I’ve always suspected that one (not the only) basis for proselytizing is an underlying sense of unease. Some people who have Seen The Light can’t comprehend that others are content with a different belief system. The perception that others are happy and expect the same rewards from their beliefs is threatening (the more so if one’s new-found religion involves a great deal of sacrifice), and one way to handle the situation is to convince everyone else that they’re doomed unless they too See The Light.
Christians proselytize for different reasons. It helps them to do something that makes them feel good. It helps them pay back the debt of sin. Lots of reasons, and many of them less matters of faith than of personality. There are lots of scriptural references to bringing the good news to the world. There are also lots of them about keeping your mouth shut while you are doing it. But there are more ways than one to selectively quote scripture.
So, instead, I will tell you why I proselytize.
There is great joy in my faith in Jesus. I gain strength, and comfort from His love. I find censure in his commandment that I treat you as if you were He. I think there is something vast and beautiful beyond the world we know that we cannot reach alone. I want to have everyone I love there, when I get there. I will grieve over every soul that does not reach it with us.
To those who have heard someone speaking in His name, and were told that He despised you, or that someone else stood before you in His heart, I must deny them, and their message. In the heart of Christ you will find love, and life, and joy. What messages you have heard of sin, and death, and damnation are not what I have heard, nor what I can tell you. I am not a Christian because I am better than you are, nor am I better than you are because I am a Christian. Christ is better than me. Forget me.
Make of your heart a dwelling place for the Lord. If I am wrong, you will have gained a very great heart, and all the love you have built into it will be for nothing but love itself. How bad is that? (Oh, but think, how good it might be.)
Tris
" It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching." ~ Saint Francis Of Assisi ~
[nitpick]
The words “Catholic” and “Orthodox” mean the same thing “correct” or “universal”…
The Nicene Creed refers to the holy, catholic (small “c”) Church in this sense rather than refering to the Roman Catolics in particular.
[/nitpick]
Well, ain’t that something…
The ONLY JW I know personally happens to be the guy who cleans my workplace, and a substantial part of his business includes both window cleaning/tinting and carpet care.
Hasn’t he been stereotyped!
If you listen carefully, everyone tries to force their ideology onto others, whether it’s about religion, money, sports, relationships, etc… My brother used to say that one should listen to another’s viewpoints but when they try to force it on you to tell them to go bleep themselves.
Yes, I’m well aware of this. It just struck me as interesting that some of my Protestant friends (to be fair, these are the types who tell me that “Catholics aren’t Christian,” so they’re opinons are perhaps a bit suspect) fervently object to this usage, and we Episcopalians don’t.
Are you sure there’s a small c there? I’ll have to dig out my prayer book to see how it’s used there, but I SWEAR the one I have capitolizes the c. That’s why I even bothered to mention it, because if it does, I think that’s interesting, even if of no particular significance. I’ll let y’all know when I get back from work tonight.
There is quite a spectrum in Anglicanism/Episcopalianism, from “High Church” or even “Anglo-Catholic” to very Protestant, evangelical “Low Church” Anglicans. Generally, the Anglo-Catholic or High Church wing will want to put forward the claim of Anglican intermediacy; the evangelical or Low Church wing will stress the Protestant aspects of Anglicanism.
There was of course “the Church in England” before Luther, being the local dioceses of the Roman Catholic Church. Luther published his 95 Theses in 1517. The Augsburg Confession, the first Protestant confession of faith, was adopted in 1530. The Act of Supremacy, which proclaimed the King of England to be head of the Church, and severed the Church in England’s ties with the Papacy, was enacted in 1534. There was a considerable amount of debate about how much of the Reformation the Church of England should adopt, and Queen Mary attempted to reverse the break with the Roman Catholic Church entirely when she ruled between 1553-1558. The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, which is still the Anglican confession of faith, was adopted in 1571. Some notably Protestant features of the Thirty-Nine Articles include Article VI, by which the Church of England adopts the Protestant rather than the Catholic canon of Scripture, and proclaims sola scriptura, or the Bible as the sole source of revelation, and Article XI, which proclaims justification by faith alone.
