Persuasion

One of the repeated messages of the book of Matthew is that vested interest blinds. Put another way, humans tend to deflect truth whenever it is costly or inconvenient. The general populace was astonished by Jesus. They were drawn to the power of his words. When Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at His teaching; for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as their scribes. (Mat.7.28,29). And they were drawn to his healing power. The religious leaders heard the same words and saw the same miracles, but instead of experiencing delight, they were filled with anger. 

Two particular examples come to mind. The first is in John, chapter 9, in which a man, healed by Jesus of blindness, was treated with a grilling by the religious leaders. The healed man was baffled by the leaders’ accusations and arguments. Finally, in frustration, he fired back at them: “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” 

The second passage also happens in John and is connected to Jesus raising Lazarus back to life. In John 11.45 we read that many Jews came to believe in Jesus because of the miracle. In contrast, the Sanhedrin’s reaction was to assemble in order to plot. From that day on they made plans to put him to death.(John 11.53). Shortly thereafter, when the religious leaders found out that many were coming to believe in Jesus on account of Lazarus, they made plans to kill Lazarus, as well (John 12.10).

The Bible doesn’t spend much time dissecting the causes of stubbornness in the religious leaders but Luke, chapter 16, provides an important insight. In verse 13 we read, No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. While “money” is a good translation, it is better to understand it more broadly to mean, earthly pursuits. The love of money is a debilitating problem. Love of power, love of self, love of pleasure, love of crowd worship, love of stuff, love of escapism—all these are similar in their effect. They are idols. They are evidences of putting high value on things of moderate value, while putting moderate value (or no value) on that which should be valued above all else. The Pharisees responded to Jesus’ statement with ridicule. He, in turn, doubled down and delivered to them the allegory of the Rich Man and Lazarus, which warned how riches and possessions tend to make those who love them stupid.

The religious leaders in Israel had a particularly bad case of spiritual blindness. They so loved their prestige, influence, fine clothes and good eats that they manufactured a theology that proclaimed that the well-to-do were the ones God loved best. This convenient theological distortion enabled them to be thieves for the kingdom. Jesus saw through them and referred to them as a “brood of vipers” and as “white-washed tombs”.

The inability to hear is much about the unwillingness of the non-hearer to give up something he values dearly. “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” – C.S. Lewis

We all have things we do not want to give up. Even the religious leaders’ desire for power and money and prestige were not in themselves inappropriate. The problem came about when those desires overpowered their love for the truth, disrupted their ability to provide justice, and blinded them from recognizing God himself. 

I recently rediscovered a fact I had forgotten: that Judas, everybody’s bad guy, actually repented of turning Jesus over to the religious leaders. In Matthew 27.4 Judas returned to them and pleaded, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” Their response was essentially, “That’s your problem.” It was his problem but it was also their problem. As the religious leaders of Israel they were obligated to pursue justice. They should have cared about Judas wanting to repent of an evil act. Ironically, they were very careful not to take the 30 pieces of silver that Judas threw into the temple—it being “blood money”. They used it to buy a field for the burying of strangers. They were very particular about not staining their hands with blood money, even as they successfully schemed to have the innocent man, Jesus, crucified. They were murderers who went to extremes to seem righteous, especially to themselves. They must have known deep down it was all a show, but they suppressed the truth to such a degree that they convinced themselves they were acting properly.

Pride contributes to the problem. Dr. Seuss has a good story about it, called “The Zax”. It’s about a north-going Zax and a south-going Zax. They walk into each other’s paths one day and become completely incapacitated because neither will move an inch to the right or the left. 

Spiritual contortionism is normal human psychology. How do we know we are not actively filtering out critical truths in order to maintain our current comforts? I’m not sure we can know, but looking at our actions through the lens of Scripture is an important help, especially if we slow down and carefully read what’s there. God’s Word is the plumb line. Means are always good signposts. The religious leaders had to employ false witnesses, for example, to convict Jesus in their show trials. Moses spoke to them on that point: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” (Exodus 20.19). Failure to read the signposts results in getting lost. Mark Twain once said, “It is not the things which I do not understand in the Bible which trouble me, but the things which I do understand.” He was on to something. Whenever we suppress words from the Bible we do understand, we’re heading off the path into a ditch.  

Beyond paying attention to the signs, we can only pray that God will have mercy on our devious souls by opening our eyes. Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! (Psalm 139.23,24). This is one of those prayers that would be good for us to pray every day.  We are absolutely dependent on the Spirit of God for us to know the truth, and to come to love it. 

“You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.” This is C.S.Lewis relating his own conversion experience. I find it intriguing because Lewis always relied on logic and reason. Before his conversion he was an atheist. But he was a troubled atheist, intent on the truth, wherever it might take him. The facts slowly overcame him, bringing him to believe what he did not want to believe. Still, in his recounting, it wasn’t the logic that he points to—it is his sense of God’s “unrelenting approach”.

All this is to point out that reason is insufficient for the task of making a person understand. Not that reason is pointless. As Russell Moore puts it, “We make arguments, even as we understand that arguments are merely the equivalent of brush-clearing, to get to the main point: a personal connection with the voice that rings down through the ages from Nazareth.” Jesus is called The Word. God favors the process of reasoning. “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” (Isaiah 1.18). But reason is only beneficial to those who are predisposed to actually listen. Reason is useless to those who already know all the answers, or who reject answers that do not mesh with certain inviolable presuppositions.

In the end, in order for truth to break through, God himself must soften the heart. Hearts of stone must be made into hearts of flesh. It is God who animates our bodies; it is God who animates our understanding; it is God who breathes life into our spirits. We cannot control what he will do. And, yet, he calls on us to pray, which means that he actually wants us to direct his actions. He will not abdicate his throne to fulfill our foolish wishes, but praying for wisdom is always a prayer that pleases him. 

Essentially this means there is no real formula for persuasion. Presenting ideas carefully and presenting ideas that can be supported are important to persuasion. Speaking the truth in love is important. This does not necessarily mean with a sugary-sweet voice. What it means is that the persuader is conscious of his intent, the intent to bring blessing, not harm to the listener. Long-term persuasion certainly includes the aspect of friendship that abides in spite of strong differences. But the final and crucial piece is the grace of God that only he can grant. He will grant it, not arbitrarily but on the basis of his unfathomable goodness and wisdom. Let us pray that in his goodness and wisdom he will allow us to convince others only of that which is true.