What’s All This About Sharing the Faith?

Our parish priest has been nudging us to evangelize—to spread the word about Jesus to those we know in the secular world. Many ecclesiastical leaders, especially those with a conservative or literalist bent, push this as a necessary part of one’s faith journey. They cite Jesus’ words in the gospel of Matthew to “go out and make disciples of all nations” (28:19).

At the same time, as I mentioned several posts ago (“Explaining the Unexplainable”), we’re faced with formidable challenges in talking about God at all, among them a secular culture that’s often hostile to discussions of this structure. We get pushed on both sides, so we naturally end up doing nothing—and feeling guilty.

Maybe there’s another way to think about this.

Let’s start by taking the pressure off—by removing the imperative of evangelism. A “just do it” mentality will not help us reach a culture that is highly skeptical, prefers science over faith, and associates discussions of religion with aggressive televangelists.

Then, let’s redefine what we do when we evangelize. The traditional objective is to convert: this automatically puts pressure on both parties—the evangelizer, who feels the need to recruit more church members/save people from hell/whatever, and the evangelizee, who’s being asked to make an earth-shattering life decision that she may not want to consider at all.

I would suggest that we try a different objective: not to convert, but to engage—to share our experience of God in a way that “joins the general conversation.” This fits better with the sensibility of our culture, so it may bear considerably more fruit.

There are two curveballs here. One is the risk involved in joining the general conversation. When the discussion becomes two-way, we might be confronted with the validity of the other person’s ideas. We might have to let them shape our own belief system. I think that’s a good thing in general, but it does eliminate the possibility of staying in one’s comfort zone.

The other curveball involves what we share. For many progressives, there’s no imperative of hell involved, so why even bother talking about faith? As far as I can see, the primary reason is that we can’t help it: the sheer bounty of God’s work in our lives takes our breath away, and we just have to share.

But what if that joy is not part of your faith journey? If that’s the case, I’m thinking, you put the entire evangelism business on hold. There’s something more important for you to do right now: to find that joy.

This is an incredible life we lead. By all means let us share it—respectfully, with humility, when and if we’re ready.