Yesterday I had the 'pleasure' of meeting with and engaging with two prominent evangelical Christians. Good people who I used to consider an honor to know and love while calling them my brother and sister in Christ. It would seem however, that much of the Ecumenical love is not reciprocated. I have spoken about my two evangelical friends who run a Christian book store, and with whom I get along with marvelously. All I can say is that no two sets of evangelicals are the same. It would seem that the pair who contacted me via email would consider the bookstore people heretics. First off, they were students and without going into detail about them, they wanted to do a project on Catholicism. Wellllll, I thought, sure, why not? If they were genuinely interested(and they seemed to be...) I would take time out of my day to meet and speak with them. One thing about blogging, is that while it is fun, we run across the gamit of opinion and when we are genuinely solicited, if it is from local people, I will always try to make myself available.
We met at a local coffee shop and after exchanging pleasantries (and ordering our required intake of caffeine...)we decided to get down to business. What followed next was an assault. A spiritual handicap match two on one, whereby they decided to ambush me with scripture verse after scripture verse supposedly opposing my Catholic convictions. After about the tenth spiritual jab in the face,..I decided I had had enough,.(I silently prayed a prayer to the Holy Spirit for wisdom and serenity...) and started a Hulk Hogan-like wrestling style apologetical comeback. Answering the typical anti-catholic banter,(Mary, Saints, Purgatory)I launched into an offensive regarding philosophy and the origin of scripture. An appeal was made to their common sense regarding applying the use of reason and then finally I leveled them with some history,..'Look guys, whether you like it or not, the Church gave birth to the New Testament! By accepting it you are accepting the Tradition of the Church! The Councils of Hippo and Carthage! I didn't make that up, that's history! Eat the pill! The Bible didn't fly down out of the sky with a divine table of contents to know what was inspired and what wasn't. Our Lord gave His authority to the Church to decide these things!' (Big Boot, Legdrop!)
At that moment, they decided to leave, (countout victory). For the people in attendance, I'm sure for many it was the first time they saw a Catholic defend his position. I know this cause' many older people commented. Back to the post title, I tell you this story because this is not the way to conduct oneself doing apologetics. I may have won the argument, but I could have lost the souls. Sometimes I agree that we need to be passionate, but we also need to be pastoral, something I definetly have to work on.
Please pray for me.
Marco
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