Deaf ears aren’t opportunities.

Matthew 7.6, Luke 13.6-9.

Way back in my seminary days, I was at my home-away-from-dorm, a popular Capitola coffeehouse called Mr. Toots. (Figured I’d throw ’em a free plug.) I got to talking to some UC Santa Cruz students, ’cause they quickly figured out I was a fellow student and wanted to know which school I went to. Once they realized I was a biblical studies major—a “God expert” (in training, anyway)—they wanted to talk God.

A lot of pagans go through a phase when they head off to school where they question their faith. And rightly so, ’cause they need to question everything, and get rid of those things in their religions which don’t grow their relationships with God. But many will ditch their faith altogether—if they even had any. Some of ’em dabble in other religions; some of ’em even invent their own. And some of ’em flirt with nontheism—either because they honestly think there might be no God, or because they’re jerks and just wanna enrage theists.

That’s what our conversation quickly deteriorated into. These guys wanted to try out their freshly-learned anti-God arguments on the religious guy. Kinda like a kid who just learned a new judo hold, wants to fight everybody with it, and foolishly picks a fight with the taekwondo black belt. Not that I was a black belt in Christianity… and since argumentativeness is a work of the flesh, it’s really the wrong metaphor! But I had been studying Christian apologetics since high school, and since I went to seminary in my late 20s, I did have about a decade on these guys. It wasn’t hard at all to slap their commonplace arguments down.

Still, the arguing grew tiresome, as I realized it was never gonna go anywhere. These guys weren’t curious about God. At all. Didn’t care to learn anything new about him; didn’t wanna listen, repent, and become Christian. This was entirely an intellectual exercise for them. They were just killing time at the coffeehouse. I was just tossing pearls to swine.

Yep, just like in the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 7.6 KWL

“Don’t give holy things to the dogs,

nor throw your² pearls before the pigs.

Otherwise they’ll trample them under their feet,

and they might turn and attack you².”

So I called a truce. “Wanna talk about something different?” I said. “I mean, to you this is just light conversation. But to me this is something I take very seriously and personally. I’m having trouble not taking all your God-bashing personally. Wouldn’t you rather talk politics?”

“Yeah, okay.”

So we talked politics. And after a bit, they left.

“But… planting seeds!”

Back then, I never came to Mr. Toots alone. Didn’t have a car, so somebody had to drive me there. I had come with two friends. One was a missionary who was completing his bachelor’s degree before returning to the Philippines, and the other was my roommate—a relatively new Christian who hadn’t wholly learned the difference between sharing Jesus and proselytism.

And my roommate was outraged. To him, I just blew an opportunity. The Holy Spirit, he figured, had sent me these two guys to witness to. It was my responsibility to wear ’em down, and get ’em to confess—to seal the deal! I didn’t just blow it; I abandoned my post. I just threw away these guys’ eternal souls.

No I didn’t. I had discerned these guys were fruitless fig trees. Yep, just like in Jesus’s Fruitless Fig Tree Story.

Luke 13.6-9 KWL

6 Jesus is telling this analogy:

“Someone is having a fig tree planted in his vineyard.

He’s coming to look for fruit on it,

and is finding none.

7He’s telling a vineyard worker, ‘Look:

For three years I’ve come to seek fruit on this fig tree.

I find none, so cut it down.

Why should it waste space?’

8In reply the worker tells him, ‘Master,

leave it this year

so I can dig round it and add manure.

8Then it should produce fruit.

If not, I’ll knock it down.’ ”

I mean, I can try to dig round these guys, and pile on the manure of apologetics. (Yeah, that’s probably a metaphor apologists won’t appreciate.) But you notice Jesus’s vineyard worker wants a year to work on it. I’m really unlikely to see these guys outside the coffeehouse. So it’s time I gave up, and left ’em for the next Christian.

I have heard Christians claim Jesus oughta be taken literally, which means if we’re trying to share the gospel with someone, we need to give ’em a full year before shaking the dust off our feet. I usually point out when Jesus sent his Twelve to evangelize the nearby towns. Did Jesus give them an entire year to do this job? Did they need an entire year to realize they were either getting somewhere or nowhere? Plus they had other towns to go to—and they weren’t spending a year per village.

I tried to explain this to my roommate: These guys weren’t a missed opportunity. There was no opportunity. They weren’t open and receptive; they only wanted a debate. So I was done.

I’ve worked with more proselytizers than he. Just about all of them can’t stand the idea of giving up “so easily.” They wanna keep pushing, and push hard. “I preached the word of God to them, and it won’t return void.” Yeah, that’s not at all what God means by “return void”—it’s an out-of-context quote used to justify our own closed-mindedness. We’re too impatient, too proud, to hard-hearted, to ever concede any argument, much less a pro-Jesus argument.

