As Christians, we often forget that we follow a God who gently persuades. We believe that the presence, glory, and beauty of God is so magnificent and so obvious, we should state the facts—and everyone will believe. When that doesn’t work, we sometimes become forceful, even pushy.
But that rarely works.
Why?
God must call the person first. We can point to God all we want, but it is His voice that brings a person to Him. Yet, we still do have to point.
Second, we serve a God Who, Himself, does not force Himself on anyone. He states, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.” (Revelation 3:20 NIV).
Third, faith isn’t faith if it is forced. Ours is a religion of the heart—and the heart must change, be persuaded, and not coerced.
With this in mind, I found a recent article by Walker Larson in IntellectualTakeOut.com entitled, “How to Change Someone’s Mind,”, to be very interesting. In fact, in many ways it parallels the Bible’s instructed approach to evangelism.
The author notes that political and cultural wars are “won by winning people over to certain ideas. Obvious though it may sound, if the majority of people in our country believed the right things, our problems would be quickly solved.”
This brought to mind the Scripture, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2)
So how are people’s minds changed?
A 2016 Study by University of Chicago professor Chenhao Tan provides some practical answers. Tan and co-researchers reviewed two years of an online Reddit forum, ChangeMyView, where users post a viewpoint and then invite people to dispute it with a full line of reasoning. Most people don’t change their opinions, but those who do post a delta symbol to show that the person has changed his or her mind.
Here is what they found:
1. People tend to side with the majority—if we think we are alone in our opinions, we are more likely to question them. This, too, reminded me of Scripture:
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14).
We desire to follow the crowd and be accepted by it. We find ourselves listening to worldly advice and not the Wisdom of God. The Wisdom of God is the path to life. If we find ourselves needing the approval of others, we need to step back and see if what they are saying is in line with Scripture.
“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” (1 John 4:1)
2. Those who posted their viewpoints to invite discussions were more likely to be persuaded by those who offered multiple replies—but only to a certain point. After three or four unsuccessful attempts, people were not likely to be persuaded. This, too is in line with Scripture:
“He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.” (Luke 16:31).
There is a dual message for us here—people by nature “dig in their heels” at a certain point and are not persuadable. This is a warning for us when we approach others with the Good News. Don’t badger people. Give them space and let the Holy Spirit work. It also is a warning to us to not become hard hearted and hard headed and unpersuadable if we have gone astray. It is good to stand firmly against falsehood—dangerous to not be open to truth. Again, compare the message against the Word of God.
3. Those responses that brought in a different language and new perspective had more success. Longer, more detailed arguments were more persuasive. Arguments with calmer language were more persuasive. This may be one of the reasons Jesus spoke in parables.
There are many other findings in the research, and it is worth reading them. The author of the article notes that we must be “persuasive purveyors of truth.”
We also must let the Word of God fill our minds on a regular basis so that we are able to discern truth. The best way to change someone’s mind is to be known as a wise, kind, truth teller, which perfectly describes the One we follow, Jesus.