Evangelism that misses the mark.
In my experience, many christians assume that non-christians are indeed non-christian because they have actively chosen to reject God, or at least actively chosen to avoid investigation of God. This rejection of God is termed rebellion, and it is assumed to emanate from pride, fear, and foolishness. The non-christian is considered to be afraid of coming under God’s authority. Afraid of giving up their own personal desires for God’s will. However, although i recognise that there are people who fit this description, i suspect the vast majority of people do not. I think most non-christians are not christian because they simply do not believe that the christian God exists. They may proclaim a form of belief in “some” kind of god, remaining particularly vague on the details, yet this indeterminate sense of spirituality is in no-way equivalent to acknowledging the existence of the christian God (which is the god that i refer to exclusively in this article).
The majority of non-christians, to my mind, are not rejecting God, they are rejecting the existence of God. They are not rejecting the grace of God in the form of the risen Christ, they are rejecting the historical truth of the resurrection of Christ. They just don’t believe it happened.
Imagine you are sitting at your office desk when the building fire alarm is raised. Your decision to stay seated, and continue working, and not to run to the nearest emergency exit, is made not because you reject the destructive and potentially lethal power of fire, but simply because you don’t actually believe the building is burning. In the same way, i think most non-christians choose not to submit to the authority of God, not because they don’t want to submit to God, but rather because they don’t believe in the very existence of God.
I think many christians are like aging parents who forget what it was like to be a teenager; they forget, or simply do not know, what it is like to be a non-believer. They assume everybody believes - some acknowledge this belief, and others hide it away in some dim corner of the mind - and yet the fallacy of this assumption taints the ability of christians to communicate effectively with non-believers.
Empathy is an important component of any conversation, particularly a conversation where one person attempts to direct or shape the viewpoint of another. This is particularly true of christian evangelism. A christian that starts with an assumption of universal belief, or an assumption that the bible is the true word of God, will carry little credence for the non-believer. The non-believer first needs to be convinced of the existence of God, and then, and only then, of why a relationship with Him is important. A non-believer won’t give a damn about the relevance of a relationship with God if they don’t first believe in God.
The christian evangelist must therefore find a way of articulating the reality of God. This is not to suggest that christians must be capable of delivering the definitive proof of God’s existence, this is absurd, but they must be able to at least paint a picture which opens up the door to the plausibility of God’s existence. And i think many christians have no idea how to do this.
Perhaps it is because the foundations of belief are seldom addressed in the context of church. The discourse is almost exclusively aimed at fostering continued christian faith, not at establishing or validating the roots of the faith in the first instance. And when attempts are made to preach to the unconverted, the attempts nearly always miss the mark. Why? Because the evangelistic efforts assume that all people are pre-wired to know God, and those that don’t accept Him do so of deliberate rebellious volition. And so the evangelistic sermon explains that the evidence sufficient for belief in God is revealed to us in the Bible. And when the non-christian raises his hand to question how we can validate the truth of the Bible, the answer is clear and unequivocal - because it’s the word of God.
Too many christians don’t immediately recognise the deficiency of this logic: “I believe in God because of the Bible. And i believe in the Bible because it is from God.” As convincing as this circular proof may be to a person of faith, it is foolishness to the faithless.
Empathy in evangelism is essential. It is important for the christian to see the world through the eyes of the unconverted, and not from a pulpit of assumption and self-evident truth. Telling a non-believer they are in rebellion with God is as tactful, and helpful, as telling them they are in rebellion against Papa Smurf. It is only once a person is convinced of the reality of smurfs, that a rebellion against Papa Smurf has any significance.
The mob has spoken.
I agree with some of your comments but disagree with others. I agree that most Christians don’t really know how to share the Gospel message in a way which makes God’s existence plausible to non Christians, and I agree that the foundations of belief are seldom addressed in the context of church. However, in my experience most people actually believe that God exists, but don’t investigate it further because they fear the life changes that it may require of them. They hold firm to the ‘nice’ idea that all good people will go to heaven, but don’t investigate it fully, because deep down they fear that they may be wrong, but don’t really want to know. Whilst this is not an agressive stance against God, that the word rebellion conjures, it is a form of rebellion none the less, and without being to harsh it is also a form of ignorance. This is a matter of life and death and eternity, and so it always amazes me how few people really want to investigate it fully to discover what they believe to be the truth. Life in the west may just be too good, and too busy and too enjoyable for people to feel like they need more or are missing out on something, and yet deep down most people do admit to feeling like something is missing in their life when they actually stop to think about it.
Thanks for your comment Adam. I really appreciate your contribution. However, i do see a fundamental difference in our viewpoints.
I am suggesting that the majority of non-christians do not follow the christian God because they do not believe in the existence of this God. They may believe in something they like to call God, but it is not the christian God of the bible. I do not think people are born with some kind of pre-knowledge of the christian God. I believe knowledge of God can only be obtained either directly from the bible, or indirectly from the bible via another christian. I therefore suggest that a person who has never read the bible, or never received an explanation of the core principles of christianity from another christian, is incapable of believing in the christian God. They simply hold fast to the idea of something that is comforting, something that explains the unexplainable, something that is convenient to call God; but this is not belief, and it is certainly not belief in the christian God.
If i understand you correctly, you are suggesting that deep down people have some kind of pre-knowledge of the christian God, and that most non-christians have made an active choice to either reject a relationship with God, or at least to reject the opportunity to investigate christianity to the point where a relationship with God is possible.
I argue in the article that this viewpoint, which is typically christian, emanates in part from a reluctance of some christians to understand how their faith may be viewed from an outside perspective.
I’m confident that many of the islamic faith would agree with your viewpoint, but with one significant difference: whereas the christian would typically claim that most people have an innate inner sense of the christian God, and many have chosen to reject Him, the muslim would claim that all people know Allah, and yet many have chosen to reject Him. In fact this notion of a kind of universal belief is perhaps even stronger in islam, which believes that all people are actually born in a right relationship with Allah, not a broken relationship as per the christian tradition, and it is only after birth that non-muslims turn away from their God.
And so i ask the question, do you consider yourself to be in rebellion against Allah? Do you admit to knowing Allah? And do you reject Him for fear of the changes He may ask of your life? Or have you rejected islam simply because you don’t believe in the reality of Allah and the truth of the Koran? I suspect it is the latter. You simply don’t believe it. And nor do i. And that, i argue, is exactly the way most non-christians consider not just christianity, or islam, but all religion. Our disbelief in Allah is just as reasonable, expected, and justifiable, as the non-christian’s disbelief in the christian God.
I therefore argue that the attitude of the non-christian is not necessarily shaped by fear of commitment, a fear of consequence, or by a desire to rebel; it typically comes from an inability to believe that God exists. It is easy for a believer to consider otherwise when they have subscribed to a single religion for so long.
To the non-christian, a relationship with God is not a matter of extreme urgency, or a matter of eternal life or eternal damnation that requires investigation, because to most non-believers, such eternal concepts don’t exist. The non-believer may talk of heaven, and all things nice, but once again, i don’t consider such talk to be founded on belief, it is more often sugar talk that helps to makes life taste a little better.
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