Why do people join Isis? This week my Turkish Muslim friend sent me an article entitled, “ISIS and the Lonely Young American.” With the article, he wrote this note: “Attention Barnabas; we must protect our children!”

The article profiles Alex, a 23-year-old caucasian Midwestern American girl, who picked up and moved to Syria. This paragraph grabbed my attention: “So, on his guidance [the guidance of an ISIS Facebook friend], Alex began leading a double life. She kept teaching at her church, but her truck’s radio was no longer tuned to the Christian hits on K-LOVE. Instead, she hummed along with the ISIS anthems blasting out of her turquoise iPhone and began daydreaming about what life with the militants might be like.”

Likely, Alex wasn’t dreaming of cutting people’s heads off. What she was dreaming of was belonging to a group that was living out their ideals. So it has been throughout history. Conviction has a magnetic power.

Conviction is why the crusaders multiplied, the Nazis flourished, and cult leaders always have followers. Conviction gives politicians pull and AM talk show hosts their draw. It is compelling to listen to someone talk with conviction. This is the reason that TV infomercials have an almost magical allure.
No one yawns while listening to a young colporteur tell of his summer experiences. Life-changing sermons aren’t about illustrations, wordsmithing, or even theology. It mostly boils down to conviction.

The danger is that, while conviction has winning power, everything that people are convicted about isn’t necessarily true, beneficial or noble. Many are convicted that Joseph Smith found golden tablets or that Reverend Sun Myung Moon was the Messiah or that Mohammed was a prophet. Conviction isn’t a measure of validity or value.

The subject of conviction is very interesting to me because it is the primary tool of our tentmaker missionaries. The primary tentmaker evangelistic strategy is simply to live out one’s convictions in daily conduct. Tentmakers live their lives differently, uniquely, even oddly among professionals who have never seen someone with Adventist convictions. Convictions of peacemaking, humility, forgiveness and honesty are noticed first, and then convictions of eternal life and earth’s imminent end reveal themselves. Our tentmakers express their convictions in how they manage their time, spend their money and invest in people. This artwork of character fascinates “men of peace,” and soon the convictions of the tentmaker become the treasured convictions of the local professional.

Did you notice at the beginning of this article that my Muslim friend sent me a warning about ISIS, a group living out one form of Muslim ideals? He clearly recognizes that they function under wrong convictions. He wrote, “We must protect our children.”

His interest and mine are the same—how can we best protect our children? I believe the answer is to have conviction. For, without conviction, we model for our children how to be a drifting leaf on a sea of ideas. And when they ultimately find someone who is convicted, whether for right or wrong, they are drawn like a moth to the flame.

GoTential tentmakers strategically shift their careers to live lives of biblical conviction among the unreached. Convictions make us someone worth talking to, worth arguing with, and worth pondering. Tentmakers are people who act on the voice that keeps telling them, “Jesus’ grace abounds. Tell someone what He has done for you! Tell someone! Tell someone who otherwise will not hear.”

What are you convicted about? Alex quit Vacation Bible School and went to Syria for the “Islamic State.” Where would you move for the Kingdom of God?

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