Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - How to Share Your Faith Without Compromise | Christian Conviction in a Culture of Tolerance

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

Discover how to stand firm in your Christian faith while engaging with others lovingly and authentically. This powerful conversation explores the balance between biblical truth and genuine kindness, addressing how to avoid watering down the gospel while building meaningful relationships. Learn the difference between true tolerance and cultural conformity, and get practical insights on sharing your faith without being self-righteous or judgmental.Key topics include:Living with Christian conviction in today's cultureSpeaking truth with love and humilityUnderstanding biblical tolerance vs. cultural toleranceAvoiding the trap of making Christianity just "self-help"Real-world examples of authentic faith conversationsHow to share the complete gospel message without editingPerfect for Christians seeking to strengthen their faith while learning to engage meaningfully with those who hold different beliefs. Whether you're new to faith or a long-time believer, this conversation offers valuable wisdom for navigating faith conversations in today's world.Watch VideosVisit the Website Buy Consider the LiliesFollow on Instagram

Eric thanks for sitting down I wanted to talk to you about as Christians we're called to live with conviction and we're to be you know even right now we're at Hume Lake and the theme we're preaching through is on Daniel who stood with boldness when everyone else around him was bowing down to idols. In our own culture, there's so many contemporary and cultural idols that people are bowing down to. And at times, standing for God and standing for his word is synonymous with being bigoted and narrow-minded. And even if you were to say it with gentleness and respect, no matter what, if it's the truth of God's Word, it's going

to offend. And so, I'm just interested because I think a lot of people sacrifice truth at the altar of kindness. And so, they never actually approach people with the truth because they're so worried they're going to burn a bridge with someone who doesn't know the Lord or doesn't believe what they believe. And so, they never end up communicating the truth at all. And so I'm just curious and interested in your perspective on how can people today, Christians, live with conviction, proclaim the gospel with boldness in a world of tolerance? It's increasingly difficult to be people of conviction because the perception often is, like you say, bigoted, intolerant, mean, forcing your faith on someone.

But I think the first thing to realize is that tolerance has been redefined in a way where it isn't really tolerance in the way a lot of people think about it now. Because true tolerance is having a legitimate disagreement and still respecting you, still loving you as a person, even though you may vehemently disagree with your perspective or your thinking on something. Tolerance increasingly is being defined as going along with the status quo, going along and not wanting to be on the wrong side of history is what you hear all the time. And so I want to truly respect people, even if I deeply disagree with them. And that's the kind of Christian tolerance I think we should have. The second thing I would

want us to ask ourselves is, am I being bigoted? Am I being mean-spirited? Am I being self-righteous in my idea of truth? Because I don't want to say, well, I'm being persecuted for Jesus' sake, when I'm actually being persecuted for being a jerk. And so I don't want to excuse my jerkiness or my arrogance or my self-righteousness for, oh, look at me being persecuted. So I want to make sure I'm cultivating a true heart of love and humility and kindness toward people so that I'm not excusing being an idiot with, you know, you'll be hated because the world hated me, Jesus says. But the other part of that is just what you said. You can be in a really good place in your heart and even in your manner with people, but simply because you believe that their chosen lifestyle or behaviors is dishonoring

to God and destructive to them and others, that they're going to assume you're an idiot or bigoted or intolerant or judging them. And it's important to stay confident in what we believe as a loving thing. When people are corrected or rebuked or called out for something, they often have a hard time receiving it because they have a lot invested in it. But I want to be someone who's want to be someone who's able to be corrected and honestly consider what someone's saying. And I would hope the people in my life would be willing to hear from me as well in the same way. And so to stay true to God's Word, and you can't do that unless you know God's Word, I think that's where it's got to start.

