John Lennox - Q&A

you okay welcome folks to this time on the sofa with John Lennox can I encourage you to look at the the book shop at the back there they're quite number of books by several of our speakers including these to which John John mentioned gunning for God this morning why the New Atheists are missing the target and then this second book really came out of the work he did preparing a series of talks on Daniel for the European Leadership Forum about three years ago I guess they're both big sellers and would reward careful readings I'd like to encourage you to make the most of them and they're for sale at good prices I'm going to ask John a few questions and then we go to open the open the session up for anybody to ask any question they want of him so if I could just lob a few in his direction first just to open our time together John going back to this morning your presentation you talked about the importance or your practice of traveling with a couple of Gideon's New Testaments so you've always got something available to share with people in terms of accessing Scripture have you got any other stories you can tell us about a time when you were traveling where in God's providence you had a Bible or a New Testament on you you were able to give to somebody which had far-reaching implications yes go ahead and tell us what go ahead and tell us what I'm a logic chopper really Suzy well life is often travels with the Bible sometimes I describe it but I suppose one of the most remarkable was something that precipitated my traveling to Russia a great deal from 1989 on I spent a lot of time during the Cold War in the 70s 80s in the Iron Curtain countries particularly ceremony before I could speak the language Poland Hungary but in I think it was 1988 I was in Belgium at a conference of mathematicians this thing two fascinating papers of mathematical cryptography that is how to keep your financial transaction safe when you go to an ATM and so on and we were traveling afterwards that the bus driver whose bus was full of mathematicians took up Powell to the station and as a result we all missed the train because he found himself the wrong side of a level crossing and so we're all late and pretty frustrated and angry so we got a late train which was traveling from Belgium into Germany and I got into this train and a little bit anxious because I got luggage I was on my own and didn't want to spend much time in the station at Cologne in the middle of the night but anyway I found myself at a compartment and in it so far as I recall there was a Belgian women working for the tourist office there was a German student and there were two Russians and I was sitting beside the Russian so I started to talk to him and discovered that he came from Siberia and was an ecologist and I was quite surprised so I said is ecology a valid subject in Russia can you talk about ecology and he said actually we can and suddenly occurred to me to ask him where there are other things he could talk about and he said yes we could talk about lots of things I said including God and in that moment when I posed the question I had an overwhelming desire arose within me and it never has done before since to give him a Bible that was all I could think off you see and it was a crazy thought you're traveling through Belgium at night where'd he get a Bible a Russian Bible because they spoke no English and kept fake he was given me a must given you must give him a Bible and then it slowly dawned on me that some weeks before I'd visited a German publisher and on his desk he'd had a nice Russian Bible I picked it up and looked at it and he said is that and he used to you and they said that is because it's got a large print and my own Russian Bibles very small so he said take it and on the train I find myself wondering is it still my suitcase because it's been home had I taken the right so I reached up onto the luggage rack put my hand in and sure enough was still there I pulled it out and they handed it to him and he said what's that I said that's for you they could say it was a Bible and he went very silent he couldn't speak in fact he looked as if he was paralyzed I thought something had hit him and I said what's the matter and he still said nothing and in the end he said how did you know I said how did they know what he said how did you know that six weeks ago the only Bible we've ever seen was stolen from us in Siberia and we've got this the first opportunity we've ever had to go outside our country to a conference we're catching the plane to Moscow tonight how did you know I said I didn't know I said but do you believe this book and he looked at me and he said I don't know and then he pointed over to the women sitting offices but he said that's my wife and she does and I turned around she was just beaming she took the book she hugged it she started to cry and said is that really for me and I said sure it's for you take it home with you and we talked a little bit and they were gone and the German student immediately said she said does that often happen to you and I said not every Tuesday when she said that some credible I said why I said think about it these people have been systematically denied access to Scripture for 75 years and God can use me as a message boy as much as anybody else where she said if that's the case I'd better start reading and she did I kept correspondence up with her when I got home then things really started because I told their story to Sally now she listened to it and then she says can you get your diary I said what for she said you see in a minute so I got the diary and she looked at she