Why Non-Believers Do Not Take Their Own Beliefs Seriously

One of the greatest challenges today facing Christian evangelism lies in the fact that most people in the west do not take the matter of beliefs seriously. Beliefs tend to be shaped by pragmatic concerns, applied to only one area of life, defined by pluralism, and accepted as non-binding. This is the legacy of Post Modernism which makes beliefs of little more consequence than the kind of cereal one had for breakfast---consequence, not relevance. Consequently, if beliefs are not taken seriously, then there is no reason to think that the world would see Christian beliefs any differently. The purpose of this talk is two-fold: (1) to emphasize the importance of one’s view of reality and how that view determines how one views beliefs in general and Christian beliefs in particular; (2) to suggest how Christians might meaningfully engage the non-believer with truth claims grounded in an objective reality—beliefs that do make a difference.