How Are Christians to Handle Snide Comments From Unbelievers?

How Are Christians to Handle Snide Comments From Unbelievers?

Here is a recent interaction we had on one of our FB posts with an obvious unbeliever…

All Christians will encounter someone at some point that will make disparaging comments concerning their faith, the Word of God, the church, and more. These comments will be either directly insulting, inflammatory,  misrepresentative, or otherwise. So, how are Christians to handle these situations online or in person? Well, it is really simple. You don’t need courses in reason, logic, argumentation, or apologetics. All you need to do is:

1. Be Polite.
2. Don’t Get Offended.
3. Politely correct the person’s comments so that you are acknowledging that their comments are a representation of their beliefs and thoughts, not necessarily fact.
4. Politely correct the person’s comments by telling them the truth concerning what they are saying, if possible. (This is for snide comments, but not for aggressive people, those should be ignored entirely.)
5. Explain that you can’t and won’t try and change the person’s mind via argument and that in fact, only God can do that.
6. Reassure the person that if they ever actually wanted to talk about what the Bible says you’d be happy to talk with them.
7. Ask them to ignore you and your message if they are offended and disagree. There is no reason for them to argue with you, nor you with them.
8. Stop Talking to this person unless they purposefully engage you again, and only if the conversation is about learning what the Bible says, not arguing over what the Bible says, or challenging it.

This is an informal list. This is not something you have to do step-by-step. The idea is that the Christian is not making converts, they are looking for them. As Christians, we only have the seed of the Word of God which we cast out freely and carelessly to all that will hear. The response is up to God. Only those that belong to Him will hear and obey the gospel call. All the others will ignore and walk away. When we understand all this, we can deal with unbelievers better, and have a whole lot less drama in our lives. Christian Reconstruction is about rebuilding man and society according to God’s Word. Just as Nehemiah did not waste time arguing with those that attacked him, neither should we. Let’s rally the people of God, let’s tirelessly work to equip the people of God, and let’s rebuild society under God! Don’t spend your time with destructive people, spend your time being reconstructive!