Better Ambassadors for Christ

A few links on moral persuasion and defending our faith in a pluralistic society:

1. Steve Wagner references Mary Ann Glendon’s “The Women of Roe v. Wade” for a great answer to those who say "You're imposing your view on me":

....when people advance their moral viewpoints in the public square, they are not imposing anything on anyone. They are proposing. That’s what citizens do in a democracy—we propose, we give reasons, we vote. It’s a very strange doctrine that would silence only religiously grounded moral viewpoints.

2. In reading the comments to Wagner's post, I was disappointed by some of the ones left by presumably Christians to an agnostic who had also posted comments. Unfortunately, I see and hear this kind of unwinsome witness too often. It underscored for me the importance of what Greg Koukl had to say about being A Better Ambassador (which Wagner, I thought, exemplified in his response):

There are three aspects of doing Christian defenses. The first deals with content, offering specific responses to particular questions. That's knowledge. The second deals with wisdom, how best to interact with a person so they understand the message. The third is your character, cultivating virtue that makes you an attractive ambassador for Christ.

It's the wisdom part that I sense is so often lacking, which then tends to impugn on the character of the speaker/writer - at least to the unbeliever listening to us.


3. Tim Challies has a review of Talking About Good and Bad Without Getting Ugly by Paul Chamberlain. Challies writes:

Chamberlain believes that meaningful dialogue on the difficult moral questions is not only a possibility but is a responsibility. It is crucial that Christians engage the culture with this issues for two reasons. First, this allows us to hone our own positions on these issues. It is easy to think we have all the answers, but a good challenge can benefit us by forcing us to think through the deep and difficult issues. Second, this can be our way of contributing to our culture as it struggles with new questions of morality. "My hope is that this book will be something of a map, or should I say an atlas, to help us talk about good and bad without getting ugly; a guide for engaging issues that so often leave us confused and exasperated" (page 13).

Sounds like a book worth getting.