Madison J. Caplinger

Here I am back in Richmond, KY, about to start my sophomore year at Eastern Kentucky University. It’s great to be back. I’ve missed my friends, classes, the student organizations I’m involved, and the campus and city itself. On any college campus, you find yourself exposed to a free market of ideas that just isn’t present in tiny Kentucky towns. It’s both exciting and intimidating. 

Some of these ideas are very hostile toward my Christian Faith. My church and my Bible tell me that I am to lovingly respond to the people pushing these ideas with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Lately I’ve had to ask myself why. Why have uncomfortable conversations with people who don’t care what I have to say? My beliefs are good enough for me, why do they have to be good enough for everyone else too?

That’s an easy trap to fall into. But I realized that this train of thought stemmed from treating Jesus’s command to make disciples as an item on a checklist; an afterthought of a busy life. We begin to think this way when we treat people as projects to be converted rather than human beings. And most people we come in contact with will see right through that.

So why witness then? Because there is a God-shaped hole in every person that nothing else can fill. Because the best things in my life have sprung from a relationship with God. Most importantly, because without God, our friends will spend eternity in Hell separated from Him. I don’t wish that on my worst enemy, much less my closest friend.

When we put this in perspective, we become more willing to lay out comfort and our pride on the line for the slimmest chance that God can use us to rescue someone from eternal darkness. That’s why I witness. Why do you?