My friend Steve Kneale writes here about how it’s relationships not arguments that win people over. I think he has a good point here. It’s not apologetic debating that will lead people to Christ. We may win the argument but not the person. In fact, what you tend to find is that if you prove an inconsistency or problem with someone else’s worldview then they simply tend to adapt that worldview. We also tend to assume that people are thinking in those big worldview terms. The reality is that people don’t tend to be. Our apologetics tend to answer questions that people aren’t asking. Incidentally, whilst there is a temptation to see a new development when we talk about people being less interested in “prove its true” and more in “prove it works”, I think that this, outside of academic circles has always been the case.
What caught my interest in Steve’s post was the example he used as his starting point and another direction that this could have gone in. Steve quotes from a Guardian article which says:
“Before Trump was convicted of various charges in 2024, only 17% of Republican voters believed felons should be able to be president; directly after his conviction, that number rose to 58%. To reconcile two contradictory beliefs (that presidents shouldn’t do x, and that Trump should be president), an enormous number of Republican voters simply changed their mind about the former. In fact, Republican voters shifted their views on more or less all the things Trump had been convicted of: fewer felt it was immoral to have sex with a porn star, pay someone to stay silent about an affair, or falsify a business record. Nor is this effect limited to Trump voters: research suggests we all rationalise in this way, in order to hold on to the beliefs that let us keep operating as we have been. Or, ironically, to change some of our beliefs in response to new information, but often only in order to not have to sacrifice other strongly held beliefs.
Notice here that people were willing to simply swap their ethical views when their ethics were in conflict with their support for a personality and the agenda that he was running with. There is what Steve refers to as “cognitive dissonance”, note it’s not merely that arguments are not won, it is that people actively change their minds for the sake of the cause even without logical arguments being made as to why their ethics might have previously been wrong.
Indeed, I might be tempted to suggest that what we have seen with that specific case in the US is that those who would previously have been making the case for an ethical position that sex with porn stars, buying silence and falsifying business records is wrong choice to be silent and have consistently pushed back against talk about such things because they believe there are bigger issues at stake.
Steve goes on to quote further from the Guardian article:
“A sea of evidence demonstrates that our friends have the power to change our beliefs and behaviour – not by arguing with us, but simply by being around us or showing us new ways of living. Studies on social contact theory show that when people are set up in conditions to become friends and collaborate, they become less prejudiced against the identity groups their new friends belong to… Our friendsbroaden our field of concern; they get us involved in the world, and they build the trust that human beings appear to require to open up to new ideas. Their indirect influence achieves more than arguments, especially from strangers, ever could.In other words: when it comes to persuasion, it’s not the conversation, it’s the relationship.”
Steve focuses on how we, positively, can be the friends, who by our presence influence and shape the decisions of others. Our lives should be a loud witness to God’s power to forgive, change, restore. However, the other side of the coin is that typically we see the reverse happening. We are the ones influenced.
There are two aspects to this. First, I wonder to what extent Evangelicals have become much less certain about some of the big ethical issues is from knowing people who disagree and make different choices in life. What happens when the tone of the message over the years is that certain sins are so heinous as to mark people out as monsters, then Christians actually get to know others and discover that they are not monsters? If the argument has always been that such a life style is distinctly evil and makes the person demonic, then if we find out that such people are not to all intents and purposes demonic but rather our friends, family, neighbours, colleagues and often proving to be kind and loving then how will that affect our perception of what we have been taught?
The other thing that I’m left wondering, is the extent to which we are willing to overlook, downplay sin or disbelieve claims about a person based on the extent to which we like them and their agenda. It cannot be that serious because if it were then we would have to take 1 Corinthians 5 action and this would mean losing relationship, connection, patronage or influence.
A theme in the Bible is that God doesn’t “regard the face” or pay attention to a person’s appearance (see 1 Samuel 16:7 and Matthew 22:16 for example) and nor should we. We are not to show partiality and favouritism. To what extent are we influenced not by what is true and good but by the appearance, popularity, agenda of others?
Faithroots 