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With David Nixon
82 Plays3 years ago
It seems that in our culture today, it is all too easy to offend a person by disagreeing with their ideas. This fuels our fear of rejection, broken relationships, consequences for career or reputation when it comes to discussing our faith. What can we do to foster respect, humility and love that wins the heart of a person, instead of winning an argument? Today's guest urges us to look to Jesus for a great example.
David Nixon is Associate Pastor at Carrubbers Christian Centre on Edinburgh's Royal Mile. After studying Law at the University of Edinburgh, David went on to study Theology at the Faith Mission Bible College and London School of Theology, while also training and working in church-based ministry. He regularly writes for the Solas website. David is a husband to Kirsty and father to two energetic young boys.
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Transcript
Introduction of Hosts and Guest
00:00:09
Speaker
Well, hello and welcome to another exciting episode of pep talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. I'm Andy Bannister from the solar center for public Christianity based up in Dundee in Scotland. And I'm joined as ever by my effervescent co-host Christie there coming to us from London at the other end of the country. Christie, how are you doing today?
00:00:30
Speaker
Epibessently well, thank you. I think we need to come up with some new descriptives. We do. We use that adjective rather too often, but we'll think of some better ones. Or if listeners have got some suggested, you know, long multi-syllabic adjectives we can use for a bit of light relief, there we go. Anyway, let's move on from excessive verbiage to an interesting phase guest. I've been looking forward to this one because we are joined today by a greater friend
00:00:56
Speaker
of Solas David Nixon. David, welcome to the show. Hi Andy, hi Kristy, great to be with you. For those who don't know David, David does a lot with us at
David Nixon's Focus Areas
00:01:06
Speaker
Solas here. If you go to the Solas website, you'll find all kinds of articles and bits and pieces that David has written and done. But for a day job, when we're not trying to keep him busy at Solas, David is the associate pastor at Carrubba's Church at Edinburgh, passionate about
00:01:20
Speaker
evangelism and apologetics and outside the church does lots of things in terms of university missions and evangelism so on and and so forth does that kind of capture you well David that potted bio there I think I'm guilty as charged yes
00:01:34
Speaker
guilty as charged. Well, there were certainly things we were, as Christians, thinking what to talk to you about,
Fear of Evangelism in Modern Culture
00:01:41
Speaker
David. But one thing that I know a lot of thinking about, and I know that you and I have done quite a bit of talking about over the years, is we live in a culture where I think many Christians are quite afraid.
00:01:51
Speaker
of evangelism. You know, as somebody put it to me once, they said, you know, I just wish I could figure out how to share my faith at work without getting fired. Because we seem to live in this culture that looks more and more like a war zone every day, whether it's, you know, hot issues like transgenderism, whether it's politics, whether it's, you know, a massive other sort of things that rip our culture apart. Christians, I think, are afraid of, you know, going out talking about Jesus, getting associated with some of these big cultural battlegrounds, stepping on a land mine, getting blown up, getting fired.
00:02:20
Speaker
and so all of that leads many Christians I think in the workplace to just say nothing, keep their heads down. How as Christians can we share our faith in a culture where people have forgotten how to disagree, forgotten how to discuss and it just just seemed yeah so difficult out there.
Personal Story: Disagreeing with Compassion
00:02:37
Speaker
What advice can you offer us?
00:02:40
Speaker
Well, I've had to actually learn this firsthand. I grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and I grew up in a part of the community that was held some rather extreme offensive opinions and beliefs politically, religiously, and got in some trouble in my early teens for some of the viewpoints that I held and some of the things that I was involved in. And through that, I've had to learn how is it that we can disagree with people well.
00:03:07
Speaker
So that's being something that I've had to learn about learning from Jesus really. I'm amazed with Jesus that he is someone who was filled with conviction and yet he was able to communicate that with great compassion to people. He was the friend of sinners and that compassion didn't involve any kind of compromise with his convictions. I think that's the starting point for us, it's to always lead with compassion.
00:03:31
Speaker
That's such a strong starting point and particularly looking at the life of Jesus in that way. What do you think that actually looks like when we're looking at, for example, the culture wars in society at the moment where these different groups are kind of vying for cultural dominance and to be heard?
Balancing Compassion and Conviction
00:03:50
Speaker
How can we as Christians
00:03:53
Speaker
I suppose show compassion, but at the same time have a strong conviction and the ability to be able to articulate our views within that messy mix and milieu when we're thinking about cancel cultures and we were talking a little bit about safety cultures and there's all sorts of things going on. How is it possible for us to actually, for example, turn up to work on a Monday if we're zooming in or if we're a key worker?