Do we even know what God's Word is? Because the Great Commission is not just make disciples and baptize them, but to teach them everything I've commanded, Jesus says. And so we've got to know what he's commanded if we're going to be truth tellers and have a prophetic voice in our culture. But then when we do know the word of God, we know it's the word of God and not just our opinion. And so there's no pride in knowing truth in that. And so we can stay humble in ourselves, but bold in the truth

and proclaim it with confidence and conviction as the very Word of God. And Jesus says, all authority has been given to me. Go and make disciples and teach them to obey everything. And so we can go confident that God's given us his word. And it's not just my opinion. It's not because I'm smarter than anybody else. It's not because I figured it out and you didn't. It's because God's given us his word, and it's clear and at our disposal. And so we have the word that we can bring to people. And so that needs to be done with confidence and boldness. The disciples are called bold over and over again in the Bible because it didn't fit. They didn't have status in the society. They didn't have reputation and degrees. They were common, uneducated men, but they had boldness. And it says, so they knew they had been with Jesus because Jesus had that

kind of boldness. And so we don't want to be perceived in that way, but sometimes we're just going to be. And we need to be okay with that and know that persecution is part of the deal and be men and women of the word who know it well enough and know it's God's word and preach it with that kind of conviction. That's so helpful. What would you say to someone, Eric, that wants to be a person of conviction, but on a quest of maybe establishing rapport with someone they're talking to, they smooth out the rough edges of the gospel, meaning that they might believe in their heart that there's a reality of hell, but they're tempted to just say you know separation from god you're not experiencing

his love and so they almost communicate maybe a half-hearted gospel yeah that you know people always ask why do so many people leave the church at 18. it's because they've just been saying you know there's a father in heaven that loves you but they've never seen god as maybe the just judge of all the earth right and even i think you've you've worked on a project before of what Christians say that maybe they shouldn't say. And they say things like, God loves everyone and he loves you unconditionally. Or God doesn't hate sin. Or he hates sin, not the sinner.

And so we say these things that are maybe on a quest of doing PR work for God. How would you maybe encourage someone that even begins to feel uncomfortable when someone does preach with boldness exactly what the Scripture says in a humble, non-jerky way? Yeah. So Colossians 1, 28 and 29 has been really helpful to me. When it says, Him we proclaim, so it's about Christ,

warning everyone, so it's got judgment day in mind in the message we bring about Christ, warning everyone, and teaching everyone, so it's got content, with all wisdom. So we want to do it in a way that's helpful and contextualized

based on the person or the people or the context we're in, with all wisdom. Why? That we may present everyone mature in Christ. That on Judgment Day, there are people who know Jesus who otherwise wouldn't have it without our influence and who are deeper in Jesus who otherwise wouldn't have been without our influence.

And then Paul says, for this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. But you're asking a question about the with all wisdom piece, I think. Or what does it mean to contextualize based on where someone's coming from, where they currently are in their understanding of God and their commitments, and then speaking into that. We don't just blurt out whatever may be true. We want to do it wisely based on where somebody is. So if somebody's in a world of hurt and in pain and struggling,

I'm not going to talk about the ontological argument for the existence of God. I'm going to cry with them. I'm going to pray with them. And if I'm in India, I'm going to emphasize something like the fatherhood of God because there's an absence of that in Eastern religions. And so I want to contextualize and be wise, and I don't want to just say whatever may be true if it's not going to be helpful in this context. But on the other side of that, I don't want to edit. I don't want to filter because it may offend this person. I don't want to transform the message. I want to translate the message into the current context. And so transforming the message for me when I fail in that way is just what you said, rounding off the rough edges.

So we can present the gospel in a way that's nothing but you're not getting your best life now without Jesus. It's nothing to do with God. It's not about His glory. It's not about finding who you are in Him. It's not about, like John Piper's book title, God is the gospel. We can present the gospel, and God's not even part of it. Now, there's truth in everything we're saying.

You'll find fulfillment. You'll find meaning. You'll find significance. You'll find out who you are. All those things are true. But those are wonderful byproducts of knowing God. Jesus died and rose and gave us righteousness to bring us to God, not just to make our lives better and fix our problems. And so you can say things that are true that are wonderful benefits of knowing Christ, but it's not really about Christ. It's not really

about God. So you can say, you can have a fulfilled life. You can have your relationships improved. You can do all these things. Sometimes following Jesus messes your life up a lot. Just read the prophets. But there can be a human centeredness in the way we talk about ministry, the gospel, what it means to be a Christian that doesn't even get to God. And so I don't want to filter. I don't want to edit. I don't want to transform the truth of God because it'll land better with you. I don't want to play to consumeristic thinking. And I wouldn't want anybody to do that with me, even if they completely didn't believe what I did

and have a completely different worldview. For us to have a real relationship and an honest conversation, I don't want you filtering from me. And you know what? People in my life don't do that generally, I don't think. They talk about horoscopes and karma and how great immorality is. You know, these friends and acquaintances that I have. And they don't say, well, Eric's a Christian. He doesn't believe in that. So I'm not going to talk about what I'm passionate about yeah if you're not

a Christian I want you to talk to me honestly about what you believe and not filter it and it can look just like this so somebody could say hey why'd you come teach at Biola yeah and I want to say oh God opened the doors for us he really blessed us he made it clear and he directed us but if somebody's not a Christian I mean client be inclined to just say, oh, I had a good job opportunity. That's true, but it's not bringing my view of life in Christ to the table. And somebody might say, hey, what made you decide to adopt kids?