said you'd better cancel all this stuff I said why she said because you're going to Russia I said pardon she said you better cancel it because you're going to Russia I said half a minute she said you're going to Russia how would you go to Russia as a mathematician well I suggest a minute let's sit there I know she said how would you go to Russia I said well there's a scheme exchange scheme of the Royal Society at London and they CAD amia Sciences and Russia so she said ring them up I said just half a minute no let's come this thing down event no she said ring them up and for some reason they did and I said it'll be no use because they require forms and endless applications and so on she said bring them up I rang them up at the conversation read like this I said I'm not petition the University of Wales in Cardiff and I what's your program with Russia said are you interested in going to Russia I can see there was immediate interest and I said well might be and he said well he said we are desperate for British people to go to Russia because the Russians have insisted this one week for one week and nobody from the UK wants to go for more than a week but we want the top Russians out here for months because they're some of the best in the world so Sally was waving a bass he said give them two months I said are you serious so I said well I might be prepared to come for two months he said okay you can go we can go tomorrow if you like no forms no nothing and that's how I came to go to Russia and the implications of that would take hours to tell you the opportunities of publishing articles and they Russian Academy of Sciences newspaper of getting on television of writing all sorts of stuff that we just open up vast door well you married to remarkable woman that's the first lesson to learn from that story yes since 49 years yesterday yeah great happy anniversary well we haven't got ours but you did go to Russia and you went with the person you acknowledge was your key mentor David Gooding quite a lot through the 90s could you just tell us one or two indications of the impact of the doors that the Lord opened to you and how you saw him working through you and David's joint ministries particularly through the 90s well what happened was that in the seventies David girding invited me out to Spain where he already had a fairly regular ministry and he took me under his wing and tried to teach me quite painfully actually because he was not soft that it was good for me and eventually when I started going east I then began to take him I felt and he felt that it might be interesting to do things together but what happened I first went on my own and that contact with the Academy of Sciences was quite remarkable because I was invited in that first visit for the first time in 75 years to give a lecture in the top university in Siberia on why a mathematician believes in the Creator and it was packed it was a sensation actually and I could spend a long time describing that meeting but it opened many doors but there was a reporter at it from the Academy of Sciences newspaper and she came to me afterwards and she said you should meet my boss in Moscow and I eventually contacted the newspaper and went into his office and to cut a long story short he was not pleased to see and we discussed various things he said why are you here what well I said I have noticed they had read a few back numbers to see what they did in their newspaper and they've been publishing articles against the occult it was beginning to come in in the name of science and I said have you ever thought of having an article Pro science in the name of Christianity he looked at me said you're Tracey absolutely crazy I said why well he said in any case would be far too risky and the that moment I knew exactly what to say to him he had red telephone on his desk and I said do you see that telephone he said yes he was the the anger was rising I could see I said I know what are this he said you know what it is he'd never seen a James Bond film you know or anything I know what it is what is it I said it's a hotline he said you're right oh I said I can tell you much more about it than that he said and he got up in his face yelling at me you come here and you tell me what this telephone is and you tell me that you know how I got it I said I know exactly how are you gonna said how did I get it I said by taking risks and he sat down he said have that article on my desk of Monday morning I published him and he did what he didn't realize was 10,000 people roped in for more it was the biggest post bag in the history of the newspaper and that was where I got David Gooding involved because he this chap was very high up and a literary club and was a trained scientist and all the rest were very bright but David was a professor of classics was me yes acquaintance and Belfast's and so we began to write to get articles and they got into newspapers of various kinds the Academy of Sciences newspaper we put many articles into it but perhaps the most important ones we're off the back of that we got into the teachers newspaper and over a period of about three years we wrote every two weeks two and a half thousand word article the Bible and ethical education and school said it was designed for teachers to use in the classroom so it had a bit of Bible text and them leading them seriously through ethics wasn't an excuse to write a conversion manual or anything like that and those went all over the place and I'll tell you one story that really moved us I was inside the area of all things giving lectures in a nuclear shelter with the model of the tabernacle the lake