I notice that I am quoting Shakespeare today on my frontpage.
”A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still”.
This brought up an old memory, back from the days when I still had a so called regular job, before I became a fulltime preacher.
Everybody on my job knew I was a Christian, I had been there for quite a while, and since I am verbally gifted – which is another way of saying that I never have learned how to keep my mouth shut – my faith in Jesus hadn`t exactly been kept a secret.
So I had a lot of discussions, some of them quite agitated, with my comrades in lunchtimes. Back in those days it was very important to me to come out on top in those small exchanges. I would not lie to you and say that I nowadays I have become such a holy man that I don`t like to win an argument anymore, I do, but I have come to realize that such victories has no value – or very small value – in themselves.
The first time I came to understand this simple fact was when one of the guys. a man who were on the same working team as me, once came up with the question of all the suffering in this world.
”How can a God who is supposed to be both omnipotent and loving allow it? You Christians must be wrong about this!”
I immediately saw a golden opportunity to really show off, so I gave him twenty minutes long lecture on the issue, barely noticing how he more and more started to look like a man who has been hit on the head – hard – with an ironbar…
When I finally finished he looked at me, a long, hard look. ”Oh yes, you do have a way with words!” he said acidly, turned his back on me and left.
There I stood, wondering what went wrong. Then it dawned to me. I had been so eager to win the debate that I had utterly forgotten that the important thing was to win, not the discussion, but my fellow man!
I had convinced him against his will. And nothing good came out of it.
Ergo, personal prestige should always be left out of any attempt to really win another person for Christ…