For many Christians, it was how we were raised in church: evangelism training. Learn a well thought out, precise (yet canned) presentation of the gospel. Learn not just the arguments but the counter arguments. Anticipate their negative reasonings and have a ready response. And then when you’re ready (and have a training certificate to prove it), unleash your new found knowledge on unsuspecting homeowners, bombarding them with eternal questions while they’re trying to make dinner for the kids. For some reason it never seemed to work out that well, and for a very good reason.

When I was a teenager I tried to reason/argue with a co-worker who had been raised in the Catholic church. I remember us getting hung up on whether or not Peter was the first pope, something that Baptists and Catholics definitely disagree on. Trying to find research and arguments to combat this defense thrown up by my coworker, I asked my pastor for help. His response seemed to me less than enthusiastic, but my pastor knew something I didn’t yet know at the time. I was trying to argue my coworker into the kingdom of heaven, and what my pastor knew was that if I answered one objection with a logical argument another objection would emerge right in its place. The objections and defenses my coworker were throwing up were a smoke screen. The issue wasn’t the logical arguments for or against Christianity. The issue was (and always will be) the heart. That’s why you can’t argue someone into the kingdom of heaven, because the deepest objections do not lie in the mind. Rational objections and arguments are symptoms of a much deeper heart issue. And the heart has a stubborn way of being unaffected by rational arguments.

“For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Romans 1:21). Notice the progression here. They chose (in their wills and/or their heart) not to glorify God, and their thinking became futile as a result. A hard heart will be impenetrable to even the most logical of arguments. That’s why you can’t argue someone into the kingdom of heaven. But you can love them into it. Maybe that’s why Jesus gave his disciples the new command to love each other like he loved us (John 13:34-35). It’s that sacrificial love, displayed in tangible ways in our everyday relationships, that has the potential to melt the hardness of the human heart.

Arguments are great, but showing the love of Jesus is greater. It always will be.