This weekend Grace Church Chichester had the pleasure of hosting an evening with Ian McCormack, nicked named the Jellyfish man due to being stung 5 times by Box jellyfish, apparently dying, encountering God and returning to life. For the full story see the link, it's a fascinating tale whether you believe it or not.

By some miracle, a friend of ours attended who is not a Christian, and was brought up in the Bible belt of the states, and has a passionate hatred, or has had. Ironically though the only people he has really hung out with this past semester have been Christians. At the end I actually chose not to speak to him about it, as I was aware many of my friends may ask him and didn't want to pressure.

One of my housemates did chat with him though. Apparently, he hated it. He found it extremely manipulative. However, what we found interesting is that the main bit he did not like was the description of hell. If he had thought the story was complete rubbish, the likelihood is this wouldn't have bothered him, so it would seem this had an impact.

This got me thinking how sometimes, things can appear to harden, people we know can seem to become angry at our faith, but often this reaction is based on a fear and a thought that maybe there is something more, and in which case, that means they have to change.

The simplest illustration is this:

If you keep heating clay, it will harden, but eventually, it will crack.