II. The advantages of engaging into dialogues or debates.
This is the part 2 of the paper that I presented before. Before I cleared the misconceptions. Now we will be talking about the advantages of engaging into dialogues or debates (on the presumption that the basis is truth and not myth).
Most of us are engaging into a debate everyday. In schools, at the office, into chit chat, etc. Not that formal though but most if not all is onto debating.
I will summarize the advantages in engaging into a mature and based on truth debates.
I will use 2D's:
Define
Decode
Define
I am currently reading this book now by Ron Martoia. His thesis is all about the languages that we are using that somehow misinterpret by the nonChristians. I may not agree to all of his positions but I agree that we have to define (or redefine) the terms that we are always using.
Sometimes, by just sharing our faith the non Christians misquote us and worse, reject the gospel. In a dialogue we will have a chance to define our faith on the level that our audience can understand. The one way communication can't relay properly the message but with dialogue or two way communication the non Christians may ask and require us to answer about our hope... Our faith.. Our God (Please read 1 Peter 3:15). Since there is an interaction we can define what we mean by the terms that we are using.
Let's have an experiment. What is the first picture that comes to your mind if I will say Church. Some may say a big building. Others may say a group of people. It is because we have different backgrounds, family traditions and upbringing. We are all different. Defining our terms into an interaction may open the gate for open discussion for the non Christians that continues to reject the gospel because of our mispresentation of it.
Decode
Remember this book ? This is the book of full of symbols that the characters of this novel need to decode for them to understand the whole message.
If other may not understand us, we too sometimes have misinterpretations and misquotations on the things that they believe.
If we will understand what they think. If we will know how they play they game. On how they use the language. We may be able to understand their needs.
If you can notice, Jesus and Paul have different teaching styles. Why? Because they have different audiences with different questions in life. If we know their questions we may know what they want to hear from us.
-Danes
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