My Bulgarian friends know a high school student who told them he always wears a crucifix because he’s not ashamed of his faith. But also he sometimes holds out his crucifix to Muslim high school students and tells them, “Kiss the crucifix!” And he told my friends, if those people don’t kiss the crucifix, he pulls his knife on them!

I had such a mixed set of emotions when I heard of this. And it all has really stuck with me. For one, I sort of admire any young man who’s not ashamed of his faith in these so bedarkened days in Europe. In some places it’s even illegal to wear a crucifix anymore in this part of the world. But this young man is evidently bold and unashamed of being a Christian. God bless him for that.

However, many of us would draw back at some of the steps he’s taking to spread the faith. Religious coercion has a long sad history, both the Christian and the Muslim kind, and it’s certainly not the way Jesus taught His followers to win people to God’s ways. In fact, when you sort of take it apart, what this dear young man has been doing reminds me of the verse that says, “They have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.” (Romans 10:2)

My impression, when knowing a little of the background, is that this young man is trying to do what he feels is right. And there probably is some sincerity in his efforts to win his Muslim classmates to faith in Christ. But also, most of us know that kissing a crucifix isn’t going to save your soul. And pulling a knife on those who won’t kiss the crucifix isn’t going to compel them to receive the truth and love that Jesus shared.

But all this really did get me thinking. It’s like the verse I’ve shared a few times, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” (Hosea 4:6) Did this young man really think that getting his Muslim classmates to kiss his crucifix was going to save their souls? My sad guess is that the young man himself probably has only a faint concept of salvation in Christ and even less an idea of how to win the lost to Him.

Last Sunday I was speaking to the church here that I’ve spoken in a few times before when I’ve visited Bulgaria. The story of this young man caused me to wonder how much folks actually understand what it means to be saved and to become a “new creature in Christ” (II Corinthians 5:17). So I spoke to the ones on Sunday about this local young man’s attempts to compel his non-Christian classmates to become Christians by this outward act of kissing a crucifix. And we went over such basic verses about salvation as Acts 16:31 “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved, and your house.”

I mentioned to the ones here that it was the wise witnessing of some teenagers nearly 50 years ago who showed me from the Bible the plan of salvation. I just can’t get it off my mind that this Bulgarian teenager here was, in his quirky way, trying to stand up for Jesus and even win others to the Lord. And yet he was so uninformed about how to go about it that probably little if any good was done. And perhaps it even offended and stumbled those who he evidently compelled to kiss the cross around his neck.

My, oh my, how much sound and basic teaching is needed about such crucial, fundamental subjects as salvation itself and how to share the truths of God with others. Jesus even said, “Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in, that my house may be full.” (Luke 14:23)  But we can be certain that Jesus never meant us to use the threat of violence to compel souls to receive the Lord. And the Lord didn’t push outward rituals like kissing a cross to be a substitute for opening our hearts to Him and His truth in order to receive the saving power of His grace.

It all reminds me of a haunting series of verses that often came to my mind back when I was a young Christian, from Amos 8:11-13. “Behold the days come says the Lord that I will send a famine in the land. Not a famine of bread or a thirst for water but of hearing the word of the Lord. And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord and shall not find it. In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst.”

How heartbreaking that is and it’s not just something that happened in the time of Amos. So many today die without a knowledge of God or instruction in His ways. Do you know the basics of salvation and how to share it with others? Are you feeding His sheep and pouring out the spiritual riches you have with ones who have so little and are hungering and thirsting after righteousness? May God help and have mercy on us all.