If you are a devout follower of Christ, it’s only a matter of time before you encounter a vocal skeptic who will challenge you on your faith. If you are not well versed in The Scriptures, or are unfamiliar with apologetics, I recommend you keep your responses limited to:

1. Answered prayers within your life.
2. The life changing transformation you’ve experienced in Christ.

Why keep your responses limited to these two topics? Well, because you need to talk about things that you have personal experience with, as well as things the skeptics are unfamiliar with (and have no personal experience with). This is important because some skeptics will try to keep you focused on:

1. Evil in the world.
2. Hypocrites within the church.
3. The difficult topics / verses with the scriptures.
4. The shortcomings of the church throughout history.

Unless you are well versed in handling such topics – with gentleness and respect – your talks with skeptics will probably end in a frustrating or even hostile manner.

By talking about answered prayers and the transformation that occurred when Christ came into your life, the skeptics won’t be able to say much. Yes, some of them will try to down play or ridicule your experiences…but keep in mind they are speaking from a position of ignorance and inexperience. If they had pursued after God, had found Him and had numerous prayers answered, they wouldn’t be skeptics – they’d be Believers just like you!

Allow me share a story with you; one that will illustrate a particular method of dealing with skeptics:

A young man approached me one day and asked me the following question. He said, “How do you respond to the people who say ‘Christians are nothing but a bunch of hypocrites.”

I answered his question this way:

“Here is what I would say to them: What you say is true. There are a bunch of people within the church who are hypocrites; people who pretend to live the Christian life! So I agree with you on this point. However, your statement begs to ask two vitally important questions:

Question #1 – What do you do with the Christians who are living the life that you know you should be living?

Question #2 – What do you do with the Christians who are having their prayers answered by God Almighty?

While it is easy to focus on the bad apples of the faith, the truth of the matter is this: While it is important acknowledging the bad, it is equally important to acknowledge the good. So, again I ask you, what do you do with the Christians who are having their prayers answered?”

Do you see how my response was not confrontational or argumentative? Instead, I kept the focus of the conversation on the one thing that matters most – God answering prayers!

So, when you encounter some skeptics, keep the conversations kind, gentle, respectful and focused on the topic that matter most. Why? Because the goal of the conversation is NOT to win the argument, but rather, to give them a glimpse of Jesus Christ working within your life!

Food for thought my brother, my sister! Food for thought…

In His Service,

Roy