And I want to say, oh, because God adopted me because we were all orphans. And in Jesus, I find him as my father in adoption. Instead, I say, well, God really broke our hearts for orphans. And they're going to applaud that. Who's not going to be happy about that? But if I bring the gospel, which is really the heart of why my wife and I love orphan care, to the table, people might not applaud that. And so we can be inclined to filter things out and edit things based on what I think you want to hear Instead of what's really true, and that's not honest. Yeah, that's not really an honest relationship We're not as conversation

And then I want to be somebody in whom there's no guile where I'm not Editing for you because I assume the worst about you that you won't even be able to honestly listen to what I think Without being judgmental of me. Now, that may be true, but I want to give people the benefit of the doubt and think I can bring my passion for Christ to the table in the same way I want them to bring their passion to the table for the Lakers or whatever they may be into. Yeah, no, I'm good on the Lakers. No, I love what you're saying even about the editing of the gospel because I think sometimes people use texts like John 10.10 that Jesus comes to give you life to the fullest without telling them that the call to follow Jesus

is also a call to come and die to yourself. And so there's so much, I think, importance there because people would be like, well, to religious people, Jesus preaches hard, but to empty people, he just says, I'm living water. But in John 4, he'll say, he'll confront the woman in her sin. You don't have, you know, you have five husbands. And so, or you have five men. And so I think that's so important in what you're saying, but even contextually how we use wisdom to use natural conversations, like you're

saying, to bring up the truth of the gospel. And I do think that we turn the volume down on maybe our normal responses of life, even what you're saying. Well, God broke our heart for orphan care. I'm a son of God, and I love that He's my Father, and this is the response of a heart that's been saved by God. Yeah, and Jesus could easily just become a life enhancer or a supplement that makes you more vibrant or a self-help coach who helps you guide the things of life. And it's so different than that when you really understand what it means to be a Christian, that Jesus is your life.

He doesn't enhance your life. He's the source of your life. He's a source of your new life in Christ. He's everything to you. He's more source of your life. He's a source of your new life in Christ. He's everything to you. He's more important than anything or anyone else. And that's very different than Jesus is somebody who soups your life up and makes it better and solve some of your problems for you. And if that's what you save people with, a self-help gospel, that's what you save them to. And they're invariably going to be disappointed. And they'll probably come back to you and say, you lied to me.

You didn't tell me that in some ways when I became a Christian, my life was going to get harder. Which is true because when you become a child of God, you also become a soldier in his army. And you acquire enemies you didn't have before. And you start battles you weren't fighting before against principalities and powers in high places and against the sin in your own heart. And so in some ways, life is harder as a Christian, but Jesus is so worth everything that it makes the difficulty pale in comparison.

And that's what people need to hear, not some self-improvement gospel. I was reading the Bible on a plane one time, and a lady, pretty drunk lady, sat down next to me and said, oh, what do you read? And I said, I'm reading the Bible. And she said, oh, I read self-help books too. And I said, actually, in some ways, the Bible's the opposite of a self-help book. It's a desperate for God help book. And it led to a great conversation. She was on her way, she said, to party with her daughter in Florida at University of Miami. But as we talked about an hour later,

she admitted that she was on her way to bail her daughter out of jail for selling drugs. And we had an amazing conversation about Jesus. And so it's not about self-help. It's about desperate for God help. Eric, that's so helpful even just all going back to how we live with conviction, how we do that in a way that communicates the full-orbed gospel, but with love, not being a jerk, stemming out of a brokenness for the lost and an understanding of what God has done for us in Christ as adopting us. And so what you're saying is so helpful. And I just pray that I could be more like that. And I'm thankful for your example. So thank you, Eric. You're welcome. you