How to communicate so as to be heard, speaking the truth in love

Tim and Michael Keller write in
Cunningham, Ed. Richard. Serving the Church, Reaching the World: Essays in honour of Don Carson
[I have emphasised some parts in bold.]
It relates primarily to student life but has much wider application.

Don Carson has, his entire life, been an ardent proponent of and participant in university missions. Both of us are also passionate about this subject and have had some years of experience in student evangelism. Tim became a Christian through the ministry of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in 1970– 1, and later served as InterVarsity associate staff. More recently he was a missioner at the University-wide Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (OICCU) missions in 2012 and 2015. Michael has been the director of City Campus Ministry in New York

There has begun a strong movement to control speech on campus and to punish any statements perceived to be bigoted or discriminatory. A discriminatory statement is now defined as that which offends the listener and which is perceived to violate his or her dignity and identity. So, in contrast to former times, students demand no longer only respectful, civil disagreement but full recognition and affirmation. Any failure to provide an environment that keeps dignity ‘safe’ must be punished, both by college administrators and social media. Don Carson did some reconnaissance on this trend in his 2013 book The Intolerance of Tolerance, 4 but it has accentuated almost exponentially even in the last three years into what is now called ‘vindictive protectiveness’.

This new climate finds the absolute claims of Christianity, no matter how carefully and warmly expressed, to be a violation of the dignity and identities of others. In a New York Times article titled ‘In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas’, Judith Shulevitz addresses the belief that colleges should keep students safe from distressing viewpoints and therefore from psychological angst. She argues that ‘while keeping college-level discussions “safe” may feel good to the hypersensitive, it’s bad for them and for everyone else’.   Shielded from unfamiliar ideas, students will never learn the discipline of seeing the world through the eyes of someone with a sharply different viewpoint. They will be unable to process new arguments and ideas because their intellectual climate has been so tightly controlled. 

The reasons for this change are complex. One is the flowering of an approach to personal identity that no longer looks outward to norms, commitments and communities, but that is wholly inward and individualistic. Charles Taylor, in The Malaise of Modernity, explains that this kind of identity is fragile, needs constant affirmation, and, ironically, requires more recognition and support from popular opinion.  In the past, all conceptions of identity involved connecting to some outside truth bigger than yourself. The contemporary view, however, is that we need no ‘truth’ other than our own. Religion of any kind is seen as destructive to the unimpeded inward journey necessary to become ‘true to one’s self’. In the 1940s, Dr Lloyd-Jones could be nonchalantly dismissed as being simply unenlightened.  Today the gospel message is more likely to be taken seriously as a threat to freedom and the full expression of personal identity. 

Another root of the new ‘weaponized tolerance’ is the convoluted moral relativism of our culture, which is an entailment of the individualistic identity. Morality is now seen to have no grounding except in one’s personal feelings. There is no moral source outside the self to which two people could have recourse in order to come to some agreement on an ethical issue. Sociologist Christian Smith shows how this makes young American adults essentially schizophrenic. On the one hand, they are often moralistic, with vehement convictions that some practices are very, very wrong. But almost in the same breath they will say that there are no moral absolutes, that everyone must determine what is right or wrong for them. This profound inarticulacy makes it hard for many students to conceive of anything like a ‘search for truth’ that once marked the university. It also means students can (1) denounce a speaker for his beliefs and views, but (2) then say to their own critics that ‘No one has the right to tell anyone what is wrong for them,’ and after doing both (3) see absolutely no inconsistency in this at all. To call this a conversation-stopper is putting it mildly. How does a Christian evangelist get traction, not just with moral relativists, but with moralistic moral relativists?

Other roots of the current climate lie in trends in popular culture and technology, as detailed by Jonathan Haidt and some others.  Perhaps the most obvious and pervasive influence is the Internet. Today’s undergraduate students are the first to have spent their entire adolescence on social media, and there has been much analysis about its effects on them.  Studies have shown that social media makes relationships controllable but also (and therefore) much ‘thinner’ and more superficial.

Also by comparison, it makes face-to-face encounters feel much more threatening. For example – how do you just ‘block’ a critic that is physically standing in front of you? You can’t. That is why aggrieved parties have their interchanges online, where they can simply hit the off button to end it. Before hitting the off button, however, Internet communication makes possible the kind of cutting insults and dehumanizing declarations that few people feel able to make to someone’s face. In sum, critics show that the Internet has led to a kind of illiteracy with regard to conflict resolution and committed relationships in general. Even more foreign to the Internet user, for all the reasons just cited, is the very idea of forgiveness. Haidt and others show how, for all these reasons, the Internet has contributed to the tolerant-looking intolerance, the breakdown of dialogue on campus, and the growing outrage and hostility toward religion and toward classical understandings of a virtuous human life.