00:04:20
Speaker
and be able to share the gospel in such a way that we aren't actually fired or dismissed from our jobs. What does that look like to model that compassion in this cultural moment?
00:04:32
Speaker
That's a great question, Christie, and it's interesting you said that there's so many groups competing to be heard, and that's probably part of the problem. They want to be heard rather than to listen. I think that needs to be a starting point for us.
Listening and Questioning in Evangelism
00:04:43
Speaker
It's really interesting when you go through the Gospels and you observe closely what Jesus does is, yes, he teaches, but he far more often asks questions of people.
00:04:52
Speaker
He invites people to speak and he wants to listen to what they have to say and engage with them where they're coming from. He wants to hear them out. I think that can be a really helpful tool for us to have in our evangelism toolkit. Whenever we're going about ordinary life, it's simply just to be curious about people, to ask lots of questions, the what's and the why's and to listen carefully and to explore what people really think. I think what people really want is to be heard and to be invited to speak.
00:05:19
Speaker
We never have to be afraid just to listen and to receive from others all truth is God's truth and we can learn from others even when we disagree with them passionately as a starter.
00:05:30
Speaker
That's a great starting point. The other question that occurred to me, David, is there also sometimes, if we are honest with ourselves as a Christian community, that sometimes, particularly for those of us who are passionate about politics or passionate about an issue, that if we're not careful, we can always get sucked into that culture war. We can end up in a conversation wanting to win a particular position.
00:05:53
Speaker
And we can always accidentally lose sight of Jesus. How do we keep those things apart? Especially for those of us who are absolutely passionate about some of those issues out there, making sure that we stay focused on the right thing.
Understanding Perspectives: The Elephant Analogy
00:06:08
Speaker
I think something that we've got to think about is, if we're passionate about something, we also want other people to be passionate about it as well, and we want people to be persuaded to agree with us. And then we've got to think about how do we get people to agree with us when they start from a different place. Someone who I found very helpful to engage with and learn from about this is the secular psychologist Jonathan Haidt over in America at New York University. He's a professor of moral psychology.
00:06:34
Speaker
And he's written a wee book entitled, well it's not actually wee, it's quite big, but it's subtitled, why is it that good people disagree about religion and politics? And he has this incredible picture where he says that people work like an elephant with a rider on top.
00:06:50
Speaker
There's the writer is your mind, your arguments, your thoughts. But the elephant, the much larger thing in picture is it's your gut reactions, it's your emotions, it's your feelings. And so often in conversation with people, we are talking to people's elephants, not people, the writer on top.
00:07:08
Speaker
And he points out that the elephant is really the thing in charge. It's the big, powerful beast. It sets the direction where it wants to go. It goes. And so if you want to really start to change people's minds and hearts and how they live and behave, you have to start by talking to their elephant, which means you've got to be a friendly elephant. You've got to come in close and draw alongside and then begin to persuade them to shift by talking to their elephant. And that involves being kind and compassionate and being open to listen and hearing.
00:07:37
Speaker
and engaging with people that way. So we start by seeking to win people's hearts before we seek to try and change their minds. That's such a great, I guess, starting point, isn't it, in sharing? We loved you so much that we're delighted to share with you not just the Gospel, but our lives as well, and modeling something really beautiful in that. We were talking about the missiologist Leslie Newbig in earlier on,
00:08:06
Speaker
how he, his focus was on bringing people into community structure so that they could see the credibility of the gospel through these kind of renewed relationships, redeemed relationships. And so I'm just wondering, I know we're thinking a little bit about what this looks like in society, but what I was just reflecting on is what happens when there is disagreement or tribalism within the church.
00:08:32
Speaker
How do we disagree well as sisters and brothers over some really big issues, but also on smaller issues too?
Theological Triage in Church Disagreements
00:08:43
Speaker
It seems like there's not just a fracturing in society generally, but also within God's community. How can we disagree well when, as Christians, we do want to
00:08:56
Speaker
walking the footsteps of Jesus by loving our neighbors as ourselves, loving brothers and sisters within the church. But how do we do that when we have the same convictions, but we seem to come to very different conclusions?
00:09:11
Speaker
Just this last year through lockdown and all of the impacts that's had on church and Christian life, sadly we've seen those fractures like never before. I think it's been the most difficult part of this for us as church leaders has been seeing the disunity in our church families and some of the criticisms that we've received for decisions that we've taken and how we've sought to try and lead the church through these times. So it's a very, very relevant question.
00:09:38
Speaker
I think part of it begins with us having to work out how significant is the difference between us. There's this idea of theological triage. So triage, if you're in a hospital situation, someone comes in, the doctors and nurses have to assess how serious is this person's injury or sickness? How quickly do they need to receive help?
