2/18/26

Today I had a great conversation with a student at CSUF named *Nehemiah who is currently "exploring religions". It was a fantastic conversation as he was asking very interesting questions - some merely intriguing and some very perceptive inquiries! When he walked up to the whiteboard, I recognized him, but I couldn't remember when or where we had talked last. He told me that we talked at the beginning of the year, but only briefly, and now he was back to continue our conversation which he enjoyed previously. We proceeded to discuss a number of things which I will summarize below, but it was a great encouragement to hear from *Nehemiah, unsolicited, that his interactions with us are distinctly different from the other groups. He described our interactions as enjoyable and engaging whereas his other conversations with Muslims, Jews, and others have felt sterile and closed off. I am convinced that this is firstly due to the truth and security of Christianity, but not far behind it due to the conversational approach to evangelism that we use. While other methods can be fruitful, we've found this to be more closely imitating the example of Jesus in His earthly ministry and incarnation - and the results appear to reflect that. Conversational evangelism certainly takes more time and patience, but, as *Nehemiah said, there is something distinctly different and refreshing about it! Here are some of the interesting things we spoke about in our conversation today!

I really appreciate it when people walk up knowing what they want to talk about, not merely because they can be easier to navigate, but because that generally means that they are seeking some specific thing. Everyone that you might engage with in an evangelical conversation will fall somewhere on what we call the Open-Seeking Axis. This axis is a tool that we've found helpful in informing how we interact with various types of people. On the axis, it describes two main variables: openness to talk with us in conversation (open) and awareness of their own needs (seeking). Ideally in conversational evangelism, we want people who are both open and seeking, but this tool helps to inform us about how we might interact differently with people who fall else ware on the axis. As for *Nehemiah, I perceive that he was very open and it appears that he is also seeking something -> great combo!

*Nehemiah began our conversation expressing his lack of confidence in his own knowledge of holy texts when conversing with religious people. He seemed to be afraid of offending people by not knowing accurately what the texts teach and potentially asking dumb or condescending questions. I reassured him that this was not concerning to me, and that I'm more than happy to answer any of his questions as best as I can. I also asked him if he desires to know what these texts say better and then invited him to read and discuss the Bible in an open conversation together. He hasn't taken this offer quite yet, but he proceeded to ask me a laundry list of questions regarding the Bible, Jesus, sin, forgiveness, salvation, and more!

One of the first questions he asked me was about the story of the wisemen. He was very persistent about this which intrigued me. He asked me to summarize the story of the wisemen for him and then to explain who they were and why they matter. I don't think anyone has ever asked me this question, so I was super interested in where this was going! I told him about the story of Jesus' humble birth in a manger with the visitation of poor shepherds from the fields and then wealthy and powerful wisemen from a distant land, and how this shows us that Jesus came as the King and Savior for all people - rich, poor, Jew, Gentile. I also pointed out the significance of these powerful wisemen bringing Jesus these gifts as it shows us many symbolic things, the least of these not being that He is a King. He persistently asked if there was any more story to the wisemen after the gifts, so I told him about how Herod desired to eliminate the threat of the arising King and how God instructed the wisemen in a dream not to go back to Herod as he had requested. This resulted in Herod decreeing the execution of the baby boys in that area - a peculiar parallel to the narrative of Moses, who led the people of Israel out of the bondage of slavery and into an inherence of peace and provision. It's almost like God wants us to understand Jesus as a deliverer from oppression and slavery... almost... And this led into one of the next topics, more seamlessly than initially perceived, as *Nehemiah asked me about sin and forgiveness.

"How does forgiveness work in Christianity? Is God's forgiveness unlimited in the sense that you can live however you want and still make it to heaven? And what is the Christian stance on homosexuality?" Affirming the perceptiveness of his questions, we began to address each of these questions, beginning with some corrective groundwork in how the American Church popularly understands sin and righteousness. I was joyously welcomed to plainly share the Gospel with *Nehemiah and help him reimagine sin as departure from the perfect and life-giving design God created us according to. I used the example of a laptop to illustrate this concept. In the same way that a laptop is built to run and operate in a specific way to do specific things, likewise God created us to operate and function in a particular way. Just as with the laptop, there are ways that we could use it contrary to its intended purpose which would not only destroy the laptop itself, but also cause destruction to other things or people. Computers work great, but if you decide you want to use it at the bottom of a swimming pool, you will most certainly destroy the computer. Likewise, God's law is not a bad thing - in fact, it's quite the opposite as it describes to us the way in which we thrive and flourish as humans. This moved into our discussion about homosexuality as the Bible clearly teaches that this is contrary to human flourishing. It's helpful to frame the conversation of sin, righteousness, and forgiveness in the context of a good God who intentionally created us to flourish as this moves away from the cold and sterile perception of God that appears to pointlessly create limits to our human fun. Unfortunately, this is a very common and easy perception to hold as Satan would love nothing less than for us to resent the very thing that brings us life and freedom and rather believe the lie that God is keeping something good from us - not dissimilar from the situation in Genesis 3, is it?

We unpacked only briefly the further objections people often have to the position of homosexuality being sin, but the computer example seems to be helpful for addressing this issue in one fell swoop. The issue behind homosexuality is the same root issue that leads to all other sins: our bad desires which are contrary to our design. This isn't hard to recognize when you view the practical fruits of adultery, lying, stealing, hatred, homosexuality, lust, etc., but I believe it's a much more productive approach than the unexplained approach to sin which, though not necessarily wrong in information, allows great room to misinterpret God as arbitrarily limiting human pleasure. The law is about protecting and preserving life, not limiting our human experience.

Another topic we curiously discussed were the origins and authors of the gospel accounts. In my experience, when this topic gets brought up it's to argue the reliability of these sources, but *Nehemiah's questions seemed to just be curious. I told him about these various historical record as well as who the authors were. Mixed into this conversation, *Nehemiah told me about a very strange English teacher he had that was a very vocal Atheist and made the class write a paper discussing why the gospel accounts have contradictions and are false. He said that he really didn't like that teacher, but he was really curious if I thought that there were contradictions in the gospels. I described to him how eyewitness testimony records the same events from different perspectives and can vary in details that get recorded. Often when people claim gospel contradictions they merely point out differences in the records and not actual contradictions. For example, I've talked with a number of people who insist that the mass resurrection of saints in Matthew's account is a contradiction to the other records because they don't mention it. While it might be strange that this is only recorded in one, it isn't an actual contradiction. Now, if one of them said that no saints raised from the dead, then it would be a contradiction, but that doesn't happen. I asked *Nehemiah if he was interested in looking at this paper he was made to write and addressing the alleged contradictions - to which he affirmed interest. Hopefully we will be able to have that conversation or a better conversation that God grants us!