Recently, I have been watching a lot of videos of Christians debate atheists. I find them very interesting because I wanted to be able to defend the faith if someone asked a tough question to me. The most recent one I watched touched on the subject of biblical slavery. The Christian debater started off by saying these exact words. “Slavery is evil, and morally wrong. We also do not believe the Bible condones slavery”.
Sounds like an impossible opening statement to misinterpret. But looking through the comments at the end I saw many people who still thought the Christian man was saying that the Bible was advocating for slavery and that he thinks slavery is fine. As I open up my keyboard to begin arguing back, I immediately thought of one of Jesus’ phrases that he says often.
“If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.”
Mark 4:23
This immediately tells me that not everyone will understand what Jesus is saying, and it’s probably time to read the chapter over to make sure I understand. What about those who don’t hear? To me, Jesus is saying that some people just do not have ears to hear, therefore nothing will make sense.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
Proverbs 1:7
This is the proverb I think goes with this situation the most. If you don’t fear the Lord, trust the Lord, understand how just He is, and how He knows all, how can you have true knowledge about anything biblically? When you realize this life is not your last one, it changes your worldview completely.
Jesus also said “do not cast your pearls before swine” which is a good thing to remember when having these conversations. Many times, people are just trying to have conversations. But sometimes people have already committed to misunderstanding you, so do not waste your time.
I don’t say this to bash atheists or other non-Christians. I say this as understanding of those we talk to. One of my favorite pastors said before, “When talking about the gospel, it doesn’t have to be the best representation ever, all it has to be is true”. So when defending the faith and talking about the Bible, just do the best you can. At the end of the day, Jesus himself had to pray for people to understand.
