As I was sitting alone in the cafeteria one afternoon, far from home, overwhelmed and lonely on a campus of 20,000 students, an older student walked up, smiled, and asked if he could join me. He took a seat as I prepared to engage him in a heady discussion of politics, philosophy, science. Thrilled to have the company, I was mentally preparing for anything he threw at me. 
Glancing up from his plate of spaghetti, he asked, “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?”
Stunned, I was completely at a loss for a response. “Um, yeah, actually I have.” I finally managed in reply.
“Oh,” he said. “Okay, that’s good.” He wore a look of minor defeat. He had chosen the wrong table; no soul would be won for Christ over this lunch. We chatted politely while I finished my burger. He ate quickly and excused himself. I never saw him again.
I’m sure he sincerely wanted to do “God’s work.” But evangelism isn’t a form of Multi-Level Marketing and the “Good News” isn’t an Amway product. The least he could have done was ask my name before trying to save my soul.
For many years afterward I would think of that day whenever I heard the word evangelism. The term derives from the Greek word evangel: good news. How odd then that so much evangelism appears to be about selling Jesus and hoping that you can convince the unsaved heathen to buy into salvation. Good news doesn’t have to be sold. Bad news has to be sold, but not good news.
But this was the way I had been taught during Vacation Bible School classes at the First Baptist Church of Fire and Brimstone. Pass out Jack Chick tracts, recite the canned here’s-how-you-get-saved speech, get them to say the sinner’s prayer. Above all—close the deal. They may die at any time and their souls would be lost to eternal damnation if you don’t make the salenow. At eight years old I was a cross between Billy Graham and Willy Loman.
Whenever I began to seriously read the Gospels, though, I noticed something strange. People constantly flocked to Jesus despite the fact that he never passed out a single tract. He would walk up to people, say “Follow me” and the next thing you know they're giving up their lives to follow him around the countryside. How does he do it, I’d ask my parents and church leaders. “Well,” they’d say as they pondered the question (obviously for the first time), “He is, well, you know, Jesus.”
That answer always seemed to be a cop out. Then one day I was reading the opening lines to Augustine’s Confessions:
"Great art thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is thy power, and infinite is thy wisdom." And man desires to praise thee, for he is a part of thy creation; he bears his mortality about with him and carries the evidence of his sin and the proof that thou dost resist the proud. Still he desires to praise thee, this man who is only a small part of thy creation. Thou hast prompted him, that he should delight to praise thee, for thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee.
The people responded to Jesus the way they did because he is, well, you know, God. He is what our hearts have always been seeking. When we come face to face with him we may accept or reject him. But we can’t not know him.
John Calvin claimed that there is an awareness or sense of God (sensus divinitatis) "implanted in all men." The content is minimal: there is a God, He is the Creator, and He ought to be worshipped. The philosopher Alvin Plantinga interprets this as a disposition to form basic religious beliefs about God. But while our beliefs may be rudimentary, the god is not some generic being. Our disposition is to know the one through whom all things were created: Jesus Christ.
In any case, when some very average people came face to face with their Creator they were inspired to follow him and to boldly proclaim the gospel.
How different our situation is today. Some Christians (particularly new ones enthused by their budding faith) are still eager and willing to “share Christ.” Others have a more difficult time, and many don’t do it at all.
I suspect that the average Christian’s hesitancy to share his faith, though, has little to do with timidity or lack of courage. After all, many believers have no problem explaining why they support a particular politician or cause, even unpopular ones, yet they become tongue-tied when the topic turns to why they align themselves with the Creator of the universe.
I suspect that much of the fault lies with our misunderstanding of faith. In our age, the term has become almost synonymous with an irrational—or at least non-rational—acceptance of beliefs for which we lack evidence. Rather than claiming that we possess both innate and experiential knowledge (justified true belief) about God, we imply that we have a wishy-washy trust that something is out there—though we can't prove it. When we Christians posit such a weak-kneed picture of God it is no wonder nonbelievers don’t feel the need to take us seriously.
