type FIGHTS with anyone who disagrees with him. If you do not think like he does you are an idiot and a fool who deserves nothing more than to be boiled in oil and cut into a billion little pieces. And he has made this very clear for a long time now.
He always demands that everyone hear his point of view but he refuses to extend the same courtesy to anyone else and, quite frankly, he will do anything in his power to shut up everyone who follows a different outlook.
But I digress…

The thing is that a lady called into his show and started trying to witness to him. Now don’t get me wrong. She has some real guts here. I wouldn’t do this because I have heard how he operates on enough occasions that I am not willing to “beard the beast in his lair”. But the lady made a fatal mistake.

She was telling the host about Romans 3:23 (For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God) And what this means. He sidetracked her at this point which he is wont to do and he started asking her if she believed in the bible all the way through. She stated that she did. So he said “so you think that adulterers ought to be stoned?” she said no then he said “well then you don’t believe the bible All the way through. Because in the bible it says that adulterers must be stoned.”

I would have tried to point out that I can believe the WHOLE bible because Jesus said “I fulfill the law and the prophets” which means he paid the penalty. “The wages of sin is death” that is why when an adulterer was caught he or she had to be stoned (and by the way that goes for all the sins that were to be punished that way). Stoning leads to death. That was the, supposed, inevitable result of such action (or so it was believed). But because Jesus lived a perfect sinless life he did not owe the debt due from sinners, but he paid it anyway. Because he paid it we do not have to pay it ourselves. He died so adulterers could get off without a stoning.
Again it is like the judge who pays your traffic ticket for you because you couldn‘t.
The law says if you speed you must be fined, if you are fined the fine must be paid. The judge paid the fine so you don’t have to, the law is satisfied and it still exists and it still works. But you got off without the penalty imposed by that law. The Law in this case is the old testament and the judge is Jesus. See you can believe in the whole thing (the Bible) there is no inconsistency. *

After being flustered by his taking it off track she tried to rally but then she made her fatal mistake. She went back to Romans 3:23 and he asked her “who made us sinners?” and he badgered her at that not letting her continue until she finally answered.
Unfortunately she said “God made us sinners.” At that moment he knew he had her. You could hear the triumph in his voice, and that allowed him to make his point and caused her to lose her argument (her witness).
He believes that God is a killjoy, a mean, vindictive, petty, inconsistent, TYRRANICAL Jerk. (and subsequently so are all those evil horrible Christians.)
So The host’s point was along the lines of “Even if this ‘Christian God’ exists he must be a mean and terrible guy who has it out for us.” And when the caller said that God is the one who makes us sinners, he claimed, “that means that he is punishing us for being exactly what he made.”
You do not punish a dog for doing what you teach him to do, you do not punish a soldier for fighting a war (“at least not if you are a conservative” And thus he also “proves” conservatives are “hypocrites”) these things are not appropriate so “how dare this so called God of yours punish us for doing that which he made us to do?”

See the problem is God did NOT make us to be sinners. But he made us with Choice. We have “free will.” That free will means we get to choose whether we will obey or not.
If we choose to not obey then we are sinners. And at some time we all have chosen to disobey.

Let me put it to you this way. If you are a parent this will be easier to understand.
When your child chooses to obey you out of love does that bring you more pleasure or less pleasure than when you have to force them to do what needs to be done?
It makes you happier if they obey and do for you out of love or respect for you.

Same thing for God. He wants us to grow and develop, so he must give us the chance to learn and expand, so we need to be allowed choice.
He wants us to be able to CHOOSE to serve him because that willingness is more pleasing and satisfying then simple automatons. So when we choose to disobey that is entirely of our own volition.

*And just so you know someone else later called the show and tried making the points I am making now but he would not talk about it. He refused to get into that debate, ridiculed that caller and hung up on the caller because he knew that he would not win that argument.