The Salty Scorner
Ascorner responds angrily as you share with them the source of your hope. Scorners don’t just lack belief, they adopt an active, adversarial stance against evangelistic efforts.
I’ve encountered many scorners over the years while doing street evangelism.
These brief, unpleasant exchanges take many forms: curse words hurled at you as you offer a tract (“You wouldn’t know shalom if it hit you in the ***** face!”); shouts of “Christian! Christian!” on the streets of Israel (as if he thought he had exposed a criminal); or attacks against our heart for the Jewish people to avoid a gospel conversation (antisemitic accusations, assaults on Jewish identity, etc.).
Scorners are difficult to engage with on the streets or in day-to-day encounters.
Their directed outbursts can shake us up and it’s easy to respond to anger with anger. Proverbs 15:1 instructs us,
“A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”
Scorners need to hear the Good News, but often their loud opposition to the gospel message is rooted in deep pain or disappointment.
One afternoon during a campus outreach our team displayed a sign asking about belief in the afterlife. A young woman approached ready to give us a piece of her mind.
“How can you have faith in something without proof?” she asked angrily. “How can you believe in God?”
Reminded of the wisdom of Proverbs, I gently asked her, “If God did exist, how could He prove to you that He is real?” The question led to genuine dialogue and her anger diffused. She eventually revealed deep hurt from crying out to God in the past and feeling that He never answered. Initially a scorner, she ended up hearing the gospel, receiving a New Testament, and allowing us to pray for her.
Scorners may be the most difficult group to engage with in evangelism. But we can demonstrate the same love and compassion that Jesus offered a first-century scorner when He stopped him on the road and asked, “Saul, Saul why are you persecuting Me?” If we can uncover the source of their anger, show them God’s love, and direct them to the gospel, scorners sometimes become the most fervent followers of Messiah.
Written by Steven,
Life in Messiah staff in Florida
