Several months ago I wrote a controversial article explaining to atheists why evangelists must share their faith; I entitled it “The Drowning Woman” and received over 130 comments. In a nutshell, I compared the unbeliever to a woman who doesn’t realize  that she is drowning, and the evangelist/lifeguard must do whatever is necessary to rescue her, even if it may appear rude. (Click here to read it.)

An atheist then brought in his viewpoint: That article, “The Relaxing Man,” essentially describes the atheist as a man enjoying a pleasant lull on the grass in a park when suddenly he is accosted by a crazy person, the evangelist. (Read that here.)

But the most curious comment was from a guy named Bizzle, who calls himself a Christian, but has different ideas on how evangelism should be performed. Here’s his perspective:

As for the evangelism question, I would have to say I evangelize passively, but I’m not sure that’s a correct description. I’ve tried to preach and it doesn’t work for me and there are two reasons for that:

First, I don’t actively evangelize more because I frankly don’t have the answers that folks like [those atheists] are looking for (at least not yet!). I don’t feel I’m doing my job unless I can start them down the road to conversion. To me, just preaching the Gospel is like going to paint a room and only applying primer. If you can’t go all the way, why bother?

The second reason is that I’ve actually opened more people to God’s Word through my day-to-day behavior. I’ve had people ask me how I can act with compassion and good will in such a world and then I tell them about my faith. I won a scholarship for college because I was deemed by the High School staff to be the best living example of faith in my graduating class. (Not trying to brag, just showing how that was the seed of how I share my faith.)

One of my best friends is an atheist, and he has told me that if he were to convert, it’d be because of the way I live my life more than any preaching I have ever done. He considers me a living example of my beliefs. As an aside, he thinks a lot like [one of the atheists on your blog] does, and I thought it was him for a while, but I live in Pennsylvania. I do hand out tracts, but usually only when I get them first or people hand me literature. —Bizzle

• Does Bizzle have the right perspective when it comes to sharing his faith?
• Would it be better to just shut-up and live the life?
• Atheists, would this make any difference to you at all that a Christian was just a quiet example and never preached to you?