of which the Russians had never seen by the way I find Russians secular people far more interested in it than British Christians which is quite a revealing thing but there was a lady came up and she was waving a newspaper and it was my picture in it she said that she wasn't I said yes he said you're involved in writing these articles I said yes keep writing and I said why she said listen I'm a schoolteacher I'll tell you what I do with those when I get the newspaper I copy it out 30 times by hand there's no Xeroxes no access to now a thousand words 30 times by hand she said I then put them in envelopes and I go down to the dock to the port and send them up the Aubree veut for perhaps a thousand kilometres and teachers collect them at various points I said why is that important she says the only literature we've got don't stop and you know that really spoke volumes we eventually put that all those articles into books sent them out to the schools and that's another story but that work that we did together over those years was absolutely seminal and its effect on Russian schools because they've nothing but they allowed this stuff in immediately after the collapse of communism so that incident in the Train with the Bible sparked off a huge thing that's even going on today well I'm glad you could share today in fact you because I remember in the 90s we couldn't know because of the security situation so we're privileged to you're a fleshed-out story today subsequently in remarkable circumstances maybe you don't time to talk about how Sally prayed you into moving from Cardiff to Oxford but when you were there God opened some amazing doors for you to first of all dialogue with Richard Dawkins and then other people like Christopher Hitchens and Peter Singer the Australian thinker and atheist in public spheres can you tell us a little bit John about how you've approached these dialogues and how you engaged with these people because this morning you were talking about the importance of trying to engage with people and meet them where they are did it cost you a lot in terms of time energy work preparation to engage with them and how did you go about it perhaps you could just tell us about the first dialogue with Richard Dawkins you know the first dialogue with Dawkins was for me a huge mountain to approach really because this kind of thing is formidable for many points of view first of all he had refused for many years to legitimise as he put a people like me by debating them secondly it was very remarkable her it came to happen through a friend of mine in Alabama of all places I mean the debate took place in Alabama which is amazing and my friend Larry Taunton very he pitched the thing to Dawkins that the deep south would like it experience of this Oxford debate you see and Dawkins of course had never heard of me but in the end he was persuaded that I was pretty innocuous since he never heard of me so he agreed to do it but preparing for it took many months virtually full time I had to read masses of stuff because I felt that this is going to be unique I sensed that and secondly the whole world is watching and the so-called new atheist led by Dawkins have gained a huge platform and if nobody stands up to them they win by default but if somebody stands up to them and blows it and makes a mess of it it'll be terrible so I sensed that there was a huge weight off the defense of the gospel can I make Christianity credible against the background of this formidable in one sense attack and I knew that a lot of people would be watching well people prayed in a remarkable way there were many parameters going on around the world before and after that debate but I only know of one way of approaching these things and that is to go through the arguments meticulously and I wrote our dozens and dozens of different answers to different scenarios and all this kind of stuff and you could have done that forever in a day because this kind of a debate makes demands I don't do them anymore and there's a reason for that which you couldn't come to afterwards but I had to prepare intellectually mentally and so on but the best bit of advice I got was from Nigel Lawson some dominic Lawson who is a leading newspaper columnist and I met him and I said can you give me any advice and he said look he said whatever you do say what you want said no matter what he says you see and that was important because it's very easy to be deflected by the first thing anybody else says and in the end I just I felt buoyed up because I knew I was way beyond my reach out of my depth than that sense very far out of my depth but I felt very strongly that this needs to be challenged and it was true in the first century it's still true I believe it's true therefore I mustn't be ashamed of it and whatever happens if they make a complete mess of a still I'm gonna try and stand with God's help and he didn't able me to stand and one of the very encouraging things over the years is many people who came to faith directly through the debate it's amazing I still get letters about that debate because of course it's on the internet now and several million people I believe are watch that which is just phenomenal but they're very hard work and atheists have no come a theist not to like them any more because a moderated discussion is much better and more effective than a confrontational debate but that's just a little bit of they don't turn in terms of your style what other people have commented on as they've seen yes well one of the distinctives is rigorous careful preparation months even reading all of Dawkins material yes so you could take him on