But our faith isn’t fideism. The good news isn’t an invitation to make an irrational decision, but the story of a person who lived, died, and lives still. We are not sharing news about an idea, but about a being who is fully God and fully man. While nonbelievers may not have experiential knowledge of this person, they do have an inherent disposition to recognize him. That is the common religious foundation we share with them.
Our evangelistic mission, therefore, is simply to share with others the good news that they too can know what we know. Sometimes this will mean that we must tell them about Jesus and maybe even try to bring them to a point of decision about him. Sometimes this will require us to share our faith by telling others about our own experiences. Other times it will require us to remove the worldview fog that prevents them from seeing clearly what they, by disposition, can and should know.
Most times, though, it will simply mean living as if we really believed that the gospel truly is good news for believers right here, right now, and not just in the hereafter.
God might use prayer cards or religious tracts to bring the lost to salvation and redemption. He might use young men looking to win the souls of people they don’t bother to get to know. But I suspect that he'd prefer that we introduce him as a person rather than hawk him like a car dealer selling six-year-old Chevies. I think he’d rather the good news be shared rather than sold.
Joe Carter is web editor of First Things.
Comments:
You hit the nail squarley on the head however, when you quoted Jesus words, "Follow me."
-Tim-
I found that my friend was a fan of G. K. Chesterton. We would talk about The Man Who Was Thursday and Heretics and discuss Chesterton's tremendous insight especially into counterintuitive matters. I was wondering how I could get my friend to read Chesterton's masterpiece of Christian apologetics, Orthodoxy. I figured that, if he read this book, then my friend would be open to Chesterton's argument and then he would be overcome with Chesterton's reasoning and my friend would finally see the light. When I first brought up the subject I was surprised to find that he had already read Orthodoxy and it hadn't changed his mind. Around this time I was listening to Catholic Answers on the radio. The guest was a highly regarded physicist who was explaining his faith. To my surprise my friend called into the show and engaged the guest in a polite discussion about his faith. My friend had graduated from the same University as the guest. At that point I figured that my friend was on a journey. He was looking for some form of religious truth in good faith. He was doing everything I would have suggested he do if I wanted to convert him and it wasn't working.
I'm told that Pascal said something like "rational thought can both conclusively prove the existence of God and the non-existence of God". As time goes on I tend to agree. I don't feel that I can talk someone into faith. It occurs to me that some things can be conclusively established by rational debate and analysis. For example a scientist may discover a medicine for a certain disease. We can take that medicine to people from a different culture and explain that the medicine will treat, cure or prevent the disease and they will be healthier as a result. If they don't believe our reasoning and explanation we can demonstrate conclusively how the medicine works. We can make a compelling case and show them concrete differences brought about by using the medicine.
I have found that I can't do the same thing with faith. I can talk about rational proofs. I can talk about all the well respected intelligent courageous and honorable people throughout history who were people of faith. I can talk about how faith has changed and improved my life and my family's life. Unfortunately the bottom line is always that I can't force the Holy Spirit's hand. If the subject of my persuasion doesn't see things the way I see them, then there is nothing more I can do. And it is a troublesome fact that some people will respond by moving away from faith.
My current thinking is that the best approach is to live a good life, as best I can, and be a good example. If someone is curious about my faith I am prepared to explain and defend it, but I no longer see any point in looking for people to convert like the gentleman in the article. I hear about people like Bishop Fulton Sheen who apparently could make a convert as easily as he could make a cup of coffee. I wish I could do that. I would welcome such a gift. But at this point I am working on the good example model.
Big Joe today: "The people responded to Jesus the way they did because he is, well, you know, God."
Yo Joe! Glad to see that you finally realized your parents knew best!!
Hannah Arendt in an essay on existentialism in her book "Essays in Understanding" makes clear that philosophers and theologians have not overcome Kant's success at removing God from being present in the world, whether that is what he intended or not. And Jean Luc-Marion continues the demonstration in his book "God Without Being". Marion concludes that agape is the only place we can reside in our efforts at evangelization, because agape transcends all forms of abstraction.
