Monday, January 24, 2011

In Defense of Evangelism

The impulse to convert others to one’s own religion is not a purely religious impulse; it is a quintessentially human impulse. Secular humanists do it when they express the wish that everyone should be rational. Music lovers do it when they urge someone to listen to a particular album. Most annoyingly, Mac-lovers do it whenever they hear someone—even a complete stranger—complain about their computer and suggest as a solution that they switch. I am most guilty of the latter, and I'm sorry, but I’m writing this post in iWeb on a Mac, AIFG.

I read an entry recently on the website “Jesus needs new PR” entitled “Alabama needs new PR” that took as it's starting point a quote from Robert Bentley (Alabama’s newly-elected governor)’s inaugural speech:

There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit. But if you have been adopted in God’s family like I have, and like you have if you’re a Christian and if you’re saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister.

Now I will have to say that, if we don’t have the same daddy, we’re not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother.

There was, predictably, some argument in the comments about whether or not this statement was in keeping with the message of Jesus. You can read the comments yourself, so I won't try to describe them, but it struck me as more or less of a complete nonissue: a case of people looking for something to ridicule. The dominant position in the comments (and in the post itself) seemed to be that his statement was unloving, and yet, how is his final phrase, “I want to be your brother,” unloving? While I love to bash Christians as much as the next guy, Bentley’s statement strikes me as perfectly natural, and I would like to use it as a jumping-off point for exploring my own evangelistic impulses.

In a nutshell, and in general, the evangelistic impulse may be expressed thusly: “I have found the answer, and I would like to share that answer with you.”

For some reason, I have always been far more comfortable sharing the good news of the Mac OS than the gospel of Christ. It probably has something to do with the fact that I have generally been more confident in the superiority of the Mac experience than in the benefits of going to church.

Christianity is complicated, and it is rarely what it's chalked up to be. It's supposed to be about radical grace and sacrificial love, and yet . . . it's not. Go ahead and tell me I'm wrong; I dare you. Even within a given congregation there is far less sisterly and brotherly love than we've been led to expect. Granted, that's true even within biological families, but the point is that followers of the way of Christ are supposed to be miraculously different—transformed by the power of the Spirit into dynamos of love.

But people will disappoint you, just as you will disappoint people. Good intentions are powerless to transform anything, and going to church and reciting creeds and reading the Bible are likewise impotent. Religion is impotent. I’d hate for you to become a religious person and go to church and find out first-hand how disappointing it all is, just because I tried to share the good news of Jesus Christ with you.

However, I've recently come to a fresh understanding of who God is, and I find myself wanting to share my discovery with everyone.

The “answer” I found is this: God is love. And God is a person. God is spirit, with no form or gender or beard, but God is a person in the truest sense of the word. By contrast, you and I are merely echoes and images of personhood. Personhood is not located in our bodies but in our souls, and our souls are where God's love and spirit may dwell.

This is imprecise language, and nowhere near as pithy as I would like, but what I'm driving at is that every single person in the world should be overjoyed by the invitation to become a Christian. Not should as in “ought” but should as in “don't you understand that this is the best possible news?”

Perhaps you don't. Understand, I mean. But think about the thing you love more than anything else in the world. Doesn't it seem ridiculous that everyone in the world doesn't love it as much as you do? If only they understood; if only they could truly see it, as you do. Wouldn't the world be a better place if there was more of it, whatever “it” might happen to be?

Let me expand on my “answer.” If God is love, then anyone who has love has the spirit of God within them. Of course, some definition of love is required here, since I’m not talking about love in the sense of, “I love Apple products,” or “I love touching young children in ways that some find inappropriate.” I’m talking about a “love your neighbor as yourself” kind of love. A “visit folks in prison,” “invite a homeless person to share your home,” “take a bullet for a stranger” kind of love. At the very least a love that considers how one’s actions affect other people.

Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6), and I believe him. Jesus was and is love incarnate. Love in the flesh. He was not the first to love, but he was the first to understand that love is the most important thing, the first to understand that God is love, and to understand that love means that when they come to kill you it is better to die than to stop loving long enough to fight back. If you want to argue that the Buddha (or someone else) was actually the first, I probably won’t argue with you, because that’s not the point. I believe all love comes from God through Christ, even Buddha’s, but I’m not at all convinced that you have to believe the same in order to have Christ’s love within you. When you’re in desperate need of love and can’t find it in others and can’t manufacture it within yourself, I would humbly recommend crying out to Jesus for some of his, but the fact remains that many who do not profess Jesus as their savior nevertheless appear to have far more love than I do.

Robert Bentley said something remarkable: “I want to be your brother.” The post in which I found that quote ended with, “Oh see? If you become a Christian, Robert Bentley will be your brother! Who wants Robert Bentley as their brother?” And I think, How is that more loving than Bentley’s statement?

I don’t know if the governor of Alabama would agree with me, but if I were to recast his statement, I would say, “If you have love within you, then you’re part of my family. If you don't have love, I don't want you in my family. I want you in my family.”

Even if you’re a goddamned politician. Even if you’re a Christian who doesn’t believe that I’m one. I want us all to be adopted into the family of love.

Can I get an Amen?