Friday, June 20, 2008

An Ironic Side Effect of Toning Down Hard Truths

Here's something related to my previous post. Ligon Duncan points to the following thoughts from John Piper (he doesn't note the source) on how diluting biblical truth for the sake of winning unbelievers may actually harm the faith of those already in Christ:
. . . softening hard truth for evangelism in public undermines truth for the waffling believer in private. 
I think in general this is what cultural adapters fail to realize: making the truth more palatable for unbelievers to help them make a step toward orthodoxy serves even more (it seems historically) to help loosely orthodox people feel how unpalatable orthodoxy is and move away from it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

might it be more appropriate to let our actions be a testimony for the Gospel?

Rather than watering it down the hard truths?

Personally, and I really mean personally, I think we Christians have talked way too much, and have not love each other enough and our neighbors enough in action for hard truths to set in.