at his strongest point of argument yes was one so very not very careful preparation yes you've got to take them seriously he made the mistake of not taking me seriously is very obvious but if we are going to deal with these people we must take them seriously the second distinctive is gracious but fearless defense of biblical truth is a hallmark of your approach but the third that some people have commented on is that you've actually been very gracious in the way that you've engaged sometimes with people who are very hostile and one of these people himself himself commented on this Peter Singer after you debate with him in Sydney would you like to share a little bit about your interaction with him and how he responded for the implications for us in terms of dialoguing with people with grace all of this is an attempt really to carry out what Paul says that we're to speak the truth in love some people are very good at speaking the truth but they lose the plot when it comes to graciousness and so on because they feel that if you show any grace you're compromising truth that's sheer nonsense and it has to be learned there's no question about it we have to learn our approach but I have found over life that you lose nothing by being gracious so long as you're truthful but if you're truthful and gracious you get a lot further than if you've been truthful and not gracious and Peter Singer was interesting because Peter Singer is an ethicist with very well with views that I'm diametrically opposed to undermining the sanctity of life and he's the person that wrote something like a newborn babies of damaged child is of less value the pig a dog or a chimpanzee that kind of statement and I got some horrific letters from Christians before I debated him telling me to go for the throat to eviscerate him and all this kind of stuff you know it's desperate but I wondered how do you approach this because his ethical views i abhorred the topic of the debate was does God exist and in the end having prayed about it and thought about it in great detail and read end of stuff handler stuff because he's a prolific writer I started something like this I said we're all well aware of Peter singers views and ethics and I abhorred them actually I'd be totally honest but what I notice is that they in a way are a logical consequence of his atheism and it's as atheism were here to discuss in other words the basis rather than the product but I said even before we get going I'd been reading his books and one of them I find very challenging as a Christian he could have heard a pin drop I said it's a book called the life you can save and I said as a Christian to any Christian here and anybody else I'd recommend that you read it and then moved on at the end he came up to me he put out his hand he said thank you I said for what Peter he said you treated me tonight like no other Christian I've ever met and he said tomorrow night I'm giving a very special lecture and I would like you to be the guest of honor and I just felt you know there is a rightness I didn't compromise on anything but if got in something got in and I just feel we need to learn as I look around the world I suspect that many Christians don't engage simply because they've tried before they've got cross but people who disagree with them that has just disrupted everything and then they don't try again can I ask you a couple of questions this morning go ahead you said if you could you'd abolish the word apologetics you like the term persuasive evangelism yes what's the difference well there's no difference it's just that they they word apologetics particularly in America I mean they think it's a subdivision of philosophy 101 and so they say to me oh I hear you're into apologetics I say what you talking about aren't you oh no that's for clever people and they think that the apologetics means being a high-powered academic enable to answer all the questions now when Paul gave his apologia his defense of the gospel the main thing he talked about was his conversion and then of course he did deal with arguments according to his ability which was very considerable but it's just getting people away from the failing apologetics is not for me and often people don't engage because they can't answer the questions and then they feel oh those who are into apologetics can answer those questions rather than doing the work that they need to do to start to learn to answer a few questions so I'm not against the activity I'm just against the word that divides Christians up and gives people an excuse for not engaging with the culture now the word persuade yes related to evangelism is one of the most common words in the whole of the Acts of the Apostles yes Paul persuading people yes that's right what is persuasive evangelism what are its hallmarks and should we all be engaged in it well I think we should all be there's no option when Peter talked about everybody being ready to give an answer to those that ask you I said this morning very briefly that the imagines dialogue it's one on one really and there's no evidence in scripture that they ever imagined a silent Christian and I saw some physical reason for you to be silent and if you ask yourself why were people persuaded there are a whole number of factors I suspect the first was the authenticity of the Apostles arrives they as somebody has put it they outlived the pagans in the quality of their lives secondly there was the conviction of the truth of what they said because it related into things that the people already understood now we're going to look at that a bit tomorrow but they built bridges you know the Apostles