00:09:59
Speaker
And so theological triage is about working out, is this a primary issue? Is this something that affects the core and heart of the Christian faith and its belief systems? Or is this something more that's about differences in how church looks, that would be a secondary issue? Or would this be a tertiary issue, one that just
00:10:17
Speaker
fellow Christians reach different conclusions on as they read the Bible with faithfulness and with integrity and they just come to different places on it. And so deciding is this primary, is this heresy or is this orthodoxy, is it one of those issues because then those are ones we've really got to fight over and work hard on and bottom out. Is this one where actually it just is going to be a secondary issue and different churches are going to approach that differently and if
00:10:40
Speaker
your church approaches, for example, a woman issue or a charismatic or worship expression issue, you might just need to think about what church best fits you. Or is it a tertiary issue where it's reading different parts of the Bible or having different views about, for example, the timings and the events of the end of the world, where people can be brothers and sisters, Lord Jesus, part of one church family, but
00:11:04
Speaker
they just hold these differences and they learn to be charitable and to be generous. I think it was Augustine who once said that in essential things, those primary things, we should have unity. In doubtful things, that would be the secondary things, liberty, but in all things, charity. I think that would be a good little rationale for us all to have as we work through our differences in church.
Persuasion and Understanding in Disagreements
00:11:28
Speaker
Let me ask a quick follow-up question on that, David, because this is just brilliant. What do you think the role of persuasion then looks like within those different areas? Like, do you think if we do have different views on, I mean, you mentioned women, charismatic gifts, you know, there are so many others that we could talk about thinking about the pandemic, et cetera, et cetera. Do you think it's actually a legitimate endeavor for us as Christians who try and persuade each other
00:11:57
Speaker
taking up a different position? And if so, how do we do that? And what does that look like? I think so. I think it's fair because the reason why we have it as a conviction is because as we've sought to read the Bible faithfully and with integrity, taking God's words seriously, we believe, you know, this is what God is saying and this is true. And because it's about truth, then we want to say to others, well, I think that you may not fully get this truth.
00:12:25
Speaker
But I think one of the things that can help us is we very quickly can think that we're in the right and others are in the wrong, and they're stupid for being in the wrong. How could you possibly think that? And one of the things I find to be helpful with my background in law, it's having to look at a particular issue from all the different angles. So a good lawyer is someone who can take a case and can prepare the two sets of arguments
00:12:51
Speaker
for your case and against your case and test out the strength of them and that's something that I've taken with me into theology and into persuasive evangelism and apologetics is doing that and so I find it really important to read the people who disagree with me and have a different viewpoint and very often that has
00:13:09
Speaker
softened and humbled me in thinking, actually, they've got some really good points here, but this is why I disagree with them. For example, for baptism, I came very close at one point some years ago to being convinced that actually I was wrong about baptism and would need to change. But then I was like, OK, I felt the real force. I see the clarity and the logic and the persuasion of their case. But here's why I disagree. Here's why I don't need to change.
00:13:33
Speaker
And now whenever I engage with people who have different views with me on baptism, it's with just a lot more generosity, a lot more humility, and a lot more respect, and that's helpful.
00:13:43
Speaker
What intrigues me in this discussion is, you know, coming back to this idea of us living in this world where there are the culture wars everywhere and, you know, Christians are somehow going to find a way of communicating through that. Of course, it's vital that we learn to disagree well, right? Because if we can't disagree well, then, of course, the world spots that we're disagreeing about, Adley, and called it out. I mean, I
00:14:07
Speaker
I don't know about you David, but in many evangelistic events, the question about Christianity has come up. I've heard variations of, well, hang on a minute, either which version of Christianity are you presenting this evening, or how can we take Christianity seriously when Christians seem to be infighting all the time? How do you respond to that question? If someone said to you, who's outside the Christian community, you guys can't disagree well yourselves. How on earth can you have anything to offer the world? How would you
00:14:37
Speaker
respond to that challenge?
Christian Infighting and Unity
00:14:40
Speaker
Like you Andy, I've had that come up a number of times and part of it is saying to people what you're seeing there is evidence of the very problem that Jesus came to sort out. The very fact that we are self-righteous, that we are proud, that we have a tendency to be unkind and unloving in our interactions even with brothers and sisters in the church family
00:14:59
Speaker
is evidence that what Jesus says about the nature of the human heart and the human condition is absolutely true and it's true even of Christians. As it's often been said the church is not a museum of saints rather it's a hospital full of sick people and Jesus is the great physician who came to sort out and heal sick people like you and me.