As has already been noted “catholic” merely means “universal” (and “orthodox” means “having correct doctrine”). For convenience sake, “Catholic” and “Orthodox” with capital letters are used to refer to specific branches of Christianity, but people outside the Eastern Orthodox Churches would hardly label themselves “heretics” (the opposite of being orthdox); and many (if not all) Protestants still consider themselves to be part of the “catholic church”, i.e., the “church universal”, while rejecting any claim that the Roman Catholic Church is the catholic (universal) or one true church. (Whether or not they consider the Roman Catholic Church to be part of the catholic church would depend on just how hard-core their Protestantism is.) The Westminster Confession of Faith refers to “the catholic or universal Church”, and if Presbyterians ain’t Protestant, no one is.
Let’s follow this logic a little further. Suppose you believe that the unsaved are consigned to Hell, while you will spend your afterlife in Heaven. Wouldn’t the thought of all those poor souls roasting for eternity make you feel sad? That would certainly spoil the joyful experience that Heaven is supposed to bring.
Which is why apologists often assert that the residents of Heaven will somehow be made deaf to the screams of the damned – or at least will learn not to care about it.
So I wonder how the person you are on Earth, concerned about the welfare of your fellow man’s soul, can have any correspondence with an entity (ostensibly your own eternal soul) whose compassion in this regard has been deleted.
(This doesn’t answer the OP, but it is food for thought the next time a proselytizer shows up at the door.)
There’s a debate here (a couple of 'em, actually), so I’ll just move this to GD.
bibliophage
moderator, GQ
huh. many thanks, MEBuckner. learn a new thing every day.
So they could peer into the houses they couldn’t get into?
I think proselytizing is co-dependency on a cosmic scale. I grew up Christian, my father always claimed he was a zen baptist as he was buddhist for a while but never got away from his upbringing, so I tend toward both zen and Christianity and I think as far as proselytyzing goes, I just find that for the most part there really is no point, so I would guess the zen side wins on that one. The truth is the truth so it doesn’t matter whether you believe it or not.
One of the few christian bumperstickers I ever liked said, “God loves you whether you like it or not”
Erek
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Ross *
**
I remember being so mortally offended when I was a kid and someone tried to tell me that Jesus was god. I still find it a little offensive. <wink>
Erek
Mwah-hah-hah-hah! Now I can say what I really think!
Wonderful. Now I’ll always picture you as Mr. Spock. In a kilt.
And after that, I’m ready to go door-to-door asking people, “Are you willing to let Ross into your life?”
Obviously you’re not looking in a Scottish phone book…
On a more serious note, it sometimes seems to me that those who bellow their gospels from the street corner or perch on your doorsteps first thing in the morning go out of their way to inspire antipathy. After all, is it not written (somewhere, in a book, in 8-point Times New Roman) that they will be most blessed who are persecuted for spreading the Word of the Lordsup[/sup]. And what better way to make sure you get persecuted than to sperad the WotL in as obnoxious fashion as possible?
But, again, I agree with Ross: the only people I’ve met who have seriously tempted me to convert are the ones who had accepted [religion] into their lives and were living it every day in their works. You can see it. And that can be more convincing that a truckload of tracts will ever be.
You might try putting a sign on the door which says
I agree with you! Now go away.
Hot, young, Mormon guys are always welcome over to my place. We’ll see who converts whom.
Ever listen to the comedy skit called “Pearly Gates” by the Canadian troupe The Frantics? It deals with the very same issue.
St. Peter: “Enter … and join your fellow Presbeterians!”
Thomas: “Uhm, I’m Catholic, not Presbeterian.”
St. Peter: “Oh, well, then, go to Hell.”
Thomas: “WAIT! You just said I could go into Heaven!”
St. Peter: “Well, the Kingdom of Heaven is for those who follow the one true path.”
Thomas: “Presbeterians?”
St. Peter: “Uh-hmm. First it was the Jews for a few thousand years, then God got into Muslem 'cause he liked their hats. Then when they started slicing off hands, God went with Zen. Then there were the Hopi indians, and the Azteks, and–”
Thomas: “What about us Catholics?”
St. Peter: “Oh, he never liked them. The closest he got was the Anglicans, 'cause he liked Henry VIII’s sense of humor.”
Did you ever heard Rowan Atkinson’s sketch The Devil? He’s the devil giving a welcome address to newly damned souls. I’m sorry to say the Americans are in there. All of them. It seems God got into a spat with the founding fathers. And all the Christians, too. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid the Jews were right…”
God’s sieve must be more discerning than we would be.
Funny, according to South Park, the Mormons are right.
Funny, according to South Park, the Mormons are right.
None of which cuts Trey Parker any slack with the LDS church, not after what he did in Orgazmo.