read the daily newspaper if you see what I made they understood where people were at and so they could relate the gospel to that and it seems to me that is crucial they didn't speak the Germans have a wonderful word for it each prophet canards the language of Canaan that only the Christians understand they spoke an ordinary plain straightforward language Greek or Hebrew or whatever it was or Aramaic in a way that the the the people around could understand and they did demolish arguments so I think persuasive evangelism is communicating the message in a way that persuades people but doesn't coerce people there's a vast difference between persuasion and Hrunting of people to come to coerce them which will never work and it was out of Harnack the german historian of course who said that the early church grew for two reasons that they outgrew they outlive har knife I know the pagans this morning you made two very strong points from the early chapters of Acts about how Paul balanced communication about the Christian message being a supernatural message or given to us by a supernatural God and secondly the exclusivity of the gospel could you make one or two suggestions for those of us who want help in this respect as to how we could effectively communicate in our context how the gospel is supernatural and how its exclusive any recommendations about lines we could pursue well the world I inhabit taking the supernatural question first the big difficulty is not the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus it's that people won't even consider it because they don't think such things are conceivable or allowed by the laws of nature so there are two things that have to be done and not everybody can mask the argument so though some of them are relatively easy and that is to get across the idea that any sensible understanding of the laws of nature does not forbid the supernatural in principle and then that clears the way to give evidence for the resurrection of Jesus in particular now I can do a bit of shameless advertising because they the man behind a lot of this stuff as David Hume the Scottish had like them philosopher and when I was debating Christopher Hitchens on one occasion he I mentioned the resurrection he said oh well humors put the nail in that and shown it's impossible so I just stopped him I said Christopher I can't remember my exact words but or to the effect you don't know what you're talking about humans wrong and I can demonstrate that very quickly and I did publicly and afterwards he said that was pretty heavy stuff I said yes it was he said I'd never heard it before I said no because she'd been listening to Richard Dawkins and he doesn't know what he's talking about either so we had a very good conversation about it not because David Hume figures greatly in his arguments against the supernatural I decided to at the end of the book you've got they're gunning for God I've two chapters at the end of that one is the deal with the in principle argument and then the other is to look at the resurrection but through the eyes of David Hume because David Hume famously wrote about why should we believe a witness how strong should it be and so on so I took all those criteria and applied them to the resurrection in a way in which I don't think has been done before but the two arguments are there and I reckon they're pretty accessible but you have to think carefully about them the exclusivity question that there's only one way often the objection comes and says that was alright 20 centuries ago we now live in a tiny multicultural pluralistic world and we can't afford that kind of stuff but just half a moment the early apostles preached the uniqueness of Christ not because they were unaware of multiculturalism and pluralism but because they were more aware of it than we are I mean in Wales there aren't too many temples Aphrodite at least not obvious ones and Zeus and Bale and so on they lived in a world that was absolutely full of pagan religion and philosophical thinking and various schools and so on and they knew about them and in that context they held to the neatness of Christ because it was the only place they found salvation and of waters only to be funded that tap that's the tap you tell people about because everything else is useless so it's the exact opposite reason it wasn't because they hated their fellow man it was because they loved their fellow man that they says here is the unique source so that's the way I would begin to approach that there are other things of course to be said because at the back of your question is the age-old thing that comes up all the time aren't all religions effectively saying the same thing it's a very common thing today and people feel it's arrogant why would you want to be a Christian and often I give lectures on science and faith and God and people listen they say that's all marvelous it looks as if there's a God but you believe in the Christian God and I always welcome the question because I say okay yes it's a perfectly valid question and science doesn't answer it but science isn't the only way to truth and that's a very important thing there are other things like history and experience and and so on and I said let's just take the three monotheistic religions that we know best in the west Judaism Christianity and Islam they make claims how are you going to deal with them well I only know of one way of dealing with these things and that is the basis of evidence now let's take a central claim Judaism said that Jesus died and didn't rise Islam says he didn't die and Christianity says he both died and rose those are three mutually