00:15:16
Speaker
And so I want to then say, what you're saying there is evidence that what Jesus says is true about the problem humans have. And what I'm commending to you is not my church, it is not my particular Christian flavour, denomination or anything, it is the person of Jesus and the work of Jesus. That's what I want you to focus on. It's very much what C.S. Lubbs is all about when he entitled his book.
00:15:39
Speaker
mere Christianity. It's the, as he puts it, it's the hallway between all the different rooms. There are different rooms where you get your Presbyterians, your Baptists and your Pentecostals and your Charismatics and whatever else. But there is a shared hallway where there is this common mere Christianity, where we subscribe to the creeds and confessions of the church, where we uphold the Bible, Old and New Testaments as the word and authority of God's, our supreme authority for life, behavior and doctrine. It's commending Jesus, keeping the focus on him.
00:16:10
Speaker
That's incredibly helpful. Thank you so much, David. I was just thinking about applying that then a little bit more to society where, you know, one of the common cultural values at the moment
00:16:24
Speaker
is tolerance. And the whole, you know, this is my truth, tell me yours. We have, again, this kind of this settled distinctions in society where we wonderfully want to accept the other person's view, but then you don't go the next step in terms of
00:16:43
Speaker
trying to understand or listen or put forward a different view because if you put forward a different view that seems to unsettle the previously held view or kind of call it into question or say that it's not legitimate or good enough.
Respecting Individuals vs. Questioning Ideas
00:16:58
Speaker
What would you say to that person who might be listening and to me myself where I think about my friends for example and we're all
00:17:05
Speaker
You're quite happy in our little silos to some extent. How can we really kind of disagree well with them? So I know you've mentioned compassion and walking alongside them, but do you have any stories of how we can really kind of open up the vivid life of Christ, you know, through His Word within those conversations? How can we even start those conversations when we know that if we are to disagree, almost it's an offence?
00:17:34
Speaker
If we can go back to something that Jonathan Haidt, our friend with the Elephant Man, as he's known in our house, the Elephant Man talks about how if people's hearts are open, then their minds are open. I think it's really important that people know that we are for them and that we love them.
00:17:50
Speaker
I think it comes up in all sorts of contexts, particularly over disagreements over sexual ethics and conversations around about sexuality and gender in our society, where especially people feel this threat that to disagree, to have a different viewpoint is hateful. It is to attack me, it's to dismiss me.
00:18:10
Speaker
And one of the things I think that we need to distinguish between is that people have rights and people should be unconditionally respected. They're made in the image of God. They are ones who are so supremely valued that God would send His Son to make it possible for them to be saved. So we need to see and recognize the value of people and to communicate to them in real, tangible ways that we are for them and we love them in the name of Jesus, that they have rights and we respect them unquestionably. But then it's to recognize that
00:18:39
Speaker
ideas don't have the same rights and the way that we respect ideas is by questioning them, is by discussing them, is by backing them back and forth and just being safe people who people can talk with and they can they can earn their unedited thoughts without being shot down with oh you are this you're this sort of hateful person or you know that's not politically correct if we're the sort of people who people know they can come and talk to because we're for them we want to listen to them
00:19:07
Speaker
We hear the good in what they're saying, even though they might have a completely different worldview from us, so that we can hear the marks of God's common grace. See, that is true, what you've just said, that is good. I think so much of that is what Jesus did. He's a friend of sinners.
00:19:24
Speaker
not the one who's come to throw stones. In fact, the people who wanted to throw the stones were the people who thought they were better than everybody else. They had all the right answers and they even picked up their stones to throw at the Lord Jesus himself. So I think we can learn so much just by observing how he was with people, asking questions, showing them love, serving them, being willing to embrace them in all their mess that there's no such thing as a stupid question. You can't say anything that's going to offend me. Just let it out. That's fine. Just be you.
00:19:53
Speaker
and then being able to then talk about, share with them the good news that Jesus brings and the truth that changes our
Conclusion and Farewell
00:20:01
Speaker
worlds. And it can't be uncomfortable, it challenges. The Gospel doesn't just say yes to us, the Gospel says yes and no, repent and believe.
00:20:11
Speaker
I was really struck by that distinction between the status of rights of human beings and of ideas. That's such a great way of kind of distinguishing between the two and that works particularly well in our Western context, doesn't it, when we can separate
00:20:27
Speaker
and those two things out thank you so much david a last time is against us thank you so much for opening up this this conversation with us today it's been a real joy being able to talk to you and meet you digitally for the first time thank you so much david you've been a great guest thanks for having me
00:20:45
Speaker
And I think that wraps it up for another week from Andy and myself. We'll be back with you in a couple of weeks time. We'll be joined by another guest and we look forward to continuing the conversation with you on pep talk then. Thank you for listening. Bye for now.