When Every Conversation About God Becomes a Debate
Some conversations strengthen faith. Others slowly drain it.
Welcome to today’s reflection.
Yesterday I wrote about one of the questions that shaped my own faith.
Today I would like to reflect on something different: what happens when every conversation about faith becomes a debate.
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It happens more often than you might think.
I will be chatting to someone when the conversation drifts, as it often does, towards faith. They smile and say, almost as a throwaway remark, “Well, of course, we know so much more these days.” The implication being that we do not really need God anymore in our enlightened age.
Then they carry on talking, as though the matter had been settled.
I sometimes wonder what people expect at moments like that. Perhaps they imagine I’ll suddenly stop and say, “Science? I’d never thought of that. I suppose I should abandon everything I’ve believed.”
Over the years, I think I have heard almost every objection imaginable. Some people question whether Jesus really rose from the dead. Others ask who made God. Some point to suffering. Others insist the Bible contradicts itself or that Christians are simply hypocrites.
None of those questions are trivial. In fact, some of them are among the most important questions anyone can ask, and questions have shaped my own faith more than certainty ever has.
But many of them are not really questions at all. They are conclusions disguised as questions, offered not to explore but to close the conversation. I think that's why they can feel so frustrating. The words themselves are rarely the real issue. There is almost always a deeper conversation waiting beneath the surface.
In fact, if you are able to delve deeper, there are many more interesting questions that can be asked.
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Looking for truth... or trying to win?
There is a difference between someone who genuinely wants to understand and someone who wants to score a point.
We all have been on the receiving end of both. One asks because they are searching, the other asks because they have already decided what the answer must be.
At first, those two conversations can sound almost identical, but after a while you begin to notice the difference. A genuine question opens a door, whilst an argument often closes one.
When I was younger, I thought every objection deserved a full answer. If someone challenged Christianity, I felt responsible for defending it. I would replay conversations in my head on the drive home, think of the perfect response three hours too late and search for books, articles and clever arguments that might help next time.
Looking back, I don’t think my faith became stronger during those years.
In fact, it became more defensive.
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When faith becomes something to defend
There is nothing wrong with studying difficult questions. I have spent the past few decades doing exactly that.
Understanding history, theology and biblical scholarship has deepened my appreciation of Scripture far more than it has diminished it.
But something subtle can happen when every conversation becomes a debate. Faith slowly moves from being something we live to something we constantly defend. We become experts at answering objections while forgetting that the gospel was never primarily an argument to be won.
It was always an invitation to a different way of life.
Instead of asking how the gospel is changing us, we begin asking whether we can answer every objection. Instead of listening, we prepare our next response. Instead of wondering where God might already be at work in another person’s life, we start treating them as an opponent.
Without realising it, winning becomes more important than understanding.
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Jesus didn’t answer every question
One thing that has struck me while reading the Gospels is that Jesus never allows hostile questions to dictate the conversation.
When people genuinely wanted to understand, he gave them extraordinary patience. Nicodemus came in the darkness with honest questions. The Samaritan woman began with misunderstanding and ended by becoming a witness to her village. Thomas was invited to touch the wounds he could scarcely believe.
But other questions were different.
The religious leaders repeatedly tried to trap Jesus with carefully constructed debates. Questions like these,
'Should taxes be paid to Caesar?'
By what authority are you doing these things?
Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?
Again and again, Jesus refuses to play by their rules. Sometimes he answers with another question, other times he tells a story. Sometimes he simply remains silent.
Standing before Pilate, he offers remarkably little defence at all. It is as though Jesus understands something we often forget.
Not every question deserves the answer it demands.
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Some questions cannot be solved
Let's take on one of the most challenging questions of all: suffering.
If God is good, why is there so much pain?
Unlike many debates, this one is rarely theoretical. It is usually asked through tears and the experience of grief and pain.
The Bible never offers a neat formula that makes suffering disappear. If anything, the book of Job warns us against thinking we can explain every tragedy. Job's friends all believed they had the answer, yet it is Job, not his confident advisers, who is ultimately vindicated. Some questions are not resolved by explanation alone.
Sometimes the most faithful response is not an explanation.
It is simply being present.
We often imagine faith means having answers.
Scripture suggests it may sometimes mean having someone to cry out to when there aren’t any.
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What constant arguing slowly does to us
I have begun to notice something over the years.
People who spend all their time arguing about faith often become exhausted. Everything becomes a battle, and conversation feels like another hill to die on. As a result, curiosity slowly disappears and joy slowly follows.
It becomes increasingly difficult simply to read the Gospels and enjoy being with Jesus because every passage immediately becomes another debate waiting to happen.
Faith starts living almost entirely in the head, and the heart struggles to keep up.
I don’t think that is what Jesus intended.
Perhaps spiritual maturity isn’t having an answer to every objection. Perhaps it is learning to recognise which conversations are leading towards truth, and which are simply going round in circles.
Jesus seemed remarkably free from the need to win every argument. He never appeared anxious that the truth depended entirely upon him having the final word. He knew the difference between people who were searching and people who simply wanted to trap him. He loved both, but he didn’t engage them in the same way.
That takes wisdom and humility. Sometimes the most faithful thing we can say is, “That’s an important question,” or simply “I don’t know.”
And occasionally it is simply walking away.
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A different kind of faith
Having written countless arguments and been involved in many conversations, I am convinced that questions have never been the enemy of faith.
In fact, they have often been the doorway into a deeper one.
The danger comes when every conversation becomes a contest, and every relationship becomes another opportunity to prove we are right.
Not everything that can be argued is worth arguing, and not everything that matters can be reduced to something that can be proven on demand.
In recent years, I have found myself drawn to the way Jesus held those conversations.
Patient.
Curious.
Unhurried.
Unafraid of difficult questions.
Yet strangely uninterested in winning debates for their own sake.
Perhaps that is because his goal was never to win arguments; it was always to invite people into a different way of seeing the world.
Perhaps ours should be too.
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I seem to recall that the idea that laid my arguing to rest was this: "It is more important to be loving than to be right."