exclusive historical assertions and they say they cannot all be true and their adherence of these religions say they cannot all be true it's very interesting when it comes to discussing in public the differences between religion I find that the difficulty is not with the of the religions a tourist for the secularists who want to say that they all say the same thing when their own representative say they won't it gives an opportunity to discuss the differences and I always end up by pointing out that the flip side of the uniqueness of Jesus is that he's not in competition with any other religions I got this from David Gooding years ago and I find it inordinately helpful Jesus Christ competes with no one else why because he offers me something that none of them do and then you can explain forgiveness peace with God and all the rest of it and the gospel so the religions question and uniqueness question almost inevitably I get an opportunity to explain the gospel so this is fleshed out in getting for God if you'd like to get a closer I'd like to I'd like to if we had time to have asked to draw you out in your comments about suffering from this morning but we we don't have time and I want to give opportunities for folks from the floor to ask questions as they're thinking about what to ask I didn't ask you just one last one the last four years I've heard you speak a lot about having confidence in the gospel the need to have confidence in the gospel in a generation when so many believers in our churches are really struggling they resulted by secularist views and often their confidence is dented what would you say to church leaders here trying to equip the members of the churches to have confidence in the gospel or any of us who are believers here about how we might develop a stronger sense of confidence in the gospel and the courage that you refer to amongst Daniel and his friends in against the flow what I would say to this is this in my experience of life authority and the pulpit is directly to proportional to engagement with people in the gospel in other words there is danger and I seen it again and again of people losing contact with reality and they're preaching in churches they're teaching the Bible and so on but it loses its spiritual authority because it's not anchored in constant dialogue with people out there if a few days go by or a few weeks go by and I don't have an engagement conversation I feel I'm beginning beginning to lose out because we cannot lead people where we haven't been ourselves and they can tell you can tell within two or three minutes of listening to a talk in church whether there's anything real behind it or not and I think we all need to seek the Lord because we're all sinners at imperfect and have failed in this but we need to raise the bar in certain places vastly higher than it's been because the non-christian world will vote with their feet all the time and we need to be aware of that I stressed this morning the word drew of the churches grew and it was the word out there wasn't the word in the churches that grew inevitably but it was the word working in society and resulting in people coming to faith in Christ and coming into churches and I would simply encourage people who have the awesome responsibility and it's a huge privilege to ask themselves what they can speak freely because they don't know you am I getting this sermon off the internet or just hauling a few notes out of the cupboard and so on now we all use past material I do it all the time because it's part but it's keeping it fresh and the freshness comes in constant disco people that that's one of the main things I would say I mean it signs are hard saying but we got to ask ourselves we need people who give us a reality check and I would ask you who preach who criticizes what you say who you evaluate sit for you well if you've got a wife that's very useful my wife's my best critic but you need more than that and in my earlier days one of the great things was and I see professor Hawks sitting here we used to be involved in a Bible study together and when we ran that we would have a session having a post-mortem and it was a very helpful thing to do I sense that many people have grown into the ministry and they've risen way above criticism and now they are so anxious and nervous in case anybody will they've lost it I'm afraid I'm being brutally honest here but I think we need to Lindsay thank you well I suppose one of the things is to preach they lured me to lead me to the people in whom you're working that you want me to speak to that Sarah francis schaeffer used to pray I think that's exactly right rather than having it as some sort of krumping narrowing thing that the joy of it and if you're not led to anybody that's fine but to be constantly looking for opportunities and therefore and I'll probably speak to this a bit more tomorrow but to be aware of what's going on so that you've got subjects to talk to people about years ago oh I'll say this tomorrow let's take a few questions because the issue of engaging with the culture and society I think awesome Michael Greene will be taking up in talks over the next two days and in the question and answer session just two rules or questions keep it short and if you have a question ask do I think this will be helpful for the majority here rather than it just being a personal question because we don't have much time so please try to ask questions you think will be of value to many others who are present here and address the Malta Lindsey address them all - Lindsey said he would have a question they were to ask John please thank you thank