oh the love of... debate?

I only know one or two people that I will be my expressive-expander self with on a regular basis. For me it's about trust. If I don't trust you, I probably won't verbally process around you. The main person is my bud Aza and so I've been waiting for a couple weeks to have a conversation with him about my latest inquiry into the faith world... the significance of salvation; ie, what is the Good News, after all? I have a post coming up about it, which is why I wanted to talk to Aza... my conclusion would mean several changes in how the church views and "carries out" evangelism, and I wanted him to challenge and question me about it. The condensed version of my current understanding of the Good News: rest. But more on that when the post is actually about that.

We were talking when a guy by the name of "George" sits down and asks us (myself, Aza, and another) why we're christians/believe in God. His tone, posture, abrupt entrance into our "environment," all told me that this guy was here to pick a fight. I asked him why he wanted to know/what his intent was. His answer: he was surveying, trying to understand. So my friends took the bait. It went from iffy, to bad in about 3.2 seconds. My wonderful friends were all clammering, trying to salvage their arguments; they'd given control over to George that they could have maintained. They fell right into his intellectual traps. I tried interjecting to get the convo headed in a constructive direction, to no avail... all the while I'm mourning the death of an amazing conversation that I've waited about 3 weeks to have... and it was going beautifully until George took the stage. This is me being selfish, yes.

After George left I was very honest about my frustrations with my friends. I explained that 1) I was sad because my conversation died (selfishly, here) and 2) the "debate" was handled all wrong, and instead of getting stuck on arguing semantics we should be focused on figuring out if 1)his questions are genuine and 2) what he's really after but might not be communicating. We talked about the importance of slow, intentional response rather than pouncing in defense of something he disagrees with, 2) feeling okay with staying in "control" of the conversation and the direction/feel it has, and 3) that love isn't necessarily shoving our perspective in anyone's face... if they aren;t ready for it it may cause them to become bitter or have a false interpretation of what we've given them... and that's no good. Hopefully next time I'll either 1) get to finish my conversation, or 2) interruptions will spur greater and more fruit-bearing conversation.

Also, Vintage Kids' night was great. We have "artwork" drawn with crayons and construction paper on display, and ate monkey tails (choc covered bananas), JELLO Jigglers, and ants-on-a-log, and Corrina brought brownies. We also played with plah-doh. And everyone was very excited about the activities (which actually promoted conversation and interaction) and the snacks (yay fond memories). And remember my nay-sayer from my last post? Yeah, they retracted their previous opinion and said that it was a lot of fun =) woot.

I'm going to bed now

Asher