We hope that the realism of the last section of our chapter does not give the impression that we think the prospects for university missions and evangelism are bleak. Not at all. The current climate, for all of its challenges, also provides promising opportunities. 

First, there is a deeper hunger for relationships than ever. Students still intuitively want deeper friendships and relationships than their culture affords or encourages. Students are very lonely and much more anxious than earlier generations.   If they experience, not the thinness of late modern consumer networking, but real friendship and love, they will be strongly attracted to it, despite the fact that these relationships are harder for them to manage. Yes, they are afraid of commitment, can easily take offence and can simply disappear without a word or notice if they get overwhelmed or anxious. However, evangelists who are really motivated by love will not be put off or daunted. A patient evangelist, who is not him- or herself fragile and easily hurt, and who offers a tireless listening ear will gain a hearing.  Student evangelism has always stressed the importance of relationship but, in our time, love will be as important as argument for showing people the plausibility of the gospel. Student workers will have no more important skill than the ability to maintain as many non-perfunctory, caring relationships as possible. 

Secondly, there is a genuine concern about the lack of moral sources in secularism. Long ago Nietzsche pointed out how deeply incoherent secular liberalism is. Most forms of modern secularism insist that the universe is purposeless, that there is no supernatural, transcendent dimension, that we are here only through a process of the strong eating the weak, and that there is no afterlife or final judgment for our behaviour. They then turn around and, in the same breath, insist even more loudly that every human being has inviolable dignity and rights, that we must care for the welfare of all people, that we must alleviate poverty, hunger, disease, injustice and suffering everywhere it exists. These two beliefs – in materialism and humanistic moral values – are utterly contradictory, as Nietzsche and scores of other thinkers have pointed out. This could be the secular ‘Achilles heel’. Students will not see this immediately, however. They are so fully habituated to see these beliefs as compatible that they will not immediately perceive the problem. Overzealous, triumphalistic evangelists who seem to be saying that atheists cannot be moral people will only arouse students’ ire. It is important to give full credit to moral, secular individuals, while also showing the lack of moral sources within the secular world view to support the very ethical and justice commitments they have. Done well, this is something that can trouble students in ways that lead to fruitful lines of enquiry. We have seen it many times. It is not comfortable to be moralistic moral relativists, as so many students are.   However, as we said above, it is much easier to convince them of the problem in private, personal dialogues than in public debates or impersonal mass communication. These will almost inevitably draw the charge that ‘you think only Christians can be good’. 

Thirdly, there is the powerful witness of graciousness. As we have observed, communication in contemporary culture is increasingly shrill. Opinions are seldom expressed without being accompanied by denunciations, condemnation and disdain for the contrary position. Ironically, these are the ugly marks of Pharisaism, the self-righteousness of religious pride. It is the result of the profound spiritual anxiety that belongs to those who are trying to prove themselves and save themselves, whether they are formally religious or not. Christian evangelists who exhibit a radically different spirit will stand out. Evangelists, of course, will be testifying to the existence of moral absolutes, but if they do it with obvious graciousness and humility, it will be deeply counter-intuitive for students, yet attractive. This humble-boldness can only come from the knowledge that one is simul justus et peccator [at once justified and a sinner] both sinful yet infallibly loved. By being courageous and plain-spoken, but gracious and kind at the same time, the evangelist becomes a powerful, disarming, living embodiment of salvation by grace, not works. 

Finally, here is the best news of all: Jesus himself is still a compelling figure for students. Exposing students to the person, life and teachings of Jesus, either through direct Bible study and reading, or through the vivid exposition of biblical texts, continues to be the best ‘method’ of evangelism. In an era that is arguably more open to the imagination than to rational argument, nothing is more effective than to plunge a student into Gospel narratives until Jesus begins to appear in his or her mind’s eye. In years past, as with the John Stott university missions of the 1950s, presenting the biblical Christ to students could be almost the whole of evangelism. We believe that today this must be accompanied by more apologetics than was necessary in those times.

Nevertheless showing students Jesus is still the meat of the ministry meal. Here is one more thought for our encouragement. When Lloyd-Jones was criticized for preaching to undergraduates as if they were simple farm hands, the Doctor responded that Oxford students were ‘just ordinary common human clay and miserable sinners like everybody else’, and therefore their needs were ‘precisely the same as those of the agricultural labourer’.  We doubt that this bold retort convinced his critic. But we are grateful that it has been preserved, because all of us who care about university mission and evangelism must never forget it. It does not matter how learned, sophisticated, jaded, postmodern and sceptical contemporary students are. At bottom, their spiritual needs are the same as everyone else’s. Their sin and pride are not more impervious to the gospel than those of other classes and other generations. Their hearts must be and can be opened up by God to the truth just like anyone else’s (Acts 16: 14).

Tim Keller, Michael Keller in Cunningham, Ed. Richard. Serving the Church, Reaching the World: Essays in honour of Don Carson