When one resides in agape one can successfully evangelize; indeed, once one resides in agape one can't help but evangelize, spreading the good news. And I am convinced that in this age of high abstraction (so severe that people actually are convinced that they are in solid relationship with others via media devices) only God's love breaks through. I could give examples all day, but I'll just give one:
I grew up inside reformatories and a 10-year stint in prison, and during that time I mastered all the games of violence, and I did this by a simple decision not to ever allow myself to be humiliated, being totally prepared to kill or die in an instance of any attempt at humiliating me. Never a tough guy, I eventually would be admired by many in the prison system, and even took on a mythological status that others constructed and sustained.
But when I let it all go many years after being out of prison for good (my daughter was born and I turned to God), I took on the way of the Cross, and it is only from the Cross that one can enter agape, which meant I had to let go of my stance of killing or dying in the face of being humiliated. The first test came when a few toughs got on a bus, the leader giving me a dirty look and swinging his coat over his shoulder, smacking me across the face. My neurological and philosophical instincts moved me to respond as I had always responded, but instead I closed my eyes and uttered the Lord's Prayer, and when I opened my eyes I looked right into the eyes of the assailant, and what he saw is something he had probably never seen, agape. I then reached up to open the top window where I sat, and he moved quickly over and said, "Let me get it for you," and he opened the window, and we both smiled.
What he witnessed was love overcoming violence that is always rooted in fear. And this is precisely what we are not receiving from priests. We're getting lots of sociology, psychology, politics and lukewarm gospel encouragement.
The real problem is that we as Christians continue to sidestep the movement of the Holy Spirit, and in that relentless sidestepping we are thoroughly exhausted, not even possessing the energy it takes to think seriously about the new evangelization, something that simply does not exist.
There is a difference between Catholic and Protestant evangelism; however, many Catholics, especially certain campus evangelists and those influenced by the Charismatic Renewal, are still practicing Protestant evangelism.
Come on, you know that one.
Augustine uses the illustration of drawing a sheep in the direction you want it to go by holding out a leafy branch: no coercion or pressure is required. Likewise, human beings ineradicably desire the good, and Christ is all good made flesh and offered to us.
The problem, of course, is that our desires are misdirected and confused. The desire for God that is deepest in us ontologically is by no means obvious subjectively. What we want subjectively is not what we need. That's why the "showing" of Christ has to be a divine act of illumination and attraction. We won't "see" Christ if we just happen on him with the eyes we are born with; only the Father in heaven, by the power of the Spirit, can show us Christ so that we really see.
No human sales technique can accomplish this "showing." No argument however skilfull and valid can do more than clear away obstacles. Evangelism is a matter of displaying Christ so that the Father can "show" him and thus "draw" people to him.
Karl Barth once said that the best apologetics is a good dogmatics; that is, the best way to persuade people about Christ is to set him forth, and leave it to God to do the showing. Historic liturgy, when thoughtfully done, is a model for this. Christ is set forth in a complex way, in words and signs and in their interplay within the liturgical "ordo" or pattern. There's no sales pitch, only the prayer and hope that the Spirit will open our eyes and draw us in.
In a different way, Christians go forth from the liturgy to display Christ in a complex way, in words and signs, through testimony and the living of their lives, neither dispensible, so that there may be something present in the world to which God can open people's eyes. (We generally don't do this terribly well, but the grace of God can make do with the fact that it is tried at all.)
I agree with Joseph Swanson that this is not an issue of Catholics vs. Protestants. It's an Augustinian issue. All western Christians who are even a little bit Augustinian ought to be at one on the basic principles here; the "selling" model derives historically from a fairly radical repudiation of any kind of Augustinian doctrine of grace. (And lest I give a false impression, I don't regard Wesley's problems with Augustine as "radical repudiation" in the sense intended here!)
I think part of our error in the "car salesmen tactic" is that we have my an assumption that our calling is to make converts. Dallas Willard wrote that are calling is not to go and make converts, but to go and make disciples. We may also note that Christians are only called Christians in a few places throughout the NT. The vast majority of the time they are called followers of the way. I bring this up only to emphasize the importance of the relational aspect of what we are called to live. Which I also understand to be the heart of this article.
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Peace and God Bless, and may Christ be the center of your life.