See, we’re supposed to want to see ’em come to Jesus. And hey, I do want ’em to come to Jesus! But for the proselytizer, mixed in with their desire (or often taking the place of this desire) is a desire to see ’em lose the argument: We wanna win. We want to beat them. We want the victory. We want God’s word to be so powerful and irresistible, they can’t help but cry out, drop to their knees, weep and tear their clothes, and embrace Jesus. We’re on the Almighty’s side, so why shouldn’t we have nothing but grand success every single time?

But what about when we don’t have success? Well, denial. We tell ourselves we sorta did have success: “I planted a seed. He thinks he’ll never become Christian in a million years, but I gave ’em God’s word, and it won’t return void, and it’ll burrow into his soul like a tapeworm, and God’ll change him eventually. I started that. It wasn’t for nothing.”

Clearly we missed the point of Ecclesiastes: Some things are for nothing. We tried to argue ’em into God’s kingdom, but they don’t wanna go. It sucks, but it happens. Telling ourselves we “planted seeds,” that our efforts always produce fruit no matter what: ’Tain’t biblical. Some seeds, the birds snatch away.

Recognize the signs you’re getting nowhere.

Denial means plenty of Christians can’t accept the idea they’re throwing pearls to swine. Unlike the vineyard worker in the Fruitless Tree Story, they never will cut down the tree. Won’t see the red flags, the flashing lights, the warning signs. Won’t accept cutoff points and deadlines. They just keep piling on the manure.

Instead of admitting that sometimes evangelism is hard, they’ll skip those stories and only tell the ones where they converted a hardcore holdout. Like some pagan who just hated Jesus, but the Holy Spirit broke them. A tough customer like Paul of Tarsus. So keep plowing the alkaline soil!—’cause someday you’ll convert your Paul.

Again: Not biblical. Paul was a tough customer, but he required Christ Jesus’s direct intervention. And when you listen to those former holdouts, you’ll quickly notice a lot of them never talk about an evangelist cracking them open; they give all credit to the Holy Spirit. Oh, there might be a persistent preacher or a praying grandma in the story—and those folks would surely love to take credit. But the reality is bringing these people to Jesus took the Spirit. Took a miracle. Wasn’t our persistence, nor our stubbornness. It was all the Spirit.

As I said earlier, not every seed is gonna make it into the ground. Mk 4.15 Sometimes you’re not planting seeds—you’re giving holy things to dogs. In Jesus’s culture, dogs and pigs weren’t pets; they were ritually unclean, ran wild, and were scavengers, eating trash and dead animals, which is also ritually unclean. Lv 11.24, 39 Often they ate the things you didn’t want ’em to eat, like the food you set out for your actual pets. If you touched these animals, you were ritually unclean; you couldn’t go to worship. (Commentators love to point out κυσὶν/kysín, “dog,” was also slang for male prostitutes. But it’s really unlikely this was the metaphor Jesus had in mind: “Hey, don’t give God’s word to whores.” He gave God’s word to whores.) Jesus’s point is there are are some people who are just toxic. What we find valuable, they won’t. What they find valuable is nasty.

So are you trying to share Jesus with dogs and pigs? Pay attention to your surroundings! Notice whether the conditions are right. When you’re dealing with hard-hearted, mocking antichrists, stop evangelizing. Stop wasting their time and yours. Shake the dust off your feet Mk 6.11 and stop giving them your pearls.

And pay attention to the Holy Spirit, ’cause looks can be deceiving. If they look good, but the Spirit says, “Drop it and go away,” you tell him “Yes sir,” drop it, and go away. Never assume you know better than the Spirit.

Don’t be one of those evangelists who pretend they heard the Spirit, but what really happens is they psych themselves up to overcome any anxiousness, then indiscriminately share God with random people. This happens way too often. You’ll know them by their fruit: They win very few people to Jesus. They hypocritically claim bigger numbers than they actually have, ’cause they include people who were already Christian, whom they got to recommit to Jesus… but those aren’t new believers, and we’ve no proof they’re gonna be any more devout than before.

Evangelists aren’t wrong when they say there are always opportunities to share Christ. Those opportunities are all around us—and we blow ’em because we’re gutless. Every time someone earnestly asks us a religion question, a moral question, a philosophy question, or bluntly, “What’re you doing Sunday morning?”—here’s our chance to pipe up!

If they back away—“Whoops, didn’t wanna go there”—then okay, drop it. But a lot of times they are curious. There’s our opportunity. Share!

Be cautious about their curiosity. Antichrists are happy to listen… because they’re looking for something to slam and ridicule. Heretics wanna “correct” you. The “open-minded,” who aren’t open-minded so much as they’re trying to look for clever ideas to swipe, but not so much follow Jesus, aren’t real opportunities either. Pay attention. Discern which of these you’re dealing with.

And ask the Spirit to lead you to receptive people. Step away when it turns out they’re not. Remember, you’re there to share, and if they don’t want what you’re sharing, find someone else. Spend your time on people who are worthy of Jesus. Mt 10.11 Worthy of pearls.