Communicating with Grace and Truth

Another good quote from Chris Castaldo's book, Holy Ground. Castaldo is actually quoting John Stackhouse's book, Humble Apologetics. When sharing with non-believers,

"We should sound like we really do respect the intelligence and spiritual interest and moral integrity of our neighbors. We should act as if we do see the very image of God in them. It is a voice that speaks authentically out of Christian convictions about our own very real limitations and our neighbor's very real dignity, not cynical expediency.

"We are rhetorically humble because we are not prophets infallibly inspired by God, let alone the One who could speak with authority in a way no one else can speak. We are messengers of that One: messengers who earnestly mean well, but who forget this bit of the message or never really understood that bit; messengers who never entirely live up to their own good news; messengers who recognize the ambiguities in the world that make the message harder to believe; and therefore messengers who can sympathize with neighbors who aren't ready just yet to believe everything we're telling them."