What Christians Can Learn From Judaism: Anti-Missionary Tactics

Of all the religions encountered by Christian missionaries, Judaism is generally the most resistant. Centuries of conflict have so hardened the Jewish heart to belief in Jesus, that most Jews will not even give the idea a fair hearing.

 In fact, Judaism has become so resistant to the gospel, that they have hired people to work full-time in order to thwart Christian missionary efforts to the Jews. Such a role is called the counter-missionary or anti-missionary. The two main organizations that employ anti-missionaries are Jews for Judaism, who operate worldwide, and Yad L'Achim, which operates in Israel.

These organizations provide classes in how to battle missionaries and foil their tactics. They also provide role-playing where they teach teens and college age children how to spot and avoid missionary activity, as well as how to argue with missionaries who are engaging fellow Jews. They also provide a 24 hour hotline, which any Jew can call immediately if a friend or family member is being influenced by missionaries.

Tovia Singer told a story where a Jewish teenager who joined a Christian youth group and accepted Jesus as his savior. The teen's parents called Jews for Judaism, who sent Tovia Singer to talk to the boy. There was some resistance. The boy would not talk to Singer unless his pastor was at the meeting. Singer agreed, and not long afterward met with them. Singer managed to completely destroy the unprepared pastor in debate, having responses for any argument the pastor could mount. As a result, the boy renounced Christianity and joined Orthodox Judaism. Singer concluded the story with "Yeah, he's in yeshiva now."

You might be saying "This sounds like a very bad thing. What can Christians learn from this?"

The apostasy rate for Christians in college is somewhere around 70%. While many Christians return to their faith later in life, it is often with a worse set of beliefs. They give up their belief in an inerrant and authoritative Bible and instead join the church because it provides a social club for their children. In other words, they rejoin the church but retain the secularized belief system they acquired in college.

Why does modern Evangelical Christianity not have a system in place similar to Jews for Judaism? In addition to the aggressive missionizing by the New Atheists, especially in the online environment, conservative Evangelical Christians face a whole host of missionizing influences. Most skeptics will not care if your children are nominal Christians, but some professors make it their goal to strip your children of their conservative theology. They will argue that belief in an inerrant bible is untenable, and that any form of creationism is worthy only of the harshest ridicule. They will attack the biblical moral system, calling anyone a bigot who believes that fornication or abortion is evil. They will also attack the idea that truth is absolute, and that Christianity is right in a way that other religions are not. They will do everything they can to keep Christians from sharing their faith, and try to keep Christians from believing that Jesus is the only way to heaven.

Through peer pressure, and the vulnerability that comes from a change in environment, these missionaries of secularism and relativism will succeed if we do not have a system in place to stop it. This seems to be a very strong potential market for Christians who are both good at apologetics and counseling. These aplogetics counselors could reach these youth while their minds are still young and still open to change. There are no programs of this type of which I am aware, even though there is tremendous need for one.