"There is no commandment greater than these."
In Mark 12, Jesus emphatically declares that the most important commandment of all is to love God, and to love your neighbor as yourself. At the end of the Book of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples to, "Go and make disciples of all nations. [Teach] them to obey everything I have commanded you." Matthew 28:16-20 is called the Great Commission, because that's what people (though not Jesus) decided to call it.
So the conscientious Christian engaging a non-Christian does so mindful of two imperatives: to love him (thus fulfilling The Great Commandment), and to convert him (thus fulfilling The Great Commission). Thus is the Christian in the position of wanting to simultaneously convey to the non-Christian two diametrically opposed messages: "I love you," and "You should utterly change."
Most people react to being told that they need to become someone radically different than they are - and especially to being told that by someone whom they never invited to venture any opinion on the matter at all - by (in one way or another) distancing themselves from whomever told them that. Who wants to hang out with a person who they know believes them to be wrong about some of the most personal and important topics anyone can be wrong about? And the non-Christian isn't being told by the evangelizing Christian that he's wrong about what team is going to win the Super Bowl, or which brand of toothpaste is the best. He's being told he's wrong about God. And if you're wrong about God, you're wrong about a lot of crucial stuff: divinity, cosmology, nature, destiny, morality, knowledge, the nature of Self, the afterlife, what you should do on Sunday mornings, etc. Being wrong about God means being about as wrong as wrong gets.
And it's not like Christians believe that non-Christians are just a little bit wrong about God. They think they're so incredibly wrong about God that the price they'll have to pay for just how wrong is having the living flesh seared off their bones for all eternity.
That's... a pretty big bag wrong.
And so the Christian, wanting only to save the non-Christian from the damnation of eternal hell, persists in "witnessing" to the non-Christian. (Forgetting, of course, that a witness is only supposed to ask questions when asked). To the Christian, trying to fulfill the Great Commission is fulfilling the Great Commandment. It's true that the Christian evangelizes out of love, and no one can fault him for that.
The problem is that evangelizing fails like a Ted Haggard sermon on the joys of moderation. Trying to convert others almost never works, and every Christian who's ever tried it knows it. It's no mystery as to why that is: again, who enjoys listening to another person tell them that they're unworthy of respect? And that's where the logic board of so many Christians seems to blow: they can't grasp why telling a person that they need to radically alter who they are is profoundly, offensively disrespectful to that person. The inseparable subtext of the message, "It's absolutely essential to your well-being and happiness that you completely change," is the message, "I don't respect you. I don't respect the choices you've made, the opinions you hold, or the values you've chosen for yourself."
And that's a long, long way from a message of love. Because love proffered minus respect is like a bowl of plastic fruit: it looks healthy and nourishing - but it's not. Love without respect is, in fact, no love at all. At best... it's patronizing.
And people who've been patronized and insulted tend to not hang out with those who've treated them that way.
In Mark 12, Jesus emphatically declares that the most important commandment of all is to love God, and to love your neighbor as yourself. At the end of the Book of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples to, "Go and make disciples of all nations. [Teach] them to obey everything I have commanded you." Matthew 28:16-20 is called the Great Commission, because that's what people (though not Jesus) decided to call it.
So the conscientious Christian engaging a non-Christian does so mindful of two imperatives: to love him (thus fulfilling The Great Commandment), and to convert him (thus fulfilling The Great Commission). Thus is the Christian in the position of wanting to simultaneously convey to the non-Christian two diametrically opposed messages: "I love you," and "You should utterly change."
Most people react to being told that they need to become someone radically different than they are - and especially to being told that by someone whom they never invited to venture any opinion on the matter at all - by (in one way or another) distancing themselves from whomever told them that. Who wants to hang out with a person who they know believes them to be wrong about some of the most personal and important topics anyone can be wrong about? And the non-Christian isn't being told by the evangelizing Christian that he's wrong about what team is going to win the Super Bowl, or which brand of toothpaste is the best. He's being told he's wrong about God. And if you're wrong about God, you're wrong about a lot of crucial stuff: divinity, cosmology, nature, destiny, morality, knowledge, the nature of Self, the afterlife, what you should do on Sunday mornings, etc. Being wrong about God means being about as wrong as wrong gets.
And it's not like Christians believe that non-Christians are just a little bit wrong about God. They think they're so incredibly wrong about God that the price they'll have to pay for just how wrong is having the living flesh seared off their bones for all eternity.
That's... a pretty big bag wrong.
And so the Christian, wanting only to save the non-Christian from the damnation of eternal hell, persists in "witnessing" to the non-Christian. (Forgetting, of course, that a witness is only supposed to ask questions when asked). To the Christian, trying to fulfill the Great Commission is fulfilling the Great Commandment. It's true that the Christian evangelizes out of love, and no one can fault him for that.
The problem is that evangelizing fails like a Ted Haggard sermon on the joys of moderation. Trying to convert others almost never works, and every Christian who's ever tried it knows it. It's no mystery as to why that is: again, who enjoys listening to another person tell them that they're unworthy of respect? And that's where the logic board of so many Christians seems to blow: they can't grasp why telling a person that they need to radically alter who they are is profoundly, offensively disrespectful to that person. The inseparable subtext of the message, "It's absolutely essential to your well-being and happiness that you completely change," is the message, "I don't respect you. I don't respect the choices you've made, the opinions you hold, or the values you've chosen for yourself."
And that's a long, long way from a message of love. Because love proffered minus respect is like a bowl of plastic fruit: it looks healthy and nourishing - but it's not. Love without respect is, in fact, no love at all. At best... it's patronizing.
And people who've been patronized and insulted tend to not hang out with those who've treated them that way.
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