Your Choice

It's odd; when I was doing swimming lifesaving training, we weren't taught to do the following:

[Throw rope to drowning person]

Now, you have a choice to make. If you want, you can take hold of that rope and pull yourself out. Or maybe you haven't yet made up your mind, in which case I can throw you this booklet about different types of rope and how wonderful it is to live life when you aren't drowning. I'm not going to put any pressure on you. In a couple of minutes, I'm going to show you how to pull on a rope, which if you want to, you can copy.

So why do that when preaching evangelistic sermons?

I remember one scenario we did where I had to play someone who didn't want to be rescued, and maybe took to the role slightly too much. One guy dived in; I held him under for a bit. Eventually, four of them dived in, each grabbed one limb, and swum me to shore like that.

I think we have a choice to make about whether we actually care about non-Christians...

(And just pointing out that of course I think it's important to respect people. It's also important to get people thinking, which is what I'm trying to do here.)