you John I know Lindsey was converted but you need us back to the beginning and tell me about your background how were you converted the same way as everybody else is yeah in detail interesting that I get asked that question the story of my conversion is infinitely less important than the fact that I Pacific here believing that Jesus is the Son of God and I mean that seriously I grew up at a culture north of Ireland where people were very interested in the details of it I can't really remember you see my parents were believers by grandparents were believers and they're their parents were believers I'm looking back over 70 years I can't remember exactly what were my experiences as a child and what were my parents experiences and so as a result of that I was a huge doubter I got converted a lot of times I go to this camp and I oh yes I got it now and then I'd hear preachers saying are you sure you've got it now I wasn't sure I got it so I get it again and it was very sad actually looking back psychologically it's not the way the Lord treated people but the crucial thing is yes there was a time clearly when I came to trust Christ I suspect it was the earlier that I'll find out at heaven all about the details so I thought be able to answer your question in heaven but the main thing for me sitting here today is look I believed that Jesus Christ was the son of God yesterday I still believe it today am i building up my faith that I'm gonna believe it tomorrow and it's that living nurse of it rather than the fact I don't spend much time telling people I was born physically I hope I don't need to good question by the way there's one back there I can see they are always asking these trick questions in Bertha as a student I often find having discussions with friends I am somewhat of a novelty intellectually defending the Christian faith and they're very happy to have discussions and enjoy the novelty but you can't really move beyond that spiritually how do you avoid being an academic and intellectual novelty there's always the question of moving people from the abstract to the concrete from the intellectual to the personal and people come with questions we have to genuinely answer those questions but very often as you get older you get experience that people are just repeating one question after another and I can recall many incidents with people I get the opportunity these days to talk to some very high-powered business people and one man wanted to talk about Christianity haven't he spent an hour and a half firing one question after another I didn't get opening in my life until I stopped and I said to him do you know you haven't listened to a single thing I said you're not remotely interested in it you're jumping from one question to another no unless you begin to get serious you're going to get no word I'm certainly going to get no harm that resulted in getting Ament to believe it or not a Bible study which were we made much more progress and I think as a student it's important to engage in these late-night conversations and so on and so forth but sooner or later we get the sense that more needs to be said and very early on I learned this in quite a dramatic way when I was a student and I was asked at dinner in Cambridge one night by somebody what I thought why I believed that Jesus rose from the dead and I tried to explain it quite quietly because they were surrounded by big guys like Lindsey they were old members that are ugh beaten up and as I got quieter and quieter the silence grew and it was very difficult until a chapter 3 down lost his temper he thumped the table and all the knives and forks jumped and he said that's the most absolute nonsense the worst I've ever heard and all this kind of stuff and I thought oh dear what do I do now he was pooh-poohing the resurrection so what I said was this I said to obtain me I said this you feel very strongly about this he said yes I do I feel very strongly about it so what was I doing now I was discussing his emotion and his reaction not the evidence for the resurrection you feel strongly yes he said I do so I said tell me what did you make of Paul's evidence when you read it he said what I said you heard me what did you make of the evidence of Paul would you read and he said I never read it well I said where is the strength of feeling coming from I said aren't you a serious person so I invited them back for coffee half an hour later he said this he said the trouble John is actually my parents shoved this stuff down my throat and I don't want to believe it I said right that's the first honest thing you said tonight he was converted within half an hour and he still he's still serving the Lord in other words we got through that constant questioning by talking about reaction now you have to be very sensitive when you do that sometimes I do it very gently sometimes they do it quite forcefully but you have to learn to move beyond just the factual content with well this is implications what are you going to do about it and after the easiest way just to close this with his assistant somebody suppose so we've had a long are given hour-long discussion suppose I could convince you or persuade you that Jesus is the Son of God would you be prepared to trust him ah well and then it comes out honestly and you can deal with that you talk about that then okay what's the best way method of sharing the gospel in the world for people with no you know positions of authority you know I mean what can people like myself what's the best way all people people are very different and you can't give one method but let me make just a few brief comments you don't