Giving False Assurance

by Lee Strobel

They are an unlikely duo: Atheist-turned-Christian Kirk Cameron is a former TV heartthrob, while Ray Comfort is a New Zealand-born street evangelist, humorist and illusionist. But I believe God has given them a message that the Church, especially those of us involved in outreach, needs to hear. Actually, the message belongs to Jesus: “Unless you repent, you too will all perish,” He said in Luke 13:3.

Unfortunately, the emphasis on repentance seems to have evaporated in many churches these days. Instead, some churches attract people by simply telling them their life will improve if they become a follower of Jesus. The result can be false conversions—people who “sign up” for a better life through Christ, only to fall away when times get tough. They’ve never really come face-to-face with the depth of their own sinfulness and called out in utter helplessness to Jesus for forgiveness and mercy as the only alternative to spending eternity in hell.

The problem is that many individuals think they’re good people and therefore don’t need God’s forgiveness. Taking their cue from the way Jesus often humbled the proud, Comfort and Cameron use the 10 Commandments to help audiences understand that they have violated God’s laws and will someday face judgment. Once people recognize that they’ve broken God’s commandments—and that deep down they’re really lying, stealing, blaspheming adulterers (and worse!)—they’ll begin to grasp their desperate need to repent and receive forgiveness through Christ.

Comfort and Cameron use the analogy of an airliner. If you give a parachute to someone sitting on a plane, he may hold it in his lap for a while but then eventually stow it in the overhead compartment because it seems irrelevant to his situation. Yet, when you tell a passenger that the plane is about to crash, then the parachute becomes much more relevant! He will eagerly grasp it and hang onto it for dear life. Suddenly, it’s not an encumbrance, but the only means of survival.

Similarly, it has been a long-standing tenet of evangelism that we must let people know the bad news before they can really respond to the Good News. When God’s laws are used as a mirror so that people can come face-to-face with their own moral failures, then they recognize the Gospel for what it is: the only lifeline to forgiveness and eternity with God.

In many ways, Comfort and Cameron approach evangelism differently than I do. That’s OK. I firmly believe a number of outreach styles are reflected in the New Testament. Still, I admire their zeal, and I’m glad we’re friends. And I’ve told them I think they’re doing the Church a valuable service by reminding everyone of the fundamentals of evangelism: If we really care about people, then we need to help them understand that their willful violation of God’s laws will ultimately land them in hell if they don’t repent and turn to Christ for forgiveness. That’s a tough and politically incorrect message, and it always has been. And many young people, who expect their own death to be far in the future, don’t always sense the urgency of dealing with eternal matters now.

 But our goal shouldn’t be to transform the Gospel into a feel-good greeting card that omits the tough elements of sin and repentance. Instead, we must keep the Gospel intact but translate it into current language, art forms and modes of communication that 21st-century people can respond to.

One of the reasons I love Outreach magazine is because it features a wide variety of ways that ministries are innovating to bring the hope of Christ to their communities and the world. I’m glad we have a lot of approaches to reach all of the different people on earth. Nevertheless, we’ve failed in our mission unless we help people authentically turn away from their sins and cling to Jesus as their only hope of rescue. Otherwise, we may be giving people false assurance—and in the end, do them more harm than good.

Lee Strobel’s new book, The Case for the Real Jesus (Zondervan), releases in August. Get his free e-newsletter at Leestrobel.com. To dialogue with Lee about this column, contact him at Lstrobel@Outreachmagazine.com.

-EXCERPTED from Outreach magazine, "Lee Strobel on Outreach," July/August 2007

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