Announcing the release of my new ebook, How Would Jesus Blog? Answering Online Adversaries Jesus’ Way
If you could know how Jesus would blog — especially when it comes arguments with opponents online — would you want to? Would you be happy to find out there’s a better way?
There is!
We’ve Been Bearing With It a Long Time
Mockery. Smugness. Unwillingness to listen. Refusal to acknowledge good reasoning. Self-satisfied, condescending snarkiness.
This is how many of us experience the atheist internet, especially when we try to engage with skeptics and atheists on blogs or on Facebook. It isn’t always that way, but when it is, wow, don’t you wish it could be better? Don’t you wish there was a way to settle down the rancor, and make things more productive?
There is. It isn’t some magic road toward agreement — not even Jesus achieved that with his opponents — but at least it’s this: it’s modeled after the way Jesus dealt with them.
How would Jesus blog, anyway? Especially with atheists online?
We’ve Been Answering This Group the Wrong Way
Across more than a dozen years of blogging I thought I knew the answer, as much as any answer existed. I thought the Christlike thing to do was to be gracious, long-suffering, loving, and focused on the truth of our Christian apologetic answers for as long as the questions kept coming.
I was wrong.
Jesus had adversaries, too. They were one of five different audiences he interacted with, and he dealt with each one differently. Based on his example, the right way to deal with one audience wasn’t the right way to deal with another. He taught his disciples in a very noticeably different manner than he did the crowds, for example.
His interactions with his opponents were noticeably more different yet. Yet most of us try to communicate the same way with our adversaries as we would with genuinely interested students. That’s not wise. There’s a better way.
How Would Jesus Blog?
How would Jesus blog? Not the way I’ve been used to doing it, I’ve lately learned. Probably not the way you’ve been doing it.
This new, short (13,500 words) ebook explains it in depth.
It started out as a blog post in my mind, but the more I thought through it the more I realized it needed a very solid biblical exposition supporting it. The more I realized, too, that there are ways to get it right and ways to get it wrong — and those right and wrong ways needed more attention. So I’m offering this short book on Kindle as a guide for you to help you understand how Jesus would probably handle atheists online today.
I’m quite sure you’ll find it’s different than you thought. I’m quite sure it’s biblical nonetheless. And I’m quite sure it will free my fellow Christians and me up to be better bloggers and commenters.
Atheists and skeptics reading this: Realize I’m not saying, either here or in the book, that conversations with you are always as negative as I’ve described them here. I’ve enjoyed a lot of my interactions with you.
But in a lot of places — especially on Facebook, and on some of your own web pages — my description fits. This book is for where it fits, not for where it doesn’t.
So there’s probably no need for you to complain that I’ve overstated my case. Some of your fellow skeptics really do fit this description, so I haven’t.
Thanks for realizing I didn’t say it was true of all, and thanks for recognizing it really is true of some.
Linked/quoted in the comment-box over at http://christianapologeticsalliance.com/2017/03/27/antony-flew-the-most-renowned-atheist-of-the-20th-century/ ~~~
A similar and somewhat common Non-Theist Tactic is an Argumentum ad Frgenblitzen (…as per https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/01/saying-no-to-fragenblitzen/ …).
Perhaps for similar context see the following two items:
“ISIS, Pastor Martin Luther King Jr., & The Homosexual” at http://disq.us/p/1jzeikl
And,
“Observations In Non-Theistic Tactics” at http://disq.us/p/1jzf38t
~~~
(…the links in those items are in Disqus which may take a few seconds to open to the specific comments in threads referenced along the way, depending on browser variables…)
Interesting. Always pictured Jesus on tumblr, or twitter! Pithy, punchy, and always topical
Interesting! Thinking of it, he would have had a social media manager. Even without social media, he pulled crowds everywhere he went. Same thing I was thinking about this morning after reading Mark 6.
I can’t imagine him doing it that way myself.