have to be a pastor to witness if you are a pastor you should be witnessing but as Christians we are called all of us to be witnesses now Peter gives us a clue he says you should be answering questions well you can't answer questions you don't forget asked so you have to be a question provoker that's what you have to be get people curious now one of the ways of doing that learning to listen I was taught that I've got two years in one night that I should use them in that proportion now Irish people I not speak for the Welsh Irish people have a considerable difficulty without they should have been given two miles in one year but they weren't and listening to people now how do you do that well my intellectual hero from the ancient Greek world is Socrates who was famous for asking questions and learning to ask questions is one of the most interesting things you meet somebody new I have a little rule which I break frequently because I'm Irish usually but meet somebody new try this the next time when you meet somebody do and I'm talking to you specifically you ask the question keep asking them questions until they ask you one some people find that virtually impossible because they're so full of a message they want to get rid of and things they need to share and so on that they don't know how to listen and if you do that know what questions it's not I'm suggesting you say to them what do you think of Ezekiel 37 no it's tell me a bit about your story tell me a bit about your life people love talking about themselves and you begin to find out a bit about their friends and their family don't ask them what they do first of all that's a common mistake that and it particularly happens in the world at which I work at the University what do you do but try to get to know who they are and what interests they have and what hobbies they have I mean the dinners we have at our colleagues at Oxford I sit beside people and I say well you're a professor of X tell me what are you doing your spare time and they all light up and they say well I meant to replied basket weaving how fascinating and you start talking and then as you get an opportunity you begin to probe something may have happened like today there's been an explosion in London on the tube just take that as an example and say look we're all fit for this kind of thing every day have you got any resources that cope with that and listen for their answer and don't give yours until they ask you the crucial thing is to hold back and hold back and hold back and hold back and then you discover you've made a friend and most people I speak to today when I ask them to tell me the story of how you became a Christian is through friendship and all I'm saying is giving practical advice on how to make friends years ago it was said to me if you want people to find your faith interesting you had better be interested I said in what in everything in other words never become a monomaniac you know the sort of person that can only talk about the gospel and you'll notice sometimes this is another thing some people have to learn specially Celts is not to change their voice when they're talking about the gospel it is remarkable it is remarkable you listen to people they talk about politics football and then when it comes to the gospel I've got a message for you and they frighten people to death I know this is very simple and practical but I tell you practicing talking about your faith in Christ of the same tone as you talk about card of Arms Park or politics or anything makes a huge difference because then people say it's a natural part of your life does that make sense good you know what a day because we shout about everything but it was TS Eliot the great poet who once said of Jesus he was the man who never stopped asking difficult questions so we now evangelist in the art of asking questions is a lost art in part it has to be done alongside preaching and gossiping the gospel and will we look at that issue in the evangelism track can I say one way to the young man who kindly ask the question one of the things that stops us doing what you want to do is the fear of not being able to give an answer I want to say one thing about that if somebody asks you a question you can't answer say so at once and just say you know I've never heard that question before I'm sorry I I don't know what to say but I tell you what I would love to go away and think about that because it seems to me that's very interesting can we have coffee next week you'll never lose face by doing that you'll more than likely see them become a friend because it turns out that you're human you don't know everything and you've admitted it it is so important I get questions all the time that I can't answer and I have to think about them and that makes you human be vulnerable be human but use that as an opportunity to think about it and come back and make a little step forward and so on if they ask you another then honored those sorry thank you well a good exercise for all of us is to go and read the Gospels and list all the questions that Jesus asked at least 70 in the Gospels so he was a master of question and answer in the way he dialogue with people alongside his his preaching well thank you John that was a great hour take a break now folks for half an hour for some coffee or tea say Chris and that Court is it quarter-past [Music] profiteer coffee before you go though shouldn't be giving them a round of applause you

Channel: Wales Leadership Forum

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Id: OvktcsBLouY

Length: 60min 14sec (3614 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 04 2017