Another Example of Equivocation

I heard an interesting example of equivocation this morning:

The host of a Christian radio show introduced their topic while he was interviewing the speaker. The topic was, "myths about evangelism", and the host labeled the first one, "people do not want to hear about Jesus." The speaker then began to elaborate on the myth by stating its converse, "people are open to the gospel".

All other errors aside, it is one thing to suggest that people do want to hear about Jesus; this statement could be considered true if one qualified it by saying that a person wanting to hear about Jesus is not the same as a person seeking after God, which Paul in his letter to the Romans explicitly states as not being the case, but to liken the idea that, "people want to hear about Jesus" with the idea that "people are open to the gospel", is to equivocate a potentially true statement with an out-right error.

The context on the program was this: we as Christians tell ourselves lies (myths) about unbelievers and about the nature of evangelism so that we might not feel so guilty about not proclaiming the gospel. But in that context, we can never say that persons (ones we should be evangelising) are open to the good news, which is that Christ has born the penalty of our sins, and raised from the dead to placate the wrath of the Father. If anyone believes that then they do not need to be evangelised...they need to be discipled.

As a result of, what I believe is a disregard for what have historically been considered biblical categories: evangelism, seeker, and the gospel, and for what has been the historical understanding of the human condition, i.e., depraved, persons often think that unbelievers are open to the gospel, or that they are even seeking it or seeking Jesus for salvation prior to being regenerated, when we know from scripture that all of us who once were, and all present unbelievers not only are not seeking the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, but in their hearts we hated Him; those considered "seekers" by many evangelicals may very well want to know more about Jesus the person who existed in history, they may even want to know more about the historical truth claims of Christianity, but unless they are called by The Spirit of God, they are never open to the gospel...at least not until one is regenerated is he open to the gospel.