- Wed, Jun 29, 2011
- Grace and Truth
How should I approach my unsaved parents about Christ in a loving but convicting manner?
While both of my parents are good people, neither of them has accepted Christ, and they are skeptical about organized religion. I feel they’re running out of time, and I know if I don't tell them the truth, no one will. Can you suggest how I could best approach my unsaved parents about Christ in a loving but convicting manner?
I would recommend you sit down with your parents and tell them you love them, you appreciate all they’ve done for you, and you want to be sure they spend eternity with you.
Ask them if they think they’ll go to Heaven, and if so, on what basis? This will cut to the core of the main issue—that Jesus is the only way to Heaven, and nothing they’ve done can earn them the way. On the contrary, their default destination is hell, which we all deserve, not Heaven, which we don’t deserve.
What distinguished the first Christians from the world around them? It certainly wasn’t their buildings—they had none. It wasn’t their programs—they had none. It wasn’t their political power—they had none.
A friend in our church came to me about his nonchristian, theologically liberal sister, a Princeton grad. He had proposed to her they each pick a book and ask the other to read it, and then discuss both books. She picked A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren. A revealing choice. While McLaren takes the Bible more seriously than she does, as a fairly extreme theological liberal she nonetheless respects his departure from “modernism” (which essentially means evangelicalism, an ironic turn of the phrase since fundamentalists, the parents of evangelicals, fought “modernism,” which meant theological liberalism).
